ANGEL WITH A BLUE SHADOW

CHAPTER 7

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I

-

On regaining consciousness, Sai Fung immediately realized he was in de Carriole’s mansion. Beside him stood the baron in blue and Miska, and they had an incredible question for him. They wanted to know whether or not there was a manual to explain how to transfer the Destroyer within Miska over to the baron. When he replied quite honestly that he didn’t know, the baron thought for a moment before ordering him, “Help out.”

With a ghastly, blood-chilling aura blustering at him from a face every bit as handsome as D’s, Sai Fung was only too happy to agree.

Surprisingly enough, the baron was familiar with the use of each and every piece of machinery in de Carriole’s laboratory. In no time at all, atomic candles burned in the reactor and a mysterious mix of chemicals and herbs began to boil in a large cauldron.

“Tachyon injector: energy charged to ninety percent—okay,” a machine called out, announcing the result of its checks.

“Mental wave conversion mode at highest setting—okay.”

“Psycho transference zone alpha: Unity ratio of 1/99,999,999—okay.”

Although he’d been told to help out, Sai Fung’s role only went as far as moving unnecessary tables and equipment out of the way. For him, the work was a piece of cake. Simply standing in one spot, he effortlessly moved the massive centrifuge and maser-based stabilizer.

It didn’t even take ten minutes to complete the preparations. Once the baron had finished adjusting a servomechanism, he went over to where Miska lay on a couch.

“I’m sorry, but it’s almost time.”

With one arm missing and her neck half-severed, the beautiful woman with the paraffin-pale complexion still managed to nod. Although the bleeding had stopped and the wounds were closing, she remained in hellish agony. That was the fearsome might of the Guide.

“The thing within me still slumbers—will that be okay?”

“We’d better do it while it’s still groggy,” the baron said, and then he grinned. “I heard from the children’s own mouths how you came to be injured. You were superb.”

“No, merely foolish. And it was only on account of the Destroyer that’s within me.”

“Is that a fact?”

“Pardon me?” the woman said, crinkling her elegant brow.

“The Nobility may still have possibilities. Something other than a simple run down the road to decline. Possibilities for the whole species. You and I, or you at the very least, might’ve served as an unexpectedly positive example. And I suppose the way you risked your life to save a human boy and girl is another expression of that. Perhaps it’s just a tiny something sleeping somewhere in our genes that no one would ever know about if it were left alone. But there was one who took note of it and planned to use it to change the fate of his declining species. My lack of desire for human blood may be one phenomenon connected to something that being awoke in me. Your protecting the children might be, too.”

“But I . . .”

“It is conceivable that the Destroyer somehow triggered this. And given what that being represents, I can only say I find it highly ironic.”

“I don’t know . . . I simply can’t fathom Nobles sympathizing with human beings . . .”

But after saying this, she held her tongue. Because she was talking about something she herself had done.

The baron guided Miska over to an operating table hooked to countless cables.

“Lie down. This should all be over soon.”

“I wonder if you’re right about that,” Sai Fung called out from behind an enormous distillation rig. “Trying to transfer this Destroyer without even an instruction manual isn’t the sort of thing a sane person would do. I don’t care how good you are with machines; this deal’s gotta require a certain amount of know-how. If you screw it up, what’ll you do then? There’s no telling what’ll become of the world if the Destroyer runs amok in some half-assed form. You think you’d be up to stopping it?”

“Step back,” the baron commanded sharply. “I’m finished with you. You may go.”

“Yessir. No way in hell am I gonna hang around here and get mixed up in any of this. You’ll have to excuse me for making an early exit, O wise baron.”

As he headed for the door, he suddenly turned and said, “What you said just now—you really think that could happen?” He was wearing a very strange expression—a sober face.

“I certainly hope so. Now go.”

Shrugging his shoulders, Sai Fung walked out muttering, “Humans and Nobility . . . that’s just stupid . . . Sympathizing . . . Hey, you’ve gotta be pulling my leg . . .”

The baron stood before the control panel and threw the switch to start the nuclear power. The whir of a motor rose from nowhere in particular, and pale blue current connected one cylindrical electromagnet to another.

On the operating table, Miska closed her eyes—then, after a moment, opened them again to gaze at the baron.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Now, I might never be a match for Vlad Balazs. I can’t. Suddenly, I simply can’t bring myself to do it.”

Choked with distress, the baron’s expression was enough to make Miska forget her own pain.

The Noblewoman sat up, saying, “Why all of a sudden? Do you fear the Destroyer running amok?”

“More than that—I’m afraid for you.”

“Me?” Miska asked in shock, but something quickly occurred to her. “You mean of me returning to normal?”

The baron nodded. A shade of suffering flickered in his handsome features.

“You are one of the great possibilities of linking the Nobility and the human race. And being possessed by the Destroyer plays a large part in that. I don’t want to remove it.”

“Then you will never accomplish your aim. Or avenge your mother.”

“I will still strike at Vlad Balazs. However—”

As the baron gnawed at his lip, Miska focused a gaze on him that was beyond description, but suddenly she let out a low laugh.

“What is it?”

“I was—my dear baron, I have no desire to become an exquisite link joining the Nobility to the human race.”

“But you—”

“I saved those two merely on impulse—or to be more accurate, from the same kind of sentiment as someone who won’t abandon their pet dog to be killed by someone else. But they aren’t even my pets. While I cannot say that I don’t care for them more than the average human, still, they are naught but a burden to me. I will thank you to return me to my old self as swiftly as possible,” she said in a gelid tone.

The baron stared at Miska, but then he shook his head and said, “You make a poor liar.”

“Ridiculous.”

“No. Your eyes are too soft. Now that you know what it’s like to save a human life, you can’t return to your cold ways. And it’s best that you don’t. Kindly wait at Lagoon’s place. You may not get to go to the Promised Land, but you might become someone of great promise yourself. I will dispose of the Guide without fail.”

“But . . .” Miska began, but she broke off there.

It was just as the baron said. The instinctive scorn and hatred of human beings no longer existed in her psyche. The boy and girl were doing everything they could, trying their best to survive—and she loved those two kids.

“Let me help you down,” the baron said, stepping away from the control panel and walking over to Miska before offering her one hand.

It was just then that the operating table gave off a glow. An unseen force suddenly laid Miska flat on the table. A spasm rocked her body, and she arched her back like a bow.

Turning in amazement, the baron couldn’t believe who he saw standing before the control panel, and he shouted, “de Carriole?!”

“It would seem this old fool has given you too much credit, my good baron. What a foolish, pathetic mind I fostered in you. What a Noble needs is a psyche of ice and steel to make the lowly humans kneel, and to feel no remorse about drinking their lifeblood down to the very last drop. If not, then why did your mother have such regrets? Baron—kindly leave this to me. I, Jean de Carriole, will take that power from Lady Miska and transfer it to you, milord.”

“De Carriole, you mustn’t!”

The baron advanced two steps. A band of light flew from the interior of his cape, splitting open de Carriole’s left shoulder.

Though the aged scholar spilled bright blood everywhere, his madness didn’t waver in the slightest.

“Master of the dark skies, immortal Sacred Ancestor! In your name, I now offer Baron Byron Balazs the most powerful Destroyer.”

He prepared to slam his right hand down on a switch on the display. but it stopped in midair. The old man turned in shock. There was no one behind him stopping him.

“Give it up, boss.”

Sai Fung stood in the doorway.

“You—you wretch! Are you trying to interfere, you miserable traitor?!”

Madly thrashing his arms and legs all the while, de Carriole was pulled away from the device.

“Why don’t you act your age and wither away already? You’ve still got too much interest in romance.”

“Why do you interfere?” the old man asked.

“Let me tell you a little story. My mother got bitten by a Noble, too. But even though she hadn’t gone over to the Nobility herself yet, she wound up having a stake shoved through her heart by the same villagers who’d been her friends. Now, I don’t know who was right and who was wrong, but if the Nobility and humans could get along, there’d probably be a whole lot fewer kids that’d have to go through something like I did. I was only nine at the time.”

The building shook unexpectedly. Ripples passed through the floor and walls as if they’d been turned to liquid, and a second later, the area around the door rose in a point like the head of a squid and rocks and earth were thrown aside as a colossal caterpillar-like device wriggled into the room.

Sai Fung immediately shoved de Carriole away as a few thousand tons of rock rained down on him, but they all halted three feet above him. However, having all his attention focused on that load proved to be the undoing of the grinning Sai Fung.

The great scythes whooshed out of the caterpillar before any of those thousand limbs could react—no, actually it felt like a number of those unseen arms and legs were severed as Sai Fung’s torso was bisected horizontally.

“That’s a just reward for interfering with me—that’s what you get for being a traitor,” a voice called down from atop the green caterpillar.

Though he’d been cut in half, Sai Fung’s superhuman tenacity allowed him to open his eyes and turn, at which point the man gasped out loud.

The misshapen figure standing on the mountain folk tank was de Carriole. The other one—the de Carriole Sai Fung had hampered—had been buried beneath rocks and dirt by the caterpillar. Undoubtedly his death had been instantaneous. In which case—who was this?

“My lord knows better than anyone the results of my research. Kindly come out here.”

As de Carriole spoke, Vlad arose from somewhere in the caterpillar. There could be no mistaking that the young woman he cradled in his arms was Taki.

Then whom had D defeated?

Without even glancing at Sai Fung or the remains of the other de Carriole, Vlad glared at his son on the floor.

“Why do you think I’ve come? Fear not, it isn’t to dispose of you. As punishment for betraying me, I have come to send you into even deeper despair. Look at the girl who was hidden in Lagoon’s basement, yet I took possession of her oh so easily. Tomorrow night, I shall make her my bride. What’s more—oh, is that the young Noblewoman who came seeking Shangri-la? The Guide has told me all about that.”

The grin that skimmed across his lips was that of a good-natured old man—something rarely seen from him.

“Don’t!” the baron exclaimed as a white flash shot from his cape.

Deflecting it in flight, the scepter pierced Miska’s chest as she lay on the operating table, running through the table and into the floor below.

“Miska?”

As the baron was about to dash over, his body was knocked away by a blast of light from the side of the scepter. Flames engulfed his cape, but he quickly returned to his feet. His hair was singed, his flesh melted and dripping.

“Oh, as defiant as ever, I see. Very well, Byron. I won’t run, and I won’t hide. If you still intend to get me, come to the Field of Bones at midnight tomorrow evening—that nostalgic spot where I walked with you nestled in my arms. Come alone if you wish, or bring assistance if you will. However, keep in mind that if you are even a second late, I shall sink my fangs into this young lady’s throat. Give up, Byron! Forget about me and everything else and leave the village. You have but to go to some distant backwoods Nobility and introduce yourself and you’ll not want for human blood for the rest of your days. However, the name you should give them is mine.”

Once again a streak of light flew from the baron’s chest, but Lord Vlad had already disappeared into the caterpillar, and de Carriole had also vanished.

When the massive vehicle caused the ground to rumble and began to return to the depths of the earth, the baron raced over to Miska. Her frail form was pinned to the operating table like an insect. Just like the baron’s mother.

“Baron . . .” Miska said, opening her eyes.

Byron must’ve wanted to plug his ears. Because he now had to listen to the final words of another woman he loved dying in exactly the same manner as the last.

“Please . . . go,” Miska rasped in a thread-thin voice. “Leave the village . . . as your father said . . . You must not . . . be destroyed. If Nobles and humans . . . can reach some understanding . . . that will be your task in the future . . . I wish . . . I could’ve helped, too . . .”

Miska’s body suddenly grew heavy.

“My dear baron . . . just before I was stabbed . . . I restrained the Destroyer. No more blood should be spilled . . . I beg of you . . . Just leave the village.”

The baron made no effort to look at the beautiful woman as she rotted away. Seizing the scepter, he pulled it out with one jerk. And then he slowly headed toward the control panel, saying, “You have made a mistake, Father.”

He had changed the way that he referred to Vlad. But could anyone in this world ever give the word “father” such a ghastly and mournful ring?

“Tomorrow I shall slay you. Father, you shall see with your own two eyes the power of Nobility and humans.”

And then he calmly walked back to a device he had apparently renounced—the control panel for transferring the Destroyer.

-

II

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The sun rose, the sun set.

Tonight the lights burned once more at Lagoon’s sleepless pleasure quarter, and D awoke just as its halls were being festooned with the coquettish laughter of women and the murmur of bumpkins in their best clothes. At the end of their underwater battle, he’d dispatched Vlad. In return he’d been seriously injured as well, and his wounded form lay in a woodshed in one corner of the courtyard. Although Lagoon had been rather insistent about finding someplace more comfortable and having a doctor examine him, D had already fallen asleep.

The Hunter was aware that the massive subterranean tank-like creature had broken into the underground isolation chamber and that Taki had been abducted. No matter how badly wounded, this young man would bravely go off to rescue her. The reason he hadn’t was because of something odd Vlad had said underwater in his death throes: I may be destroyed, but tomorrow at midnight I shall wait at the Field of Bones. With the girl who’s underground. If you’re even a second late, I shall make her my bride.

As he’d finished speaking, D’s blade had taken off his head. However, astounding was the only way to describe the sight of D heading back to the surface after seeing to it that Vlad had disintegrated underwater. Vlad’s scepter had cut halfway through the Hunter’s neck.

Turning his back to the astonished Lagoon, D had gone into the woodshed and closed the door.

Lagoon had peeked in through a gap in the frame. And what he witnessed was a sight weirder than anything even he’d ever seen.

Lying on the floor, D held his shredded neck closed with his right hand and pressed his left hand to the wound. Blood still gushed from it. But none of it was spilled. Every last drop of it was being sucked up by the palm of his left hand—the giant realized that was the source of the slurping sounds the left hand was making.

Lagoon was fully aware that D was a dhampir. But could anything in the world be more loathsome than a creature that drunk its own blood?

And that wasn’t the only thing that astonished him. When the left hand came away, the Hunter’s neck was partially healed. And then the left hand—clearly of its own volition, not D’s—dropped to the ground, clawing up dirt with all of its fingers and spitting the blood it’d just drank out on the loosened soil. At that point the palm was turned toward him, and the eyes, nose, and mouth that’d distinctly formed on its surface made Lagoon rigid as a corpse beyond the door. It was a miracle he didn’t suffer a heart attack.

The left hand’s bizarre ritual continued, with the hand being thrust into the muddy blood that the pile of dirt had become, and the soil instantly being wolfed down by its tiny mouth. When it’d stuffed the last mouthful into its cheeks, Lagoon saw a pale blue flame blazing in the depths of its mouth. It was clearly the burning of an overwhelmingly mystic and powerful force. The wound on the neck of soundly slumbering D vanished in less than a second.

And now, as D stepped out of the woodshed with the coming of evening, Lagoon alone was there to greet him.

“At any rate, what do you say we have a drink?” the giant said, and even he thought his voice sounded funny. After all, he’d seen what D—or his left hand—had consumed.

“Why didn’t you run me through?” D asked.

“Huh?!”

“There was murderous intent in your eyes as you looked at me. Orders from Vlad? Were you to be compensated with the power of the Nobility?”

“You’ve got me!” Lagoon said, slapping his forehead. “That’s what I’d planned on doing until I saw you fight, and then I gave it up. With a guy like you after me, I’d have to live in fear for the rest of my days. Plus, I never was very fond of Vlad.”

While it was unclear whether D believed him or not, he changed the topic, asking, “Where’s the Field of Bones?”

“Oh, that’s the plain that lies to the west of Vlad’s castle. Bang a left just in front of the castle and you’ll be there in a snap. But who’s gonna be waiting there? You slew Vlad, right?”

“One of them.”

“Huh?!”

“There are two of him.”

Lagoon only grew more and more confused.

“What was de Carriole researching?”

After thinking for a while, the giant smacked his fist into his hand.

“Now that you mention it, he did order a weird text from the Capital. Some book about doppelgangers, I believe. Hey, you don’t mean to tell me there are two freaking Vlads, do you?”

D said nothing as he straddled the horse tethered there. Then, in a terribly blunt manner, he said, “Thanks for everything.”

“I didn’t do much. But—Godspeed to you. Even I couldn’t live the way you do.”

As the Hunter began to ride away, the giant called out from behind him, “I suppose there’s no sense saying this, but if you ever get tired, stop by anytime. You’re always welcome. I’ll even set you up with a good woman.”

D raised one hand. His left.

On seeing the grinning face that formed on palm of that hand, Lagoon almost fell over.

-

From the windows of a lab in the lord’s manor de Carriole gazed out at the twilight tinting the western sky. His decrepit form—heavily-wrinkled face and stooped-over silhouette—was bathed in the red glow, looking like it might melt away entirely. In reality, he was already an empty shell. The second Cordelia was impaled before his very eyes, the fires of enthusiasm that’d burned in that elderly body of his had been snuffed. Now, he intended to die. The cane he held in his right hand had a knife built into its handle. One thrust of it into his aged, feebly beating heart, and he could bid farewell to his pointless life.

When he turned that blade toward himself without any great determination, a voice called out his name behind him.

De Carriole turned, and his eyes bulged in their sockets.

Standing about ten feet away was a woman in white with water dripping from every inch of her. Although he couldn’t see her face for some reason, he knew at first glance who she was.

“Madam—is that you, Lady Cordelia?”

“Indeed, it is,” the woman nodded in reply.

In the same voice with which he’d addressed D early in the afternoon the previous day, the old man said, “If that’s the case, then it actually worked. Ah, and I never knew it for this last decade . . .”

“And with good reason. I didn’t appear until a year after you believed you’d failed.”

A doppelganger—de Carriole had been so obsessed with the idea of creating one because Vlad’s wife was hopelessly condemned to a life drifting underwater. He wanted to make another Cordelia and give her a different life. The fervor born of his longing only grew more obsessive with each passing day, until the genius succeeded in animal tests and his brain turned to making a copy of the valiant Cordelia. And that ended in failure.

De Carriole wasn’t discouraged, though. After all, he’d succeeded with Vlad and himself. Of course, in Vlad’s case, it’d manifested as merely a voice at first, becoming a complete physical entity only after news had reached them that the baron would return home, and it was at about that time de Carriole conducted similar experiments on himself. Naturally, every time he’d made a new breakthrough he’d asked the woman in the water if he might attempt the experiment again, but he’d always met with the same calm refusal.

However, it seemed impossible that the failed experiment he’d conducted for the one he loved most had actually succeeded.

“Cordelia,” the old man said, forgetting the ironclad rules of master and servant and addressing her solely by her first name. “Why didn’t you tell me? If you had, I might’ve escaped much of this pain. The pain of making you live underwater.”

Perhaps that was the very reason why Cordelia hadn’t told him.

“You mustn’t die, de Carriole,” the woman from the water said. Neither cold nor kind, her voice was like the water itself. “There’s one thing you must still do. A creator must take responsibility for his creations up to the bitter end. Destroy the doppelganger of him.”

De Carriole shook. He had guessed what the woman would want. Still, hearing someone actually say it now, he couldn’t help but shudder.

Dispose of Lord Vlad’s doppelganger—

“For the longest time, I was unable to leave that underworld. But it became possible after my other self met that gorgeous young man. I went outside with him. If I so desire, I can make it so no one at all can detect my presence. De Carriole, your experiments have proven more successful than you ever imagined. I rode with him on a horse out in the sunlight. And on returning to the manor, I saw and heard everything that you and my husband undertook.”

De Carriole was speechless.

“I have nothing to say regarding that. Except this—de Carriole, you must destroy the copies you created of my husband and myself.”

The old man swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple was a horrible sight, bobbing up and down.

“But that’s . . . Milady . . . I cannot do that. Nay, I mustn’t. To start, even I don’t know if the Vlad that remains is the doppelganger or not. Milady, it might well be that you alone would disappear . . . and that would only serve to subject this old fool to the pain of having his soul torn asunder once more.”

“Do it, de Carriole.”

The old man turned his back on the dripping wet woman. It was soon afterward that a pale hand touched his shoulder gently. Perhaps the woman who’d drifted underwater had the devilish nature of the Nobility after all. As that hand slowly groped his neck and stroked his chest, the color returned to the old man’s cheeks, and his breathing became as ragged as a beast’s.

“You destroyed me once. With your hands and your scalpel. Do away with me again—that shall be your recompense. And when you do, you shall die as well. At least let us set out on the journey into death together.”

De Carriole’s eyes filled with a confused vigor. It had a horribly dark hue to it.

-

III

-

Regarding the Field of Bones, there were those who said it was so named because that was where the bodies of the villagers who’d fought the Nobility had been left to rot, while another theory had it that the remains of creatures used in the Nobility’s bizarre experiments had been discarded there. Whatever the case, the soil in that region was as red as if it’d been soaked with blood, and perhaps the grass that grew there had sucked that up, as it was unusually high and deeply verdant.

The wind had picked up with the coming of night. Though many flying animals had abandoned the field, being unable to fight those winds, a number of lizard-like creatures deftly rooted at the red earth and began snatching up grubs and insects. Suddenly, they sensed something.

Abandoning their prey, the creatures scampered off en masse while behind them, an object that resembled a titanic green caterpillar appeared, halting almost in the dead-center of the field. Of all the cruelty—Taki was completely naked and spread-eagle, bound hand and foot to the front of the vehicle. Opening the hatch, Vlad stuck his head out. Standing on the mountain folk vehicle with scepter in hand, garbed in an opulent robe, and with his hair billowing in the wind, he was the very picture of a demon king about to sacrifice a young beauty in some accursed ritual.

After gazing off in all directions, he said, “Only one more minute—I never thought both of them would fail to show up.”

From the way he phrased it, it seemed he’d expected both D and the baron to come and had intended to fight both at the same time from the very start. His self-confidence was chilling.

Going to the front of the caterpillar, Vlad then leered down at Taki and said, “As promised, I refrained from slaking my thirst last night. And as I also swore, if they are even a second late—”

The way his grin left his lengthy incisors exposed, it made him look like a demon. After making an easy leap down to the ground, something must’ve happened, because his lips warped once more into a smile and he approached Taki.

Guessing who it was, Taki opened her eyes.

“Stop it . . . Stay away from me!”

The gaze Lord Vlad played across her full breasts and the face she tried so desperately to avert could only be described as that of a lustful fiend.

“There’s no problem so long as I don’t feed on you,” he chortled.

He pressed a pair of thick purple lips to her right breast.

Taki was anguished by the pain of flesh being punctured, and two streaks of blood coursed out between the lips and the supple skin.

“I haven’t drunk from you. Haven’t drunk a drop.”

When his mouth came away from her, two dark, swollen fang marks remained. And then he pressed his disgusting lips to the impressive swell of her left breast.

“Aaaah!” Taki cried as she tried to pull away.

Common opinion was that the thing about the kiss of the Nobility that sent the victim into rapture was the magical power of the actual act of drinking blood. Bites delivered without that feeding were nothing but the agonizing act of a wild beast tearing into flesh.

The writhing girl’s entire body was covered with blood, with teeth marks ruthlessly carved into her smooth belly, her armpits, and her thighs.

Intoxicated, perhaps, by the scent of blood, Vlad had a look of sheer ecstasy on his face. Although this act was meant to check his desire, the way he subjected a completely immobilized girl to the torture of being pierced by his fangs without bothering to hypnotize her only seemed to illustrate the cruelty of the Nobility.

Taki fainted from the fear and pain.

Feeling the time, Vlad muttered into the wind, “Only three more seconds . . . Two . . . One . . . And now—”

His chest made a strange sound. A wooden spear flying at lightning speed had penetrated it. The spear was over six feet long.

Driven back two or three steps by the impact, he said, “So, someone came?!”

His bloodshot eyes turned toward the waves of grass before him. Every time they undulated in the wind, it scattered the moonlight, so it looked as beautiful as the dance of the fireflies.

Seeming to push his way through the grass was a figure in black who gripped a sword in his right hand.

“D.”

Taking hold of the spear, Vlad pulled it back out.

“So good of you to come. And what of Byron?”

“I’m here,” a voice called out from behind him.

Not bothering to turn around, Vlad said, “What are you waiting for? Have at me!”

D’s wooden spear had clearly pierced him through the heart, yet he didn’t show a hint of pain.

“D, stand back,” the baron called out to the Hunter.

Gazing at the young Nobleman’s distant face, D gave a nod.

Perhaps taking it as some kind of signal, Vlad pivoted. He saw the face of his son. And he groaned.

Although there’d been no change to his gorgeous features, which could be described as the glory of youth personified, Byron’s cheeks seemed to have lost some of their meat and his skin some of its color, so he looked like a wraith from the underworld. But more startling than anything was the intensity of his eyes, which glittered with pain and the hue of blood as he stared at Vlad.

Had the baron decided that the only way to slay the devil was to become a demon himself?

“What happened, Byron? Did you take on the Destroyer?” Vlad asked. It was only natural.

“No, it’s just me.”

And saying that, he let a streak of light fly from the chest of his cape—and in response, the scepter flew from Vlad’s right hand.

Were life and death separated by an eternity or a split second?

Vlad’s body opened to a vertical flash of light.

At the same time the baron was pierced by the scepter and blown backward. For an instant the young Nobleman’s body appeared to swell up—but a second later a boom resounded within him like a great drum being struck. Still, the baron managed to maintain his pose, narrowly avoiding collapse.

“You bastard—you took in the Destroyer after all,” Vlad groaned as the band of light kept flying right through him. It had pushed straight through the middle of his massive frame.

“What’s this?!” he cried, pressing his hands to either side of his head.

The lord was using every ounce of his strength to try and hold the two halves of his body from splitting apart.

“Do you see this, Byron? This is your father.”

As he laughed aloud a band of light split his chest. Vlad’s body was literally split in a cross.

“Arrrgh!” he cried.

His scream of agony was like a howl from the heavens and the earth.

The night wind buffeted his face.

“It won’t close! The wound won’t close! What are you doing, Guide?!”

Staggering, he collapsed in the grass. The baron lay about fifteen feet to his rear. The light the young Nobleman had just hit him with had taken the last strength he could muster.

Crawling over to him, Vlad grabbed hold of the scepter protruding from the baron’s chest and used it to pull himself up onto his feet.

“You or I—which of us will follow after Cordelia?” the lord said, giving a powerful twist to the scepter he still grasped.

There was nothing the baron could do but bend backward in pain and writhe.

Pulling out the scepter, Vlad raised it high over his head for the coup de grace. One more thrust—to the heart. Even possessed by the Destroyer, the young Nobleman couldn’t survive a second blow.

His body shook. Another scepter had pierced his heart from behind. The same scepter that’d destroyed Lady Miska.

“You—you bastard . . .”

He tried to turn, but there was no need. In the raging wind, the imposing figure in the black coat circled around in front of him.

“Looks like there was no need for me,” D said in a low voice, taking Vlad’s head off with a single stroke of his blade.

Even after the head landed on the red soil far away, the body didn’t fall. Still impaled on the scepter, it slowly began to walk. Toward the head it had lost.

“I won’t be destroyed . . . I won’t be . . . ,” came a distant voice. The head lying on the red soil had spoken. “Guide . . . take me away . . . to the promised land . . .”

“Oh,” the wind groaned. In the vicinity of D’s left hand.

Look at how the space ahead of the decapitated torso shimmered like a mirage, forming an image—was that a land mass coming into view far beyond the black-and-white tips of the waves? The crystal palaces off in the distance had an eternal glow. And the waves parted as the path rose from them.

D said nothing as he walked over to the baron and propped him up. Picking up what Vlad had dropped, he put it in the Nobleman’s bloodless right hand.

“You can use this, can’t you?” he asked.

The baron opened his eyes a crack, nodded, and said, “This isn’t the Destroyer’s power.”

He hadn’t borrowed the strength of that shuddersome entity—there had been fears it might unleash limitless destruction. His powerful desire to slay his father had been checked by clear thinking. However, his hatred remained. At this rate, he couldn’t beat his father. When despair and hatred overlapped and his seething emotions reached their peak, another power had awakened in him. And that was—

“In that case, you’re the same as me,” D said.

When the baron planted both feet firmly on the ground and raised the scepter high with his right hand, D let go of him.

As he watched the howling scepter smash Vlad’s severed head into a million pieces, the baron tumbled to the ground face-first.

The massive form of Vlad fell as well. His hand trembling feebly all the while, he reached out for the glittering Shangri-la. However, before he could touch that dreamlike space his fingertips dropped with a sudden lack of power. The Noble’s hands slapped the red ground ineffectually before he moved no more.

The confrontation between father and son had come to a conclusion.

On seeing that it was indeed finished, D was about to walk back to the baron when he suddenly turned his attention to a sound on the breeze.

“It was a woman’s voice,” his left hand said. “Sounded kinda like the baron’s mother.”

Later it was discovered that the aged scholar de Carriole had died after severing his carotid artery in his laboratory in Vlad’s manor. By his side was a smashed machine the purpose of which no one knew, and in addition to that, it was said there were signs that water had been splashed across the floor. Seeing that the puddle in question was in the shape of a person, the farmers who’d discovered it shuddered in fear. They never did learn that in keeping with a request from the woman he’d secretly loved, the aged scholar had destroyed his own device for creating doppelgangers. In the end, he’d probably died without ever knowing that the Lord Vlad that remained was the real one. What de Carriole’s thoughts were as he watched the woman who’d once been relegated to an unnatural fate under his scalpel turned to water once again by his destructive act remained a mystery. They had set out on their voyage to the hereafter together. However, no one knew whether or not they’d held hands as they did so.

-

It was at dawn two days later that D bid farewell to the baron. In the courtyard of Lagoon’s establishment, Hugh, May, and the owner had come out to see him off.

The baron had already recovered his strength. His recuperation came with the same remarkable speed as D’s own.

“Just like you,” the left hand said with deep admiration. “So, was there another success?”

“Will you stay here?” D asked the baron.

“No, I’ll be setting off on a trip soon. There’s no place for the Nobility now,” the baron said with a smile.

“You’re not a Noble anymore. You should stay,” Lagoon said as he gazed at the young Nobleman with a look that said he regretted this parting from the bottom of his heart.

The garden was filled by the light of winter. A day brimming with life was just beginning.

And in the past two days, the baron had discovered that whatever “a certain great personage” had given him, it’d done more than just give him the power to slay Lord Vlad; it also allowed him to walk in the light of the sun. He hadn’t borrowed the power of the Destroyer. The strength of his will had kept him from inviting limitless destruction. And that’s what Lagoon had meant.

“We’ll be staying here instead,” Hugh stated proudly as May gently rubbed his head. The two of them were going to be doing acrobatics shows at Lagoon’s establishment.

“Just a word of warning . . .”

At that from D, Lagoon stuck both hands out in front of himself.

“I know. In no way, shape, or form am I gonna let anything weird happen to those two. I’m sure if I did, you’d blow in here like a gale and chop my head right off.”

“Miss Taki’s not here. But she said she’d be out in a minute,” May said as she turned back toward the door to the establishment.

“I’ll go have a look,” Hugh said, and he started walking that way, but the baron put a hand on his shoulder to stop him, then turned.

The wintry light threw blue shadows on the ground.

The Nobleman disappeared through the doorway and several minutes passed.

Taki’s room was the third from the door.

“I’ll go,” Lagoon said, but just as he was about to do so, a figure in an ink-black coat passed him.

Slipping through the doorway, D halted in front of Taki’s room. He’d caught a certain odor.

Quietly he pushed open the door. The light spearing in through the window focused on the white bed. Taki’s upper body had fallen back against it. Apparently she’d changed into a gray sweater to see D off, and the garment was speckled with red dots.

Walking over, he looked down at her. Taki had already expired.

“The girl—she was a victim before she ever joined us,” a shadowy voice echoed behind him.

Apparently the baron was standing behind the door.

“The one who called himself Lord Yohan used his hypnotism to repress her memories of being a victim, but it would seem the shock the other day brought them back. When I got near her, she suddenly threw herself at me.”

To lull D and the baron into a false sense of security, the “victim” had most likely had a keyword implanted in her mind that would awaken her true nature, but in all this time it hadn’t been used.

D turned around.

The baron had one hand pressed to the nape of his neck, and the chest of his shirt was speckled with drops of blood.

“Were you bitten?”

“Yes.”

His face was pale, his lips colorless, and from them poked a pair of bloody red fangs—Taki’s throat had been torn open.

“And that awoke it in you, too?”

D’s ears caught a distant voice. You were my only success.

Taki’s voice came back to him. Save me, D.

D heard the blue voice.

“D—destroy me.”

“No one has hired me.”

“I’ll be the client.”

“I see.”

For an instant, two streaks of light adorned the transparent morn. The light from the baron skimmed by D as the Hunter bent back far, imbedding itself in the floor, while D’s blade pinned the Nobleman’s chest to the wall.

The baron’s cape tinged D’s eyes with blue.

When he got up again, D laid Taki’s body out on the bed, and then left the room. He didn’t watch as the baron’s end came. For D knew that he’d intentionally missed with his light attack.

“What did you come here to do, baron?”

There was no one there to hear that muttered query.

A figure of immeasurable darkness and beauty walked down the corridor.

Through the doorway, the sound of May and Hugh’s laughter was growing closer as the children rushed to find their friends.

-

END