A TWIN-SHADOWED FIGURE

CHAPTER 2

-

I

-

Those clothes, and, more than anything, that inimitable beauty—it was D beyond a doubt. Mia felt relieved. The fortuneteller’s daughter didn’t notice that her joy over the safety of a young man she didn’t even know had given way to feverish excitement.

“Hey, you . . .” one of the young men called out to him, taking a step closer.

The scene that unfolded a second later was an enormous and terrifying betrayal of everyone’s expectations. A streak of light flowed out. Where it started and where it ended, none could say. It simply flowed.

“What the—” the young man cried, and judging by the way he jumped back, he alone must’ve discerned the path of that light. Or perhaps he merely acted on reflex.

A mellifluous, soothing sound came from D’s back.

Jogging back, the young man halted in front of Mia. When Mia saw that his eyes were filled with tears, she was a bit surprised.

“I . . . I’m Zoah,” he said somewhat uncomfortably. “Remember that . . . Zoah. Okay?”

Feeling something she couldn’t fight, Mia nodded. “And I’m—” she was saying when the young man put both hands on top of his head as if to hold it down. A thin red line zipped across the base of his neck.

Without even knowing why, Mia cried out, “Mia! I—I’m Mia!”

A single tear fell from the young man’s eye. A smile formed on his lips, and then he reeled backward.

Once his head had fallen behind him, bright blood shot into the air from the stark stump of his neck, and the occasional gusts of wind carried it toward D as if at his bidding, covering every inch of him. Soaked in blood—an exquisite figure in vermilion.

But even that sight held Mia spellbound and drew sounds of admiration from the men—in truth, groans of pleasure. However, that only lasted a few heartbeats before the men returned to their senses and the sheriff rapped on the turret of the armored car, shouting, “Prepare to fire! Draw a bead on that bastard!”

Wait, Mia thought, but she couldn’t move. The ghastly demise of the young man who’d introduced himself as Zoah had had an explosive impact on her brain, crushing all other thoughts.

That streak of light had undoubtedly cut through Zoah’s neck. However, instead of being slain on the spot, he’d lived long enough to give Mia his name, knowing all the while he would die. Were there even words to describe such a bizarre and superhuman feat? But all that aside, why would D do such a horrible thing? The question numbed Mia’s mind. The handsome features now being dyed crimson by the vivid rain of blood had a cold beauty that dulled the very sunlight. He could murder his own parents—she just knew it. Knew it all too well. But even knowing that, in her heart Mia had still held a fiery little ember of conviction that he would never slaughter an innocent person so horribly.

Mia’s mind was pulled back to reality by the harsh music of a motor and gears. The armored car’s turret was turning toward D. The barrel of its cannon took unerring aim right at his face—dead center on his handsome visage. The marksman inside the turret was coolly taking aim through a little glass sighting window set in the armor plate. Crosshairs had been etched on the glass—and they came to a halt right between the eyes of their target.

Now! The index and middle fingers of his right hand pulled hard on the trigger. The rusty trigger was just about to pass the point of no return.

The gunner’s field of view stained crimson. Or, to be more precise, the glass window did.

He’d seen D’s upper body lean far back, and then snap forward again. But there was no way he could’ve imagined the blood that soaked every inch of D flying back at the armored car. It came with such speed, such force. The iron-plated vehicle shook when it struck.

However, its cannon belched fire. The forty-millimeter shell was true to its aim—then it flew wildly off course and made impact. Not with D’s face, but with the ground at his feet. Sparks and black smoke mixed with a roar.

Mia stood entranced by the crimson D until the impact bowled her and the men over.

D was in the air. The bloody torrent had rocked the cannon just before it fired, and at the same time he had sailed into the sky. He drifted down and landed on the front of the armored vehicle, as if thirty-odd feet hadn’t separated them in the first place. Without a second wasted, a silvery flash whisked through the turret. The armor plating could easily withstand forty-millimeter shells, but D’s blade stabbed through it like it was paper, piercing the throat of the gunner within.

Pulling his blade back out, D looked down at Mia on the ground and grinned. Ah! He was like youth incarnate, gleaming with his own beauty and cruelty.

Mia was practically ready to faint.

Leaping easily through the air, D landed about fifteen feet from the group. Not a single drop of blood clung to his sword.

“Come,” he said, speaking at last.

On confirming that it was D’s voice, Mia could taste only despair.

“Come,” he invited them once more.

The figures around Mia stalked forward. They were villagers. Each gripped a stake or spear in his hands. Full of fighting spirit—or so they looked, their expressions vacant as if some other force had possessed them.

“Don’t go near him!” Mia cried, but that only served as a kind of cue to them.

Advancing a few steps, the villagers let out a cry that wasn’t quite a word and charged at D en masse. Light streaked between them, becoming vermilion spray a second later. The lifeblood that then shot up from the decapitated men looked like the kind of entertainment one might find at a banquet in hell. There was a succession of dull thuds all around D—the sound of the severed heads landing. Stabbing one of them with his sword, D flung it toward Mia.

It fell about three feet shy of her. Mia looked down and gasped when it rolled to her feet. It was Zoah’s head.

“That’s the head of the man who loved you,” D said softly.

Unable to look at it, Mia raised her face frantically. D was right in front of her. She couldn’t say a word.

Between the speechless Mia and the Vampire Hunter, Zoah’s head rose. D had skewered it with his sword.

“From the look on his face, I doubt you could say he’s resting in peace. Why don’t you give him a kiss?”

How cruel! But as he thrust the horrible head in the girl’s pale face, a hint of surprise crept into D’s expression.

He’d intended to make Mia kiss the severed head. Mia recoiled, yet she was unafraid as the severed head seemed to sink into her face. The second the man’s and the woman’s faces seemed to overlap, Mia’s body had passed through D’s and come to stand behind him.

Looking over his shoulder in astonishment, D swung his sword down behind him. Mia was well within reach of his blade. And the instant the sword became a streak of light that split her body like a piece of firewood, she gave off an iridescent gleam and vanished.

“Ah!” a voice gasped from the vicinity of the armored car.

Wasn’t that also Mia by the back of the vehicle, steadying herself with one hand on its body while she pressed the other to her chest?

“A diversion, eh? Not bad for a punk kid,” D remarked, coolly stepping forward. Astonishingly enough, the sword in his right hand still had Zoah’s head on it.

With this beautiful fiend closing on her, Mia couldn’t move. She couldn’t recall ever having a decoy spell she’d put her heart and soul into broken that way. She’d learned from her mother that a spell could be broken only by another spell—and she had absolute confidence that things always followed that natural law. And yet, here it’d been broken by an ordinary swordsman and his blade. More than the physical trauma of having her illusion destroyed, it was despair that caused Mia to freeze up.

Once more the dead man’s mouth was thrust toward her bloodless lips.

“Here, send him off to eternal peace,” said D. His lips held a smile.

As Mia turned her face away, cold lips struck her cheek.

“Now, why are you trying to fight it?” D asked, his query every bit as still and cold as a winter night.

The lips slid right after Mia’s.

Mia’s back struck the car, informing her that escape was now impossible.

Just then, the heavens and earth rumbled. Caught off guard, D staggered, while Mia was thrown more than six feet to one side. As the ground suddenly quaked like it’d been transformed into muddy slop, the iron vehicle and the corpses danced a crazed jig across it.

Trying desperately to maintain his balance all the while, D prepared to dash toward the brink of the subsidence.

“Looks like I might’ve underestimated him,” he muttered, although whom that comment was intended for was anybody’s guess.

Suddenly, his shoulder split as if it’d met with some unseen blade. A bloody mist shot out.

Standing on the quaking earth, D twisted around and looked behind him.

Thirty feet away there stood a black horse.

“Aha,” he exclaimed, forgetting to staunch the flow of blood.

It was a cyborg horse. However, even cyborg horses came in varying qualities. The one that now stood perfectly poised in the distance, ignoring the noisy quaking of the earth, had a magnificent frame, lustrous coat, and fine musculature—everything about it attested to its being a model of the very highest quality and ability. Such a mount wasn’t easy to obtain out on the Frontier.

And D’s eyes were riveted to the blue figure astride that steed. He wore an indigo robe, and his lengthy hair, which hung like threads from the top of his head down to his waist in such a way that even his face was obscured, also had a somewhat chilling and mysterious indigo hue.

“Who are you?” D asked as he continued to defy the motion of the restless earth.

“I disposed of Origa,” the figure in blue told D, remaining completely motionless as he addressed the jostled swordsman. “Next, I’ll take care of you.”

-

II

-

Origa was the sorceress D had called on to solve the riddle of Muma. She’d been hacked to pieces the night D met with her, and it seemed that it’d been the work of this rider in blue.

“Who are you?” D asked once again.

Though he was confronted by an opponent skilled enough to remain utterly motionless through this savage quaking, and despite the fact that the flow of bright blood from his right shoulder was unabated, he didn’t seem at all surprised.

“Why are you after me?”

A sudden gust of wind stirred the hem of his coat.

The hair of the figure in blue streamed off to one side like a swarm of countless insects. And yet, his face wasn’t visible.

“You found out. That alone is the reason.”

His words seemed to creep across the ground.

What had D learned, and how did the man in blue know about it? And why had he slain Origa?

“I suppose there’s no point asking you anything else.”

D swung the sword in his right hand and sent Zoah’s head flying.

The black horse and blue rider approached. Although the animal was most definitely treading across the ground, its gait didn’t seem the least bit affected by the quaking that continued even now.

The instant the horse and rider sauntered within reach of his sword, D made a horizontal swipe with his blade without saying a word. He intended to sever the horse’s front legs, and as his foe was thrown from the tumbling animal, a second stroke would catch him without a moment’s delay.

The blade sliced. The black horse tumbled forward. Just as expected. And the rider in blue went flying. Just as expected. Reversing direction, D’s blade handily bisected his opponent’s torso.

At that instant the whole world was sealed away in blue. Out of the carved body of the man, a bluish hue sailed into the air. No, not merely a hue, but hair. Just how much hair did that rider in blue have inside his body? Ten thousand, a hundred thousand, no, easily a million strands flew everywhere, and every last one of them stabbed into the ground or the rocks or even the armored car.

D managed to deflect each and every one in the first wave. However, the blue needles assailed him without end. One pierced his left shoulder. He deflected dozens more without pausing to extract that one, then another slipped through and stabbed into his solar plexus, and when he not surprisingly reeled from that for a second, another needle got him through the right eye, coming all the way out through the back of his head.

Another storm of blue was about to assail his reeling, staggering form, but then white smoke surged over him from one side like a wave. Smoke—smoke roiling up from the bottom of the subsidence. While the wind had indeed shifted in that direction, the way it moved to obscure him like a bodyguard made it seem as if it were imbued with a desire to protect him.

And within that cloud, what kind of explosion of thought and deed took place? The roiling of the white smoke grew ever more turbulent, swirling, painting everything with a solid and disturbing hue of white as it began to roll thickly over the road.

The rumbling of the earth continued.

-

Late that night . . .

Mia was in the village hospital. Though she was weary to the marrow of her bones, the events of midday were branded into her brain, refusing to leave her or even wane, so while she wanted to sleep, a sort of insomnia now troubled her. All she could remember was that D had been forcing her to kiss a severed head when the earth had quaked—and that was it. Her body was thrown against the ground once or twice, and the next thing she knew, she was receiving treatment from a new scouting party that’d come from the village. Based on what one member had told her, all that’d been left at the scene was the tipped-over armored car and the sheriff—who’d lost both legs when they were pinned under the vehicle. The remains of Zoah and all the other villagers had vanished completely.

Though the villagers wanted to get the story from Mia, she kept silent. She’d decided that the best thing to do would be to leave the entire matter to the sheriff’s department. Simply keeping a dazed look on her face was sufficient to fool the villagers. As Mia kept up the act, countless questions sprang into her head and then faded again, and try as she might, she couldn’t come up with a satisfactory answer to a single one of them before she sank wearily into a despairing conclusion.

Getting out of bed, Mia went over to the window. She could see the courtyard. White blossoms swayed in the flower beds. These were plants that bloomed by the light of the moon.

The moon hung in the middle of the sky. Its surface was like a silver platter, and onto it a gorgeous visage burned itself, sharper than the rest of its glow.

“D . . .” she murmured sadly, although Mia herself wasn’t aware of the sadness. She’d witnessed his cruelty with her own two eyes. It’d been directed at her. She’d tasted terror and anger and hate. And yet his strikingly handsome face continued to hold the nubile fortuneteller captive.

“Damn, this is no good,” Mia told herself sternly. “What did I come here to do, anyway? After leaving my mother for dead . . .”

The intense battle between will and emotion lasted only a second. Her chest, well developed for her age, rose and fell heavily as she let out a morose sigh.

“Come tomorrow, I’ll be back to normal,” Mia told herself. “Tomorrow.”

But there was no evidence to support that claim, and she had no confidence in it.

Mia focused her gaze intently on the crystal-clear night as if seeking salvation. The darkness grew thicker. A cloud had hidden the moon, and there was no other light. The moon quickly reclaimed its starring role. But that wasn’t what made the girl feel that the stillness had grown ever deeper.

A figure astride a white horse was in one corner of the garden. The moonlight cast sinful shadows on a face so handsome she had to wonder if the moon existed solely to praise him. D.

Fear bubbled up within her. Doubts eddied. Anger rose. Forgetting all that, Mia opened the windowpane.

The white horse and rider approached. There wasn’t a sound. Although the path through the courtyard was paved with bricks, the hooves of the horse D controlled remained silent.

“You’re okay . . .” Mia muttered to the handsome face that stopped not three feet from her.

Though she had intended to ask D what had happened after he’d flown down into the subsidence, she remained oblivious to the fact she hadn’t finished her question.

Still on horseback, D leaned toward her. No sooner had she noticed him placing one hand on the sill than a wind gusted in so quickly Mia didn’t have time to get out of the way, and then the Vampire Hunter stood in her room.

“D . . .”

“I’d like to ask you something,” D said in the voice of the night.

Before she even responded, D extended his right hand. Mia felt her back grow warm.

“What . . . what is it?” Embarrassment flooded through her. As if to push it away, she asked once more, “What is it?” She realized she’d forgotten to close the window.

“What happened up top?”

It took her a while to understand the question. “Up top? Don’t joke around about that. That was you, wasn’t it?”

As the girl barely managed to choke back a hail of invective, D quietly gazed at her face, finally asking, “What did I do?”

“What did you—are you out of your mind?”

“Unfortunately, it would seem not.”

Mia’s eyes were drawn to the vicinity of D’s left hip, and the girl showed some bewilderment before she looked at the Hunter’s face again.

“I only came back up just now. Up top, there was the smell of blood. Was that my doing?”

After a short time, Mia nodded. “You mean, that wasn’t you?”

Nothing from the Hunter.

“Or is it that you don’t remember?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know . . .”

“As soon as I reached the bottom, I lost consciousness. I don’t know what happened after that.”

Mia found it incredibly difficult to believe that this gorgeous Hunter could lose consciousness even for the briefest of times. Managing to fight through her surprise, she said, “Okay, I’ll tell you all about it, then. In return, you have to tell me what happened underground.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Why not?” she asked, her tone reproachful in spite of herself.

“You’re better off not knowing.”

In keeping with the darkness, his words were low and grave, but even as she felt their inescapable pressure, Mia shot back, “That’s not fair. While you were gone, I went through hell. I’ll have you know, you—”

Mia broke off as it dawned on her that the person who’d put her through hell was the same person who stood before her, and she was left speechless. Judging from that, it would seem that up until now, she hadn’t considered that D to be the same as this one.

“I did what to you?”

“Y-you . . . That is . . .”

“Just as I suspected,” a hoarse voice remarked.

Her nerves already stretched to the breaking point, Mia didn’t even seem to notice it.

“What happened?” D asked again.

It’s not fair, Mia thought to herself, but she couldn’t fight him any longer.

There was nothing coercive about him. Well, actually there was, but in his soft query there was just the faintest bit of something terribly urgent—it had a ring of sadness to it wholly unsuited to a young man who seemed to be made of ice and steel.

“Fine,” Mia sighed, dropping her shoulders. She gestured to the chair next to her. “Have a seat. I’ll tell you everything.”

Then she seated herself on the edge of the bed.

Time flowed like a river under the wintry moonlight.

“I see,” D told her, rising unaffectedly and heading for the window.

“Wait!”

Her faint cry made him turn and look.

Mia’s face was turned down, and she stared at her knees. “Is that all?” she said.

A puzzled silence from the Hunter.

He had been less than amiable, if not downright blunt.

“You heard my tale, and now you’re just going to go? Without thanking me in any way?”

“She’s got a point,” the hoarse voice said. It seemed somewhat intrigued.

Squeezing his left hand into a tight fist, D said, “You have my thanks.” Then he prepared to turn away again.

“That won’t do.”

When she spoke, it made him look at her again.

“I’d like to have it done properly.”

“Oh la la,” said the hoarse voice. This time it sounded rather surprised.

However, the most astonished of all was Mia herself. Even she didn’t know why she’d said such a thing. Something warm had stirred in her chest and, unable to stand it, she expelled it from her mouth, where it became those preposterous words. What’s more, it was the middle of the night, and she was alone in a hospital room with a young man of unearthly beauty. Conveniently enough, there was a bed right there, too. Mia didn’t know what a proper expression of gratitude would be. But her heart was on fire.

D’s hand reached for her knee. Feeling like her heart might stop, she closed her eyes. The hand quickly came away.

When her eyes opened, they found a few gold coins sitting in her lap.

“That’s the only kind of gratitude I know how to show,” said D.

“I meant—” the girl sputtered, beginning to rise in spite of herself. The gold coins tinkled merrily against the floor.

A black-gloved hand came to rest on her shoulder. Although that should’ve been what she wanted, Mia froze in place, and she couldn’t even speak. There was a chance this young man was a cold and merciless murderer. What was she doing with him?

His hand came away again quickly. Thick, heavy, and cold it was—and yet, a quiet warmth unlike anything before seeped into Mia’s heart. A chill struck her face.

The shape of the horse and rider dwindled in the moonlight without a sound.

For a long time, the young fortuneteller didn’t move from the edge of the bed. Then, finally, she stood up and quietly shut the window.

-

III

-

The next morning, Mia awoke at dawn’s first light. The hospital still slumbered peacefully. Gathering her things—which consisted of what she’d had on her when she was carried there—she left her hospital room without anyone around to challenge her. Walking to the stables on the edge of town, she bought a small cyborg horse and threw a simple saddle on its back. To any who saw her, she might’ve looked awfully tense.

“Where are you off to so early in the morning?” asked the old man who ran the stables. “You’re that fortunetelling girl they brought back to the hospital yesterday, ain’t you?”

It was a tiny village. Information was transmitted through it with the speed of a computer.

“That was a quick recovery. I get the feeling there’s gonna be bad trouble. You’d best get out of here right away. Yesterday, the kinfolk of those who went missing were raising a ruckus about wanting a word with you.”

“What a mess,” was all Mia said in reply as she straddled her horse.

It wasn’t out of the village she rode, but rather right through the middle of it. Though she passed a number of villagers who were apparently headed out to the fields, she galloped by them without taking notice.

Less than ten minutes later, she was at the western edge of the village. She’d cut across the entire community. The great subsidence lay to the north of the village. In a spot that seemed unrelated to the pit, Mia dismounted.

What had she come out there to do?

A desolate plain spread before her. As the soil on this side of the village was fairly acid, it wasn’t suited to farming. And though it was a plain, here and there massive boulders lay on the ground or jutted from the earth as if to add ghastliness to the existing desolation.

When viewed from above, the spot where Mia dismounted was near a rock that was essentially in the center of a group of boulders. Mia tied the reins lightly around a nearby outcropping of rock, and then began to climb that boulder. Due to the fact that since childhood she’d spent day and night practicing fortunetelling and related spells under her mother’s tutelage, it was safe to say that outdoor activities weren’t exactly her strongest suit. Her hands got scraped and her breathing grew ragged. By the time she’d reached the summit of forty-five or fifty feet, her shoulders heaved with every breath.

“This is the place, all right.”

Still struggling to catch her breath, she had both determination and fear in her eyes as she peered down. The eyes of any human but Mia would’ve seen only a vast wasteland, but beneath the black earth, she could see a single red line. A thick one. By her estimate from her present position, it had to be more than three feet wide. Mia pictured a massive and endless serpent gouging its way through the earth.

How am I supposed to sever that?

A disappointed sigh escaped her, but the next thing Mia knew, she was tightening her grip on the shoulder strap of her backpack. That and her own judgment were all she had to rely on. As she stared a bit harder, Mia planted the soles of both shoes firmly against the rock’s surface. The power of the rocks that stood in this region flowed into her body—and through her optic nerves.

Somewhere on the red line. She needed it to be there, somewhere. Her gaze needled its way along the great serpent stretching through the depths of the earth. The red blurred.

There!

Using a trick of her eyes to burn the location into her retinas, Mia began to climb down from the rock. On her horse, she reached her destination in under five minutes.

“The moment of truth.”

Her heart pounded madly. This was the first big job for her without any assistance from her mother. And now she had to destroy the energy pipe running through the ground. It was down about thirty feet deep. Who could’ve imagined that a conduit for enough energy to destroy a quarter of the Frontier would be buried so close to the surface? Although she had no idea how many decades or centuries it’d been down there, she was amazed that it still survived. Now she was about to destroy it.

She hesitated for only an instant. Setting down her backpack, Mia pulled an egg-shaped lump of metal from it. Tugging on its red tip, she extended its telescopic, directional antenna. As she reached for the timer, her finger trembled. She switched it on. A red light began to flash. There would be no turning back now. It was simply a matter of getting as far away as possible within the next ten minutes. Through the antenna, the explosive force of the atomic charge would be channeled down some thirty feet underground—more than enough to destroy the energy conduit. But God only knew what that energy would do when it spilled out. There was a chance Mia might go down in history as the grim reaper responsible for killing every living creature in the region.

“Mom—here I go!” she said to herself, driving the atomic charge into the ground. Since the explosion would be underground, fifty yards away would’ve been safe, but there was no way of knowing how devastating the energy inside the pipe would be when it was unleashed. She’d have to get three-quarters of a mile away.

Looking for her mount, Mia turned and was stunned to see D right in front of her. A short distance away was a chestnut cyborg horse, so he must’ve come without Mia noticing him. As strange as it was that she hadn’t heard even a footstep, she didn’t find it strange at all where this young man was concerned.

“Are you—D?” Mia asked, though it sounded to her like the words were a million miles away.

“Do I look like anybody else?”

“No,” she replied. As D approached, she told him, “I just set an atomic charge. The timer can’t be disarmed. Get out of here.”

“What an interesting thing to do.”

D didn’t stop walking but came over to Mia and gazed down at the bomb.

“Yeah. I have to exorcise this demon that’ll spread over this village—no, the whole Frontier region.”

Mia’s right hand slipped into her blouse, but D didn’t notice.

“I was—” he began to say and then turned around, having sensed Mia’s murderous intent. Before D could even finish turning, Mia planted the dagger in her right hand in his heart with perfect precision.

Time stopped. All movement halted, and even the wind seemed to have died.

The next move came from Mia. Letting go of the dagger she’d stuck in him, she backed away a step or two.

D stood stock still. “Why?” he asked.

“You’re a murderer! But thanks to you, I know the D I met last night was the real one. There really are two of you after all.”

Rasping, D asked, “How . . . did you know?”

“Yesterday, you were riding a white horse.”

“I see,” he said, his voice carrying strength. Before Mia even had time to be shocked, D reached his left hand for the hilt of the dagger jutting from his chest and pulled it out without any trouble. “Care to try that again? Or should I skin you alive here and now and let the atomic flames cook you?”

A faint pain shot through the base of Mia’s throat, calling attention to the fact that D had drawn his longsword and pressed it against her.

“With that model, we should have ten minutes till it explodes. Time enough for a little chat. So, I went to see you last night, did I?”

Mia furrowed her brow. She got the feeling that D knew more than he let on. Because he had a different horse, she’d thought he had to be a different person, but could it be that she was mistaken?

“And what did I talk with you about, then?”

The girl was at a loss for words.

“How I’d had a falling-out with you and the villagers?”

Again, silence from Mia.

“I went into the garden and slipped into your room through the window—right? And as I was leaving, I put my hand on your shoulder. Do you remember that?”

For Mia, it felt as if all the blood were draining from her body. So, this D was the same as the one the night before after all.

“Let’s suppose for a minute that I just bought a change of horses. What did we talk about?”

“What you said just now. And that was it.”

Gazing steadily into Mia’s eyes, D said, “Okay, next matter. Why did you come out here?”

The blade pressed against her throat a little harder.

“I saw it in a dream . . .”

“In a dream?”

“My mother appeared to me and told me what to do. What I was supposed to do out here. Hey,” Mia continued, her strength roused once more.

With apparent curiosity, D replied, “What?”

“Tell me something. Who are you? And what’s this energy pipeline for?”

D’s lips twisted into a grin. “You’ll find out in hell. In no time there’ll be more people than you can count joining you there. You’ll have to ask one of them.”

His tone was that of a judge delivering his verdict, and it made Mia close her eyes. She felt ready to meet her maker. Various thoughts came and went in her mind. Her mother had visited her in her dream—she was probably dead now, wasn’t she? Once Mia was dead, too, who’d tell fortunes for those in the nearby village? Was old Kevin’s granddaughter going to marry the younger Sawyer brother? Or would it be the postmaster’s blockhead of a son?

Blistering heat came to her throat—then vanished unexpectedly. More than that pain, it was the lurid and malicious aura that’d buffeted her for some time that left Mia reeling. As her consciousness was slipping away, she heard someone say, “So, I finally meet up with myself.”

Her eyes snapped open again. The sight that greeted them was something Mia never could’ve pictured, but at the same time exactly what she expected.

There they stood, not ten feet apart. Two Ds.