MISTRESS OF TOXINS

CHAPTER 2

—

I

—

Midnight. Shadowy figures approached the fence around the village—one at the main gate and two on the west side. The footsteps of the one at the gate rang out, while those of the pair to the west made not a sound.

On noticing those footfalls, the villager in the watchtower at the gate turned his searchlight in their direction. A special lens magnified the modest light of a candle a million times, throwing a beam that picked out the form of this nocturnal intruder starkly.

“D!” was all the villager said before he froze.

Painted with that white light, the young man in black swayed like a mirage, glowing, his gorgeous features like something that couldn’t possibly be of this world. Seeing how D advanced without saying a word, the villager in the watchtower finally threw the switch on the siren.

The wail that split the stillness of the night reached the ears of the mayor and the two travelers at her house.

“He’s here!”

“I knew he’d come.”

After three short blasts, the sound died out.

“It’s D. Apparently he’s come alone,” Mayor Camus said, rising from her chair with a grace hardly expected from someone of her age.

Tobacco smoke swayed in the air. It came from Grand Duke Mehmet’s cigar.

“Well—shall we go, then?” the Duke of Xenon said, rising as well. “As per our draw, I’ll face him first. Which is fortunate, since it’ll give me a chance to make him tell me where my daughter is before I finish him off.”

“I’m next, then?” Grand Duke Mehmet said, using a china ashtray to crush out the cigar he held. “Then I shall go conceal myself where no one will find me. If you’ll excuse me.”

He relied on an enormous, immortal puppet to do battle. His body was hidden while he controlled it. Because an attack against his true self would be a serious matter, it was quite natural that he kept his location a secret even from his own colleagues—particularly from colleagues he couldn’t trust.

As the two Noblemen headed for the door, white smoke crept around their feet and enveloped them.

“Too bad, Dr. Gretchen,” Grand Duke Mehmet said with a despicable laugh. “We realized that you would never wait to go third, and that you would try to make us inhale poison to stop us. So before coming here, we had General Gaskell’s physician put something in our blood to counteract poisons. There’s nothing you can do to us any longer.”

The grand duke’s body staggered forward, as if pulled on a line.

“This . . . this can’t be . . .”

First Grand Duke Mehmet fell, and then the Duke of Xenon dropped right on top of him.

Looking down at the pair with her old woman’s mask, the mistress of toxins laughed like a bell.

“The general’s physician, you say? You think someone who isn’t even a specialist could know everything about my beloved poisons? What you just inhaled is newly concocted. No antidote will work on it.” Baring her pale throat with a laugh, she continued, “Now, then—I, the poisoning fiend Dr. Gretchen, am going off to dispose of D, the Hunter of Nobility, in accordance with the wishes of our Sacred Ancestor.”

And then the infamous poisoner who wore the guise of an old woman stepped lightly through the door and out into the world of night. Into the kingdom of the Nobility, where battle and life and death all waited.

—

Juke and Sergei were the pair of figures who were climbing over the west side of the fence while the siren was going off.

“I wonder if D will be okay.”

“Get your own job done before you start worrying about anyone else. Where are the wagon and our cargo?”

Pondering Juke’s question for a second, Sergei said, “Where they store all their goods.”

In unison they said, “The western warehouse!” These men had visited this village several times before.

While they ran from shadow to shadow, as if stitching the darkness together, Sergei said, “That little princess—we left her behind, but she’s got me worried.”

“Hey, Gordo’s keeping an eye on her.”

“That’s what worries me—what Gordo might do.”

—

Gordo didn’t know how many times he’d already pressed the muzzle of his gun to Lady Ann’s brow or the back of her head. It wasn’t just because this fearsome little girl had left him completely incapacitated until a short time earlier; it was also because she was obviously a member of the Nobility.

Why am I letting her live? This question, too, had risen in his mind more times than he could count. Because D said it would keep the Nobles from attacking us. That was certainly true, and he agreed. However, while reason was satisfied, emotion wasn’t. The fear of the Nobility that was branded into human DNA commanded him to blow the angelic face off the innocent little girl who lay at his feet.

You know, reason told him coldly, a Noble won’t die from a gunpowder weapon. You could blow her head off or shoot her heart out a hundred times, but they’d be back again as long as the dark of night persisted.

He’d have to do something else to take the life out of her once and for all. Drive a wooden stake or steel blade into her heart, or cut her head off. And Gordo had tried that countless times, too. Pulling the machete from his belt, he’d tried to sever the girl’s head. He’d tried to stab her through the heart. As he drew his machete, he’d felt the weapon’s formidable weight as he raised it over his head. He raised it high. And every time he did, he got the same feeling in his hands. The feeling he’d gotten jabbing a stake into that woman’s chest years ago.

Die! Die! he must’ve muttered or shouted countless times. He ordered his nerves and muscles to obey as he grew slick with sweat. Perhaps less than twelve inches lay between life and death.

From beneath the overwhelming voice that pressured him to take the girl’s life, the tone of reason snaked out, thin but strong as steel. You stabbed the woman who killed your mother and your brothers and sisters, it said. Just ask the palm of your hand. Ask it how it felt the moment you drove a stake into that soft flesh.

“I can’t!”

Gordo had no choice but to lower the machete he’d raised again.

As D and two of the transporter’s compatriots were leaving, Lady Ann had asked to accompany them, but D had driven his fist into her solar plexus and knocked her out. She’d since been bound hand and foot with wire, and a blindfold covered her eyes. Her limbs were tied to guard against her monstrous strength. The blindfold was intended to negate the powers of mesmerism the Nobility possessed.

“I just can’t do it. Guess I’ve got no choice but to wait,” Gordo murmured, wiping his sweat off, but due to the roar of the falls, he couldn’t even hear himself very well.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something move. Lady Ann. Before Gordo’s wide and horrified eyes, the little vampire lady whom D’s blow had rendered unconscious was slowly but smoothly righting herself.

In a lethargic voice she said, “I can’t see.”

Her whole body tensed. Power coursed into her arms, still secured behind her back. However, the steely line didn’t break.

“I can’t move,” she said in a voice that was terribly sweet and unsettling at the same time.

In one corner of his mind, Gordo thought, Is that how Nobles are? Even the roar of the falls disappeared when the girl’s voice rang out.

“Who’s done this to me? Are you there?”

For some reason, he responded. “Yeah.”

“I knew someone was there.”

The girl’s words turned Gordo’s heart to ice.

“Please, take this blindfold off of me,” the girl entreated him sadly. “I beg of you. I can’t see anything.”

“I can’t. And don’t move.”

“Why won’t you heed me? If you toy with me, you should fear the consequences.”

“Shut up.”

“I beg of you,” Lady Ann repeated. A little nasal, her voice was that of a cute little ten-year-old girl. Even without having seen her face, he could’ve envisioned the watery blue depths of her eyes, the gold of her hair, and her full cheeks and lips, all from that voice. “Please! I beg of you!”

Gordo was completely aware of what he was doing. Wiping his sweat away before rubbing his hands against his pants, he could hear every creak of his joints as he walked toward Lady Ann. Oh, why hadn’t D gagged her, too? His hands went into action. He was moving toward the girl, toward the knot in her blindfold. Why was he untying it?

“Thank you,” she said, Gordo’s face reflected in the watery blue of her eyes—and rising from their watery depths were malice and a savage hunger.

—

II

—

Even beneath the unchanging sea of clouds, D could see as distinctly as if it were midday the old woman who came out through the gates. It was unclear if the Hunter found anything strange about the absence of the two Nobles who should’ve accompanied her—Grand Duke Mehmet and Roland, the Duke of Xenon. However, his face, in all its unearthly beauty, was trained on his approaching foe, as still as the air on a harsh winter’s night.

“I was wondering if you know who I am?” the mayor asked.

“What happened to the other two?” D inquired. To this young man, the names of those he had to slay had no meaning.

“I put them to sleep. It is I that shall slay you—Dr. Gretchen!” she said, her voice no longer that of an old woman, but rather the honey-dripping tone of a temptress.

“When will they get up?”

“That will depend on their constitutions. Perhaps they already have. Perhaps they never will. They inhaled enough poison to kill a human being ten times over. If you want to take care of all of us in one fell swoop, this is your chance.”

D went into action—he seemed to share that sentiment. As he dashed forward, he drew his blade. The instant Dr. Gretchen’s body entered the deadly arc it described, another death would be decorated with fresh blood.

However, when D was about fifteen feet from the villainess, he pitched forward. Sticking his sword into the ground, he tried to use it as a lever to pull himself up again, but his lower half crumbled feebly. Black beads formed on his face, leaving threadlike trails as they began to stream down it. They were blood—lifeblood that gushed from D’s pores.

“Did you get your four friends back safely? How accommodating of you,” jeered a figure that his night vision revealed to be a woman of dazzling beauty. “I made them drink my poisons. Without knowing it, all four of them became poison people. It’s perfectly natural that not even you knew it. After all, there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about any of them. However, you breathed in what they exhaled, and little by little it collected in your body, causing a delicate chemical reaction. Adding one last poison will cause the same reaction as an immortal Noble exposed to sunlight.”

D’s forehead split open horizontally, and from it a blinding light shone on the gate. His shoulder split. His upper arm broke open, and then his chest and abdomen ruptured. Light pierced his clothes, shining down at the earth and up into the void, transforming D into an anthropomorphic sun in black raiment.

“When subjected to the Daybreak effect of my poisons, even the greatest of the Greater Nobility screamed in agony and pleaded with me to kill them. How about you?”

Not answering her, D tumbled forward. The hand that still gripped his sword split apart from wrist to elbow, unleashing a new light. The light grew much more intense, swallowing the young man in black. He was literally a sun that had been born to the night.

Perhaps it was unavoidable that the mother of that sun should laugh mockingly, midday in the midst of darkness—but even as this was happening, Dr. Gretchen’s laughter ceased. The glow had continued to intensify, cutting through the defensive shield General Gaskell had given her and searing her flesh with the feverish heat of midday.

“How is this possible?” she cried out in amazement, as every place the light touched her grew white hot. She was gripped with the fear of having her immortal flesh charred right down to the marrow of her bones. The light continued to envelop the poisoning murderess.

“Aaaaah! Begone!” she exclaimed, but when she tried to leap away, both her legs shattered at the knee. The joints were shrouded in white flames. Her protective shield had been broken.

“Impossible! This can’t be! Help me!”

Dr. Gretchen fought madly to extinguish the flames. However, every time she struck them, white light spread from that spot, and new flames shot from the hand she’d brought down on it.

“How—how can this be? I—I’m burning!” she cried as her whole body was wrapped in light like some sacred sculpture. It was said that, in protest against the actions of their fellow man, human holy men had once set themselves aflame—but rather than a saint, this was a demonic Noble in agony.

Just as the hellish torment was about to drive her out of her mind, a needle of wood whined through the air from the light that had enveloped D and pierced Dr. Gretchen through the heart.

“Gaaaah!”

When she unleashed that death rattle, the skin and flesh had already melted from her body, leaving bare bones. Yet her mouth moved and she formed words, saying, “Why? Why doesn’t my Daybreak have any effect? Somebody, please tell me. Ooooh!”

Her last cry was an expression not of surprise but of horror. The source of the light that was incinerating the queen of toxins rapidly lost its color, retreating as if to avoid some counterattack by the darkness, while from it stepped a figure in black. It was a man descended from Nobility who feared nothing save the day, yet who’d been turned into a source of sunlight and had still come back from the dead—D.

“You . . . Are you stronger . . . than even the greatest of the Greater Nobility? You, no more than . . . a dhampir. A filthy half-breed . . .”

The burning murderess raised a right hand reduced to bone. What did she intend to do with the poison in the jar? Turning, she aimed the container at the village fence. The contents of the jar were a virulent toxin that would become an odorless and colorless gas the second it made contact with the air, suffocating every living creature in a six-mile radius.

“Just watch. Here is my final gift to the world!”

The doctor threw it with all her might, but she was now nothing but a skeleton. As the jar limned a gentle arc that would carry it over the fence, a white light followed it. A rough wooden needle deflected the jar without breaking it. As it fell toward the ground, a hand in a black glove caught it. Though his glove and coat were both shredded, D’s hand demonstrated untold force and power. When she saw him put the jar away in his coat, Dr. Gretchen’s skeleton chattered its largely melted teeth and jaws with regret, and then it lost all cohesion and clattered to the ground. The bones quickly lost their shape, turning to dust. Yet her voice could still be heard.

“How did you . . .”

“Someone told me what you’d done,” D replied.

Did he pity the woman in her frustration? Or had her tactics been so utterly inhuman as to garner a certain respect?

“Who . . . was it?” said the one bone that remained on the mound of dust—the skull. Its vocal cords and tongue had long since turned to dust, yet it seemed to produce the voice from sheer tenacity.

“It was Rosaria,” D answered.

To be precise, it had been the other Rosaria—a spirit or a doppel-gänger that had appeared before D as he watched the preparations for the execution before dawn from a tree, and had told the Hunter that Dr. Gretchen had made the four of them drink poison.

“You used the same trick once on a certain Greater Noble. I remembered that.”

“Impossible . . . Why, that was . . . ten thousand years ago! Besides . . . how did you make an antidote?”

“I didn’t.”

The skull’s teeth came to a dead stop. “What I did to you . . . would burn a Noble down to the bone. Because it turns you into the sun . . . no one can withstand it. Yet how did you manage this . . . without any antidote? Why . . . the only one who’s ever endured that was our Sacred Ancestor . . .”

Her voice petered out there, and then came back again. This time it was so faint, it didn’t seem it would even reach human ears.

“Now . . . I finally see . . . D . . . your face . . . I’ve seen it somewhere. It can’t be . . . You can’t be . . . Your highness is . . .”

After watching the last remaining bone lose its shape and turn to dust, D headed for the main gate on foot. Two foes he needed to deal with still remained in the village.

When D was about six feet from the gate, a flash of black light angled up out of the ground. Taking D through the solar plexus, it came out again though the back of his neck. Not making a sound, D kept his left hand in his pocket as he grabbed the long spear with his right and tried to pull it out through his back. Just then, a second spear burst from the earth. D grabbed that with his right hand as well, but its steel head slipped through his hand, tying his solar plexus and neck together again.

Laughter rose from the ground. And as it rose, black earth flew away to reveal a gigantic exoskeleton. Roland, the Duke of Xenon.

“I was watching your battle all along from underground. As Dr. Gretchen herself said, that poison wasn’t terribly potent. And as I watched, I noticed something. D—you can’t see, can you?”

—

Their wagon was indeed in the warehouse. And its cargo was still loaded. The only reason they thought it wasn’t a trap was because this village had had so much trouble lately, and the pair decided the townspeople hadn’t had time to break down the load yet. They were half right. Thanks to the accuracy of their deduction, all their hardships had been banished from the brains of the two men, and that was where the danger lay. Yes—it was a trap. The pair did a quick yet thorough investigation, but there didn’t seem to be any problem. Nor was there any sign of anyone in hiding.

“All right,” Juke said when he was sure they were in the clear. Sergei was overjoyed.

Silence had returned to the darkness outside. What kind of unearthly battle was D locked in with their foes?

With D, their decoy, coming right up to the front door, the pair of transporters planned to make off with their wagon and cargo while the Hunter kept the villagers occupied. The plan was a simple, tried-and-true classic, and it seemed it would come off perfectly. They were concerned about D, but he’d told them to take off as soon as they’d done their part.

Juke climbed up onto the roof, and Sergei got in the driver’s seat.

“We’re gonna tear straight out of here!”

But as soon as Sergei took up the reins, a fourteen-foot-tall figure came in through the warehouse entrance.

“Holy crap!”

“What the hell is that?”

That was all they could say as the giant’s smooth movements placed it in front of the wagon. When its enormous face turned in their direction, Sergei started to draw the rivet gun D had procured at the neighboring village.

“Don’t,” the face told him, and he froze. After all, the face was more than double the size of any person’s.

“Just who are you?” Juke, who was tougher than Sergei, asked. He had his firearm out on the roof.

“My name is Grand Duke Mehmet—I’m one of General Gaskell’s guests. Come now—if you fire that, the villagers are sure to come running. What’s more, shooting me won’t do any good.”

“Then what do you want?” Sergei asked from the driver’s seat. He was getting used to the large face. No longer afraid, he was puzzled.

“Nothing in particular. I don’t care about the two of you. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t matter to me whether I simply let you go or if I smashed you flat. Which shall it be?”

“I’d have to go with the one where you say, ‘On your way, guys.’ ”

Juke nodded at Sergei’s reply.

“However . . .” Until this point, there’d been something humorous about the grand duke’s expression, but suddenly it became that of a merciless Noble. “I can use the two of you—to slay D. Gretchen, that sly minx, tricked me, and by the time I’d woken up, Roland had also, so perhaps it was fortunate that I noticed the two of you out in front of this warehouse.”

“I’m not sure exactly what you’re talking about, but you’d best hurry up and go. You’re just gonna fall further behind at this rate.”

“Oh, I don’t mind. No matter how impressive Dr. Gretchen or Roland may be, I don’t think either of them alone is a match for that Hunter. With his swordsmanship and his bearing—I’m afraid to say I don’t believe in the least that I can face him on my own.”

The huge face twisted into an evil grin. Eyes as big as fists reflected the faces of the two transporters.

“Yes, I’m going to need an edge over him.”

—

III

—

The Duke of Xenon’s assertion had been correct—D remained blind. Robbed of his sight in his first encounter with Madame Laurencin, he now faced one fearsome opponent after another on the final day of his recovery. And the foe before the eyes he kept shut had not only been ordered to fight the Hunter for some mysterious reason; he also burned with hatred over having his beloved daughter taken from him. D had been able to destroy Dr. Gretchen because all her preening about the trap she’d laid had given him her position and allowed him to follow her movements—even as she threw the jar, she’d kept talking.

Raising the skewered D ten feet off the ground, the Duke of Xenon shook the spears in both hands with relish. A cry of pain came from D’s mouth, and in addition to the lifeblood that dripped from the spearheads, the other blood that sprayed from him fell like a crimson rain.

“This isn’t the way I ordinarily do things, D—but the fury of a father who’s had his daughter taken is a bloody fury.”

This Nobleman had always been rather cheerful in battle, but now his behavior was dismal and cruel. Skewered from the solar plexus to the neck by two spears, D appeared unable to do anything about his torment.

“But it’s funny,” the Duke of Xenon said, his brow crinkling inside the massive exoskeleton. “The first time I fought you, you’d already lost the use of your eyes to Madame Laurencin. However, it didn’t seem like the fight of a blind man, and until this very moment I’d forgotten all about it. So, just how did you find me out, I wonder?”

“You’ll see—” said a cold voice that fell on the duke from above like moonlight.

“What?”

“—soon enough.”

And as he spoke, D moved. Upward? No, downward. Not even bothering to pull out the spears that ran through him, the gorgeous Hunter did completely the opposite, sliding down to the Duke of Xenon’s hands as if he wished to have the weapons driven even further into him. New flesh tore, and fresh blood spurted out.

“D—damnation!” the Duke of Xenon exclaimed, but before he could let go of his spears, the sword D had raised high above his head described a mesmerizing trail of exquisite light as it sank into the head of the exoskeleton. Pale blue sparks shot out, and the night air was rocked by a cry of pain from the Duke of Xenon.

“D! Who on earth are you?”

Still staggering, the giant swung its massive right fist. The wind whistled. Though D blocked the blow with his left arm, the difference in their weights was so great the Hunter was knocked thirty feet, smashing against the village gates. The two long spears still jabbing through him kept him from moving his body freely.

Sparks flew from where the arc had met the Duke of Xenon’s head, staining the darkness blue, but he didn’t fall.

“It seems like your strike has left something to be desired, D! And now I see why. What happened to your left hand?”

D’s left arm had come out of his coat—and it was cut off from the wrist down.

—

“Sergei, we might as well give up,” Juke said, lowering his gun. “There’s no point in throwing down with that monster. As long as we’re still alive, there’s a chance. Climb down from there.”

“Sure—I’m just supposed to skulk away like some lover boy when his woman’s husband comes home?” Sergei said, shrugging his shoulders as he let go of the reins.

Grand Duke Mehmet’s enormous face pulled away. At that instant, Juke raised his gun with just a movement of his wrist and fired his weapon from below his waist.

The roar tore a black hole below the nose in the enormous face. Having taken the shot at close range, the gigantic puppet was left staggering.

“Yahoo!” Sergei exclaimed at the top of his lungs, slapping the reins. The horses whinnied, and the wagon sped forward, reaching sixty miles per hour in half a second.

The giant made a reflexive move for the door. Sergei aimed for his right leg. They were going to plow straight into it—but a split second before they did, he cut the wagon to the left. Its leg hit by the front right corner of the vehicle, the giant was thrown wildly off balance, landing on its left side on the floor. Encouraged by the thud it made, Sergei sped on.

“How should we get out of here?” Sergei yelled.

“Take it out the main gate,” Juke shouted. His eyes were turned back toward the entrance to the warehouse. Its roof blew off. A black shape shot up, extending its arms and legs in midair.

Juke’s firearm barked time and again. The stock pressed to his shoulder kicked hard enough that it should’ve broken the bone. The penetrator rifle D had procured could even punch through the armor plating on a flame beast. Ordinarily it would be mounted on a tripod to steady it for repeated firings, because the average person couldn’t carry it around. When he’d accepted it, Juke had been completely despondent, but just now it’d saved him.

The high-caliber penetrator rounds he slammed into the giant’s temple, shoulder, and side threw the attacker off balance in midair. The leap had been calculated to bring it down on the roof of the fleeing wagon, but the hands it desperately extended barely missed the edge of the vehicle, and the left half of the machine man slammed into a nearby barn. When the giant rose again, three-headed chickens, giant rabbits, and cow-pigs that had been roused from their peaceful slumber were running everywhere.