MELODY ON A WHITE MOONLIT NIGHT

CHAPTER 3

I

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The moonlight passed right through the woman and bleached the floor. A number of the flecks of light glittered on her body, accenting the flow of her long hair and the pleats of her dress and making her look like something from beyond the grave.

“When did you return?” D inquired softly.

I never went anywhere at all, she replied, her voice resounding in D’s head. I’ve been here all along. The only reason none of you noticed me was because I didn’t sing.

“And that song—who taught it to you?”

I don’t recall, she answered immediately. There’s little point in asking who taught me it, or when. All I know is how to sing.

“Then let me ask you this—who decided when you’d sing? And how and why were the selections made?”

The woman turned to D without a sound—not even the air stirred. Perhaps both the woman and the room were mere illusions. Maybe even D himself was one.

What brings you here, you gorgeous man? Even my song will be no more than noise in your presence. I feel I may even forget how to sing.

“That song isn’t to be sung,” said D. At some point he’d taken a place by the woman’s side. “It’s a song that a certain man had his musicians compose, and he made a certain woman sing it. The effect it had wasn’t what the man intended. And that’s why it can’t be allowed to remain in this world.”

The woman’s sparkling eyes reflected D’s image. Through her dreamlike form, the window to her rear and even the very moonlight was visible.

Are you . . . ? the woman began, her thoughts swimming. Your face . . . Your bearing . . . So like him . . . You couldn’t be . . .

Without a single wasted motion, D drew his blade and slashed through the woman’s torso. The silvery flash left a trail through her body like the Milky Way, but it disappeared almost instantly.

D didn’t launch a second attack—the first had merely been a tentative strike. Although the woman existed, she wasn’t real. To cut an illusion given shape, even D would need a very special sword technique.

The woman’s outline rapidly grew hazy, like a dream as its dreamer is about to awaken.

I’m always here. Come anytime you like.

From behind D came the rasp of a sword being unsheathed. A few seconds later, another sound entered the room. It was Price and Kurt.

“Where’s the singer?” Price asked as he gingerly surveyed the room. The handsome young man must’ve heard her as well.

“She’s right there,” D replied, gazing at a spot over by the windows.

“I don’t see a damn thing,” Kurt spat venomously. “Sheesh, you let her get away. And after all the talk I’ve heard about you being the best Vampire Hunter on the Frontier. She never would’ve escaped if I’d been here, I tell you!”

His caustic remarks sprang from hard feelings over the arm he’d lost.

“I’m a tad disappointed in you,” Price said in a sarcastic tone.

There was a dull thud as the steel arrow fell at his feet.

“What’s this?”

“Which one of you does that belong to?” asked the Hunter.

“This thing? What are you trying to get at?”

“That arrow was fired at me earlier.”

As Price’s gaze fell upon him, Kurt lowered his eyes.

“I thought I told you not to.”

“Hell, an arrow like that could’ve come from anywhere,” Kurt retorted in an unsteady tone.

“We split up in the garden, but I didn’t think he was going off to take a shot at you. You have my apologies,” Price said before making an obsequious bow to D. “It won’t happen again. I ask your forgiveness.”

“You’ve gotta be kidding me! There’s no reason you should be bowing your head to this joker. If I get half a chance, I’ll kill him for sure,” the man in the military garb blustered.

But an icy tone informed him, “You’ll never get another opportunity.”

It sounded as if it could freeze the very moonlight.

“You dirty—” Kurt started to say as his left hand reached for his chest. Arrows that’d been tucked in his uniform jutted out, becoming flashes of black concentrated on D. But all of them seemed to be batted away by a single streak of white light. The man’s left hand was about to unleash another assault when a naked blade made a diagonal cut through him. Sliced from the left shoulder to the right hip, the upper portion of Kurt’s body didn’t begin to smoothly slide off the lower half until after D’s blade was back in its sheath.

“Are you going to bury him?”

Freed from his paralysis by the Hunter’s question, Price could finally move again. “You—you’re not much for forgiveness, are you?” he stammered.

Though his remark invited side-splitting laughter, it rang with the brutal reality of what had just transpired. He hadn’t been able to so much as lift a finger while his comrade was slaughtered before his very eyes.

“You heard the woman’s song, correct?” D said as he faced the windows.

Hers had been a modest tone, and it didn’t seem the least bit likely to have carried all the way down to the garden.

“If you could hear it out there, it may have reached the village, too. Let’s head back.”

Even after the graceful figure in black had slipped through the doorway, Price had to stand there a little while longer before the spell over him was completely broken.

 

Shaken firmly, Ry reflexively tried to sit up. It took a few seconds for his retinas to confirm the presence of D and the mayor.

“What is it?” the boy asked.

In lieu of a reply, a black glove reached out to grab his chin, turning his face to the left and the right. Oddly enough, the treatment didn’t feel at all rough to him.

“There’s not a mark on him, is there?” the mayor said with apparent relief.

“What’s going on?”

A man so handsome to his sleeping eyes he had to wonder if he was still dreaming asked, “Did you hear the song?”

Narrowing his eyes, Ry traced back through his memories. “Nope. Although I was asleep, so I really don’t know.” But he couldn’t be sure if his answer was correct. To cover this, he asked ill-temperedly, “What the hell time is it anyway?”

“It’s the middle of the night. Go back to sleep.”

With these words, D returned to the living room. Price and Bijima were waiting there, although it wouldn’t have been at all surprising if they’d been on edge, the atmosphere was painfully commonplace.

“You must really be something to take ol’ Kurt out with one shot,” Bijima said, sounding more excited than anything. “Now I get a bigger share of what the mayor’s paying us. Thanks.”

“He didn’t hear the song,” Price said as his eyes knifed his compatriot.

“When the Noble sings, there’s some sort of selection,” Mayor Cobier said, pawing at her silver hair. “In the legends from two centuries ago, the only ones entranced by the song were young people around twenty years of age. The same goes for twenty years ago—”

“A Noble that only wants the blood of kids, eh? That’s a new one,” Bijima remarked.

Eyeing the door to Ry’s bedroom, the mayor continued, “However, that boy didn’t hear it. If there’d been anything else out of the ordinary, I’d have long since been notified about it.”

“Perhaps he doesn’t remember.”

Three pairs of eyes focused on D. The hue of surprise melted into infatuation, as was always the case.

Not surprisingly, Price was the first one to return to his senses. “You mean the boy? But if he didn’t go out to the mansion and there’s no trace of the accursed kiss left on him, I don’t see what the problem is.”

The mayor nodded her agreement.

“Actually, nothing strange happened to me, either. I think the song last night didn’t have the power of the Nobility behind it.”

D’s eyes swallowed Price. “Perhaps only one person was chosen.”

“Chosen?”

The mayor and Price looked at each other. The eyes of one of them filled with a horribly keen light as they bored through the young man in black.

“There’s something I’d like to ask, too,” said Price.

D was silent.

“What brings you to this village? Up until now, I thought it was merely a coincidence, but do you know something?”

“The singer is in the mansion,” said D. “That’s the only person who knows everything. We should get some rest.”

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II

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“Why are you so out of it?”

At this unexpected remark, Ry turned sideways. Amne was there. Her hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and she wore a pair of thin slacks. The rather generous swell in her yellow blouse made the boy a bit nervous.

“Since you never came back, I just came to check up on you. Whether you use it or not, you’re still gonna have to pay for the room, you know.”

“I know that,” Ry said, leaning against a nearby tree trunk while his eyes fell on a glittering band some fifteen or twenty feet away.

Flowing from a mountain spring about twelve miles to the north, the river helped give the scene a grim majesty. The spray sent up by a collection of boulders allowed pure white blossoms to bloom, and countless rainbows sprang to life in the sunlit gaps between flowers. As proof that these were no ordinary trick of the light, when the silvery fish shot from the surface of the river and broke through them, their tiny mouths pulled multicolored bits from them, and the rainbows were clearly being whittled down. The roar of the river was reminiscent of a rumbling in the ground.

They were by the road that ran from the mayor’s house into the heart of town. There wasn’t any sign of travelers along the riverbanks.

“You’re not in very good spirits, are you? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, really.”

“It’s not nothing, I’d say. You seemed like a completely different person yesterday. Are you really such a brooder?”

“That’s a hell of a thing to say to one of your guests!”

“Okay, okay,” Amne said, pointing to the electric-powered wagon that was parked a short distance from them. “In that case, allow me to show our guest some hospitality. I’ll give you a guided tour of the Noble remains around the village based on a map drawn up by the Anise Historical Research Society.”

“Not interested,” Ry replied, pulling away.

“What’s this? Yesterday you were overjoyed to go for a ride. Oh, I get it! Now that there’s been a little excitement, you’ve lost your nerve, haven’t you?”

“That’s right.”

“Coward.”

“I’m just a plain old traveler. I don’t have any interest in the damned Nobility.”

“That’s a lie. The interest you showed yesterday was certainly real enough. So, off you go to stay at the mayor’s house when I’m not looking—looks like you’ve got plenty of secrets.”

“You’ve got me all wrong.”

“Whatever. Come with me. After all, you’ll get to see the sights for free. It couldn’t hurt to look. And I’ll throw in something special to sweeten the deal.”

“Oh? What’s that?” the boy asked with no apparent interest.

To be honest, Ry was a bit anxious. In answer to D’s question, he’d said there was nothing out of the ordinary, but in truth he couldn’t remember anything about the previous night. His memories ended with him climbing into bed. It was unusual for Ry, who always stayed quite alert until the second he fell asleep. What’s more, he couldn’t shake the feeling he was being followed by someone. When he’d woken up that morning, D, the two warriors, and even the mayor had already left, but one of the mayor’s servants had conveyed her orders that he stay at her house from that night on. He’d run into Amne as he was going off to collect his things and bring them back. One of those four was probably following him. Most likely it was Bijima, though he’d have to be doing a pretty sloppy job of it for Ry to notice him.

“I’ll tell you what the bonus is if you get in the wagon,” said the girl. “I don’t want anyone else to hear.”

This would probably be a good way to lose his unseen pursuer.

“Okay. I’ll go with you,” Ry said reluctantly. “But in return, you’ve gotta forget about the charge for my room.”

“Hey, that’s a whole different matter!”

“In that case, count me out.”

“Okay, I get the point. You’re a real tightwad, aren’t you?” Amne said irritably, although his cheapness was only natural.

The wagon carried them south for about a mile and a quarter before it stopped. They were out in a field quite some distance from the main road. Though it looked as if flames of green were blazing across the grasslands as far as the eye could see, in spots here and there chunks of black stuck out like a sore thumb. These were clearly the remains of a massive structure.

“On this spot stood one of the Nobility’s research centers or factories. Lately, though, the opinion that it was another kind of facility has been gaining strength.”

“What kind of facility?”

“A concert hall!”

“You don’t say,” Ry replied as he looked up at the heavens. White clouds frolicked like kittens in the blue sky. “And just who’s voiced this theory?”

“Yours truly.”

“Give me a break!” the boy snorted.

“No matter whose theory it is, what’s true is true!”

At her passionate reply, Ry realized she had a point.

“Come this way.”

Doing as she said, Ry got out of the wagon and advanced across the grass to the largest of the ruins.

“Here it is!” Amne declared, standing there with all the excitement and emotion befitting a girl her age. But ahead of her, all Ry could make out was assorted piles of rubble from some unknown source.

“And where’s this supposed concert hall?”

“You can’t tell just from looking at this. The basis of my theory is this way.”

It took a good five minutes to circle around behind the massive stone ruins.

“But how could anything this big and solid fall apart? It looks like it should’ve lasted thousands of years.”

“Good question,” said the girl. “It didn’t fall apart—it was knocked down.”

“What, by the villagers? I’d heard that while some of the Nobles’ castles fell into ruin, it wasn’t possible to destroy them.”

“There are some that could be destroyed and others that couldn’t. This is one of the ones that couldn’t be wrecked. But a Noble could do it.”

“You mean on purpose?”

“That’s the only thing I can think of.”

The two of them stood in front of a stone pillar about thirty feet from the heart of the ruins.

“Why would they have done that?” Ry inquired, feeling slightly dizzy.

“I don’t know. Maybe it broke some sort of taboo. Maybe they just didn’t need it anymore. But based on how thorough the devastation is, it sure must’ve been one hell of a good reason!”

“To destroy a concert hall? Your theory’s starting to sound pretty shaky.”

“Nuts to you. Let’s see what you have to say after you’ve seen this,” Amne said, approaching the stone pillar with a sullen expression. Bending over, she touched her hand to a spot at the base, and the pillar spun around smoothly. A hole ten feet in diameter now lay where the stone column had towered.

“Don’t just stand there with your mouth hanging open; pick your jaw back up,” Amne said triumphantly. “You see, I found this switch during my investigations. Wanna go down?”

“What’s down there?”

“I have no idea. Actually, I’ve never descended before.”

“So you mean you simply found it, and that’s all?”

“I’m a historical investigator, you know. Not an adventurer.”

“Oh, so you’d leave all the dirty work for the boys, then? Wonderful.”

“I’ve heard enough out of you. Get going already.”

“Well, I’m not an adventurer either,” Ry told her.

“You’re a man, aren’t you? Don’t you want to see what’s down there? If you discover booty left by the Nobility, it could be worth a fortune.”

Putting his hand to his face, Ry wiped away his sweat. The sunlight was too strong. It looked so cool down in the hole.

“I’ll give it a shot,” he said.

“That’s the spirit!”

From the brink of the hole, a set of whitish stone stairs descended into the ground. Once they were five steps down, the chilly air swept over Ry. At the same moment, the lights came up. A lamp in the wall had gone on.

“It still works. Can you believe this thing?”

“We’re talking about the Nobility here,” Amne reminded him. “The Nobility.”

A short while later they reached the bottom. There was a corridor, and the ceiling was fairly high.

“I wonder which way we should go,” Amne said, looking around in all directions anxiously.

“This way,” Ry told her, pointing one way as he began walking. Even he wasn’t sure why he’d chosen this particular route. Proceeding straight down the corridor, they came to a black steel door. As they stood before it, it split open right down the middle. The darkness beyond it was dispelled by the very same devices that’d done so on the stairs. Taking a step in, the pair then froze in their tracks.

In the ash gray space that seemed to have been scooped out of the very rock, countless humans lay like ghouls. Though their garments were filthy and tattered, they were those of ordinary villagers. The stark and waxy luster of their faces was not the fault of the lights.

“What . . . what the hell are they?” Ry said, trying to keep his knees from buckling.

“I don’t know. Maybe they’re people who were bitten by the Nobility.”

“No, they don’t have a mark from the Nobles’ kiss.” And having spoken, Ry turned around. Amne had just drawn a sharp breath. The girl had her fist to her mouth.

“Look. The clothes on those people over there—they’re awfully old-fashioned. But these ones are just like my own. Could it be . . . Are these the victims from before the Nobility disappeared . . . and then the people who were bitten when they came back again twenty years ago . . . ?”

“I already told you, they haven’t been bitten,” Ry snapped irritably, but then he froze. His face turned to Amne of its own accord. Amne was looking at him as well.

“These are the people called here by the song,” she said in a tone without cadence.

__

III

__

“Weren’t they killed?”

Amne shook her head at Ry’s question. “They lived. But I wonder who could’ve hidden them down here.”

“I don’t know about two hundred years ago, but how about the families of the victims from twenty years back?”

“Who knows? That time, there weren’t very many of them at all. Look—one, two, three of them all told. And on top of everything, they’re with the people from two hundred years ago, of all things. You know, we should go back to town and ask around about it.”

Just then, Ry caught a certain scent.

“Hey, you’re not hurt anywhere, are you?”

Amne furrowed her brow. But it took less than a second for her expression of consternation to become one of horror. Bending over so quickly it was like she’d been snapped in half, she stared down at her right ankle. “It’s bleeding. I scraped it on the stone stairs on the way down, but . . .”

Ry’s gaze was riveted on the people around the room, and how they’d started to stir. How their eyes had opened . . .and how they now got to their feet not with the jerky motions of a marionette, but slowly and smoothly.

“. . . it doesn’t really hurt. I just banged it up a little bit.”

“Don’t look straight ahead,” Ry told her.

The people in the chamber were already standing. Staring at them.

The pair began to back away. Amne turned her face to the floor; she just wanted to whip around and run like hell. But the others would probably break into a sprint as well.

They went through the doorway. Though she prayed they wouldn’t follow her, the people stepped out into the corridor completely unperturbed. Amne let out a scream. As Ry tried to catch her collapsing body, he lost his balance.

“Snap out of it!” he shouted as he grabbed her and staggered to his feet. The pale countenances were right in front of him. Amne’s body twitched in his arms. The people of the night advanced effortlessly toward the pair.

__

When the two of them reached the surface again, they collapsed exhausted on the grass. The world brimmed with sunlight and the scents of life.

“I guess we made it . . .” Amne muttered, the words sounding more like a question directed at herself.

“Yeah,” Ry said through ragged breath.

“But how? I passed out when they surrounded us, so I couldn’t tell. Are you really that tough?”

“I don’t know. But I do know that they all started to sing.”

“A song? Down there, at a time like that? That’s like something out of a comedy,” the girl said, though her face was still pale.

“But it’s the truth,” Ry told her, closing his eyes.

It all came back so quickly. Strangely enough, the scene didn’t fill him with revulsion. Who could’ve imagined the song of the crystal-clear night would flow from the lips of filthy people clad in rags? As he’d shoved his way through them, Ry had felt a pang of regret in his chest. The song was that sad and forlorn. For the last twenty or two hundred years, probably nothing save that song had passed their lips down in that hole in the ground.

“Those called by the song didn’t crave blood after their return, but merely wandered the village by night singing that song—the legends must be true!”

“Impossible,” said the girl. “I’ve never heard of such victims.”

The two of them looked at each other.

From behind them, a rough voice declared with naked delight, “Sounds like you two saw some pretty interesting shit. Tell us all about it.”

A handsome young man and another man in a uniform stood ankle-deep in the sea of grass. Ry realized in an instant that these two were the ones that’d been following him.

“You said something about singing, didn’t you?” Price said as he came closer. “Who did? Those things underground? I suppose we’ll have to dispose of them.”

Although his tone was decidedly cruel, Price’s remarks were perfectly justified. The law of the Frontier was that every last person who’d received the kiss of the Nobility was to be isolated and eradicated. As a matter of fact, Amne nodded a bit at his remark.

Ry couldn’t understand why he then stood up and shouted, “No! You mustn’t kill them!”

Bijima’s eyes bulged in their sockets.

Price wore no expression at all—his eyes simply shome with a new gleam. A dangerous glint.

“You heard the song, too, didn’t you?” said the beautiful warrior.

At Ry’s side, Amne gasped in surprise.

“A lot of people must’ve heard it just as we did. And yet, only the two of us came to this village at the same time, almost as if we’d been invited. Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know anything about your situation,” Ry said as he shielded Amne. He could feel the tension radiating from every inch of Price so keenly it hurt. “I wanted to hear the song my father sang one more time. So I came here. That’s all there is to it.”

“And I can’t say I blame you for wanting to do so. However, I get the feeling that merely by undertaking the same endeavor as myself, you’ve become an obstacle.”

Ry didn’t know how to respond.

“Step aside. We’re going to execute the requests of our employer. And the Nobility and their entire ilk must be destroyed.”

“Stop! You can’t do that!”

The change in Price’s expression was truly a sight to see. Shades of something that wasn’t quite perplexity alternated with a look akin to understanding, but before settling on either emotion, the warrior asked, “Why would you protect them? It doesn’t seem to be out of some sort of youthful humanitarianism.”

And then his voice dipped lower, as if he’d suddenly thought of something, and he said, “Are you certain nothing happened last night?”

Ry didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

“Not that it matters much. We’ve got to hurry up and take care of that group down below.”

Opening a flap on his uniform, Bijima pulled out a square lump. There was a slim silver tube stuck in it. A fuse—and the block was plastic explosive. Judging by the pinkish color, it was an incendiary charge. While the fifty-thousand-degree blast might not kill true Nobles, it would be far more than their servants could withstand. Bijima’s thick fingers gave the fuse a twist, and then the man brought back his right arm for an underhand throw.

“Stop it!

The boy was about to rush forward when a flash of white zipped right in front of his nose. As he recoiled, the bomb flew in a parabolic arc over his head. But another line intersected it in midair. Destroying the fuse alone, a stake of rough wood came down and stuck in the bushes.

“D?” both Ry and Amne shouted, while Price muttered the same name with infinite hatred. The blade he’d swung at Ry should’ve taken off the boy’s head. But at the warrior’s feet was the long thin stake that’d thrown his footwork into disarray.

In a spot fifteen feet from either of the warriors stood the Vampire Hunter in inky black, backed by a colossal carving of a demonic head with eyes bulging and fangs bared.

“What are you doing out here?” Price asked as he took a step back with his right leg to avoid the stake that’d foiled him. When he and his compatriot had left the mayor’s house, they’d come straight here. And they’d been given instructions from D that they’d be free to do what they liked until night. The ruins were something they’d learned about at a bar soon after they’d arrived in the village.

“I followed the boy,” D replied succinctly.

“I see. Let’s call it a day, then,” Price said, returning his longsword to its sheath. “But I will have to report back to the mayor the fact that you spared a horde of Noble reserves.”

“There’s no need to do that,” D replied, his voice borne on the wind—a wind with an edge like a knife.

As Price stared at him in amazement, he continued, “You were going to cut him down, weren’t you?” He was referring, of course, to Ry.

A second later, Price decided what he had to do. There was no use trying to deny anything with this man.

“Keep out of this,” he bade Bijima as he stepped to the fore, but as simple as that sounded, trying to take on D empty-handed was an act of complete insanity.

A chill raced down Ry’s spine. The other man looked so utterly defenseless, it was actually unsettling.

D dashed forward, the wind swirling in his wake. A silvery glint raced from his scabbard. And right before the Hunter’s eyes, a vermilion flash flared into existence. Still stuck in the same pose as when he’d brought his blade down the first time, D made no second attack.

But he hadn’t slain his opponent. Price leapt back about six feet. In his face, a pair of red lights blazed. His eyes.

“How do you like my evil eyes?” Price asked as he blinked.

Anyone who saw the demonic red light that radiated from his pupils would be blinded instantaneously, and there was nothing they could do to restore their sight. It would also send enough pain searing through their brain to drive a person insane. The eyes had the very same effect on even the most vicious of beasts or demonic creatures. The fact that the young man in black still held his sword—or worse, that he was also still on his feet—could’ve only seemed like a miracle or a nightmare to Price.

“Now’s our chance. Let’s kill him! And then we’ll do the same to the freaks down below!” Bijima urged, but a powerful hand stayed him.

“Fall back,” said the handsome but paled warrior.

“What?!”

“Look,” the blond warrior said, his trembling hand indicating his own front.

Bijima took a sharp breath despite himself.

Price’s chest had been slashed in a straight line from the base of his throat to his abdomen.