HUNTING THE HUNTER

CHAPTER 3

I

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After awakening from her strange dream, old Helga hadn’t been able to go back to sleep, and seeing D as he returned before dawn, she gasped, “Well, I’ll be . . .”

Even in the darkness the Hunter seemed to gleam like steel, but every inch of him was soaked. Droplets of water rained incessantly onto the floor.

“Went for another swim, did you? You’ve been having a devil of a time, too,” she said intently as she rubbed the bandaged wrist that Bazura and the others had injured during the day.

“Are you hurt badly?” D inquired.

“Funny you should ask. They took a whip to me and split the flesh right open.”

“I’d like to see it.”

“Huh?” said the crone, adding in a somewhat unsettled tone, “Well, you sure do have some strange interests, don’t you? Wanting to see somebody else’s wounds . . . Did you find anything in the pond?”

“I want to check on something.”

“Okay. You know what’s best.”

With a deftness hardly befitting her age, Helga began to spiral the bandages off her wrist.

“Look at that, would you.”

The forearm she presented had nearly four inches of freshly broken skin that left the flesh below exposed. The orange tint to the wound must’ve been due to some ointment. When D had returned there during the day, the old woman had already finished patching herself up.

“Thank you for showing me,” D said softly.

“So, what in blazes did you find? Are there Noble ruins at the bottom of that pond after all?”

“There are.”

The old woman bugged her eyes, and then, as if suddenly realizing something, she asked, “Did you learn anything? About what they were working on out there, I mean.”

“A world.”

“What?” said the crone.

“Did the Nobility here have any children?”

“Now that you mention it, I do believe there was one . . . though this is simply going by the legends . . . I believe they had a daughter.”

“What was their daughter like?”

The Hunter’s rapid-fire questions left the old woman’s head spinning.

“Well, this is just what I’ve heard. They say she was a great beauty. Only the girl was every bit as cruel as her father, and every night she’d go into the village, choosing only little boys and sucking the blood from them until they were dead. As for her appearance . . . they say she had pale green hair and always wore a white dress,” the crone said, training a searching gaze on D. His countenance was so exquisite she thought she might lose herself if she continued to stare, but the Hunter didn’t so much as raise an eyebrow.

“Did they have any other children?” he asked.

“Nope. Never heard any mention of anyone else. Oh, that’s right,” the old woman said, clapping her hands together. “I don’t know anything more about the girl, but apparently there was a lady-in-waiting who was always with her, practically like her shadow. And that compared to her master and his daughter, she was even more—”

“She was about eighteen or nineteen. Black hair and a blue dress.”

“That’s right . . . You mean to tell me she’s the one who’s been running around?”

“She’s the one who went after the sacrifice, at any rate.”

“You don’t say! Seems like the strangest thing has popped up. She sounds like real trouble. If you don’t hurry up and find her hiding spot so you can pound a stake through her heart, we’ll have a lot more victims on our hands.”

“One of my stakes did go through her heart.”

Silence descended—a fearful silence.

“One of your stakes . . . stuck in her chest . . . and you mean to tell me she still got away?”

“So it seems.”

“It can’t be. She can’t be indestructible . . . can she?”

“I’ll do my job.”

The crone let out a long sigh and relaxed her body. “I get the feeling I’ve lived this long just to hear you say those words. I’m counting on you, D.”

Sluggishly rising to her feet, the old woman turned toward the window. Her curtains weren’t drawn. A watery light colored the eastern sky.

“The colors sure are different on a fall morning. Stay in the village a little longer, D. If you do, you’ll see every leaf in the forest ablaze with red. And then when they start to yellow, the village will be the most beautiful place on earth.”

“I can’t let my work go that long,” said D.

The old woman gazed at the black rider. His elegant profile faced the windows. Old Helga realized this young man would never look upon the blazing trees of fall. He wouldn’t be in the village that long. If he was still here at that time, it would undoubtedly be because the villagers had discovered the corpse not of a Noble, but of the Vampire Hunter “D.”

A detailed scene abruptly formed in the old woman’s brain. D’s back. As golden leaves fell in a wild dance, the young man in black was silently walking away. That was probably the whole reason he’d come.

Faint grief filled the crone’s heart. She reflected on her hundred years. The endless cycle of joy and anger and suffering and sadness had left her a withered branch. But now what flowed through her was a thought more dire than anything she’d ever felt before. What could cause her more distress than this? No matter how old they might grow, human beings lived on, repeating the same pains over and over again.

To the old woman’s side, the autumn night was giving way to daybreak.

“. . . There is something we can do,” the old woman said to D. “Long ago, I learned a spell from a conjurer who came to town. It can locate a vampire’s hiding place. Since it’s rather taxing, I didn’t want to do it at my age, but I suppose I really should give it a go.”

Perhaps prompted by her decision, a hand so beautiful it gave people goosebumps gently came to rest on her stiffened shoulder.

“If my employer winds up dead, there wouldn’t have been much point in calling me here.”

“Don’t worry about that. Part of the blame rests with me. If only I’d gotten in touch with you earlier—as soon as I noticed something wrong with the apples.”

“I won’t try to stop you.”

“I know, I know. That’s fine, because I’m doing this on my own. But at least I’ll hold off until I’m not quite so drowsy.”

D turned to the door without saying a word. Even with the superhuman endurance of a dhampir, he still required sleep. Especially during the day.

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†

She intended to get right up again, but three hours passed. After drinking a hot cup of tea, old Helga set about making her preparations and, an hour later, when she’d finished scribing magical wards on the floor, she heard the sound of something snapping through the air. It repeated time after time, and upon realizing that it came from out by the barn, she was just about to run out there when a man’s hands covered her nose and mouth from behind.

Bazura and his men had unlocked the back door and slipped in with silent footsteps.

As the gasping, struggling crone witnessed the smoke and flames rising from the barn, she went pale. Out in the garden, bowmen with flaming arrows had the tiny shack surrounded.

“Don’t make a sound, granny,” Bazura said in an intimidating tone.

He had an artificial voice box buried under the bandages that swathed his throat–one of the more useful items the Nobility’s civilization had left the world.

“Daybreak is when a dhampir’s metabolism is at its slowest. And there’s nothing worse at that point than an attack with fire. Even the renowned Vampire Hunter ‘D’ won’t be able to get out of there. I’d like to see him try. He’ll wind up target practice for a score of bowmen who can get off three shots a second. Don’t take it so hard, granny. Because he went and saved Cecile last night, someone else was victimized right away. So now he’s just getting what he’s got coming. Hell, even the mayor knows what we’re doing.”

Seeing that the strength had drained from the old woman, Bazura ordered his men to release her.

“How could you do this . . .” she groaned like a patient at death’s door as she feebly collapsed into a chair. “The Hunter was our last hope. That young man might’ve saved the lives of hundreds or even thousands here in the future.”

“Relax. We’ll look out for the village. All of us are gonna go out and turn over every last rock and pebble searching for the Nobility. So instead of worrying yourself to death, old-timer, go brew some herbs or something.”

“What about the sacrifice?”

“If you mean Cecile, we put her back in the same place. Only this time we took her folks into custody. They won’t be giving us any more trouble. And we threw the mayor’s little rascal behind bars, too.”

“You still don’t get it, do you? This isn’t the sort of Noble the likes of you can destroy!”

“Watch you mouth!” the second-in-command bellowed, ready to give the crone a taste of the back of his hand when suddenly there was a commotion outside that sounded like a mix of surprise and terror.

“Is he out?” Bazura shouted as he dashed over to the window, a crossbow clutched in his hand.

Suddenly D was standing in front of the howling inferno the barn had become.

“Run for it, D!” the old woman cried. “They’re gonna kill you and put Cecile back out at the same place as a sacrifice!”

“What are you doing?! Shoot him!”

The shoulders of the bowmen trembled at the harsh order from the second-in-command, and their bodies were so tense it was as if they’d been turned to stone. Yet not one of the arrows aimed at D was released. While flames leapt from parts of his black raiment, he stood there quietly—and his beauty and intensity touched all of them strangely, leaving them completely frozen.

“Damn, we’ve gotta do something!” their leader shouted angrily as something twanged from his fingers.

The steel arrow flew straight for D’s chest—then pierced it! The Hunter hadn’t been able to move a muscle.

Bazura, who’d fired the shot, was so stunned he even cried out, “What the hell?!”

A few seconds after that missile impacted with over two hundred pounds of force behind it, D toppled forward with the arrowhead sticking out of his back.

“Impossible . . .”

Walking over to window in a daze, the old woman received another shock.

“That smell—you smeared that arrow with garlic essence before you fired it, didn’t you?”

“Figured me out, did you? Well, why not—I was up against Vampire Hunter ‘D,’ after all. I had to have something up my sleeve, you know. And then there’s my bow—which I got in the Capital, by the way. It’s got a laser targeting system built in. So once you lock onto something, the arrow will follow its target until it sticks into it.”

And that was the real ace up Bazura’s sleeve.

Turning to those in the garden, he asked, “Well?”

“He’s dead,” said a man who’d fearfully approached D.

“Now for the body—okay, weigh it down and dump it in the pond. I wouldn’t feel very comfortable disposing of it in the usual way.”

Perhaps due to the excitement of having slain D, Bazura’s voice was racing.

Turning his gaze to the circle scribed on the old woman’s floor, he snorted, “Sheesh, I have no idea what you had planned, but if you thought some outdated spell would do you any good in this world, you were sorely mistaken. Hey, now! Don’t make a move. Just sit there all quiet-like and be glad we haven’t run you out of your home. Of course, you’ll probably be shunned by the village anyway.”

Once the group had left, the crone remained in torpor for some time, but then she slowly got up, stood in the center of the magical wards, and muttered, “I’ll try and go on, D. If I see you in the hereafter, I’ll show you where the Noble’s been hiding.”

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II

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Two men had been charged with disposing of D. After parting company with Bazura and the others, the two of them exchanged unnerved glances more than a few times on their way to the pond. Though they traveled a desolate path where not even a single bird sang, they couldn’t help but get the feeling that somebody was watching them. And from very close at hand.

Going down to the edge of the pond, they put D’s body into a canvas cargo bag, tossed in some rocks, and threw it out into the water. They never even considered bringing it out to the center of the pond to dump it. And that was a wise choice.

After the hoofbeats of their respective mounts had faded and the ripples had vanished from the surface of the water, a long black shaft shot up out of the pond, then sank into the watery depths once more. It was the steel arrow that’d pierced D’s heart.

And in less than the time it took to draw a single breath, a strange phenomenon began to take place on the surface of the pond, which was by no means small. A funnel formed near the area where D’s corpse had been discarded, and the muddy pond water rushed into it. A nightmarish tableau, it was almost as if some titanic fish nearly as large as the pond itself was sucking up all the water.

 

 

“Damn it! Let me out of here!” the boy shouted as he grabbed the iron bars and rattled them with all his might, but no reply came from the sheriff’s office beyond the closed door.

Instead, a voice from the adjacent cell said, “Let it go already. If we make any more of a fuss, they’ll see to it Cecile has a hard time of it.”

Hearing the opinion of his girlfriend’s father, Lyle bit his lip and let the strength ebb from his body. Ever since he’d been taken from the home of his father the mayor in the dead of night and locked up in the sheriff’s office, he’d gone through this cycle of resistance and restraint dozens of times. Not long after he was detained, Cecile’s father had come. With neither of them knowing what had become of Cecile’s mother or the girl herself, the pair was left there alone after the sheriff went out, and no one had been by since.

“Uh, sir, what do you think’s gonna become of Cecile?” the boy asked, unable to remain silent in his current state of mind.

“That’s what I’d like to know,” her father responded in a feeble voice that hardly sounded like the same stalwart man who’d rushed off to rescue Cecile the night before.

They’d probably played out this same dialog more than a few times.

“Oh, damn it all!” the boy exclaimed. He realized they were both looking at rather severe punishments. Half out of desperation, he kicked the bars.

As if on that cue, the door to the jail opened and several figures came in.

“If it ain’t the fucking mayor!”

As Lyle wildly reached out through the bars, his father pursed his lips with displeasure. The other visitors consisted of the sheriff and two guards.

“Your punishment has been decided by a meeting of the town council.”

It came as little surprise that even Lyle held his breath for a second at the mayor’s declaration. In accordance with the brutal environment, punishments in Frontier villages were harsh. The lightest was a hundred lashes with a whip. Before half that number had been delivered the flesh would split, and by the end even bone would be visible. After that, the wounds would receive the tender mercy of being rubbed with salt. Needless to say, the stiffest sentence was the gallows. Just shy of that was exile.

“A hundred lashes for each of you. Your wife will not be censured. And you should count yourselves lucky.”

“What the hell have you done with Cecile?!” Lyle bellowed. Far from satisfied with their “mercy,” he was furious. Given how extremely lenient their punishment was, something would clearly be sought in exchange. And with Cecile being involved, it was obvious what that would be.

There before his own son, the mayor stated frostily, “Instead of flying off the handle, you should be thanking Cecile. The fiasco last night is difficult to overlook, but she’s sworn not to go along with any more of your plans. In other words, she’s accepted her fate. She’s already back in the same place as last night, waiting for evening.”

“Don’t underestimate me, you sorry excuse for a mayor! Mark my words, I’ll get out of this shitty little jail and rescue Cecile. And then we won’t have anything more to do with this filthy burg. Before you know it, me and Cecile will be miles from here.”

“Prattle on all you like. At any rate, the two of you will get your licks tomorrow. And I’m sure the Noble will be pleased with our offering.”

“You son of a bitch! You call yourself mayor, and you mean to tell me you can’t think of any way to save the village besides sacrificing our fellow villagers?”

Glancing at Cecile’s father, the mayor said, “Your wife has gone home. But we’ve got someone keeping an eye on her so she doesn’t try anything funny.”

And with those words, he left without showing any sign of even hearing his son’s abuse.

“Just accept it,” the somewhat affable sheriff said from his spot beside the door. “Bazura says he took out D, too. There’s nothing more that can be done for Cecile now.”

“D—killed?”

Lyle couldn’t believe it. The image of the Hunter effortlessly freezing Bazura and his men with his swordplay at the edge of the pond was still burned into his eyes.

“Yep. Seems they sent his corpse to the bottom of the pond. Dhampir or not, I don’t reckon he’ll come back to life after a drowning.”

Now Lyle slumped to the floor.

Seeing the boy collapse from utter despair, the lawman remarked, “Cheer up. At least Cecile managed to save the two of you. If you’re not thankful for that much, you’ll get yours someday.”

After the sheriff left, Lyle still didn’t get up again. From the next cell, he heard Cecile’s father sigh.

“It’s gonna be okay, sir. D said it’d take that woman two days to recover from her wound. This is the first of those, so Cecile will still be safe.”

“But you heard what they said over at the mayor’s house, didn’t you? Shakero’s daughter was killed after we drove the woman off.”

“That’s gotta be some kind of mistake.”

“Even if it is, there’s not a damn thing we can do, am I right?” Cecile’s father said, his voice a roiling mess of irritation, rage, and grief.

But Lyle didn’t reply.

__

Out on the Frontier, daytime had a far greater meaning than the people who lived in the Capital could ever conceive. For that was the only time people here were really allowed to live—to cultivate their fields, harvest fruit, tend their cows, catch fish. And in addition to all their other endeavors, there were two more struggles. Chasing off supernatural beasts, picking off fog-like creatures, using a stake driver to halt the demons that might slip in from underground—these were their battles. As for the last one—in some places it hadn’t been done for the longest time, while in others it still remained a grave necessity.

In Shirley’s Door, it was actually neither. Although a battle hadn’t been necessary for a long time, continual and tireless preparations against the night had become a custom of sorts—whittling wooden stakes, sharpening arrowheads, and polishing longswords. Garlic was hung from the eaves of houses, and children’s clothes were soaked in its juice. The people thanked heaven that they had plenty of stakes and garlic and could still remember how to use both. However, the one person most in need of these things was given neither, and those who might’ve helped get them to her were powerless as the daylight slipped away.

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III

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Getting out of her wagon by the edge of the pond, old Helga went over to the water. Her face was heavy with shadows. The autumn day seemed to be snagged on the tip of a distant mountain. As the crone nervously gazed across the water, a hazy but nonetheless undeniable trace of shock spread through her eyes like a ripple.

“What in the world?” she croaked.

From behind her, a scornful voice remarked, “I knew you’d come.”

The old woman spun around, but her eyes found nothing. All she could do was place the voice.

“That’s you, isn’t it, Bazura? What in blazes would you be doing out here?”

“As if you didn’t know. I had a sneaking suspicion some idiot might come out here to try and save the Vampire Hunter. Of course, I only just got here myself. Everything else’s been taken care of, but I don’t have the least bit of confidence where the pretty boy is concerned. That’s why I’m back out here.”

“And the level of the pond—I suppose that’s your doing?” the old woman asked as she pointed to the water.

Oddly enough, the disembodied voice didn’t try to conceal its surprise as it replied, “Sorry, I don’t know that trick. But it sure looks like I was right to follow that hunch, wouldn’t you say?”

“Well, in that case, who could’ve . . .”

“Much as I hate to say it, the bastard we sent to the bottom of it,” the voice replied, coolly assessing the situation. There wasn’t the smallest trace of overconfidence in its tone.

The crone shuddered.

“There was something I meant to ask you about earlier, granny,” the voice said, changing the topic. “Those magic wards you drew—I remember seeing them before.”

“Oh, really?”

“Before I came to this village, I saw a conjurer doing his stuff in a town out west. And I believe that was what he used to divine the location of a Noble.”

As the old woman’s face grew pale, he added, “Right on the money, I take it. Well, it’s not going to be D that you tell, but me. Okay, spill it!”

The crone suddenly tried to escape, although it wasn’t anything she’d given any particular thought. Rather, she was so terrified that she acted out of blind fear. But before she’d taken two steps, something got a firm grip on both her ankles.

“What in the world?!” the old woman exclaimed as her momentum sent her tumbling forward, her ankles held by a pair of arms growing out of the ground, of all things.

Once the fingers let go, the arms reached straight up and slowly began to rise higher. Chunks of earth fell free as the person they’d been clinging to—Bazura—pulled the rest of his body out of the ground.

“You—you’re . . .”

As the leader of the guards knocked the rest of the black soil from his body, he shot a vicious grin at the astonished crone.

“You’ll have to forgive me if I’ve got your heart racing. This is a special talent of mine. If you’d been a foe, I would’ve had a sword or a spear in my hands just now.”

Any battle-hardened warrior would pay close attention to their surroundings and even the sky above them. But how many of them would be able to defend themselves from an attack that came with lightning speed from directly below —from the very ground on which they stood?

“What’s wrong? Did you bust a hip or something?” Bazura asked with a cruel laugh as he readied the rapid-fire crossbow that’d been strapped to his back.

“No, I just remembered something,” the old woman said, inching backward as she straightened herself up. “Twelve or thirteen years back, there was a string of crimes where over a dozen moneylenders were attacked and killed in an area to the east. No matter how much they investigated, the authorities never could tell how the culprit managed to escape, and they say all of the victims were wounded in the belly or crotch. That was you, wasn’t it?”

“How wonderful of you to remember—although I have myself to thank for reminding you of that. Well, now I’ve got an incentive to get rid of you . . .although I’ll give the mayor a different reason, of course. What a pity! You could’ve just kept your mouth shut and lived out the rest of your days, but since you got it in your head you had to do something for this worthless little town, now you have to die before your time. Granted, you’re probably only losing a year or two at most, so try not to take it so hard.”

His finger tightened on the crossbow’s trigger. As a fiend who lurked in the ground, the man probably never expected his own leg to be grabbed. With the limb jerked out from under him with incredible strength, he gave a cry of surprise as he fell face-first. But truly he was a well-trained combatant, and even as he toppled, he managed to twist his upper body and catch a glimpse of his feet. But he didn’t fire the bow. All he managed to do was fall to the ground as stiff as a board with his eyes wide open.

The fingers that released his ankle and retreated toward the pond looked for all the world like the left hand of a person of unearthly beauty.

Unable to even curse, Bazura simply let out a heavy breath as he released an arrow. His steel arrows were powered by blank rounds. Guided in its flight by a laser beam, the lone arrow had only a tenth of a second to travel to its target. It slammed right through the back of the hand and nailed it flat on the ground—or it looked like it would, but a split-second before impact, the hand twisted around with inhuman speed and threw itself into the pond while the arrow sank into the ground, unable to change course on such short notice.

And in that instant, Bazura was certain he’d heard a hoarse voice snidely remark, “Oh, too bad!”

The warrior didn’t fire a second arrow, and the next surprise to greet him actually made him shudder.

“What in the world?” he muttered.

He’d just witnessed the hand emerging once more at the same point on the shore where it’d just leapt in. But was it really the same hand? No, it moved differently. In place of the almost manic speed that had allowed it to avert the arrow, now it crept along purposefully, sinking its fingers into the black earth, moving with a grace that would mesmerize any who beheld it.

It couldn’t be.

Bazura had just discovered something. Now that half the water had been drained from the pond, he could see the unmistakable ruins of the spires and walls of a castle of some sort out at its center. This was what had come from throwing D into the pond.

When the black traveler’s hat rose like a demon of the darkness, Bazura let the second arrow fly. Though it should’ve pierced the Hunter’s head, his left hand caught it in midair. A third arrow flew. In all, the crossbow held six arrows. Each and every one of them was batted away with beautiful sparks.

Darkness sealed the warrior’s field of view. Like the rapidly dropping autumn sun, D sailed through the air, his coat spreading out around him like a supernatural bird.

A flash of white light whizzed out from somewhere, and a bloody mist went up. Perhaps D even felt something out of the ordinary when his blade made contact.

Bazura’s entire body was covered with an iridescent liquid. Although the tinges of vermilion gushed from the spot on his head split open by D’s blade, the rest of the multitude of colors came from a mysterious fluid secreted by his sweat glands. Not only did it save the man from a lethal wound by making D’s deadly blow glance off him, it also dissolved the ground at the former mercenary’s feet, allowing his body to sink far into the earth in a mere instant.

Launching no further attacks, D walked over to Helga instead.

“I knew it . . . I just knew you’d be everything I expected . . . You survived, didn’t you?” the old woman said, somewhat tongue-tied by either fear or emotion.

“Did you hurt your hip?” asked D.

“Not quite. I dislocated it.”

Bending over, D touched his left hand to the old woman’s hip.

Suddenly getting up again, the crone remarked, “Well, what do you know! It’s all better. It’s like I had ice on it. You rubbed some sort of secret medicine on me with that left hand of yours, didn’t you?”

“Why would you say that?” was the only reply.

Knitting her brow, the crone remarked, “For a young guy, you sure can sound like an old coot.”

D said nothing.

“I’d ask you how you came back to life, but I don’t suppose you’d tell me, would you? Well, I guess that’s okay. Anyway, the sun will be going down soon. Cecile’s in danger.”

As they headed back to the wagon, the crone recounted the day’s events.

“. . . and that’s the long and short of it. That accursed spell knocked me flat on my back, and by the time I came around again, half the day had passed. But I sure am glad I came out here in the hopes you might’ve survived.”

The two of them got into her wagon.

“At my house, you can get your horse and ride.”

“Did you have any luck with your spell to find where the Noble is?” D asked as soon as they were on their way.

“Not really,” the old woman said as she lashed the horse.

The conversation ended, and as soon as they reached the crone’s house, D got on his cyborg steed.

“Be careful. And whatever you do, find some way to save her,” the old woman said as she waved her hand, but her voice swiftly faded away.

His handsome features were assailed by the autumn wind. Through the chilling moonlight he went. D didn’t follow the road. He knew where Cecile was.

Tearing through the forest, his horse raced up a rocky hill.

“Was there anything out of the ordinary about Helga’s physiology?” the Hunter asked as he came to the bottom of a second hill.

“Not really,” a hoarse voice could be heard to say from the vicinity of where his left hand gripped the reins.

“I didn’t find any irregularities either. She’s just a plain human being.”

“Well then, what’s the story with what you saw at the bottom of the pond?”

“I don’t know,” the Hunter replied, his words crumbling under the thunder of the iron-shod hooves.

Without a moment’s hesitation, the voice asked, “What’s wrong?”

D was looking off to the left. Less than ten paces away, a girl in a white dress was running along at exactly the same speed. The pale green hair that fluttered in the breeze carried the scent of fall, and the hue of her skin resembled moonlight.

The rider leaned over to the right. At the same time, his horse bounded. As soon as it came back to earth, it wheeled around sharply. Hooves gouged the ground.

The girl’s feet continued their sprint, while the light of the moon seemed to well up beneath them. Her lithe figure went straight up—and the girl was suddenly in midair.

And above her was D—although when he’d kicked up out of the stirrups was a mystery.

The wind snarled. The blade met proper resistance as it slashed downward, and in its wake, the girl showed her white teeth.

As D straightened up again back on the ground, his eyes caught the white figure slipping into the forest off to the left.

We’ll meet soon, said the voice that came to him, riding on the wind. The fall wind. Soon, you gorgeous creature. Very soon.

D sheathed his blade.

“You sure have messed up a lot today,” said a voice by his left hip. “Must’ve been the wind’s fault.”

Apparently, the source of the voice was aware of how the force of the wind had diminished the power of the Hunter’s stroke when he brought his sword down on the girl.

“Where did the girl come from?”

D turned to the spot a short distance away where his mount had halted.

“Seeing how she’s showed up practically on top of us both yesterday and today, she’s probably following our movements,” he responded in a leaden tone.

“In that case, she’d be close at hand, right? How about at the old woman’s house? What if the Noble made it her hiding place without the old girl even knowing about it?”

“You think a Noble would live in a human’s house?”

“Not really,” the voice replied flatly, adding, “But I’m actually more intrigued by something else.”

D straddled his horse without saying a word.

“Now, why do you suppose that woman’s gone to all the trouble of appearing to us twice now?”

Once again the horse began to tear through the autumn evening. This was the beginning of a long night.