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“Damn it! You’re good!”

Worked by her right hand, the whip did not strike her shoulder but danced back through thin air, yet the girl stood rooted to the spot and made no attempt at a second attack. She realized his fighting skills were as high above hers as the heavens were over the earth.

“Out of my way, please,” the youth said, as if nothing whatsoever had transpired.

The girl complied.

The youth and his horse passed by her side, but when they’d gone a few steps more, the girl once again stepped into the road and shouted, “Hey, look at me!”

The instant the youth turned around, the girl grabbed her cape with her left hand and whipped it off in a single motion.

For a moment, the venomous glow of twilight seemed to lose its blood-red hue.

Clad in not a single stitch, a naked form so celestial none save the goddess Venus herself could have fashioned it glittered in the breeze. At the same time, the girl extended her other hand and undid her ponytail. Her luxurious raven mane splayed in the wind. Her nakedness alone had been beautiful, but this was truly enchanting. The wind twisted around, bearing nothing but the scent of a woman in the full of her bloom.

“Let’s try that again!”

Once more her whip cracked.

Through some masterful handling, the single tip whistling toward the youth split into eight parts just as it was about to strike. Each tip had a separate target, coiling around his neck, shoulders, arms, and chest with slightly different timing, making a hit much more difficult to avoid than if all struck simultaneously.

“You sure fell for that one,” the girl laughed. “That’s what you get for letting a little nudity distract you.” She hollered the words, conceding nothing to the snarling wind. And then, almost disappointed, she suddenly added, “You’re the ninth. Looks like I’m out of luck after all. How do you wanna play this? You drop the weapon you’ve got on your back and the ones around your waist and I’ll have you undone in no time.”

The reply she received was totally unexpected. “And if I said I wouldn’t?”

The girl became indignant. “Then you get your choice of how I knock you out. Either I strangle you or I drag you to the ground. So, which of those suits your fancy?”

“Neither appeals to me.”

With his words as her signal to start, the girl concentrated all her might into her right hand. Her power coursed down the whip to the tips, trying to send the youth sailing through the air. But it didn’t! In fact, all eight loops passed right through the youth’s body without losing their circular form!

“What the—?”

Not merely surprised but dumbfounded, the girl stood rooted and dazed. After all, here was an opponent who had beaten an attack that incorporated every bit of skill she possessed without so much as lifting a hand...

The youth’s mount started to walk away calmly.

Though she remained in her absentminded stupor for a bit, the girl wrapped her fallen cape around herself and scrambled after the youth with a speed that was hard to believe from such slender legs. “Hold up. I apologize for that craziness just now. I’d like you to hear me out. I just knew you were a Hunter. Better yet, you’re a Vampire Hunter, aren’t you?”

The youth finally turned his eyes to the girl.

“I’m right, aren’t I? I wanna hire you!”

The horse stopped.

“That’s nothing to joke about,” the youth said softly.

“I know. I know Vampire Hunters are the most skilled of all Hunters. And I’m well aware what fearsome opponents vampires are. Even though only one Hunter in a thousand is good enough to make the grade, your chances of fighting a vampire and winning are still only fifty-fifty, right? I know all that. My father was a Hunter, too.”

A tinge of emotion stirred in the youth’s eyes. With one hand he pushed back the brim of his hat. Long and thin and cold, his dark eyes were quite clear.

“What kind?”

“A Werewolf Hunter.”

“I see, so that’s where you get that trick with the whip,” the youth murmured. “I’d heard all the vampires in these parts were wiped out during the Third Cleansing War. Of course, the war was a good thirty years back, so I suppose we can’t put much stock in that. So, you want to hire me? I take it someone in your family or one of your friends has been attacked. How many times have they been preyed upon?”

“Just the once, so far.”

“Are there marks from two fangs, or just one?”

The girl hesitated for an instant, then laid her hand to the scarf around her neck. “See for yourself.”

The wind-borne cries of wild beasts streamed like banners across the darkening sky.

On the left side of her neck in the vicinity of the main artery, a pair of festering wounds the color of fresh meat swelled from the sun-bronzed flesh.

“It’s the Kiss of the Nobility,” the girl said in a low voice, feeling all the while the eyes of the youth bearing down on her from horseback.

The youth tugged down the scarf shielding his face. “Judging by that wound, it was a vampire of some rank. It’s surprising you can even move.” His last remark was a compliment to the girl. The reactions of people who had been preyed on by vampires varied with the level of their attacker, but in most cases the victims became doll-like imbeciles, with the very soul sucked out of them. Their skin lost its tone and became like paraffin, and the victim would lie in the shade day after day with a vacant gaze, waiting for a visit from the vampire and a fresh kiss. To escape that fate, one needed extraordinary strength of body and spirit. And this girl was clearly one such exception.

However, at the moment the girl wore the dreamlike expression of the average victim.

She had lost herself in the beauty of the unmasked youth, with his thick, masculine eyebrows, smooth bridge of a nose, and tightly drawn lips that manifested the iron strength of his will. Set amid stern features shared only by those who had come through the numerous battles of a grief-ridden world, his eyes harbored sorrow even as they sparkled. That final touch made this crystallized beauty the image of youth incarnate, chiseled, as it were, by nature itself, perfect and complete. Nevertheless, the girl was shaken back to her senses by something vaguely ominous lurking in the depths of his gaze. It sent a chill creeping up her spine. Giving her head a shake, the girl asked, “So, how about it? Will you come with me?”

“You said you were knowledgeable about Vampire Hunters. Are you also aware of the fees they require?”

Scarlet tinged the girl’s cheeks. “Uh, yeah...”

“Your offer being?”

The more powerful the supernatural beasts and monsters a Hunter specialized in, the more expensive their fees. In the case of Vampire Hunters, they got five thousand dalas a day minimum. Incidentally, a three-meal pack of condensed rations for travelers was about a hundred dalas. “Three meals a day,” the girl said, as if she’d just settled on it.

The youth said nothing.

“Plus…”

“Plus what?”

“Me. To do with as you please.”

A faint smile played across the youth’s lips, as if mocking her.

“The Kiss of the Nobility is probably preferable to being bedded by the likes of me.”

“The hell it is!” Suddenly tears glittered in the girl’s eyes. “If it comes down to that or becoming a vampire, I have no problem with someone havin’ his way with me. That doesn’t have anything to do with a person’s worth anyway. But if you must know, I’m ... no, forget that, it doesn’t matter. So, how about it? Will you come with me?”

Watching the girl’s face for a while as anger and sorrow churned together, the youth quietly nodded. “Very well then. But in return, I want to be clear on one thing.”

“What? Just name it.”

“I’m a dhampir.”

The girl’s face froze. This gorgeous man couldn’t be ... But come to think of it, he was too gorgeous ...

“Is that okay? If you wait a while longer, another Hunter may come by. You don’t have to do this.”

Swallowing the sour spit that filled her mouth, the girl offered a hand to the youth. She attempted a smile, but it came out stiff.

“Glad to have you. I’m Doris Lang.”

The youth didn’t shake her hand. Just as expressionless and emotionless as when he first appeared, he said, “Call me ‘D.’”

.

Doris’ home was at the base of a hill about thirty minutes at a gallop from where the pair happened to meet. The two of them rode at a feverish pace and arrived there in less than twenty minutes. The second she wrapped up her discussion with D, Doris put the spurs to her horse, as if pushed by the encroaching twilight. Not only vampires, but also all the most dangerous monsters and supernatural beasts waited until complete darkness fell before they became active. There wasn’t cause to be in such a hurry, but D remained silent and followed his attractive employer.

Her home was a farm surrounded by verdant prairies that were most likely rendered permanently fertile by the Great Earth Restoration Project three millennia earlier. At the center was the main house. Constructed of wood and tensile plastics, the house was surrounded by scattered stables, animal pens, and protein-synthesizing vegetation in orchards consisting mainly of thermo-regulators fastened to reinforced sheets of waterproof material. The orchards alone covered five acres, and second-hand robots were responsible for harvesting the protein produced there. Hauling it away was a job for the humans.

When Doris had tethered her horse to the long hitching post in front of the main house, the reason for her hasty return threw the door open and bounded out.

“Welcome home,” a rosy-cheeked boy of seven or eight called down from the rather lofty porch. He hugged an antiquated laser rifle to his chest.

“This is my little brother Dan,” Doris said to D by way of introduction, and then in a gentle voice she asked, “Nothing out of the ordinary while I was gone, was there? Those mist devils didn’t come back now, did they?”

“Not at all,” the boy replied, throwing out his chest triumphantly. “Don’t forget, I blasted four of the buggers just the other day. They’re so scared they wouldn’t dare come back again. But just supposing they do, I’ll fry ’em to a crisp with this baby here.” That said, his expression suddenly grew sullen. “Oh, I almost forgot … That jerk Greco came by again. Carrying some bunch of flowers he says he had sent all the way from the Capital. He left ’em here and asked me to pass them along to my ‘lovely sister when she gets home.’”

“So what happened to the flowers?” Doris asked with obvious interest.

The boy’s mouth twisted into a delighted grin.

“Chopped ’em up in the disposal unit, mixed in some compost, and fed it to the cows!”

Doris gave a deep, satisfied nod. “Good job. Today’s a big day. We’ve got company, too.”

The boy, who’d been sneaking peeks at D even as he spoke with his sister, now smiled knowingly at her. “Say, he’s a looker, ain’t he? So, this is how you like ’em, eh, Sis? You said the robots were in such lousy shape you were going out to look for someone to replace them, but it looks to me like you went out hunting for a man.”

Doris flushed bright red.

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. Don’t talk that foolishness. This is Mr. D. He’ll be helping us out around the farm for a while. And don’t you be getting in his way now.”

“There’s nothing to be bashful about,” the boy chuckled. “I know, I know. One eyeful of him, and old Greco don’t look much better than a man-eating frog. I like him a heck of a lot better, too. Pleased to meet you, D.”

“The pleasure’s mine, Dan.”

Showing no signs of being bothered by the emotionless tone D used even when addressing a child, the boy disappeared into the main house. The pair followed him inside.

.

“I’m sorry, he must have really gotten on your nerves,” Doris said in an apologetic tone when dinner was finished and she’d finally managed to drive Dan off to his bedroom, ignoring the boy’s protests that he wasn’t sleepy yet.

D passed the sword he normally wore on his back from his right hand to his left as he stood at the window gazing at the darkness beyond. Thanks to the clear weather that had persisted the past four or five days, the solar batteries on the roof were well charged and glittering light showered generously on every corner of the room from lighting panels set in the ceiling.

Apparently there was something about the inhospitable stranger the boy liked, and he’d planted himself by the man’s side and wouldn’t leave, imploring him to talk about the Capital, or to tell him about any monsters or supernatural creatures he might have slain in his travels. Then, to top it all off, he created quite a commotion when he said his sister was being a pest and grabbed D by the arm to try and bring him back to his room where they could talk man-to-man all night long.

“You see, he gets like that because travelers are so rare. And we don’t usually have much to do with the folks in town, either.”

“It doesn’t bother me. I take no offense at being admired.”

As he spoke, he made no attempt to look at Doris sitting on the sofa, wearing the shirt and jeans she’d changed into earlier. His tone was as cold as ever. Closing his eyes lightly, he said, “It’s now nine twenty-six Night, Frontier Standard Time. Since it has already fed once on the person it’s after, I don’t imagine it’ll be in that much of a hurry, so I suppose after midnight will be the time to watch. In the meantime, could you tell me everything you know about the enemy? Don’t worry; your brother is already asleep. I can tell by his steady breathing.”

Doris’ eyes went wide. “You can hear something like that through the door and everything?”

“And the voice of the wind across the wilderness, and the vengeful song of the spirits wandering the forest shade,” D murmured, then he came to stand at Doris’ side with the smooth strides of a dancer.

When she felt that cold and righteous visage peering down at the nape of her neck, Doris shouted, “Stop!” and pulled away without thinking.

Though the abhorrence was quite evident in her voice, D’s expression didn’t change in the least. “I’m just going to have a look at your wounds. To get a general idea of how powerful a foe I’m up against.”

“I’m sorry. Go ahead, take a look,” she said, turning her face away and exposing her neck. Even if the slight trembling of her lips was a remnant of her reaction seconds earlier, the redness of her cheeks was caused, no doubt, by the embarrassment of a virgin having her flesh scrutinized by a wholly unfamiliar young man. After all, in her seventeen years, she hadn’t so much as held hands with a boy before.

Seconds later, D’s expression had a distant air to it. “When did you run into him?”

Doris breathed a sigh of relief at the sound of his voice, which was entirely without cadence. But why was her foolish heart pounding so? Unaffected by her racing pulse, and gazing raptly at D’s face all the while, she began to recount the tale of that terrible night in the most composed tone she could muster.

“It was five nights ago. I was chasing a lesser dragon that’d slipped onto the farm while we were fixing the electromagnetic barrier and killed one of our cows, and when I finally thought I’d finished it off, it was already pitch-black out. To make matters worse, it was near his castle. I was all set to hightail it home when what should happen but the dying beast suddenly spits fire and burns the back half of my horse to a cinder. I’m thirty miles from home, and the only weapons I’ve got to speak of are the spear I use to kill lesser dragons and a dagger. I ran as fast as I could. I must’ve run for a good thirty minutes when I noticed something, like there was someone running along right behind me!”

Doris suddenly fell silent, not only because the memory of that terror had become fresh again, but also because a fiendish howl had just pierced the darkness from somewhere very close. The breath was knocked out of her as she turned her beautiful face in that direction, but soon enough she realized it was only the sound of some wild animal. Her expression became one of relief. Though rather dated, an electromagnetic barrier that had cost them a pretty penny sealed the perimeter of the farm, and within it they had a variety of missile weapons set up.

She resumed the account of her horrid experience. “At first I thought it was a werewolf or a poison moth man. But there was no sound of footsteps or wings flapping, and I couldn’t even hear it breathing. Yet I just knew there was someone right behind me, no more than a foot away, and moving at exactly the same speed I was. I finally couldn’t take it any more and I whipped around—and there was nothing there! Well, there was for a fraction of a second, but then it circled around behind me again.”

Memory was sowing terror across the girl’s face. She gnawed her lip and tried to force her trembling voice out. D said nothing, but remained listening.

“That’s when I started shouting. I told whoever it was to stop hiding behind me and come out that instant. And when I’d said that, out he came, dressed in a black cape just like I’d always heard. When I saw the pair of fangs poking over his mean, red lips, I knew what he had to be. After that, it’s the same old story. I got my spear ready, but then my eyes met his and all the strength just drained right out of me. Not that it mattered much, because when that pasty face of his got closer and I felt breath as cold as moonlight on the base of my neck, my mind just went blank. The next thing I knew it was daybreak and I was lying out on the prairie with a pair of fang marks on my throat. That’s why I’ve been down at the base of that hill each and every day, morning till night, looking for someone like you.” Her emotional tale over at last, Doris slumped back onto the sofa exhausted.

“And he hasn’t fed on you again since?”

“That’s right. Though I do wait up for him every night with a spear ready.”

D’s eyes narrowed at her attempt at levity. “If we were merely dealing with a blood-starved Noble, he’d be coming every night. But, you see, the greater the interest they take in their victim, the longer the interval between attacks so they can prolong the pleasure of feeding. But the fact that it’s been five days is incredible. It seems he’s extremely taken with you.”

“Spare me the damn compliments!” Doris cried. No trace of the spitfire who had challenged D to battle at twilight remained now. She sat there, a lovely seventeen-year-old girl trembling in fear.

As D surveyed her coolly, he added words that only made the hair on her neck stand higher. “The average interval between attacks is three to four days. More than five is extremely rare. He’ll come tonight without a doubt. From what I can tell from your wounds, he’s quite powerful, as Frontier Nobility go. You said something about ‘his castle.’ His identity is clear to you, is it?”

Doris gave a little nod. “He’s been lord over this region since long before there was any village of Ransylva. His name is Count Lee. I’ve heard some say he’s a hundred years old, while others say he’s ten thousand.”

“Ten thousand years old, eh? The powers of a Noble grow with the passing years. He could prove a troubling adversary,” D said, though his tone didn’t sound particularly troubled.

“The powers of a Noble? You mean things like the power to whip up a gale with a wave of the arm, or being able to turn into a fire dragon?”

Ignoring Doris’ query, D said, “There’s one last thing I need to ask you. How does your village handle those who’ve been bitten by vampires?”

The girl’s face paled in an instant.

In many cases those who’d felt the baleful fangs of a vampire were isolated in their respective village or town while arrangements were made to destroy the culprit, but if they were simply unable to defeat the vampire, the victim would be driven from town or, in the worst cases, disposed of. This was the custom because a night fiend, crazed with rage at not being able to feed on the one it wanted, would attack anyone it could get its hands on. More towns and villages than anyone could count had been wiped out for just that reason. Ransylva had similar policies in effect. That was the reason Doris hadn’t asked anyone else for help, but had privately sought a Vampire Hunter. Her failure to confide in her brother was for fear that his conduct might tip off the villagers if they happened to go into town. Had she no younger brother to consider, she’d surely have gone after the vampire on her own, or done away with herself.

Vampires dealt with their victims in one of two ways. Either they drained all the blood from their prey in one feeding and left them a mere corpse or, through repeated feedings, they turned the individual into a companion. The key point in the latter was not the number of times the vampire fed but rather something D had touched on earlier: whether or not the vampire took a liking to its victim. Sometimes a person joined their ranks after a single bite, while other times they might share the kiss of blood for months only to die in the end. And it went without saying that those transformed into vampires had to bear their destiny as detestable demons, wandering each night in search of warm human blood, living in darkness eternal. For Doris, and for every other person in this world, that was the true terror.

“Everywhere it’s the same, isn’t it,” D muttered. “Accursed demons, ghouls from the darkness, blood-crazed devils. Bitten once and you’re one of them. Well, let them say what they will. Stand up, please,” he said to Doris, who was caught off-guard by the one remark meant for her. “It looks like the guest we were expecting has come. Let me see the remote control for your electromagnetic barrier.”

“What, he’s here already? You just said he’d be here after midnight.”

“I’m surprised, too.”

But he didn’t look it in the least.

.

Doris came back from her bedroom with the remote control and handed it to D.

In order to keep all kinds of strange visitors from sneaking onto the farm while both Lang children were away, they had to have some way to erect the force field from the outside. Acquired secondhand off a black market in the Capital shortly after their father’s death four years ago, the barrier was their greatest treasure except, of course, for the rare occasions when it broke down. Their losses to the wraiths and rabid beasts that wandered the night were far less than those of other homes on the periphery; to be more exact, their losses were practically nonexistent. But the purchase came with a price. After they bought it, they were left with less than a third of their father’s life savings.

“How are you gonna fight him?” Doris inquired. It was a question that sprung from the Hunter blood flowing in her veins. The fighting techniques of Vampire Hunters, who were rare even out on the Frontier, were rumored to be gruesome and magnificent, but almost no one had ever witnessed them firsthand. Doris herself had only heard of them in tales. And the youth before her now was completely different from the rustic Hunter image conjured up by those stories.

“You should see for yourself, and I wish I could let you, but I need you to go to sleep.”

“What—?”

The youth’s right hand touched Doris’ right shoulder, which was taut with swells of muscle while still retaining some delicacy. Whatever the technique or power he now employed, as soon as Doris noticed the frightening cold charge coursing through her body from her shoulder she lost consciousness. But just before she did, she glimpsed something eerie in the palm of D’s left hand, or at least she believed she did. She thought she saw something small, of a color and shape she couldn’t discern, but whatever it was it clearly had eyes and a nose and a mouth, like some sort of grotesque face.

Apparently confident in the efficacy of his actions, D didn’t even bother to check if Doris was actually unconscious before leaving the room with his sword over his shoulder. The reason he’d put her to sleep was to prevent her from interfering in the battle that was about to begin. No matter how firm their resolve, anyone who’d felt the vampire’s kiss once could not help but heed the demon’s commands. Many were the Hunters who had been shot from behind or had their hearts pierced by the very women they sought to save from cursed fangs. To guard against that, veterans would give the victims a sedative or confine them in portable iron cages. But the extraordinary skill D had just displayed with his left hand would have been viewed by even the most veteran of Hunters as impossible in all but dreams cast by the Fair Folk.

Once out in the hall, D opened the door to Dan’s room. The boy snored away peacefully, oblivious to the deadly duel about to ensue. Quietly shutting the door, D slipped through the front hall and down the porch steps onto the pitch-black earth. No trace of the midday heat remained now. The green grass swayed in a chilled and pleasant night breeze.

It was around September. It was to the great credit of the Revolutionary Army that they hadn’t destroyed the dozen weather controllers buried beneath the seven continents. If not by day then at least by night the most comfortable levels of heat and humidity for both the Nobility and humans were maintained all year round. There were, however, still the occasional violent thunderstorms or blizzards, written into the controller’s programs by some uniformity-hating Nobles to recreate the unpredictable seasons of yore.

With a graceful stride that was a dance with the breeze, D passed through a gate in the fence and went another ten feet before coming to a stop. Before long there came from the depths of the darkness, from the far reaches of the plain, the sound of horse hooves and wagon wheels approaching. Could it be that D had heard them even as he talked with the young lady in that distant room?

A team of four horses and a carriage so black it seemed lacquered with midnight appeared in the moonlight and halted about fifteen feet ahead of D. The beautifully groomed black beasts drawing it were most likely cyborg horses.

A man in a black inverness cape was seated in the coachman’s perch, scrutinizing D with glittering eyes. The black lacquered whip in his right hand reflected the moonlight. By the light of the moon alone D could make out a touch of beast in his face and the terribly bushy backs of his hands.

The man quickly alighted from the driver’s seat. His whole body was like a coiled spring; he even moved like a beast. Before he could reach for the passenger door, the silver handle turned and the door opened from the inside. A deep chill and the stench of blood suddenly shrouded the refreshing breeze. As D caught a glimpse of the figure stepping down from the carriage the slightest hue of emotion stirred in his eyes. “A woman?”

Her dazzling golden hair looked like it would creep along the ground behind her. If Doris was the embodiment of a sunflower, then this woman could only be likened to a moonflower. Her snow-white dress of medieval styling was bound tight at her waist, spreading in bountiful curves reaching to the ground. The dress was certainly lovely, but it was the pale beauty unique to the Nobility that made the young lady seem an unearthly illusion, sparkling as she did like a dream in a shower of moonlight. But the illusion reeked of blood. The flames of a nightmare crackled in her lapis-lazuli eyes, and her beckoning lips were red as blood as they glistened damply in D’s night-sight, calling to mind a hunger that would not be sated in all eternity. The hunger of a vampire.

Gazing at D, the young lady laughed like a silver bell. “Be you some manner of bodyguard? Hiring a knave like you for protection is just the sort of thing a lowly human wretch would do. Having heard from Father that the girl who lives here is not only of a beauty unrivaled by the humans in these parts, but that her blood is equally delectable, I came to see her for myself. But as I expected all along, there is no great difference between these foolish, annoying little pests.”

Ghastliness rushed into the girl’s face. The pearly fangs that appeared without warning at the corners of her lips didn’t escape D’s notice.

“First I shall make a bloody spatter of you, and then I’ll drain the humble blood from her till not a drop remains. As you may well know, Father is inclined to make her part of our family, but I will not stand by while the blood of the Lee line is imparted to a good-for-nothing that would stoop to a trick of this sort. I shall strike her from the face of the earth into the waiting arms of the black gods of hell. And you shall accompany her.”

As she spoke, the young lady made a sweep of her slender hand. Her driver stepped forward. Murderous intent and malevolence radiated from every inch of him like flames licking at D’s face.

You lowly worms have forgotten your station, his mien seemed to say. Turncoat scum you are, forgetting the debt you owe your former masters, rebelling against them with your devious little minds and weapons. Here’s where you learn the error of your ways.

The transformation had begun. The molecular arrangement of his cells changed, and his nervous system became that of a wild beast born to race across the ground at great speeds. The four limbs clutching at the earth began to assume a shape more befitting a lower animal. A prognathous jaw formed, and revealed rows of razor-sharp teeth jutting from a crescent-moon mouth that split his face from ear to ear. Jet-black fur sprouted over every inch of him.

The driver was a werewolf, one of the monsters of the night resurrected from the dark depths of medieval legend along with the vampires. D could tell just by watching the transformation, which some might even term graceful, that the driver was not one of the genetically engineered and cybernetically enhanced fakes the vampires had spread across the world.

A throaty howl blazing with the glee of slaughter split the wordless void. With both eyes glittering wildly, the inverness-wearing wolf lurched up onto his hind feet. This was exactly what made the werewolf a lycanthrope among lycanthropes, for despite its four-footed form, a werewolf’s speed and destructive power were greater when it stood erect.

Perhaps taking the fact that the youth had stood stock still and not moved a muscle since their arrival to mean he was paralyzed with fright, the black beast crouched ever so slightly. Trusting its entire weight to the powerful springs of its lower body, it leapt over fifteen feet in a single bound.

Two flashes more brilliant than the moonlight split the darkness.

D didn’t move. The werewolf, dropping down on D from above with every intention of sinking its iron-shredding claws into his skull, changed course in midair. It sailed over D’s head as if poised to make another jump, and landed in the bushes a few yards behind the Hunter.

Staged completely in midair, a jump like that was a miraculous maneuver only possible by coordinating the power of the lungs, the spine, and extremely tenacious musculature for a split second, and it was something werewolves alone could do. Even groups of seasoned Werewolf Hunters occasionally fell victim to attacks like this because the attack was far more terrible than any rumors the Hunters might have heard, and they weren’t prepared to counter the real thing. These demonic creatures could strike at their prey from angles and directions that were patently impossible as far as three-dimensional dynamics were concerned and the attack was entirely silent.

However, moans of pain spilled from the beast’s throat as it huddled low in the brush. Bright blood welled from between the fingers pressed against its right flank, soaking the grass. Its eyes, bloodshot with malice and agony, caught the blade glittering with reflected moonlight in D’s right hand as the Hunter stood facing it silently. Just as the werewolf was ready to drive its claws home, D had drawn the sword over his shoulder with ungodly speed and driven it into his opponent’s flank.

“Impressive,” one of them said. Strangely, that someone was D, who’d been under the impression that he had cleanly bisected the werewolf’s torso. “Until now, I’d never seen what a true werewolf was capable of.”

His low voice sowed the seeds of a new variety of fear in the heart of the demonic beast where it lay in the bushes. The beast’s legs could generate bursts of speed of three hundred and seventy miles per hour—almost half the speed of sound. There had been less than a fiftieth of a second between the time it jumped and its attack on D, which meant the youth had been able to swing his sword and split its belly open even more quickly. Worse yet, the werewolf’s wound wouldn’t close! That wouldn’t be so unusual when it was human, but once it assumed the beastly form, the cells of a werewolf’s flesh were like single-cell organisms, giving it the regenerative power of a hydra. Cells created more cells, closing wounds instantly. But the blade the werewolf had just tasted made regeneration impossible, though it was probably not due to the blade but rather the skill of the youth who wielded it. Skin and muscle tissue that could reject bullets weren’t showing any signs of regenerating!

“What’s wrong with you, Garou?” the young lady shouted. “In wolf form, you should be unstoppable! Do not make a game of this. I demand you tear this human apart immediately!”

Though he heard his mistress scolding him, the werewolf Garou didn’t move, partly because of the wound but also because of the youth’s divine skill with a sword. What really tapped the wellspring of horror was the lurid will to kill that gushed from every pore of the youth just before the werewolf could unleash its deadly attack. That hadn’t come from anything human!

Is he one of those? A dhampir?

Garou realized he’d finally run into a real opponent.

“Your guard is wounded,” D said softly, turning to the young lady. “If he doesn’t come at me again, he might live to a ripe old age. You might, too. Go home and tell your father a dangerous obstacle has cropped up. And that he’d be a fool to attack this farm again.”

“Silence!” the young lady screamed, her gorgeous visage becoming that of a banshee. “I am Larmica, daughter of Count Magnus Lee, the ruler of the entire Ransylva district of the Frontier. Do you think I can be bested by the likes of you and your sword?”

Before she’d finished speaking, a streak of white light shot toward her breast from D’s left hand. In fact, it was a foot-long needle he’d taken out at some point and thrown faster than the naked eye could follow. It was made of wood. As it traveled at that unfathomable speed, the needle burned from the friction of the air, and the white light was from those flames.

But something odd had happened.

The flames had come to a stop in front of D’s chest. Not that the needle he’d thrown had simply stopped there. The instant it was about to sink into Larmica’s breast, it had turned around and come back, and D had stopped it with his bare hand. Or to be more accurate, Larmica had caught the needle with superhuman speed and thrown it back just as quickly. The average person wouldn’t even have seen her hand move.

“If the servant is no more than a servant, still the master is a master. Well done,” D murmured, heedless of the flaming needle in his hand or the way it steadily scorched his naked flesh. “For that display of skill you get my name. I’m the Vampire Hunter D. Remember that, should you live.” As he spoke, D sprinted for the young lady without making a sound.

Terror stole into Larmica’s expression. In a twinkling, the distance between them closed to where she was within sword’s length of him, and then—

“Awoooooooooh!”

A ferocious howl shook the night air, and an indigo flash of light shot from the coachman’s perch on the carriage. D dove to the side to dodge it, only able to escape the beam because his superhuman hearing had discerned the sound of the laser cannon on the perch swiveling to bear on him. The beam pierced the hem of his overcoat, igniting it in pale blue flames. Presumably, the cannon was equipped with voice recognition circuits and an electronic targeting system that responded to Garou’s howls. Avoiding the flashes of blue that flew with unerring accuracy to wherever he’d gone to dodge the last, D had no choice but to keep twisting through the air.

“Milady, this way!”

He heard Garou’s voice up in the driver’s seat. There was the sound of a door closing. As D attempted to give chase, another blast from the laser cannon checked his advance, and the carriage swung around and was swallowed by the darkness.

“I’ll settle with you another day, wretch, mark my words!”

“You’ll not soon forget the wrath of Nobility!”

Whether he was pleased at having staved off the enemy or perturbed he hadn’t managed to put an end to the vampiress, D wore no emotion on his face as he rose expressionless from the bushes, the malice-choked parting words of the pair circling him endlessly.