MASTER OF THE HOUSE OF ILL REPUTE

CHAPTER 1

-

I

-

The chaos of the situation kept growing. And at the end, drawing cold breaths, naught but death waited. No, not death, but annihilation. Even Miska and Vince—both of whom housed the Destroyer—could only stare at him in amazement. A ghastly aura slapped them and de Carriole across the face.

“Kindly step back, milord Balazs.”

The hand that came to rest on his shoulder to push him back was tossed off by a single shake from the Baron, following which de Carriole pedaled backward eight or ten feet in a kind of bizarre dance before finally coming to a halt.

“De Carriole,” someone called out.

“Yes?” he replied, but he hesitated a few seconds because de Carriole himself knew that the person to whom that voice belonged couldn’t be there. The voice was like that of a ghost rising from the depths of earth.

“De Carriole . . . who are these two?” the baron continued.

“You mustn’t go near them, milord Balazs. Each carries within them the Destroyer.”

“The Destroyer . . .”

The baron’s gaze seemed to bore right through Miska and Vince.

“I was defeated . . . by Lord Vlad. I could never beat him . . . as things now stand . . . And there is no shame in that . . . but my ambitions shall remain unfulfilled . . . in the end.” But in that wraithlike voice he added, “And this Destroyer . . . might it prevail? Over Vlad?”

“Good question,” de Carriole answered reflexively, and then he numbed with shock.

The baron’s intent had dawned on him.

“How about it?”

“Well . . .”

“De Carriole!”

Realizing he was beaten, the aged scientist replied, “I can’t say for certain that it would win. The odds are fifty-fifty, I’d say.”

The baron walked forward intently.

“These two—either one will do. Take the Destroyer out of one of their bodies and give it to me.”

The old man’s complexion grew as stark as his beard.

“I couldn’t possibly!”

But as de Carriole protested, the baron only continued to advance. Gaunt as a specter, his expression was tinged with blue—the electric glow given off by the forms of Miska and Vince.

“You mean to tell me you can’t, de Carriole? In that case, I shall take it upon myself to—”

But what exactly could he do? The effects of Chlomo’s makeup and the humiliation of being defeated by his father had left the baron in an extremely strange and precarious state, both physically and mentally. The thought of taking in the Destroyer had sparked an obsession.

The legs that carried the young Nobleman across the floor were unsteady, and his knees hit the ground.

Vince smirked. Even before he’d been imbued with the Destroyer, he was hardly what anyone would call normal. A creature of pure blistering energy that ordinarily could be contained solely by the immortal form of a Noble seared his brain, driving him insane in its attempts to escape this frail meat cage. His muscles and internal organs blistered as well, melting away, regenerating in a millisecond, and then dissolving once again. Which force would triumph in that infinite repetition?

However, Vince’s crazed mind recognized a “command” that had been branded into his subconscious as a Vampire Hunter. His eyes were shut. The smile that rose on his lips was the same one that could be found on so many religious statues from the ancient cultures of the east.

His eyelids opened . . . and unleashed the power of the Destroyer!

Heaven and earth were both bleached by the pale light. All things lost their shadows, and were turned into shadows themselves. Even the wind died. Every sound was silenced.

The baron’s form was enveloped by a sphere of blue light. Within it, the baron could be dimly made out running. And when that light faded away, there would be one less Noble in the world.

The blue sphere of light rapidly lost its hue. Contracting in a matter of seconds, it broke into a million minute pieces that faded unexpectedly. Beyond them, a second sphere remained.

De Carriole shifted his gaze to it, and then looked at Miska.

Before the blue light that’d shielded the baron faded, Miska and Vince extended their arms simultaneously. Once again, the world dissolved into a single pale light. It took on a stark whiteness, and a split second before it was going to swallow everything in nothingness, color and shape returned.

The baron stood out on the floor, behind him and off to one side de Carriole had both hands out, and Chlomo and Sai Fung both poked their heads out from behind a massive cylinder of specially tempered glass. All noise had died out and no one spoke, creating a horribly quiet, yet peaceful, tableau.

Chlomo and Sai Fung moved. Gazing at the spot the two freaks had occupied, they then looked to either side before one of them groaned, “They’re gone!”

“Where the hell did they go?” asked the other. “Damn! Look at the big-ass holes in either wall. They must’ve either escaped through them or been blasted to pieces.”

“They escaped—or rather, they were both blown out of here,” de Carriole said in a hoarse tone.

“What’ll we do, just let ’em go?”

“Don’t talk rubbish. They have the Destroyer within them. If we leave them to their own devices, it’ll mean the end of the world. Although there’s not a thing you two could do against them—damn it, find them anyway. Split up—no, never mind about Lady Miska. I’m sure her Noble blood will soon check the urge for destruction. It was that that saved the good baron. Find Vince first. You’re to notify me as soon as you locate him. Just to be perfectly clear, make no move against him. You’re not to so much as breathe on him.”

After his two subordinates had vanished into the darkness like sparrows in flight, de Carriole turned back to where Baron Balazs stood on the floor. The baron’s eyes were closed. He didn’t even seem to be breathing. Though he stood there at the ready like a sculpted temple guardian, he’d lost consciousness.

“How unfortunate,” de Carriole said, the pain in his voice all too genuine as his gaze was riveted to the Nobleman’s haggard profile. “For you and your mother both. However, that’s only for the time being. Some day very soon, your humble servant shall slay Lord Vlad. Please wait until then. I absolutely cannot allow you to make a demon of yourself, milord.”

And then he walked over and put his hands on the baron’s shoulders.

The baron went into action. This time, de Carriole’s hands were not knocked away; but rather, they were seized around the wrists with a vise-like grip. Even as he heard his bones creaking, the old man couldn’t help but be impressed.

“So, you want to attack the lord that badly, do you? Even while unconscious?”

He broke off there, running his gaze across a water tank that’d been destroyed. Twisting around, he then looked at the two huge holes in the walls.

“One of the two . . .”

Regardless of what he meant by that whispered remark, the aged scholar had the sort of dangerous glint in his eyes that would make even a weeping child faint dead away.

-

D was at a warehouse on Thornton Street. And though it was simply a warehouse, its contents looked like they would’ve brought down lightning bolts of wrath in any place besides this village.

When Lagoon got down off his beetle and gestured to D to follow him through the door next to the shutters, the Hunter’s gaze leapt across all the items packed into a space that looked nearly large enough to hold a five-story building. The power shovel had a bucket fixed at the end of a rough one hundred-fifty-foot arm that looked like it could reduce a city block to dust in a mere five minutes. The gleaming black drill that seemed to stand alone was actually a machine for deep subterranean boring. At fifteen feet in diameter, it wouldn’t stand very high, but the drill portion alone was a hundred feet long, and since the whole machine stretched to nearly one hundred and forty feet, it needed a heavy gantry to hold it upright. With a reputation for being able to pierce the earth’s mantle and return unscathed, the drill was made of an alloy based on the mysterious orichalcum metal said to have been created in a legendary continent in the eastern sea in ancient times—Atlantis.

“Know what that is?”

As the speed of the moving sidewalk running into the depths of the building slowed, Lagoon pointed to a machine with a collection of countless rails surrounding a black mountain of a base. Its appearance reminiscent of a diagram of an atom, the path of its rails didn’t appear to follow any set pattern at first glance, but on closer inspection, they were all laid out in accordance with a single guiding principle.

“A Big Bang Accelerator?”

Lagoon gave a hearty nod at D’s reply. He was no longer wearing his liquid metal suit. His massive form was wrapped in a dazzling robe, as befitted such a prominent member of the village.

“Leave it to you. You’re not like most of those uneducated Hunters kicking around. Just between you and me, there are times when I’d love to fire a blast from that bad boy into Lord Vlad’s manor.”

From Lagoon’s flushed expression, it seemed he believed the resulting devastation might take the life of their lord.

This accelerator could produce the same results as the Big Bang—the enormous explosion that created the universe. Launched down rails that curved in arcs and angles determined by physical laws even beyond human comprehension, the “material” would exceed the speed of light once in flight and, on striking its target, it would impede the very flow of time. Although that was the greatest ability of the Big Bang Accelerator, the massive machine that smoothly slid through their view had been stripped of its time-impeding apparatus, leaving it a catastrophic death-bringer to be used solely for destruction.

“These are all devices of the Nobility,” said D. “Were they brought here from the Capital?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I built all of them here in the village.”

As D’s eyes fell upon that grim visage, Lagoon’s expression instantly gave way to childlike pride and joy. The owner and operator of the Frontier’s preeminent pleasure quarter was almost certainly a surprisingly simple man at heart.

“Of course, the theory behind the machines was taught to me by you-know-who. Later on, I drew up plans, made a refinery, and brought in the raw materials. I even built a power station. I wish you could’ve seen the scale of the factory, sprawling out on the edge of the village!”

“So ‘knowledge’ was part of your compensation?”

D’s query served to rob the man of some of his fire.

“Right you are. And thanks to that, the village stays safe from bandit and monster attacks without relying on Vlad’s power. I know my place might look like some stupid little bumpkin strip joint at first glance, but it actually houses a few pearls of wisdom.”

Just as his bragging was winding down, the automated walkway entered a narrow tunnel, and they presently halted before a metal door. Beyond the door lay two opulent rooms that were storehouses in name only, and in the first of these—a reception room—they were met by May.

“D—what about Taki?” the girl inquired anxiously.

“I rescued her, and she’s in another location.”

“That’s great!” May exclaimed, leaning back against the armrest and weeping.

“But she was given the kiss of the Nobility,” D continued in a cruelly soft tone.

May’s body sprang up a bit as if with some sort of spasm while she stared at D.

“Then you’ll have to . . .”

“As you requested, I rescued Taki. My work is done.”

As if enslaved by D’s handsome features, May didn’t take her eyes off him, and she swallowed hard. It took some time for her little head to drop.

“Yes—I suppose you’re right. It’s all over now. Will Taki be put into an asylum? Is that how all this will end?”

“Do you have any intention of extending the contract?”

For a second, May stopped moving and knit her brow as if she hadn’t caught what he’d said. She looked at D in disbelief.

“But—I mean, I don’t have any money . . .”

“I believe I said you could pay me later.”

“Say, would you like me to pay him for you, missy?” Lagoon said, fishing one hand into his pocket.

“No. I’ll manage something or other. D—you have kids’ rates, don’t you?”

A gonglike sound reverberated through the room. Lagoon had thrown his head back in a great belly laugh.

But what was truly astonishing was what flitted across D’s lips. No matter how you looked at it, it was clearly a smile.

“Pardon my asking, but just how do you propose to earn that money?” Lagoon asked with profound curiosity.

May smacked one foot against the floor, and then her tiny form flew straight up ten feet, executed an elegant flip, and, after planting one hand on Lagoon’s shoulder, the girl flew across the room at an angle.

“Wow!” the big mover and shaker exclaimed when the girl landed on the shade of a lamp and maintained her balance exquisitely as she took a bow. “I’ve seen all manner of acrobats, but I’ve never seen such a cute little wunderkind. What do you say to coming to work at my place?”

“Well,” May said, squinting at Lagoon, “I don’t come cheap.”

His great mitt-like hands slapped together.

“Great! Then we got ourselves a deal. The wages will take your breath away,” Lagoon said gravely, but he gave her a smile of delight.

To D he said, “I don’t imagine you have a problem with me making a star out of this splendid acrobat. Now, your job is to save Taki. From Lord Vlad.”

It was difficult to tell whether that last remark carried scorn or sarcasm, but no sooner had it drawn a gasp from May than a slight tremor reached them from all sides.

“I’ll be damned,” Lagoon muttered as he gazed at D.

D was already headed for the door.

“If you’re going to relocate May, you’d better be quick about it,” the Hunter said.

D realized what had caused the explosion that he alone had heard. It was the same boom he’d heard on the outskirts of a certain town on the way to Krauhausen, when Miska—possessed by the Destroyer—had wiped the puppet master, Mario, out of existence.

-

II

-

The first reports on what threatened the ordinarily peaceful nights of Krauhausen came about ten minutes after the sound of the bizarre explosion. A farming family that lived out by the mansion of the aged scientist, de Carriole, got in their wagon and raced to the sheriff’s office, foaming at the mouth as they relayed how nearby farms and sections of forest were disappearing one after another. Sheriff in name alone, the lawman immediately contacted Lagoon to request the mobilization of his private peacekeeping forces; and, once the sheriff had seen they were on the case, his men followed along after them. Although it wasn’t really their fault, they had failed to pass along one very important piece of information obtained from the bloodless and nearly crazed farming family. As the family was on their way there, they’d encountered a young man of unearthly beauty astride a cyborg horse, and he’d gotten them to tell him about the mysterious disappearances.

D halted his horse in the midst of the ionized air. The scene spread before his eyes.

A section of earth roughly one hundred and fifty feet in diameter had sunken into a bowl-like depression. No. Seeing as there wasn’t a single thing resembling a rock or tree to be found within the depression, perhaps it was more accurate to say it’d been scooped out; but the way the surface had been fused into a glassy substance made it clear that that wasn’t correct either. A good thirty feet deep, it glowed bewitchingly in the moonlight, like particles of light that had coalesced. From the look of the rail fences, stepping stones, and wooden gates that remained beyond the rim of the mortar, what had been obliterated was undoubtedly a central house, an outbuilding, and a pen for animals. Near the brink of the hole, a two-story building that looked to be a barn was perfectly fine.

Advancing further on his horse, he saw that out in the moonlight, the eerie tableau went on. The glittering of the ground that’d melted down into a beehive shape challenged the light of the moon.

Who would do such a thing?

There was a crash. D’s ultra-keen senses told him it came from a great distance away. From the direction of the village.

D wheeled his horse around. The sound of the first explosion had definitely come from whoever had left this hole. Was he on the move?

The conclusion D reached was a simple one.

“Why, there’s two of them,” a voice remarked from the vicinity of his left hand, but D raced off without even glancing down at it.

Having received orders from Lagoon to stop the intruder before he entered the village, the peacekeeping force formed a dragnet around the main road from the farm to the village as well as all side roads, but they soon realized it was too late. A roar was drawing closer from the dark forest where even they feared to tread by night. What’s more, it was moving at an unusual speed. A number of men who ran out into the trees with the intention of establishing surveillance were obliterated, trees and all, leaving only a glittering mortar-shaped hole in the ground. Though it was clear some sort of energy was being released, not the slightest wind blew, and they didn’t feel any heat on their skin. The survivors beat a hasty retreat, and though they peered hard into the night, they saw no sign of anyone moving around the hole. A second later, they too were reduced to nothingness. This was only about half a mile from the village.

On orders from the peacekeepers who’d remained in the village, all residents who lived in the direction from which the unknown being approached had been evacuated with naught save the clothes on their backs. But once the devastation had spread to within a few hundred yards of town, the explosions stopped dead.

Peacekeepers and members of the vigilance committee had crept into position with their weapons, and as they focused their fear-choked eyes, a tall, thin figure appeared from the darkness at the far end of the main road. Even by the moonlight, they could tell at a glance that it was an ordinary human being. But the bartender from the all-night watering hole in the hotel recalled the face that had been etched into his memory and let out a low cry. When that man had called on his bar at dusk, getting some information and easily dispatching the enforcers that came at him before leaving, the only way to describe the way he’d dominated his opponents was to say he was invincible. Vince—the bartender repeated the name.

The defenders were perplexed. Even on the demon- and monster-dominated Frontier, it seemed utterly unimaginable that the devastation the farmer had described could’ve been wrought by this man, who looked so dazed the very soul might’ve been sucked out of him.

And while that was going on, Vince reached the entrance to the pleasure quarter—the kingdom under Fisher Lagoon’s direct control. The neon glared and music echoed because Lagoon swore this place would never be swayed by some unnamed threat. Halting, Vince was tinged with white from head-to-toe as he stood in a daze staring up at the glow.

A light a hundred times brighter than the midday sun hit his body with an almost palpable weight. It came from a searchlight the public peacekeepers had set up.

“Freeze,” an amplified voice shouted down from the sky. “Who are you? You the one who blew the holy hell out of that farmhouse?”

As unbelievable as that seemed, it was still a possibility. One of the rules of the Frontier was that before trying to take anyone down, you asked your questions from a safe distance.

Vince didn’t reply.

“Don’t you have ears? I’m gonna give you to the count of three. Then we start shooting. Okay—one . . .”

It may have seemed a rough way to do things, but now that they knew the person they were dealing with wasn’t a resident of the village, they owed him no mercy—that was also part of the Frontier code. From under cover, from behind the searchlights, from roofs and porches, the weapons aimed at Vince backed every potential bullet and laser beam with deadly determination.

And in response, Vince’s reaction was—complete disregard.

Though his invincible flesh was another matter, the man’s mind had been ravaged beyond salvation, leaving him utterly insane. The Destroyer required of its host not only the resilient flesh of a Noble, but an equally resolute psyche as well. Only the kind that’d brought it into existence had the wisdom to govern the Destroyer. When such control became impossible, its host became ruin and slaughter incarnate. The only thing that saved the village from complete destruction was some fragment of humanity that lingered in Vince’s subconscious and remained active for a while.

And then that, too, vanished.

Vince’s eyes glowed with a blue light, and then he took a step forward as if to crush the earth beneath his foot.

Light streaked at him from all directions, with the report of the guns following after. Flesh bunched up as massive slugs ripped into him. Struck by more than a thousand rounds almost simultaneously, his body seemed to instantly swell to twice its normal size.

The shooters’ expressions were haunting. They continued pulling the triggers like men possessed—they couldn’t take any chances. This character could be blown to ribbons and he still might come back. Shoot! Shoot! Shoot! They had to blow every last bit of him away with their bullets.

As if in answer to their prayers, the writhing body of Vince on the ground was indeed growing smaller. It already lacked a head. Both arms had been blown off, neither leg had more than the thigh remaining, and more than half of his torso was missing.

“Hold your fire! Particle cannons!” the commander called out at that point, entrusting the foe’s final elimination to blasts of blistering heat.

Crimson streaks of light stabbed into the searchlight beam, ripping into the fleshy lump on the ground from all directions. Unlike lasers, particle beam cannons would also completely melt a wide area around the point where they made contact. The ground became a boiling pit of mud. And the bubbling soil swallowed Vince’s remains.

“Good enough,” a gruff voice said.

Some sixty feet above the scene, there hovered an airship the same hue as the darkness. The voice came from a loudspeaker set in its bottom.

“That takes care of that. We can look into just who he was later. For the moment, I’m more interested in the man who was headed into the forest. I wonder if he just wasted his time . . .”

And saying this, Fisher Lagoon turned his gaze in the same direction D had gone just as the subordinate who stood beside him on the observation deck exclaimed, “Boss—down there!”

“What?”

Twisting around a face that looked like a patch of rough rock, Lagoon saw the same thing his subordinate did, and his eyebrows rose.

The particle cannons had already ceased firing, and the circle of illumination thrown by the searchlight revealed the still-boiling ground, but out in the center of it something slowly rose. It had a head. And hands. It even had feet—it was clearly a human being. And all the while, flames rained down onto the baked ground from that slender form.

The second he realized that the face jerking up into the searchlight was that of the completely unscathed Vince, the commander bellowed, “Fire!”

Blue light flitted to space.

The hand of God sent the airship flying. Knocked out of shape, the light hydrogen-filled airship rose a good three hundred feet. Two things allowed it to narrowly escape destruction—it was fashioned from metal alloys using the Nobility’s “knowledge,” and it had only been struck by a plain physical shock.

“What—what the hell just happened?!” Lagoon asked angrily, gripping the handrail and barely managing to support himself.

“The street—the whole thing’s been blown away,” his subordinate said, his reply overlapping with the original question.

When Lagoon raced over to the window without another word, his eyes were greeted by nothing save the neon of the shopping district. What had happened to the searchlight? Worse yet, why was more than half the neon out?

“Get the ship’s searchlight on!” he ordered.

For the first time in decades, he was met with an objection.

“That’s too dangerous. I mean, that guy on the ground . . .”

“Damn it all, I don’t care! Light it up!”

A beam of light shot down from the heavens to the earth. What it starkly illuminated was the mortar-shaped depression that’d been scooped out of the earth and the naked figure of Vince standing at the bottom of it. Standing there in the light spearing down from heaven, he might’ve been a god who’d come down to earth. However, this was no god of good fortune. This was a god of destruction who wouldn’t leave so much as a single blade of grass. As evidence, one had but to look at how the rows of buildings around him had been obliterated without a trace and how the ground had sunk into a mortar-like depression in a three-hundred-foot radius.

Planting a foot on the smoothly sloping side, Vince began to slowly climb back up to ground level. The hole was twice the size of the one D had found. If these were to grow any larger, it seemed possible that one would be enough to wipe an entire village off the face of the earth.

“Should we attack the—” his underling began with trepidation.

“No, hold off. It’ll be here soon,” Lagoon told him.

Vince got out of the hole and looked up into the sky.

The subordinate let out a scream.

But it didn’t seem that Vince turned on account of this noise. Down the same road he’d come by, a tremendous black shape had just come around the corner—a glistening black base surrounded by countless looping rails.

“Look there, boss—it’s the Big Bang Accelerator!” the subordinate exclaimed in wonder as the airship finally regained stability.

“Looks like we don’t have any other choice,” Lagoon said, making it clear he could read a situation quickly.

To counter the power of a Destroyer who wouldn’t rest until everything had been annihilated, here was the same Big Bang that’d created all of the planets in the universe and all life on them.

“Incredible. It’s a regular showdown between God and the Devil!”

As if vouching for what Lagoon had said, the accelerator that’d halted thirty feet away began to let out a momentous groan, and the rails positioned themselves in sacrosanct angles that couldn’t err by even a picometer. Ahead of it stood a god of destruction by the name of Vince, waiting to unleash more violence.

-

III

-

The moon hid behind a cloud. It was a second later that a golden light winked on somewhere on the accelerator. The light traveled down one of the rails, and there was a metallic ting! Once accelerated by electromagnetic waves, it took only one ten-millionth of a second for the minute charged particles the Nobility’s science alone could’ve discovered to shift into hyper-acceleration. When Lagoon realized the golden glow clinging to all those rails was the afterimage of the accelerated body, it was already moving faster than the speed of light, and it slammed right into Vince’s face.

It almost seemed a mirage, the way the blue light opened like the petals of a flower. If God’s eyes had been trained on it, they would’ve seen that a split second before the accelerated mass scored a direct hit on Vince, the light enveloped his entire body—or rather, his body actually became that blue glow. And the bullet that was supposed to give life to the universe was swallowed by it.

Vince staggered. Just before it was annihilated, the shock wave from the accelerated mass’s explosion had knifed through the wall of light, barely managing to strike him in the face. Clutching his eyes, he extended his right hand. What flew from his fingertips was a particle of light of exactly the same size. Once it had adhered to the base of the accelerator, it immediately expanded. Base and rails alike were tinged with blue, and then the color faded as if it were destiny, leaving no trace of the accelerator behind. The air danced with heat shimmers.

Not turning, Vince stared off in the direction from which the accelerator had come.

It’s difficult to explain what happened next. Rows of houses in a three-hundred-foot radius vanished, and a huge hole was created in the ground. That’s the only way to describe it. When and how the houses had been erased and the hole had been made remained a mystery. Perhaps the homes and soil had never existed in the first place.

“Boss, at this rate, the whole village—” the subordinate screamed, his voice ringing out even louder than Lagoon’s, “no, the whole world could be finished!”

Vince began to advance. Far ahead of him towered Lagoon’s place. The inhabitants of the village would’ve gone there when they were evacuated.

Then Vince turned around. The thunder of shod hooves was approaching from his rear.

At that point, moonlight spilled through a gap in the clouds to shine down on the figure who halted his cyborg horse at the rim of the great hole. Perhaps it was his good looks that made Vince stop. Though his face possessed the kind of beauty humans didn’t even encounter in dreams, a fiercely eerie aura radiated from him as he glared at Vince. It was D! But could any Vampire Hunter, no matter how great, have the skill to stand against a fiend who could negate the very energy that’d created the universe?

Wrath filled Vince’s face. Though his psyche had been ravaged, some final remaining fragment of his subconscious had recalled the connection between D and himself. And his eyes blazed with the pale and deadly light.

D didn’t move.

In the airship in the sky, Lagoon was left breathless, and when May raced out of the warehouse, she paled at what was on the rim of the great hole. The instant that separated life and death required an appropriate ceremony.

WAIT! boomed a voice that called to mind the god of some evil domain.

The eyes of both D and Vince whipped around and focused for a second on a point in the huge hole.

While it was unclear how long he’d been there or how he’d appeared in the first place, the figure who suddenly stood there with a golden scepter in hand was none other than Lord Vlad Balazs.

Staring intently at D, Vlad told him, “Leave this to me, Hunter.”

He seemed neither surprised nor angry that D remained alive. And there was no sign that he was afraid of Vince making an unexpected move against him. It seemed that this figure steeped in an overwhelming self-confidence and forcefulness left even Vince at a loss.

“Lowly worms though they may be, I have a duty as a Noble to protect the residents of my dominion. There’s no point in you getting involved in this. What’s more, at some point I shall have to do battle with you, so I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to kill some time while demonstrating my power to you.”

The wind snarled. The scepter he’d held pointed straight at Vince.

D didn’t move.

“I don’t know how great your power is or who’s given it to you—no, I actually have a fairly good idea regarding the latter—but the Nobility were born of accursed earth where everything else died off. And now you will feel in your bones how different that is from some upstart Destroyer!”

“This is unbelievable!” Lagoon’s subordinate exclaimed up in the airship as he balled his hands into fists.

“Interesting,” muttered a voice from the vicinity of D’s left hand.

“Watch well, D. Witness the true power that we Nobility possess!”

Lord Vlad pulled back hard with his right arm. He held his scepter as if poised to hurl a javelin. Only three feet long, the scepter suddenly stretched—the part that extended was a golden spearhead. The whole scepter was probably some unknown form of coalesced energy. The lord’s surroundings grew distorted, as if glimpsed through a heat shimmer.

Vince’s right hand unleashed a blob of unholy light.

The scepter flew, too.

Changing direction, the point of light painted an arc as it zipped to the tip of the scepter. Even as it took on the pale hue, Vlad’s scepter sped forward. The pale blue light fizzled like popping soap bubbles, leaving the golden tip exposed. Right in front of Vince.

Not only did it strike Vince squarely in the middle of the face, but it even came out through the back of his head. After a few seconds, he took a couple of steps backward, and then his body sank. He was at the brink of the pit.

“Get back!” Lord Vlad shouted as he leapt to the rear.

The explosion this time was terribly small.

As he felt a slight tremor pass through the airship three hundred feet in the air, Lagoon gazed at the scene that filled the windows of the observation deck. At the bottom of the opening yawned another hole, perhaps a third its size. And that was Vince’s grave, plain and simple.

“Cut the searchlight. We’re going home,” Lagoon ordered.

Though he questioned the wisdom of not checking out the bottom of the hole, the subordinate realized he had no choice but to follow his boss’s command and grabbed hold of the wheel.

Looking up at the departing craft with its tail fins gleaming in the moonlight, Lord Vlad spat, “Ha! That incompetent Lagoon’s run off with his tail between his legs.”

He then turned to D.

“How’s that, Hunter? You can come at me if you like. If your nerve hasn’t shrunk down to nothing, that is. See? I don’t even have my scepter any longer!”

His challenge gave way to laughter, but then that stopped. Vlad was paralyzed by a ghastly aura that radiated from D.

“This . . . it’s even more intense . . . than the Destroyer. You really are . . . the great one’s—”

The lord was looking at D. Looking at the black horse and rider that’d raced forward sixty feet without giving any indication beforehand.

The lord’s robe fluttered and a flash of white light shot from one sleeve to mow through the barrel of the horse.

Success! A feeling of relief the likes of which he’d never experienced with any foe in the past tempted the lord to drop his guard.

D was above his head. Coming straight down from above, his sword had incredible force behind it.

The lord held up his left arm to block it.

The second the Nobleman’s armored limb was taken off at the elbow and blood spilled from his forehead like black ink, D reversed his sword so he could carve out his foe’s heart, but the blade snapped off at the hilt and was lost in the darkness. As Lord Vlad leapt to a new location, D’s coat spread like a supernatural bird and he flew back.

Now D had no sword, while Vlad had lost an arm and had a merciless torrent of black blood gushing from his brow. Given the situation, was D to be admired for the horrible force of his blow, or was the lord to be praised for his strength in stopping said blow?

“Well done,” Vlad said, tearing the hem of his robe with one hand and pressing it to his brow. “You’re everything I expected, I should say. However, this is hardly the full extent of my abilities. We shall meet again.”

Although Vlad didn’t appear to move his feet, he receded a good sixty feet in one fell swoop. D alone could see that beside him a horse and black-lacquered carriage waited. D didn’t pursue him because he could see that even with his great speed, he’d never catch the Nobleman on foot.

As the black form of the driver cracked his whip and wheeled the horse around, a sharp line glittered through the moonlight. Though the needle of rough wood pierced the outer wall of the carriage and dropped the driver, the rattle of the vehicle’s wheels rang out without respite as the carriage raced off into the darkness.

Walking over to where the driver had been left in the road, D pulled him up by his purple topcoat. Decaying bones rained noisily to the ground. Looking down at the figure that’d been reduced to dust as he’d fallen, D then turned his gaze to the darkness where the carriage had departed.

A small figure came out of the distance. May.

Just as she was about to call out to D, the girl became a statue. He was out in the moonlight. Though the tremendous aura that gushed from the young man in black was directed at the darkness before him, the girl was completely immobilized. What stood before her wasn’t the handsome, unsociable and secretly kind man she looked up to like an older brother. It was a darkness-prowling killer who would sink his teeth into his prey and not let go through all its death throes. May saw only a Vampire Hunter.