A WARRIOR MET ALONG THE WAY

CHAPTER 1

I

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The castle challenged the heavens. Although the way it had been constructed—by hollowing out a jagged mountain and pouring countless tons of liquid concrete—was startling, the reason the terrified scientists had their eyes open as wide as they possibly could was because a massive nuclear reactor set dozens of floors below the castle was still running.

“Yes, but just where is all that power going?” one member of the survey team asked as he tightened his grip on a garlic flower.

Not an iota of the energy was devoted to illuminating the castle or even opening and closing the doors of this massive structure that’d been carved from a whole mountain. It would probably take them more than a decade to learn every detail of this palace.

“When did the Nobility abandon this castle?” another scientist asked.

“Two thousand years ago.”

“And you mean to say the nuclear reactor has been going nonstop ever since?”

“According to the records kept by their monitoring devices, yes.”

“In that case, you should be able to check what that power line is supposed to feed into.”

“No, that’s the only information that’s been lost.”

“And you think that might’ve been intentional?”

“The odds are pretty good.”

“How much juice does the nuclear reactor generate?”

“Fifty million megawatts an hour.”

The scientists fell silent. They were numbed by the thought of the vast energy that’d been pouring into this unknown thing for the last two thousand years—or perhaps even longer.

Terror then hovered over the group like an aurora. What was the thing? Why had it been necessary to hide its existence while enormous amounts of power were fed into it for two millennia?

It was two days later that they came up with an answer, when the linguist who’d been holed up in the library located in the castle’s annex madly deciphering ancient documents of the Nobility appeared before a scientist who’d stepped out onto the castle’s observation deck to enjoy the cool summer breeze.

Going over to the edge of the observation deck, the linguist peered down. There was nothing there. A foreboding precipice that was sheer and smooth, the castle walls dropped straight down for more than three thousand feet. The outline of a distant mountain chain curtained by fog and twilight caught the linguist’s eye, and he finally felt calm again.

“They chose a hell of a place to make a hell of thing, didn’t they,” the scientist said. “This isn’t merely a mountain stronghold; it’s an impenetrable fortress.”

“Precisely,” the young linguist replied bluntly. “As you say, this was something exceptional. It’s been here for roughly seven thousand years.”

“Well, isn’t that something,” the scientist remarked with admiration, but he wasn’t able to fully conceal his feelings that a mere seven millennia in and of itself wasn’t all that amazing.

“For the five millennia from its construction to its abandonment, the castle was at war continuously.”

“What’s that you say?”

“I suppose you’ve already seen how the castle is equipped. The whole place is bristling with armaments like a veritable porcupine.”

That remark cut the scientist to the quick. If the government back in the Capital ever saw the countless weapons of legend to be found here, they’d have the whole castle locked up tight. Needless to say, there were the basic armaments such as neutron missiles, atomic cannons, and lasers, but judging merely by the remaining structures, the place had almost certainly been equipped with dimensional vortex cannons, weather disruptors, energy lines, and other weapons of mass destruction. It was a level of fortification inconceivable in an ordinary castle of the Nobility.

“According to local folklore and what I’ve managed to decipher from the scant records kept in the castle’s archives, this was the center of an ancient battlefield twenty-five hundred miles in diameter—a place known as ‘The Armageddon Zone.’ And the conflict was an extremely personal one.”

“Personal, eh?” the scientist said, involuntarily looking down.

As if on command, the fog broke like a curtain opening on the ravaged earth. An expanse of reddish brown soil without a single spot of green, the desolate scene would probably be enough to trouble anyone’s soul. Even though he only suspected that was the result of a nuclear war that’d showered the area with copious amounts of radioactive material, what the linguist had pointed out was undoubtedly the brutal truth.

“There was another family that was, in a manner of speaking, sworn enemies of the master of this fortress for several millennia. Currently, neither their names nor their crests are known to us, but there can be no mistaking the fact that they did exist. Receiving no assistance from the rest of the Nobility, these two families fought for five thousand years. And then one day, they suddenly vanished. Many Nobles have been wiped out without a trace, but this castle remains, and even now its reactor is feeding energy into something.”

“And what is this ‘something’?”

“I don’t know. It’s certainly not the weapons we’ve discovered.”

“I wonder whatever became of the other family. Since this castle remains, its master must’ve won the conflict, right?”

“We can’t even begin to guess.”

As the linguist lit a cigarette, the scientist eyed it enviously. The Capital did an extremely poor job of distributing them.

“Care for one?”

While he didn’t want to add to the other man’s sense of superiority, the scientist thanked the linguist anyway and took a yellow cigarette from him, asking him for a light at the same time. Filling his lungs deeply with smoke, he experienced a moment of supreme bliss. The ebbing of his tension actually gave rise to the most extraordinary thought.

“You think it was eventually settled?” the scientist said, but as he did, he felt a chill run down his spine. One of the possible answers was the last thing he wanted to hear.

The other man couldn’t even take that into consideration.

“I don’t know, either. If it did reach a conclusion, then the fact that this castle survived would suggest that their foes lost, but since neither the records nor any other documents make mention of it, I can’t say for certain.”

“In other words—”

“Yes. There’s a very strong possibility the conflict was never ultimately resolved.”

The scientist held his tongue. A specific thought arose in his brain with frightening clarity. It was supported by the Nobles’ nuclear reactor that even now continued its tireless activity deep within the earth and by the vast wasteland that surrounded the mountain fortress.

Looking at the linguist’s face and finding a hint of anticipation there, he decided not to indulge the other man any further. As far as the Nobility and their civilization was concerned, there was an unwritten yet ironclad rule: The less you know, the better.

The linguist knew it, too. The major difference between the scientist and him was the youthfulness of the latter. Although he was still free to choose whether or not to discuss his thoughts, his youthful overconfidence was so strong that it threatened to make him burst.

“What probably happened—” he began to say as prudently as possible.

Steeling himself, the scientist took a long drag on his cigarette.

Just then, a strange sensation traveled up through their feet.

The gaze of the youthful linguist shot to the scientist. But the scientist had his eyes shut. Suddenly, the linguist realized that it was dusk.

The observation deck faced west. The vermilion-tinged outlines of a distant mountain struck at his heart with a wave of surprise. He got the feeling that the entire page of history penned at this castle was stained the very same hue.

When the scientist’s parched lips blew out a protracted cloud of purple smoke, a now unmistakable rumbling in the earth and the sounds of destruction rose from below them. And then—there was a roaring laugh.

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II

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From off to his left he heard the whistle of a spear thrust. Though the drive came with such speed the very air seemed to bend around it, the figure in black didn’t seem to make any special moves, but merely grabbed the spear just behind the tip with his left hand. As the spearman stumbled forward with an incredulous cry, he was met head-on by the casual swipe of a sword that dispatched him before the ink-black figure surveyed his remaining opponents.

There was a wind—a winter wind that seemed to make every cheek it buffeted swell to twice its normal size. And to the men, it seemed as if the same wind was protecting the other man. An outline like a wintry night crystallized, but with all the resulting sparkle crushed from winter’s true form. His face was gorgeous, and his coat absolutely mesmerizing as it billowed out elegantly.

We’re all gonna die. That’s the price we’ll pay for trying to kill a man so beautiful and taking his gold.

“Give me some room, damn it!” one noticeably short man growled as he stepped out onto the frozen ground. It seemed like he was ready to make his move, but suddenly a pair of black wings opened noisily on his back. They weren’t organic. Rather, they’d been crafted from animal hide stretched over a skeleton of wire and wood.

Flapping his wings before the beautiful butcher, the man flitted into the air like some sort of unholy bird. The wings must’ve utilized a compact but powerful motor, and the flesh and bones of the man himself had to be awfully light.

His shouts rained down from the sky. “I’m gonna go after him, too. All of you hit him at once!”

And then the winged man rapidly climbed another fifty yards. That was the kind of altitude he’d need to launch his attack.

Naked steel glittering in their hands, his cohorts charged the butcher. They had no way of knowing that on his way down, the airborne figure had reduced his speed.

The second all the forms fused into a single mass, the bird man began to climb again with a brown rain pouring down from his chest.

Twice, cries rang out—once when the liquid made contact, and once more when the soaked bodies began to dissolve with terrifying speed. They’d been showered with a powerful acid.

When the bird man dropped thirty feet and turned for a look, none of the forms on the ground resembled a human being any longer. Descending another thirty feet and changing direction, he gasped aloud.

One of the figures who should’ve melted down into a pile of meat and bones had just stood up straight. Even from his present height, the heaven-sent beauty of the countenance now peering up at him was unmistakable.

It’s him! There’s white smoke coming off his coat—don’t tell me that shielded him from my rain of death!

Eyes glittering with malice, the bird man gained altitude. Though his opponent might’ve cheated death once, no lowly creature on the ground could possibly escape the speed and murderous intent of one who ruled the sky.

“No way in hell are you getting away!” snarled the bird man.

But before he could beat his wings to dive in an assault from the heavens, it looked as if the figure of beauty on the ground rose with exquisite weightlessness. In order to ensure his foe was now slain, the bird man had intended to swoop down to a mere ten feet above his opponent’s head. He never would’ve thought the figure in black would rise to his altitude as he was about to rain liquid death on him. The instant the man felt the silvery flash touch the top of his head, he realized the second round of screams that’d come from his compatriots hadn’t been prompted by the liquid death, but rather by their opponent’s swordplay.

As his body continued to glide through the air, its path was suddenly blocked by a figure that resembled a small mountain. Just as it looked like they were about to collide, the bird man split in two. A bloody mist spattered the giant as the pieces passed him on either side. After angling down through the hazy white of winter and slamming into the ground, neither half moved again.

While it was unclear whether or not he knew the massive individual who’d intruded on the deadly battle, the gorgeous figure silently turned his back on him to walk away.

“Wait just a second!” a voice boomed from ten feet in the air. It came from a pair of thick lips and a face larger than most children.

The figure in the black coat turned around impassively.

“Sweet lord!” the giant said with an appreciative whistle, his wide eyes going even wider. “My, but you are one good-looking fella! What do you go by, anyway?”

“D,” said the shadowy figure.

“Wow, that kinda has a sad sound to it, but it’s a good name. I’m—”

As he pondered, he twisted a great neck that was thick as a tree trunk.

“Come to think of it, I guess I don’t have one,” he laughed.

Heaven and earth seemed to quake at the sound.

Giants weren’t completely unheard-of in this world. In the western Frontier there was a village of forty-foot-tall Cyclopes spawned by the Nobility. However, this nameless Goliath was extremely ordinary in appearance, clad from the neck down in a purple cloth that looked like velvet curtains, and at the end of the pole he had over his shoulder hung a cloth bundle that looked big enough to hold five grown men. A giant traveler was indeed a rare thing.

The smile didn’t fade from the giant’s face, no matter how long he stood there. D turned around.

“Hey! Wait a second!” the giant cried, hastening after the Hunter. The ground shook with every thud of his feet.

As he followed after D, he pointed to the earthen mound over which he’d come and said, “I was sleeping nice and peaceful-like back there. Not only did you and your playmates go and wake me up, but look what a mess you made of my only set of clothes. I’ll never get the stink of blood out of them. You’ve got to take some responsibility, buster!”

“And how would I do that?” D asked without even turning to face the man.

“Smashing one or two of those creeps into a pulp would’ve satisfied me, but you already took care of them all. So that only leaves me one alternative.”

Apparently the giant was unfamiliar with the concept of subterfuge.

Not even bothering to take the package of belongings from the end of his pole, he swung it straight down at D’s head like he was working with a hoe. The bludgeon was a foot and a half thick and over fifteen feet long. Judging by the jagged condition of either end, it was probably safe to say this was a log that hadn’t been cut with any edged implement but rather snapped off with sheer strength.

Its impact shook the earth, giving off a tremendous boom and sending cracks racing out in all directions—but the figure in black walked right by the fissures in the earth without the least concern.

“Oh, damn it!” the giant shouted in dismay.

Pulling his club out of the rift, he hastened after D.

The figure in black advanced across the quaking ground without flinching.

“Damn you!”

This time it looked like the giant was going to bring down another blow from above, but he easily changed the direction of the bark-covered log for a horizontal swipe.

D moved with the flow of the log. Riding the wind caused by the great bludgeon and arcing up, he appeared unsteady for a second before bounding to the giant’s chest.

“Huh?” the giant cried, but before he could even get the words out he took a hard blow to the base of the neck from the still-sheathed sword and was knocked down.

The spot where D landed again still reverberated from the resulting crash.

“You’re pretty strong, aren’t you?” the giant conceded with clear admiration, though his face still held a grimace. “I’m no match for you. Okay, I give. I give already!”

And then he got right up, with blades of grass falling from his back—this after taking a blow from D.

“So, where are you headed anyway?” he asked, but D was already sixty feet away, mounting his cyborg horse where it’d been nibbling the grass.

His black finger indicated the narrow road that ran nearby.

“Oh, that’s perfect. I’m headed north, too. At this time of year, I’m sure it’s covered far and wide with icy blooms.”

Apparently the giant was something of a poet.

“Say, why don’t we travel together? They say the company makes the trip, and I just love having someone stronger than me around. Makes it that much safer if we’re attacked by bandits, you know.”

He was also honest.

D advanced on his horse without saying a word. Why the young man hadn’t done away with this person who’d intended to kill him was the real question.

“Come on. Wait up! Just give me a second, would you?”

Following him as far as the road, the giant then apparently gave up. With arms akimbo he shouted, “I know we’ll probably never meet again, so I should at least give you my name, pretty boy. It just came to me. I’m known as Dynus. I’ll thank you not to forget it. Dynus, you hear? Dynus the wanderer!”

His voice trailed off into the distance. By the time it faded completely, the rider in black had disappeared down the frozen road. The flavor of winter was strong that afternoon.

That was how D and Dynus came to meet.

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III

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Snow had long since replaced the rain. The tiny white dreams that fell in disarray from the leaden sky made the sun show its dazzling smile for the first time in days. Even the village of Schlad that D was calling on belonged to the white world.

Though he took a room at the only inn in town, it wasn’t because he planned on being there for any length of time. Rather, it was because the fatigue of traveling by day had caught up with him.

A dhampir’s biorhythms peaked between sunset and daybreak. Although traveling was usually done by night, everyone knew that nocturnal journeys on the Frontier meant constant encounters with supernatural beasts and demonic creatures. A perfect example was the survey group that was traveling around the northwestern portion of the Frontier five years earlier. In the two hours following sunset they encountered five ghouls, a pair of demons that could suck the skeleton out of a man, a carnivorous blob, and a female specter—and half the party was lost in the process. D probably wasn’t the only one who’d rather take to the road by day instead of fighting through the night.

Lowering the blinds to manufacture his own darkness, D soon fell asleep. After waking about four hours later, he went outside.

The sun was down. Night air on the Frontier brimmed with the aura of nature. The strength that oozed from the soil, the invigoration that billowed from the trees, the vitality of the beasts of the field—for those who’d been born with one accursed parent, these things formed an irreplaceable fount of life.

D walked quietly down the white streets. All sounds seemed to be absorbed by the snow. Although it was only about supper time, there were few people to be seen on the roads—snow was a perfect cover for certain dangerous creatures. Pedestrians carried sticks that they jabbed into the snow periodically, and about one time in ten the snow would tremble in response.

D entered a tavern. Doubling as a restaurant, the place swirled with the aromas of meat and liquor and cigarettes. The most dazzling glow in the whole rustic establishment came from the women.

Someone noticed D. Their coquettish chatter died instantly, and they concentrated gazes that beggared description on him. Even after he’d taken a seat at the end of the counter, the din failed to return.

Shutting his gaping mouth, the bartender with the handlebar mustache shook his head as if to rid himself of some thought and slowly ambled down to D.

“What’ll it be?” he asked. His voice seemed to have sprouted wings.

“Wine.”

“I’ll give you a glass of the best on the house, my treat,” the bartender said in a dim tone. “And once you’ve had your drink, I’ll thank you to leave. With you here, the whole joint will be out of whack.”

He gave the young man a tin cup full of vermilion liquid. When D touched the drink to his lips, a sound like a moan of passion shook the room.

“Would you folks mind behaving yourselves?” the bartender shouted. Apparently he was the owner.

And with that, the spell was broken. The women went back to stroking the bald heads of the nearest dirty old men or holding hands with the younger ones.

It was just then that the door opened. The reaction this time was slightly different from when D had entered. Fright and confusion—these emotions replaced any drunkenness in the gazes that followed the girl who came in carrying a wicker basket and walked all the way to the bar with her doleful countenance aimed at the floor.

“The usual?” the bartender asked in a kindly tone.

“Please,” the young woman said with an equally modest nod. For some reason, she simply refused to meet the eyes that were trained on her. Her short red hair, the simple blouse and down coat, and even the long skirt were all those of an ordinary country girl.

“What’s the matter, Raya?” one of the young men said to her in a voice dripping with scorn. He was drunk. “Without an escort tonight, are we? Am I right, your majesty?”

“Knock it off,” the guy next to him said, giving his elbow a tug.

Another friend of theirs said, “What happened to your big bad retainers, eh?”

“Hell, they don’t scare us!” the first barked.

There were three of them, all told—and each had the build and the look of a local hell-raiser.

“Would you knock it off already?” the bartender told them as he gave the girl a green bottle. “Don’t go starting trouble with Raya. It’s not like she called those characters here.”

“How are we supposed to know that?!” one of the three shouted back as he wildly waved a liquor bottle. “Three guys without any connection to her whatsoever show up one day and decide to stay. And when a local boy just grabs her ass a little bit, he gets both hands torn off at the wrist. Then someone who goes out there to collect on a debt—and gets a little mouthy—gets his bottom jaw ripped off and his tongue plucked out to boot. Is that the sort of shit a complete stranger would do?! It sounds more like bodyguards or loyal retainers protecting their darling princess.”

“Maybe, but from what I hear, both Corda and Adinas were in the wrong. Didn’t they both do or say something so bad Raya was trying to get away from them? So when they went after her to finish what they’d started, anyone who owed her family a favor would want to do something to help her, right?” said the bartender.

“So you think it’s fine someone’s gone and done that kind of damage to your fellow villagers?”

“Hell, everyone’s always going on about what a little saint she is for taking care of that rummy of a father of hers, so they can’t see squat through their rose-colored glasses. She’s not as good as everyone makes out! Three men, I’m telling you. She’s got three of them.”

“Thank you, sir,” the girl said in a feeble tone before turning around.

A distasteful air hung in the tavern, and knowing just who bore the brunt of it, one of the young men said, “Sheesh. Let’s find a change of scenery,” as all three got up. Throwing some gold coins down on the table, they then went out of their way to stomp out of the tavern as loudly as possible.

“Worthless bastards. They’re the dregs of the damn village,” the owner grumbled as a single silver coin was slipped into his hand. By the time he realized what it was for, the figure in black was casually heading out through the door.

D turned left—back the same way he’d come. His face had a dim glow from the light bouncing off of the snow. No matter how gorgeous, every face had at least one part of it that served as a reminder of the human way of life, but the only impression one got from this young man was that of pure beauty. Even under the closest examination, it would always make things such as his conversing with others, or eating, or sleeping, seem like activities belonging to a completely separate world. Even as he walked away, not a trace of the tavern’s atmosphere remained on him. He was poetry in motion.

After a minute or two, D came to a corner. Towering warehouses stretched off blackly into the distance. Every village had a place like this for storing things such as food and agricultural equipment.

As he was about to go straight, he heard a jumbled mash of two kinds of voices.

“Please, let go of me! Stop it!”

“Quit your fussing and just come with us.”

“Don’t be so stingy with your goodies. You must’ve let them give it to you, right?”

The figure in black kept right on walking. But five steps later he halted. The voices had undergone an incredible change.

“Wh—who the hell are you guys?” one voice stammered.

“And when in blazes—?”

The sounds that followed were something no one’s ears but D’s would’ve caught—the crunch of bones snapping, the sound of organs rupturing.

Before the long, thin scream had finished trailing through the air, D started walking again. He was a shadow with no relation to the events of this world.

When he’d gone about fifteen feet, a girl cried out in a distressed tone, “Someone! Anyone! Come quick!”

Sounding like the kind of farm girl you might encounter anywhere, it was the same young woman who’d left the tavern out of embarrassment.

As if caught in a whirlwind, D spun around.

Right after turning the corner, he saw several figures hanging around the door to one of the warehouses. One stood a head taller than the girl. He wasn’t one of the young toughs from the bar.

When D had closed to within six feet, the man turned and looked at him. A tinge of amazement raced through the man’s nondescript features, and the girl had a chance to slip free of his grasp.

“Help!” her round face cried as she clung to D’s chest. “Terrible things are happening to those folks inside. You’ve got to stop it!”

D didn’t even look at the girl. His field of view was occupied by the man who asked in a rusty voice, “What are you?”

Though the man was attired for work in the fields, an unearthly air inconceivable for any true farmer wafted about him.

Not answering, D advanced—and the man stepped back without making a sound.

“You lousy bastard . . .” a voice groaned.

The man’s body sank unexpectedly, but not like he’d just sat down. Rather, he disappeared from his ankles to his waist. No, actually he sank down into the snow right up to his head. But even though there’d been a lot of snow recently, the pile couldn’t have been more than a foot and a half deep. Strangely enough, it seemed he must’ve melted away.

D’s gaze was drawn to the entrance to the warehouse. One of the door panels was open.

The interior was packed with darkness, and a chilling cacophony surrounded D. But he’d probably already known to expect that.

The contents of the warehouse consisted of more than just the tractors and farm implements that’d been shoved into one corner. The wooden crates that filled the darkness were all cages fitted with iron bars. Within them, eyes glowed like red pools of blood atop furry legs or root-like tentacles while groans that might’ve been hexes or curses were vented. These were supernatural beasts and insects to be shipped to the Capital. Their uses varied. Speed spiders for feeding the poisonous insects that cured contagious diseases, doppelganger lizards that could be turned into guard beasts for a whole household through one simple operation—these were the kinds of creatures usually considered fit for nothing but slaughter out in the wild. Needless to say, even now they remained extremely dangerous.

On a fairly wide patch of ground in front of the towering heap of cages, three figures lay face down—the young men from earlier. From the low groans escaping their lips, they hadn’t lost their lives yet. They were probably fortunate to have gotten off with having their limbs left horribly twisted.

Giving the youths just a quick glance, D then turned his face to a higher spot.

“Watch yourselves,” said the voice of the one from outside. “Even I didn’t notice this guy as he was approaching. What’s more, just having him near me made me flinch. He’s something from another world.”

“Is it him?” another one of them asked. It was a bizarre voice, seeming to come from both above and below. Anyone trying to locate him by voice alone was likely to quickly succumb to confusion, perhaps even forgetting about where they themselves were.

“No,” said the third and most solemn of the voices. “This is someone else. However—this one just might be even greater than the other . . .”

“Impossible!”

“There are fearsome characters out in the wide world. That much I’ve always known, but when you actually see one in the flesh . . .”

The third speaker actually sounded quite impressed.

“We’ll introduce ourselves. I’m Duran,” he said. The voice was that of the man from outside.

“Very well. I’m Sabey.”

“Understood. I’m known as Crumb.”

This wasn’t done to be nice—each and every voice had a ring of hostility to it. And yet, they didn’t let the tiniest sign betray their presence.

Then, for the first time, they showed some sign of being upset. D had just spun around on his heel. Could any act have matched that for sheer discourtesy—or for daring?

Having ascertained that the three young men were still alive, he was finished. After that, it would simply be a matter of summoning the villagers—that was reasoning that D alone could follow.

As if to show him his error, a black figure dropped down from directly above him.

“Stop!” Sabey called out, but he was either too early or too late.

A glint of white split the darkness lit till now solely by the light off the snow, and something thudded to the ground on either side of D.

“You’re good,” groaned the one who’d identified himself as Crumb. However, that voice came from the piece that’d fallen about six feet to D’s right—the man from the waist up. From the waist down, he lay to D’s left.

“My turn next,” Sabey said, his voice falling from the ceiling as he made no further efforts to conceal his presence.

“Oh—don’t do it!” Crumb’s upper body shouted.

“Hurry up and get out of here,” Sabey snapped back at him at the same time the sounds of destruction filled the entire warehouse.

Each and every cage had broken open in unison. No external force had undone the bolts or snapped the high-voltage lines—that had been done by the mindless fury of the accursed creatures within them.

“Very well, then—go, my little friends!”

At Sabey’s bidding, the bizarre monsters charged the gorgeous silhouette that stood there motionless. Anyone familiar with their respective species would’ve been startled by the ordinarily unimaginable swiftness and agility the beasts displayed.

But even more amazing was the speed that far exceeded theirs. The din of flesh and bone being hewn sounded like a single continuous sound. D moved in a circle with a diameter no wider than his own shoulders. Each flash of his blade dealt lethal wounds to several supernatural creatures, and after four glittering strokes the assault was at an end.

A hoarse and haughty laugh came from someone they didn’t even know was there. To the contrary, the impressions that radiated down from the ceiling seemed to indicate the three adversaries were so tense they might not have even noticed the laughter.

“Unbelievable . . .”

“Damned freak . . .”

And even these remarks weren’t muttered until they’d drawn several breaths.

With the stink of blood beginning to pervade the chill air of the warehouse, the figure in black headed back to the entrance without a sound.

As he was about to cross the threshold again, Duran’s voice called out, “Wait—at least give us your name.”

“D,” he replied succinctly before stepping outside.

“Those guys weren’t too shabby,” said a hoarse voice from the vicinity of the Hunter’s left hip. The same voice that’d laughed earlier. “The first one was in a great position to cut you. Ordinarily, that only would’ve been the start of things, you know. The second was a ‘beast master’—but he’s capable of a lot more than what we saw. He was just testing the waters. And the third is the scariest of the bunch.”

D looked at the girl who was standing right in front of him.

“All three of them will live. But you should get someone out here.”

And with those words he walked past her.

“Please wait. What happened to the other three?” a doleful voice inquired.

“Are they connected to your family?”

“Not at all. About two weeks ago they suddenly came to my house. And—”

Saying no more, D continued to walk away.

“Please. I’d like you to get them to leave. At this rate, Papa and I won’t be able to go on living in the village much longer!” she said.

But the young man had taken a left at the corner, and her words never reached him.