THE DRAGON FANG TRAP

CHAPTER 3

I

__

The back of the rock ledge was a passageway—it was a natural cave that’d been widened further. Marks from blasting and chemical melting still marred the rock face in many places. At the far end of the passage was an almost perfectly circular clearing. It had to be easily six hundred feet in diameter. Surrounded as it was by rocky crags on all sides, no one would ever see it unless they were looking down from the sky, and the bandits could use another natural passage in the southern portion of the mountain to get back to the road.

Actually, the bandits had discovered this location from the sky. While searching for a hideout to use for attacks on travelers, one of them had been flying around with a glider pack when he’d made the lucky find. Five huts and a warehouse, all constructed from expandable building materials, formed their domain.

In the center of the clearing, almost a dozen figures surrounded the two carriages. Had they not been blurred by the rain, the heartless countenances of the men would’ve been enough to make even an adult grow pale—and there were two equally tough-looking women.

“How about shutting off that weather controller, Erde? If we’re gonna take down some Nobles, there’s no place better to do it than under a blue sky,” a giant of a man with an infrared scope over his right eye said to one of the women. He was definitely the boss.

The woman—Erde—tapped her fingers across the remote control strapped to her left forearm.

“It’s not responding all that well again. I’m still doing some work on it,” she replied. “But whether it’s dark or not, the Nobility sleep by day, so relax.”

“What are you talking about?! If the river overflows and washes out the road, we’ll be shit out of luck. Hurry up and get it fixed. Venice, you help her out.”

“Will do,” the other woman replied in a gruff voice. She wasn’t nearly as good looking as Erde. That may have had something to do with her tone.

Giving a toss of his chin to the carriages, the giant said, “I never seen such luxurious rides before. I’d bet my eyeteeth they’re carrying grand old Nobles and a butt-load of treasure. Well, we’ve gotta bust ’em open before the sun goes down. Get to it!”

And at his command, the men with assorted tools of dismantlement in hand set upon the two carriages like a swarm of black insects. Though these carriages made use of precious metals and rare woods, as belongings of the Nobility, no one save the decadent millionaires in the Capital would be interested in purchasing one. And since transporting one would be such a problem, when this mob got their hands on such a carriage, they quickly stripped it down.

However, these two vehicles were somewhat different from any they’d ever dealt with before.

The guy with the six-thousand-degree laser torch in his hand cried out, “This ain’t doing squat!”

The man with the heavy alloy drill that could tear through rock howled, “It broke my freaking bit!”

“Damn, you are one sad-looking bunch! Looks like we got no choice but to rough up the merchandise a bit. Hey, get ready to blast!” the giant ordered.

One of his men asked, “Are you sure that’s a good idea? I’m not sure I like the way this is going.”

But just as he was offering that objection, the giant pounced. There was a splat like something slamming into the mud, and the giant’s hand sank into his henchman’s solar plexus up to the wrist.

Hurling the man instantly killed by his blow over fifteen feet, the boss held his hand out in the rain to wash the gore off before saying, “Hurry up and get everything ready.” His tone, however, was rather low.

Naturally, several of the others hastened to the warehouse.

The slight whir of a motor could be heard emanating from the giant’s palm.

Three minutes later, a fuse and two pounds of high explosive had been affixed to the bottom of the blue carriage, and a remote control was used to detonate the charge. Though the carriage flew up off the ground and landed on its side, a trio of long thin shafts came out of the bottom and quickly righted the vehicle again. The mechanism housing the shafts hadn’t initially been part of the carriage, but rather had been added later. The fruit of the blacksmith’s hard labor had stood up to the explosives.

“Shit! Make it twenty pounds this time!” the boss shouted as vermilion pervaded his face.

“Hold on a second,” Venice said to him. Pointing to the wagons, she added, “A traveling blacksmith once told me the Nobility’s carriages could stand up to shocks well, but they were comparatively weak to heat. Let’s use an incendiary charge, boss.”

“Okay, incendiary charges it is!” the giant quickly ordered.

“Just a second, boss,” Erde said in a tone that seemed to carry a special significance.

“What is it?”

Throwing Venice a spiteful glance, Erde explained, “Those charges get upwards of twenty thousand degrees. If the carriages get burnt to a crisp, we’ll be left with nothing. After we went to all the trouble of wiping out that pass and everything, all our efforts to get the treasure would end up pissed away. There’s a smarter way to do this.”

“And what would that be?” Venice asked as she took a step forward.

Ignoring the other woman, Erde continued, “We might not be able to stop the downpour, but we can turn it into sunshine. I just finished some repairs, and I could switch it over to sunlight mode and train it into a tight beam. If we keep that focused on them and raise the temperature little by little, we should be able to cook them just right.”

“That sounds great,” the giant declared with a nod, Venice’s idea apparently forgotten completely. “That’s our Erde! Do your thing.”

“Stand back,” the woman said as she began to make adjustments to the device on her left arm.

Several seconds later, a streak of blinding light shot down from the heavens to envelop the pair of carriages. The bare rock beneath them dried instantly, and any rain that touched the light evaporated.

As their faces were buffeted by the steam and the dazzling radiance, the bandits backed away even further.

“Seven thousand degrees,” Erde said as she squinted her eyes. “Eight thousand . . . Eight thousand five hundred . . . Nine . . . Are we still okay?”

“Keep at it,” the giant bade her.

“Ten thousand . . . It’s too dangerous to go any higher. The bedrock is starting to melt.”

“I don’t give a shit. Keep going. This is about showing ’em what we’re made of. I’ll be damned if I’ll let some has-been bloodsuckers humiliate the human race!”

“Fifteen thousand . . . Twenty . . .”

The carriages appeared to be sinking into the ground . . . and they were. The exposed bedrock melted and the pair of carriages sunk down into the bubbling magma without so much as giving off a little steam.

Just then, there was a telling sound from one of the vehicles. It almost sounded like a door being unlocked.

“Stop!” the giant bellowed, and the gray sky and rain returned.

At the same time, there was a terrific hiss and a cloud of white went up—the work of the rain on the magma. The wheels were half buried in the molten rock—leaving the vehicles resting on their bellies—but the carriages themselves didn’t appear to have suffered any damage.

“What in blazes—what did they make these things out of?”

“What the hell was that sound just now?”

And as all of the other henchmen grumbled similar remarks, they heard a creeeeee. It was clearly the sound of a door opening. And once the intractable doors of both carriages fully opened, a pair of coffins the same hue as their respective vehicles were then ejected.

Seeing these drifting on top of the magma, the giant exclaimed, “Cool ’em down, Erde. Make it winter, pronto!”

The air suddenly cooled, but it took a full ten minutes for steam to stop hissing from the magma like a dying gasp.

Cautiously approaching the lake of molten rock, one of the men tapped the solidifying mass with the end of his boot, and then touched his hand to it before declaring, “It’s okay.”

The rest of the men surrounded the coffins. Finally, said the greedy glint in their eyes, but the shadow of fear hung there too, as if to eclipse it.

“Why’d they come out?” one of the men muttered.

“The heat was probably more than they could take, so the carriages’ protective systems got them out. That’s fine. We’ve still got time. Pry those mothers open and turn those Nobles to dust,” Erde said as she fiddled with the device on her left arm.

“Hell yeah!” one of them loudly cried as he brought both of his arms down.

It was a steel sledgehammer that whined through the air toward the blue coffin. A heartbeat later, it bounced back hard, leaving the man who held it reeling wildly.

Letting go of the hammer, the man shook his hands and groaned, “I guess regular strength just ain’t gonna cut it.”

Turning his bloodshot gaze on the coffin, the giant went over by the man and, with one hand, picked up the hammer his underling had dropped. Shoving a laser-burner-wielding henchman out of the way, he stood beside the coffin and raised the hammer high. Both his arms gave off the whir of motors.

The speed of the hammer’s descent and the whistle it made were both ten times what they’d been the first time.

There was a crash that sounded like an explosion.

A cheer went up from the group. The coffin had been dented.

Once again the giant raised the sledgehammer. Both his arms were artificial limbs—high-polymer muscles wrapped around bones of steel. They were controlled by electronic nerve centers in his shoulders, and the motors they contained could put out a thousand horsepower.

When the second blow pushed the coffin’s lid in even further, the henchmen were no longer shouting. They were going to get to see the inside of a Noble’s coffin. Each of them felt their body being enveloped by an aura of excitement and curiosity the likes of which they’d never experienced.

Aside from those who’d actually experienced the long battle between the Nobility and humanity firsthand, humans regarded the opening of a Noble’s coffin as a sin, like breaking some holy writ and intruding on hallowed ground. The act may have even had sexual undertones as well, so elegant and beautiful were the Nobles who slumbered wrapped in artificial fog or flowers. The men were often dressed in black formal wear while the women were usually in dresses, though Noblewomen would occasionally wear just a single sheer garment, or sometimes nothing at all. Only the Nobility’s uninhibited nature made this possible.

But if by some chance her coffin should be broken open and she were exposed to vulgar human eyes, the allure of a Noblewoman’s physique would be her final defense against the stakes and swords raised against her. They possessed the kind of beauty you could go your whole life without encountering: crimson lips that were half open and looked damp and ready to moan; full breasts; the sexual magnetism of the region from the slim waist down to the thighs that need not be elaborated; veins that seemed to creep like blue snakes beneath that paraffin-pale skin. These attributes often came as a great shock to the brains of the would-be hunters and stayed their murderous hands. As if enchanted, they would remain motionless, gazing on and on at the lovely vampire. Five minutes became ten, ten minutes became an hour—and before long, the time had flown and the sun had lost its power. Blue twilight would spread across the sky, and the next thing they knew, there was a crimson glow in the face of the Noble that had risen from the coffin. The instant they were drawn anew into those burning eyes, they forgot all human reason and became no more than a blood feast for the Nobility.

The bandits were cognizant of this fearful possibility, thus they all got their broadswords and stakes ready when the coffin was dented. They would open the lid and, without even looking at what it contained, strike without a moment’s hesitation. And yet the fact that even now some of these wretches had their eyes open a crack only testified to the powerful and perverse lust they had for what the Noble’s coffin contained.

“Come on now!” the giant bellowed, his words practically a cry of rage as he brought the hammer down.

At that very instant, the lid of the coffin popped open. It came as little surprise that even the giant couldn’t halt the hammer he’d swung with all his might, and the mass of iron went right into the coffin—or it was about to, when it stopped short.

A hand stretching from a blue topcoat had a tight grip on the head of the mallet. Though it had been brought down with the combined power of two thousand horses, it had easily been halted with one hand—and now the sledgehammer was being driven back! It was pushed away as the shadowy blue form began to rise.

The occupant was coming out. His shoulder appeared first. But even when he rose quickly, putting his whole body into view, the giant didn’t let go of his hammer. Confronted by the beauty of this pale aristocrat, he was truly frightened. Even though the sun wasn’t out, it was still the middle of the day, and he’d never heard of a Noble coming out of its coffin at a time like this.

His henchmen had actually frozen without a word, and a few of them had even dropped to the ground in abject fear. However, it was clearly the raging fires of hostility that left the giant of a man trembling.

“Hiya,” said the giant.

Baron Balazs quietly stared at him with eyes like ice, as if he hadn’t had enough sleep yet.

“Dogma is the name. I’m a miserly little bandit. It sure is an honor to meet a Noble at this time of day.”

The baron’s lips quickly went into action, forming words: “I am Baron Byron Balazs.”

At that moment, the giant realized that his hammer was no longer being held. Hurling the sledgehammer as he leapt away, the man drew the broadsword from his hip with all the speed one would expect from the leader of a mob of brigands.

The hammer scored a direct hit on the baron’s forehead that left the Noble off balance.

And the second he saw this, the giant kicked off the ground in a mighty bound. The blade he had braced against his hip was aimed at his foe’s heart. And surely enough, it pierced it.

The gorgeous face was right in front of him. And the smile it wore was so alluring, and solitary, and cruel.

“Well done.”

Even though the Nobleman’s words left him dazed, the giant saw the baron raise his right arm and glimpsed the black hammer that he grasped. Reflexively, the bandit leader brought his left arm up to block it. His artificial arm had a thousand horsepower to use in his defense.

The mass of iron fell against his arm. Sparks flew. Muscles burst and bones snapped as electrical fire colored the limb.

The misshapen hammer rose.

The giant hoped to stop it with his right arm, but the time it took him to discard his broadsword kept him from making it.

The wet splat that rang out was the sound of his skull being pulverized. Blood and gray matter flew everywhere, delivering a hearty spattering to the henchmen, who were keeping their distance. With this, they all returned to their senses.

“You bastard!”

“Freak!”

Weapons flashed out, and the men were about to make a murderous charge when the baron’s cape spread to either side like the wings of a mystic bird and an intense flash of light flew from it, leaving a trail as it weaved through the henchmen. Heads sailed through the air, and seconds later geysers of blood shot up. It was quite some time later that the decapitated bodies fell over.

A short distance away, only the two women were left. For some reason, the baron’s murderous light hadn’t flown in their direction. Erde and Venice looked at each other’s paled faces as the former reached with her right hand for the weather controller on her left arm. She couldn’t stop the rain, but she could still bring some sunlight.

The baron turned to her. Before Erde’s shriek of terror had ended, he had bounded to stand right in front of her. The woman was beset by dementia. Forgetting all about the controller as she tried to spin around, she felt an iron blade driven through her heart from behind.

“Ve-Venice?” she rasped in disbelief. “I’ll take care of this bastard. But you get to go to hell a little bit sooner than he does.”

As Venice shoved her erstwhile companion forward, she tore the controller off the woman’s arm.

The baron’s movements were checked by Erde’s body, which hadn’t fallen over.

Venice was well versed in how to operate the controller. She’d had to learn how to use it just in case anything ever happened to Erde . . . and something had certainly happened to Erde now.

“All the treasure of the Nobility will be mine! I’ll bring it to the Capital and get a fortune for it!”

A beam of sunlight should have speared down between the clouds, but as Venice reached for the switch that would trigger it, her arm was stopped cold. Pale fingers had reached around from behind her to encircle her wrist. She only just remembered that there was a second coffin when a pair of lips that were chill as ice but incredibly soft pressed against the nape of her neck.

“Stop!” the baron shouted. “You won’t be able to travel with us any longer.”

That was enough to stop her Noble instinct—the craving for blood.

“Damnation.”

Breaking free of Miska’s grip, Venice tumbled forward from the effort. As Miska glared at her, a dazzling light began to fall on her and the baron from above.

__

II

__

The two vampires stood immobilized in the sunlight.

“Die! Take that, you fuckers!” Venice exclaimed as her fingers continued to work the controls. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust!”

This was something humans always said when destroying a member of the Nobility, but no sooner had Venice finished speaking than the control was slashed in two, arm and all, and half of it fell to the ground.

The sunlight faded.

Four figures lived out in that downpour. But in whose favor had the odds increased?

Catching Miska in his arms as she collapsed, the Noble in blue saw the rain-blurred figure in black approaching.

Glancing without the slightest trace of compassion at the female bandit writhing in a lake of blood, D said, “Looks like I’m just in time,” as he returned his sword to its sheath.

The trio that stood in the driving rain like heavenly creatures were so lovely, they would’ve made anyone who saw them completely forget the downpour.

Naturally, the rest of the bandits had attacked D, and the results of that encounter went without saying. Taking one of them alive and forcing him to disclose the location of their hideout, the Hunter had then hastened back. But it wasn’t the stomach-turning scene on which D’s gaze paused, but rather the lips of the baron and Miska.

Looking then at the bandits who’d splashed up blood and rain when they fell, he didn’t have a whit of emotion in his eyes. “Get in your coffin,” he said.

“D, there’s something I must tell you,” said the baron. “She didn’t take a drop of—”

“My rate just doubled,” D said as he walked toward the two carriages. “Which of you is going to pay the remainder?”

A hue of delight suffused Miska’s countenance.

“I will.”

“No, I shall pay it.”

And with these words, the baron took Miska’s shoulder and held her up while he quietly began to trail D.

Even in this gore-splattered world, D could see that the pair of Nobles had withstood the urge to drink human blood.

__

As the stark white ribbon of road continued on dispassionately through the ocher land, it seemed as if a lone magnificent flower had blossomed. A tent like the arc of a rainbow broken in two was set up by the side of the road—although it was actually little more than an awning. Inside, there stood a tall elderly man in a black tuxedo jacket and a silk hat. More conspicuous than the arrangement of red jewels on his bow tie was the man’s beard, which flowed all the way down to his chest.

Though the central highway was normally lightly traveled, because the villages in this area lived relatively close together there were many passersby, and nearly a dozen men and women had gathered around the tent. There were even two or three children.

“Well now, whether you’ve come here from far away or live close at hand, take a good look. Before you stands the world’s greatest prestidigitator—the road is my home, and people have come to call me ‘Lord Johann, the Trail Magician.’ Now you may enter and witness acts of legerdemain not to be seen in any village or town, nay, not even in the Capital, but only out on the road, and only for the price of one thin dant. Kindly pay the young lady.”

Only once he’d given his speech did the people notice the person off to the side indicated by his white-gloved hands.

A rumble churned through the crowd. Had that girl been there before?

She was pretty, and seemed oh-so-sad. As befit a magician’s assistant, the young lady wore a gold dress slit high up the side that gave tantalizing peeks of her pale thighs while she moved among the patrons and collected their coins in a second silk hat. The hair that hung all the way down to her waist was a hue of gold even more dazzling than that of her dress.

What was a woman like her doing by the side of the road out on the Frontier, working as the assistant to some petty little magician? That’s what the people wondered, but once Johann’s sleight of hand began, they were instantly captivated. His long white fingers flashed out, and between them, balls in four different colors appeared. With a single cry, they then transformed into four breathtaking beauties. Before everyone noticed they were the same girl who’d collected the money from them, the bevy of beauties became warriors clad in metal armor, and amid the cheers they then changed into a gigantic reptile that swallowed a nearby spectator whole.

It was all so incredibly real that the patrons were left silent and frozen in place. And at that very moment, the object of their terror vanished without a trace, as if it had never existed, leaving just the people and tent.

It was nearly noon. The heavy rains of the previous day were like a distant dream and the road was bone dry, leaving only the stark sunlight—and the creak of wheels. Almost everyone facing in his direction then caught the young man in black on a chestnut cyborg horse and the pair of carriages following along behind him from the corner of their eyes. The young man’s gorgeous features made them forget all about the golden maiden. Even the girl seemed enthralled by him.

“Did you all see that? Did you see that beautiful traveler?” Johann called out, his words accompanied by some exaggerated gestures.

Still facing forward, the young man in black rode off slowly.

Noticing that the pair of carriages trailing behind him apparently belonged to the Nobility, the people began to murmur a few minutes later, not because the impression the young man had left on them had become any weaker, but simply because their attention had veered from his unearthly aura.

As if that were precisely what he’d been waiting for, Lord Johann twisted a lock of his flowing beard as he told the restless spectators, “Well, ladies and gentlemen, do you know the secret to magic? The first thing you have to do is divert the audience’s attention away from the trick . . .”

__

About an hour after passing through a little village, D halted his horse. Ahead of them, the land took an ashen shade, and in scattered places there were glints of silver to be seen, like the tracks of a snail. The black trees crowding either side of the road became scarcer, and their silhouettes were stretched tall and thin like well-worn memories. Perhaps it was due to the miasma that gushed from the earth, but the most unsettling thing of all was the way even the very sunlight was warped, making distant vistas seem close at hand and things nearby so horribly distorted they slipped right out of view. This was a famous spot in this district, a vast swamp that stretched thirty miles east to west and a dozen north to south. It was said that poisonous gas issued from the ground in spots, and that monstrous fish large enough to swallow a grown man whole lurked in its waters.

Off to the left was a wooden pier that jutted out over the swamp. A pair of figures stood by it. D approached them. Without even glimpsing the faces of the rail-thin boy and the plump girl, the Hunter knew that they must be brother and sister. Each looked to be about eleven or twelve. Four battered suitcases rested at their feet. On noticing D, they both donned expressions that suggested they were lost in dreams, and when the Hunter dismounted, it only got worse.

On the wall of the rest house situated to the rear of the pier hung a metal plate with what was apparently a timetable. Though it was fifteen or twenty feet away and the print was so tiny it practically required a magnifying glass, D scanned it for a minute or two and then seemed satisfied.

“Um, excuse me,” the chubby girl said to him. Her face was flushed. “Which way are you going?”

Glancing down at her cheeks, which looked like they might fall off at any second from their own weight, D said, “North.”

Ordinarily, it was inconceivable that he’d answer a stranger’s question so promptly.

“Oh, so are we!” the girl said, fiddling with her hands in front of her chest. Stars glistened in her eyes as she gazed at D. Pattering over to the boy, she pointed to D as she said something, and then folded her hands as the two of them came back.

“That’s an awesome sword,” the boy commented in true male fashion. “Mister—are you a warrior? Or are you some kind of bodyguard?”

“Wrong on both counts,” D replied, his actions once again inexplicable.

“In that case—are you a Hunter?”

D said nothing.

“Holy! He’s the genuine article, Sis!”

Now there were two pairs of eyes filled with stars.

“Wow!” they both exclaimed with obvious appreciation as they began to circle around D. To anyone who didn’t know how hair-raisingly dangerous their actions actually were, this simply would’ve looked like a heartwarming scene at the ferry’s landing.

“Mister, we’re going to the Capital,” the boy said, his chest puffed out.

“What do you think we’re going to do there?” the girl then asked him.

“I can’t imagine,” the Hunter replied.

“This!” she exclaimed, her cry curling backward. Still wearing her heavy overcoat, the girl executed a perfect backward somersault.

And over her head flew a lithe figure clutching both legs—the boy. An instant before he landed, they both extended their arms, and the second they touched, the two of them flew up into the air together. Moving in spellbinding arcs as they passed each other, they then flew up higher. Even if there were something inside them that let them defy the laws of conservation of energy, it still would’ve been a stunning display of acrobatics. It almost seemed as if the siblings would never have to come back to earth again so long as their hands could touch.

Though their acrobatics seemed to be the work of angels, the performance was unexpectedly short. Piercing the mist, a massive hovercraft had appeared from the far reaches of the swamp. The jets of air shooting from the belly of the ship sent muddy water spraying wildly, and the craft’s speed was nearly sixty knots.

Coming back to earth without a sound from a height of thirty feet, the siblings raced over to D.

“How was that?”

“How was that?”

Both asked the same question at the same time. They certainly were brother and sister.

“Remarkable,” said D.

Although his reaction was far more miraculous than their performance, the children were frankly delighted.

Rolling closer, a white mist enveloped all three of them. The hovercraft—or swamp ferry—had plowed through the dank cloud as it pulled up to the pier. A sizable ship, it was large enough to accommodate up to a hundred people or twenty-five wagons and carriages. Onboard were four or five passengers that looked to be merchants, and as they disembarked, they bid farewell to the elderly ferryman who’d preceded them onto the pier. Their mouths all fell open when they saw D, but the way they paled on seeing the carriages behind him was truly a sight to see.

“All right, now, all aboard! Move along now! We’re off again in ten minutes!” the gray-haired ferryman called out in a raspy voice.

__

III

__

Less than ten seconds after they began to move, the rocks and pier had vanished behind a white veil. D was all the way at the stern of the ship, and his eyes were turned toward the pilothouse and the two children who were apparently talking to the ferryman.

Are we crossing a pond? a voice from the blue carriage asked him.

“A swamp. Get some rest,” D replied.

Shut in his coffin as it rode inside his carriage, the baron still seemed to be aware of the situation. If he were watching through a closed-circuit monitor, he never would’ve said anything about a pond, so he must’ve had some Noble extrasensory perception.

There are three other people here . . . and two of them are children.

Seeming to catch something in the baron’s tone, D got a hard look on his face as he told his employer, “Don’t go back on your word.”

I know. You needn’t worry, the carriage owner responded. It may go without saying, but this could be exactly what the enemy wants us to do. One of them flew.

“I realize that,” D replied, but his expectations remained a mystery.

This swamp was so deep in parts as to be practically bottomless, and if they were to fall off the ship, neither the carriages nor the coffins seemed likely to ever surface again. And skilled as D was, the morass surrounded him on all sides, and even he couldn’t have any way of combating an enemy who could attack from the air.

Just then, what had looked to be a fallen log floating some thirty feet ahead on their starboard side suddenly stood straight up like a proverbial jack-in-the-box and stretched right toward them.

The brother and sister shrieked with surprise.

Although it had appeared to be nothing more than a tree, it had a suckerlike mouth and a trio of eyes at one end.

“Oh my!” the ferryman shouted as he cut the wheel.

The ship veered to port, showering the creature with sludge in the process.

Which would be faster? The creature’s mouth rising over the boy’s head, or the ship’s turn?

Three figures sprinted into action. The two smaller ones flew back, the one in black moved forward, and then a flash of light surged out.

The creature’s severed head crashed against the deck with a booming thud, while its neck thrashed around like a whip. Suddenly, deep red blooms of blood formed in midair, but by the time they fell like an unseasonable winter shower, the ship was already pulling away at full speed, headed back the way it had come.

“What—what in the blue blazes are you kids?” the captain asked as he gripped the steering wheel, and his curiosity was completely understandable.

“We’re acrobats, as you can see,” the girl replied, spreading both arms wide and bowing in gratitude.

“We were invited to join a full-fledged troupe of performers in the Capital and left the little circus we’d been with up till now,” the boy said, putting his hand to his chest and bowing his head.

“The Capital, eh?” Doing a job like his, the old man must’ve had plenty of courage, so when he expressed his admiration, his tone was back to normal again. “That sure is a heck of a journey for a couple of kids out on the Frontier. What about your folks?”

“They died a long time ago,” the boy answered. There wasn’t a trace of gloom in his reply.

“Is that a fact? I suppose that wasn’t exactly the best thing for me to be asking,” the old man said with a grin.

“And you—” he said as he turned to D.

The boy and girl gazed at the Hunter with a look that surpassed mere respect—something that might even be called love.

Before the old man could continue what he was saying, D asked, “Aren’t we supposed to be taking a safe route?”

“Well, sure—it’s the same one as always. In a manner of speaking, that critter was the one that was off course. Very rare—doesn’t happen much at all, so you can put your mind at ease.”

“Is there a lair of dangerous creatures out here?”

“Sure. Further to the east. Not to worry, though. They’d never come out this way.”

“Is there any danger ahead?”

“Let me see—you mean the Sturm?”

“What’s that?” asked the Hunter.

“Nothing to be concerned about. We’ve still got plenty of time—” the old man was saying when his breath was suddenly taken away.

Ahead of them floated fallen black trees . . . and not just one or two. The swamp was filled with them for as far as the eye could see.

“That’s plain impossible! Their lair’s supposed to be way to the east of here!”

“Back away,” D said as he took the children by the hand.

“No time for that. We’ll have to pull through real slowly. Don’t talk. Don’t even breathe.”

Naturally that last request was absurd, but the look on the old man’s face made it clear he meant every word of it.

Now out in the middle of the black logs—or rather, the herd of long-necked dragons—the ship had cut its air jets and switched over to the low-speed mode of the gasoline engine and floats that jutted from the craft’s belly, creeping forward so slowly it wouldn’t raise even a ripple on the water’s surface.

While D was another matter, it came as no surprise that the children and the ferryman were pale faced and frozen with horror. But the boy and girl were truly people of the Frontier, and as such, they never took their eyes off the objects of their terror. Not even a yard away—their glistening black forms wiggled in the water and muck just a foot from the sides of the ship. Though they didn’t move much, occasionally one would twist itself a bit, and a number of others around it would writhe in response, bubbling the mud in a disturbing manner and even splashing some on the ship.

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” the saying goes, but the only thing they hoped to win with this gamble was a chance to keep living—and this was like playing with marked cards. Not actually sure how much noise or movement it would take to wake the creatures up, the ferryman had the feeling that if the engine growled even a little bit louder or the waves from his vessel got just a tad stronger, the monsters would come down on them en masse.

The ship moved ahead. Their fate rested on the soft purr of the engine and the minor ripples it sent out.

Ten minutes passed . . . then twenty—and then the ferryman let out a faint cry of surprise.

Roughly a hundred yards ahead there weren’t any more of the monstrosities. There were only expanses of black muck and silvery water for as far as the eye could see.

The brother and sister hugged each other without saying a word. The hands of both were still clasped by D.

“I’ll be damned!” the ferryman remarked, letting another cry of surprise slip out. But this time it had a different ring to it.

At the point where they would exit this unsettling waterway, a lone person was standing on the black mud. It was a man, and from the neck down, his body was hidden beneath a wine-red cape of some sort. His face was horribly gaunt. If the baron had been there instead of in his coffin, he would’ve seen that his worst fears had been realized. The night D had slain a subterranean foe, the baron had been assailed from the air by this very man.

“Are you an assassin?” D asked.

Though his question certainly seemed to reach the ears of the man up ahead, the siblings merely looked at D with an odd expression, and the ferryman didn’t even seem to notice that D had said a word.

“That’s right,” the man promptly answered. “My name is Hichou. I crossed paths with the owner of the carriage behind you before. This marks the second time—and there won’t be a third!”

“Did you have something to do with these creatures?” D asked.

They still had seventy yards to go.

“Right again. See, I left their favorite snack all along the ferry’s route. I’m surprised you made it this far. But this is the end of line.”

Hichou extended his arms, and his red cape spread out. It was a huge, wine-colored pair of wings.

The instant D saw the glistening cylinder the cape had concealed, he shouted, “Full speed ahead!”

They weren’t through the herd of monsters yet. Be that as it may, the ferryman followed his command as if under a spell. The hum of the engine changed, and at the same time it began to operate as a hovercraft again. A blast of air like a jet exhaust lifted the vessel three feet and propelled it forward at a speed of seventy-five knots.

The second the ship sped at the man, flames and white smoke flew from his cylinder.

Missing the ship by a hair’s breadth, the missile was swallowed by the water where the craft had been a second earlier, and then there was a roar as a pillar of water shot high into the sky.

An unearthly cry rang out. Raising their snakelike necks into the air one after another, the monsters glared down at their prey.

Hichou didn’t have time to get off a second shot.

Not even giving the monsters a chance to lower their heads, the hovercraft sped at Hichou. There was no impact, as a wine-red streak rose into the sky. Because the man had flown off to one side instead of straight ahead, D had drawn just a fraction of a second too slow to hit his mark, and the rough wooden needle he got off a little too late was avoided without any problem. Hichou rose like a veritable bird in flight to some sixty feet off the ground, then halted. Flames and smoke flew from beneath either arm.

“Damn!” the ferryman growled as he worked the wheel, but a tenth of a second later the missile scored a direct hit on the stern of the ship. A section of the handrail was blown away, but that was the extent of damage, due in part to the compact size of the missile and in part to the skill of the ship’s captain. However, the pair of carriages tilted wildly, the white one skidding toward the stern.

Seeing that the section of railing that’d been destroyed was wider than the vehicle, the girl managed to cry out, “Oh no!”

D became a bolt of lighting as he bounded over and grabbed the reins of the blue carriage’s lead horse. The blue carriage advanced, and the white carriage followed suit. But above them, black snake-like heads and suckermouths were coming down.

Still keeping a grip on the horse, D lashed out with his sword. Despite his predicament, the Vampire Hunter’s skill was peerless. Each of the heads fell, with one of them rolling across the ship to the bow. D was about to dash off—and then the stern of the ship dipped appreciably. The carriages moved backward again, and D tried to get the horses to stop—and then he halted.

A scream went up.

The severed head that’d rolled across the ship had popped back up and latched its suckermouth onto the ferryman’s right shoulder. As the old man tumbled backward with a loud groan, his face swiftly shriveled like that of a mummy. These monstrosities subsisted off the bodily fluids of other creatures.

A rough wooden needle whizzed through the air and pierced the monster’s brain.

As soon as the creature let go of him, the captain fell—and then got back up again. Clinging to the wheel for dear life, he steered it to port. He had no choice but to try and cut through part of the waterway where there were relatively few of the monsters.

The path before them was already barred by a tangle of tapering necks. But due perhaps to the ungodly skill of the ferryman, the ship advanced through the seeming jungle without stopping once, finally escaping the herd.

“You did it!” the boy shouted in a manner that was only fitting.

However, his sister was facing the stern, and she quickly cried in terror, “They’re coming after us!”

While it was unclear just what shape their bodies took below the waterline, the creatures had their lengthy necks craned at a sixty-degree angle, and they gave chase at a rate that conceded nothing to the ship’s sixty knots.

Perhaps due to its outrageous speed, the ship rocked violently and bounced, and there was little D could do as he steadied the carriages.

“Captain—they’re gonna catch us!” the girl shouted.

And at that very moment, the ship’s movements changed. But it wasn’t the ferryman’s doing. Something about the muddy water was different.

“Ohno-ohno-ohno-ohno—” the brother and sister screamed in terror, their cries hardly sounding like anything human.

Ahead of them the swamp was swirling. Three hundred feet in diameter and still expanding, the vortex had at its center a funnel-like depression that kept growing deeper and steeper at the sides. The ship was near the outer edge of the vortex, pinned there by centrifugal force.

Was this it? Was this the Sturm that the ferryman had mentioned?

The same sort of massive whirlpool that could be caused in the sea when the tide went out was happening here in the muck. The time it’d taken them to slip through the herd of monsters—and the path they’d chosen to escape—had conspired to send the ship right into the center of that muddy vortex. And it wasn’t the ship alone that was threatened. The monstrosities that pursued them felt their black snakelike necks twist together as they struggled and slipped down the muddy incline of the whirlpool and were sucked to the bottom, one after another. As chilling as the scene was, it was also somehow comical.

Laughter rained down on everyone from above.

Looking up, D and the siblings saw a caped figure roughly fifteen feet from the edge of the whirlpool floating about thirty feet above the ship. While it was unclear what kind of power his cape possessed, Hichou hovered in the air without so much as flapping his wings.

“What do you think, D? I set this whole trap myself. I got the monsters all worked up, sent the ship right into them to buy some time, and even spaced the critters out so I could drive you right this way when I fired that missile at you. I want you to remember all my hard work as you sink into the muddy depths. Or will you find some remarkable way out of all of this?”

Hichou doubled over with laughter.

“There’s only one way for you folks to get out of there. And that would be for me to fire one of my missiles down into the whirlpool. Unlike the ocean, if the bottom changes, the flow of the mud changes, too. However, my missiles are trained on the lot of you at present.”

True to his word, Hichou had a silver cylinder pointed at them. It didn’t seem that even D would be able to escape this situation.

Just then, two figures bounded straight into the air. Or rather, because the ship was nailed to the sloping sides of the whirlpool, it’s more correct to say they flew up at an angle. One figure made contact with the other in midair, and from there they bounded once again. Hichou never would’ve dreamed that it was he they were headed toward, because the pair moved with such speed, nor could he have imagined that anyone possessing such skill was on the ship.

For a second, the three figures converged, and the missile spat flames. Its trajectory threw it right into the center of the vortex. A pillar of black water—actually, a pillar of muck—went up, and then the vortex lost momentum at an astonishing rate, its sloping bowl pushing out again and setting the ship back down in the water.

Falling toward the vessel were three silhouettes. D’s sword was there to meet them. Without leaving so much as a nick on the brother and sister, the blade sliced Hichou in two at midtorso, and the high-flying assassin scattered fresh blood like red ink as he plummeted headfirst into the sea of mud.