CHAPTER 2
PEOPLE ON THE FRONTIER
CHAPTER 2
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The year is A.D. 12,090.
The human race dwells in a world of darkness.
Or perhaps it might be more accurate to call it a dark age propped up by science. All seven continents are crisscrossed by a web of super-speed highways, and at the center of the system sits a fully automated “cyber-city” known as the Capital, the product of cutting-edge scientific technology. The dozen weather controllers manipulate the climate freely. Interstellar travel is no longer a far-fetched dream. In vast spaceports, hulking matter-conversion rockets and ships propelled by galactic energy stare up at the empyrean vault, and exploration parties have actually left their footprints on a number of planets outside our solar system—Altair and Spica, to name just two.
However, all of that is a dream now.
Take a peek at the grand Capital. A fine dust coats the walls of buildings and minarets constructed from translucent metal crystal; in places you’ll find recent craters large and small from explosives and ultraheat rays. The majority of automated roads and maglev highways are in shambles, and not a single car remains to zip from place to place like a shooting star.
There are people. Tremendous mobs of them. Flooding down the streets in endless numbers. Laughing, shouting, weeping, paying their respects to the Capital, the melting pot of existence, with a vitality that borders on complete chaos. But their garb isn’t what you’d expect for the masters of a once-proud metropolis. Men don shabby trousers and tunics redolent of the distant Middle Ages, and threadbare cassocks like a member of a religious order might wear. Women dress in dim shades and wear fabric rough to the touch, completely devoid of flamboyance.
Through the milling crowd of men armed with longswords or bows and arrows comes a gasoline-powered car most likely taken from some museum. Trailing black smoke and popping with the firecrackers of backfires the vehicle carries along a group of laser-gun toting lawmen.
A dreadful scream rises from one of the buildings and a woman staggers out. From her inhuman cry people instinctively know the cause of her terror, and call out for the sheriff and his men. Before long, they race to the scene, ask the wailing woman where the terror is located, and enter the building in question with faces paler than the bloodless countenance of the witness herself. They ride an independently powered elevator down five hundred stories.
In one of the subterranean passageways—all of which had supposedly been destroyed ages ago—there’s a concealed door, and beyond it a vast graveyard where the Nobility, blood-craving creatures of the night, slumber as in days gone by in wooden coffins filled with damp soil.
The sheriff and his men soon go into action. Fortunately, it seems there are no curses or vicious beasts here, no defense system of lasers or electronic cannons. These Nobles were probably resigned to their fate. The lawmen hold rough wooden stakes and gleaming metal hammers in their hands. Their expressions are a pallid blend of fear and sinfulness. The mob of black silhouettes encircles a coffin, someone’s arm rises toward the heavens then knifes back down. There’s a dull thud. A horrifying scream and the stench of blood fill the graveyard. The anguished cry grows thinner and dies out, and the group moves on to the next coffin.
When the lawmen leave the graveyard not long after that, their faces are adorned with crimson beads of blood and a shade of sinfulness much deeper than the one they wore before this mission.
Though the Nobility was nearly extinct, the feelings of pride brought on by the awe humanity held toward them had seeped into their very blood over the course of ten long millennia and would not be shaken off so easily. Because they had indeed reigned supreme over the human race. And because the automated city—now populated by people who couldn’t fathom its machinery or receive the tiniest fraction of the benefits it might provide—and everything else in the world that could be called civilization was something they had left behind. They—the vampires.
.
This strict stratification of vampires and humanity came about when one day in 1999 mankind’s history as lords of the earth came to an abrupt end. Someone pushed the button and launched the full-scale nuclear war that the human race had been warned about for so long. Thousands of ICBMs and MIRVs flew in disarray, reducing one major city after another to a white-hot inferno, but the immediate fatalities were far outstripped by the wholesale death dealt by radiation more potent than tens of thousands of x-rays.
The theory of a limited nuclear war, where sensible battles would be fought so the winners might later rebuild and rule, was obliterated in a split second by a million degrees of heat and flame.
The survivors barely made it. Their numbers totally insignificant, they shunned the surface world and its toxic atmosphere and were left with no choice but to live in underground shelters for the next few years.
When they finally returned to the surface, their mechanized civilization was in ruins. With no way of contacting survivors in other countries, any thoughts these isolated pockets of humanity might have had of things returning to the way they’d been before the destruction, or even of rebuilding to the point where it could be called a civilization, were flights of fantasy, and nothing more.
The regression began.
With generation after generation striving merely to survive, memories of the past grew dim. The population increased somewhat after a thousand years, but civilization itself plunged back to the level of the Middle Ages. Dreading the mutant creatures spawned by radiation and cosmic rays, the humans formed small groups and moved into plains and forests that over the years had gradually returned to verdure. In their struggles with the cruel environment, at times they had to kill their newborn babies to keep what little food they had. Other times the infants went toward filling their parents’ empty bellies.
That was the time. In that pitch-black, superstitious world they appeared. How they—the vampires—kept themselves hidden from the eyes of man and lived on in the luxuriant shadows was unclear. However, their life form was almost exactly as described in legend and they seemed the best suited to fill the role of the new masters of history.
Ageless and undying so long as they partook of the blood of other creatures, the vampires remembered a civilization the human race could not, and they knew exactly how to rebuild it. Before the nuclear war, the vampires had contacted others of their kind who lurked in dark places around the globe. They had a hidden super-power source that they’d secretly developed in fallout shelters of their own design, along with the absolute minimum machinery required to reconstruct civilization after the absolute worst came to pass.
But that’s not to say they were the ones who caused the nuclear war. Through cryptesthesia, the black arts, and psychic abilities mankind never guessed they’d cultivated, the vampires simply knew when the human race would destroy itself and how they, the vampires, could restore order to the world.
Civilization was rebuilt and the tables were turned for vampires and humans.
How much friction and discord that course created between the two sides was soon apparent. Within two thousand years of stepping onto history’s great stage, the vampires gave the world a sprawling civilization driven by super-science and sorcery, dubbed themselves the “Nobility,” and subjugated humanity. The automated city with its electronic brain and ghostly will, interstellar spaceships, weather controllers, methods of creating endless quantities of materials through matter-conversion—all this came into being through the thoughts and deeds of them and them alone.
However, who could have imagined that within five short millennia of this golden age they would be treading the road to extinction? History didn’t belong to them after all.
As a species, the vampires possessed an underlying spark to live that was far less tenacious than that of humans. Or perhaps it would be better to say that their life held an element that ensured their future destruction. From the end of the fourth millennia A.D., the vampire civilization as a whole started to show a phenomenal decline in energy, and that brought on the start of mankind’s great rebellion. Though they had an expertise in the physiology of the human brain, and had developed the science of psychology to such extremes they could manipulate the human mind in any way they chose, in the end they found it impossible to eradicate the innate urge to rebel that lurked in the depths of the human soul.
Weakened by one great uprising after another, the Nobility entered dozens of armistices with the humans, each of which maintained the peace for short periods. But before long the Nobles faded away, like gallant nihilists who realized their destiny.
Some took their own lives, while others entered a sleep that would last until the end of time. Some even headed off into the depths of space, but their numbers were extremely few; in general the vampires had no wish to establish themselves in extraterrestrial environs.
At any rate, their overall numbers were on the decline; ultimately they scattered before mankind’s pursuit. By the time A.D. 12,090 arrived, the vampires served no purpose beyond terrorizing the humans on the Frontier. Yet, precisely because this was their sole purpose, the humans felt a special terror of them that shook their very souls.
To be honest, it was miraculous that mankind was able to plan and execute a rebellion no matter how utterly desperate they might have been.
The horror all felt for vampires—who slept by day and awoke at night to suck the lifeblood from humans and ensure their own eternal life—became part of the vampire mythology, right along with the ancient legends of transformations into bats and wolves, and their power to control the elements. As a result of clever psychological manipulation that continued throughout this mechanized age, the horror laid roots down into the deepest layers of the human psyche.
It is said that the first time the humans signed an armistice with the vampires—their rulers—all the representatives on the human side save one were shaking so badly their teeth chattered. Even though vampires could no longer be found in the Capital, it had still taken the humans nearly three hundred years to check every street and building.
Given how much strength the vampires had in their favor, why hadn’t they set about exterminating the human race? That is the eternal question. It couldn’t be that they were simply afraid of destroying their source of the blood, since they had mastered a method of perfectly synthesizing human blood in the first stage of their civilization. As far as manual labor went, they had more than enough robots to bear the load by the time the revolution broke out. In fact, the reason why they allowed humans to continue to exist in the first place, even in their role as subordinates, is a mystery. Most likely it was due to some sort of superiority complex, or out of pity.
Vampires were rarely seen by humans any more, but the fear remained. On very rare occasions, they appeared from the depths of the darkness and left their vile bite on the pale throats of their victims; sometimes a person would seek them out with wooden stake in hand like a man possessed, while at other times the humans would drive the victim out from their midst, earnestly praying they wouldn’t receive another visit from the vampires.
The Hunters were a product of the people’s fear.
Being nearly indestructible themselves, the vampires weren’t so eager to exterminate the mutant creatures humanity feared so much in the years just after the war. Quite the contrary, the vampires loved the vicious beasts, nurtured them, and even created others like them with their own hands.
Thanks to their unparalleled knowledge of biology and genetic engineering, the vampires unleashed one legendary monster after another into the world of man: werewolves, were-tigers, serpent men, golems, fairies, mer-creatures, goblins, raksas, ghouls, zombies, banshees, fire dragons, salamanders resistant to flames, griffins, krakens, and more. Though their creators neared extinction, the creatures still ran rampant on the plains and in the mountains.
Working the land with the scant machinery the Nobility allowed them, defending themselves with replicas of old-fashioned gunpowder weapons or homemade swords and spears, the humans studied the nature of these artificial monstrosities for generations, learning their powers and their weaknesses. In time, some people came to work exclusively on weapons and ways to kill these things.
Of those people, some specialized in producing more effective weaponry, while those of surpassing strength and agility trained themselves to use those weapons. These exceptional warriors were the first Hunters.
As time went by, Hunters became more narrowly focused, and specialists like the Were-tiger Hunter and Fairy Hunter were born. Of them all, Vampire Hunters were universally recognized as possessing strength and intellect beyond the rest, as well as an ironclad will impervious to the fear their former rulers inspired in others.
.
The next morning, Doris was awakened by the shrill whinny of a horse. White light speared in through her window, telling her it was a fresh day. She was lying on the bed dressed just as she was when D knocked her out. Actually, D had carried her to the bed when his first skirmish was over. Her nerves had been frayed with worry after her vampire attack, and she was incredibly tense from her search for a Hunter, but when the power of D’s left hand put her to sleep she was totally at peace and had slept soundly till morning.
Instinctively reaching for her throat, Doris recalled what had happened the night before.
What happened while I was asleep? He said we had company, and that had to be him. I wonder how D made out? As she sprung out of bed in a panic, her expression suddenly grew brighter. She was still a little lethargic, but physically nothing else seemed out of the norm. D had kept her safe. Remembering that she hadn’t even shown him where his room was, she pawed at her sleep-disheveled locks and hurried out of her bedroom.
The heavy shades in the living room were fully drawn; at one end of the murky room sat a sofa with a pair of boots hanging off the end.
“D, you really did it, didn’t you? I knew hiring you was the right thing to do!”
From beneath the traveler’s hat that covered his face came the usual low voice.
“Just doing my job. Sorry, it seems I forgot to put the barrier back up.”
“Don’t you worry about that,” Doris said animatedly, checking the clock on the mantle. “It’s only five past seven in the morning. Get some more sleep. I’ll have your breakfast ready in no time. And I’ll make it the best I can.”
Outside a horse whinnied loudly again. Doris was reminded she had a visitor.
“Who the hell would be making such a racket at this hour?”
She went over to the window and was about to raise the shade when a sharp “Don’t!” stayed her hand.
When Doris turned to D with a gasp, her face was twisted by the same terror that had contorted it the night before when she tried to escape his approach. She remembered what the gorgeous Hunter really was. And yet she reclaimed her smile soon enough; not only was she stouthearted, but she also had a naturally fair disposition. “Sorry about that. I’ll fix you up a room later. At any rate, get some rest.” As soon as she’d said that she went ahead and grabbed a corner of the shade anyway, but the moment she lifted it and took a look outside, her endearing face quickly became a mass of pure hatred. Returning to her bedroom for her prized whip, she stepped outside indignantly.
Astride a bay in front of the porch was a hulking man of twenty-four or twenty-five. The explosive-firing, ten-banger pistol he was so proud of hung from the leather gun-belt that girt his waist. Below a mop of red hair, his sly eyes crept across every inch of Doris’ frame.
“What’s your business, Greco? I thought I told you not to come around here no more.” Her tone just as commanding as it had been in her search for the Hunter, Doris glared at the man.
For a brief instant, anger and confusion surfaced in his cloudy eyes, but a lewd smile soon spread across the man’s face and he said, “Aw, don’t say that. I come out here all worried about you and this is the thanks I get? Seems you been looking for a Hunter now, haven’t you? Couldn’t be you’ve gone and got attacked by our old lord, could it?”
In a heartbeat, vermilion spread across Doris’ face, the result of the anger and embarrassment she felt at Greco hitting it right on the mark. “Grow up! If you and your trashy friends in town go around spreading wild stories about me just because I won’t have nothing to do with you, I’ll teach you a thing or two!”
“Come on, don’t get so worked up,” Greco said, shrugging his shoulders. Then his gaze became probing as he said, “It’s just, the night before last there was this drifter in the saloon blubbering on about how he got himself challenged to a test of skill out at the hill on the edge of town by a right powerful girl, then got his ass handed to him before he could even draw his sword. So I buy him a drink to hear all the details and it turns out looks-wise and build-wise, the girl sounds like the spitting image of you. The frosting on the cake was he said she’s damn handy with a weird kind of whip, and there ain’t no one in these parts that could be besides you, missy.” Greco’s eyes were trained on the whip Doris had in her right hand.
“Sure, I was out looking for someone. Someone good. You should know as well as anyone how much damage mutants have been causing around town lately. Well, things are no different out here. It’s more than I can take care of all by my lonesome.”
On hearing Doris’ reply, Greco smiled faintly. “In that case, all you’d have had to do was go ask Pops Cushing in town, seeing how he’s in charge of scouting new talent. You know, five days back, one of the hands at our place seen you chasing a lesser dragon toward the lord’s castle right around dusk. Now, on top of that, you’ve got this need for hired help you don’t want anyone in town to know about.” Greco’s tone of voice changed entirely. He threateningly suggested, “Let’s see you take that scarf off your neck.”
Doris didn’t move.
“Can’t do it, can you,” he laughed. “I figured as much. I think I’ll go into town and have a few words with … well, I don’t think I have to tell you the rest. So, what do you say? Just be sensible and give me your okay for what I’ve been asking you to do all along. If we got hitched, you’d be the mayor’s daughter-in-law. Then no one in town could lay a stinkin’ finger on you or—”
Before his vile words were done, a snap rang through the air and the bay reared up with a whinny of pain. Doris’ whip had stung the horse’s flank with lightning speed. In a heartbeat, Greco’s massive frame was thrown out of the saddle and crashed to the ground. Hand pressed to his tail, he groaned in pain. The bay’s hoofbeats echoed loudly as it fled the farm, heartlessly leaving its master behind.
“Serves you right! That’s for all the filthy things you’ve gotten away with by hiding behind your father’s power,” Doris laughed. “I never cared too much for your father or anyone in cahoots with him. And if you got a problem with that, you bring your daddy and your buddies out here any time. I won’t run or hide. Of course, the next time you show that ugly, pockmarked mug of yours around here, you’d better be ready to have me flay the skin right off it!”
Color rose in the big man’s face as words so rough you had to wonder where a beautiful young lady kept them shot at him like flames.
“Bitch, you fucked up real good …” As he spoke, his right hand went for his ten-banger. Once again, a surge of black split the sunlight-soaked air, and the pistol he’d tried to draw was thrown into the bushes behind him. And he could draw in less than half a second.
“Next time I’ll send your nose or one of your ears flying.”
The man knew there was more to her words than empty threats. With no parting quip, Greco scurried off the farm, rubbing his backside and right wrist by turns.
“That scumbag’s nothing without his daddy behind him.” After she spat the words, Doris turned and froze on the spot.
Dan stood in the doorway, still dressed in his pajamas and armed with a laser rifle. His big, round eyes were brimming with tears.
“Dan, you … you heard everything then?”
The boy nodded mechanically. Greco had been facing toward the house and he hadn’t said anything about Dan, so the boy must’ve stayed behind the door. “Sis ... were you really bit by a Noble?” The boy lived in the wilds of the Frontier. He was well aware of the fate of those with the devil’s kiss on their throat.
The young beauty who had just sent a brute twice her size packing with a crack of her whip was now rooted to the spot, unable to speak.
“No, it can’t be!” The boy suddenly ran over and threw his arms around her. The sorrow and concern he’d been wrestling with surged out in a tidal wave, soaking Doris’ slacks with a flood of hot tears. “You can’t be, you just can’t! I’d be all alone then ... You can’t be!” Though he didn’t want it to be true, he had no idea what he could do about it, and his sorrow sprung from his helplessness.
“It’s okay,” Doris said, patting her brother’s tiny shoulder as she fought back tears of her own. “No lousy Noble’s put the bite on me. These are bug bites I’ve got on my neck. I only hid them because I didn’t want you getting all worried.”
A ray of light streamed into his tear-streaked face. “Really? Really truly?”
“Yep.”
Surely the boy had a heart that could shift from low gear to high on the fly if that was all it took to calm him down. “But what’ll we do if the folks in town believe all Greco’s fibbing and come busting in here?”
“You know how good I am in a fight. Plus, I’ve got you here—”
“And we’ve got D, too!”
At the boy’s exuberant words, the girl’s face clouded. That was the difference between someone who knew the way Hunters worked and someone who didn’t. In fact, the boy hadn’t been told D was a Hunter.
“I’m gonna go ask him!”
“Dan—”
Before she could stop him, the boy disappeared into the living room. She hurried after him, but was too late.
In a completely trusting tone, Dan addressed the youth on the sofa. “A guy just came out here trying to get my sister to marry him, and he says he gonna spread the worst kind of lies about her. He’ll be back with a bunch of folks from town, I just know it. And then they’ll take my sister away. Please save her, D.”
Imagining his answer, Doris unconsciously closed her eyes. The problem wasn’t the reply itself, but the effect it would have. A cold, adamant rejection would leave a wound on the boy’s fragile heart that might never heal.
But this is how the Vampire Hunter replied: “Leave it to me. I won’t let anyone lay a finger on your sister.”
“Okay!”
The boy’s face shone like a sunny morning.
From behind him, Doris said, “Well, breakfast will be ready soon. Before we eat, go have a look at the thermo-regulators out in the orchards.”
The boy galloped off like the spirit of life itself. Doris turned to the still prone D and said, “Thank you. I know it’s the iron law of Hunters that they won’t lift a finger for anything but dealing with their prey. I’d be in no position to complain no matter how you turned him down. You did it without hurting him ... and he loves you like a big brother.”
“But I do refuse.”
“I know. Aside from your job itself, I won’t ask any more of you—what you said to him just now will do fine. I’ll handle my own problems. And the sooner you get your work finished the better.”
“Fine.”
Not surprisingly, D’s voice was emotionless and bitterly cold.
.
As expected, “company” came as the three of them were just finishing a somewhat peculiar breakfast. What made it peculiar was that D only ate half as much as young Dan. The menu consisted of ham and eggs on a colossal scale—mutant-chicken eggs a foot across on an inch-thick slab of light, homemade ham—along with preservative-free black bread hot out of the oven, and juice from massive Gargantua grapes cultivated right on their own farm. Of course, the juice was freshly squeezed and the three large glasses were filled from a single grape. And those were just the main dishes; there was a gigantic bowl of salad and fragrant floral tea, too. Only a farm like the Langs’ could offer a rich menu like this, and the freshness of the ingredients alone should have been enough to make a good-sized man take seconds or thirds on the ham and eggs. The refreshing morning sunlight and giant lavender blossoms that adorned the table were in essence part of a sacred ritual to give all those gathered around it the strength to fight the cruel Frontier for another day.
And yet, D quickly set down his fork and knife and withdrew to the room in the back Doris had just given him.
“That’s weird. I wonder if he ain’t feeling too good?”
“Yes, I’m sure it’s something like that.” Though she pretended nothing was wrong, Doris pictured D back in his room now taking his own kind of breakfast, and started to feel ill.
“Not you too, Sis! What’s the matter? I know you like him and all, but don’t get sick just because he does.”
Doris was about to lay into Dan for his teasing remarks when tension suddenly flooded her face.
Outside, a thunder of hoofbeats drew closer. Lots of hoofbeats.
“Damn it, here they come,” Dan shouted, dashing over to where a laser rifle hung on the wall.
He started to call out for D, but Doris’ quick hand silenced him.
“But why not? It’s gotta be Greco and his thugs,” he said with disgust.
“Let’s see if the two of us can’t handle it first. If that doesn’t work, maybe then …” But she was perfectly aware that no matter what was going to happen to the two of them, D wouldn’t do anything.
Armed with a whip and a rifle, the pair stepped out onto the porch. She let her little eight-year-old brother join her because the law of the Frontier was that if you and your family didn’t defend your own lives and property, no one else would. If you always relied on others, you wouldn’t last long against the fire dragons and golems.
In no time, a dozen men on horseback formed up in front of them.
“Dear me, the cream of local society is out in force. A no-account little farm like this don’t deserve such distinguished guests.” As Doris greeted them in a calm tone, her eyes were cautiously trained on the men in the second and third ranks. In the foremost rank were prominent villagers like Sheriff Luke Dalton, Dr. Sam Ferringo, and Mayor Rohman—this last was Greco’s father, whose face was unusually oily for a man nearing sixty. There was no reason to worry about any of those three suddenly trying anything funny, but behind them was a mob of brutal hooligans just itching to make a statement with the Magnum guns and battered heat-rays they wore on their hips should the opportunity arise. They were all hired hands from Mayor Rohman’s ranch. Doris glared at each of them in turn without a trace of fear until she came across a familiar face at the very tail of the mob, and her gaze became one of pure contempt. When it looked like trouble was brewing, it was just like Greco to shut his big mouth, find the safest possible place, and try to look like he didn’t have the faintest idea what was going on.
“So, what’s your business?”
Apparently by mutual consent, Mayor Rohman spoke first.
“As if you don’t know. We’re out here on account of the marks you’ve got under that scarf. You show them to Doc Ferringo now, and if they’re nothing then fine. But if they’re ... well then, unfortunately we’ll have to put you in the asylum.”
Doris snorted in derision. “So you believe the nonsense that damn fool son of yours been talking? He’s been out here five time asking me to marry him and I’ve turned him down every time, so he’s stuck with some pretty damn sour grapes. That’s why he’s spreading these stories when they ain’t true. You keep spouting that filth and you won’t like what happens, mayor or not.”
The bluff rolled from her so fluently the mayor couldn’t get a word in edgewise. His bovine countenance flushed with rage.
“That’s right! My sister ain’t been bit by no vampire! So hit the road, you old pervert,” Dan shouted from his sister’s side, pushing the mayor over the edge.
“What do you mean by calling me an old pervert? Why, you … you little bastard! To say something like that about the mayor even in jest ... A pervert of all things! I’ll have you know ... ”
The old man had lost all control. He might hold all the real power in town, but he was still just the mayor of one tiny village. Simply touch on one of his sore spots, and his emotional restraints would burst. In that, he wasn’t so different from the thugs behind him.
From the back, Greco bellowed, “They’re making fools of us! C’mon boys, don’t pay them no nevermind. Let’s grab them and burn the damn house down!”
Cries of “Hell yeah!” and “Damn straight!” resounded from the rowdies.
“Hold everything! You pull any of that crap and you’ll answer to me!”
The rebukes flew from Sheriff Dalton. For a moment, Doris’ expression was placid. Though still under thirty, the sincere and capable sheriff was someone she was willing to trust. The hoodlums stopped moving, too.
“Are you with them, Sheriff?” Doris asked in a low voice.
“I need you to understand something, Doris. I’ve got a job to uphold as sheriff in this here village. And checking out your neck is part of it. I don’t want things getting out of hand. If it’s nothing, then one peek will do. Take your scarf off and let Doc have a look.”
“He’s right,” Dr. Ferringo said, rising in his saddle. He was about the same age as the mayor, but thanks to his studies of medicine in the Capital, he had the intelligent look of a distinguished old gentleman. Because Doris and Dan’s father had been a student of his at the education center, this good-natured man worried about their welfare on a daily basis. Before him alone, Doris couldn’t hold her head up. “No matter what the result may be, we won’t do wrong by you. You leave it to me and the sheriff.”
“No way, she goes to the asylum!” Greco’s spiteful words came from the back. “In this village, we got a rule that anyone that gets bit by a Noble goes to the asylum, no matter who they are. And when we can’t get rid of the Noble … heh heh … then we chuck them out as monster bait!”
The sheriff whipped around and roared, “Shut up, you damn fool!”
Greco was shocked into an embarrassed silence, but he drew power from the fact that he was surrounded by his hired hands. “Well, put a badge on you and you get pretty damn tough. Before you give me any more back talk, check out the bitch’s neck. After all, that’s what we’re paying you for, isn’t it?”
“What’d you say, boy?” The sheriff’s eyes had a look that could kill. At that same moment, the hoods were going for their backs and waists with their gunhands. An ugly situation was developing.
“Stop it,” the mayor barked bitterly at the entire company. “What’ll we prove by fighting among ourselves? All we have to do is take a look at the girl’s neck and we’ll be done here.”
The sheriff and the hoods had no choice but to begrudgingly go along with that. “Doris,” the sheriff called out to her in a gruffer tone than before, “you’d best take that scarf off.”
Doris tightened her grip on the whip.
“And if I say I don’t wanna?”
The sheriff fell silent.
“Get her!”
With Greco’s cry, the mounted thugs raced right and left. Doris’ whip uncoiled for action.
“Stop!” the sheriff shouted, but it looked like his commands would no longer do the trick, and just when the battle was about to be joined—
The toughs all stopped moving at once. Or to be more accurate, their mounts had jerked to a halt.
“What’s gotten into you? Move it!”
Even a kick from spurred heels couldn’t make the horses budge. If the men could’ve looked into their horses’ eyes, they might have glimpsed a trace of ineffable horror. A trace of overwhelming terror that wouldn’t permit the horses to be coerced any further, or even to flee. And then the eyes of every man focused on the gorgeous youth in black who stood blocking the front door, though no one had any idea when he’d appeared. Even the sunlight seemed to grow sluggish. Suddenly, a gust of wind brushed across the fields and the men turned away, exchanging uneasy looks.
“Who the hell are you?” The mayor tried his level best to sound intimidating, but there was no hiding the quiver in his voice. The youth had about him an air that churned the calm waters of the human soul.
Doris turned around and was amazed, while Dan’s face shined with delight.
Without a word, D stopped Doris from saying whatever she was about to say and stepped in front of the Langs as if to shield them. His right hand held a longsword. “I’m D. I’ve hired on with these people.”
He looked not at the mayor, but at the sheriff as he spoke.
The sheriff gave a little nod. He could tell at a glance what the youth before them really was. “I’m Sheriff Dalton. This here’s Mayor Rohman, and Dr. Ferringo. The rest back there don’t count for much.” After that reasonable introduction, he added, “You’re a Hunter, aren’t you? I see it in your eyes, the way you carry yourself. I seem to recall hearing there was a man of unbelievable skill traveling across the Frontier, and that his name was D. They say his sword is faster than a laser beam or some such thing.” Those words could be taken as fearful or praising, but D was silent.
The sheriff continued in a hard voice. “Only, they say that man’s a Hunter, and he specializes in vampires. And that he’s a dhampir himself.”
There were gasps. The village notables and hoods all froze. As did Dan.
“Oh, Doris! Then you really have been ...”
Dr. Ferringo barely squeezed the hopeless words from his throat.
“Yes, the girl’s been bitten by a vampire. And I’ve been hired to destroy him.”
“At any rate, the mere fact that she’s been bitten by a vampire is reason enough not to let her remain at large. She goes to the asylum,” the mayor declared.
“Nothing doing,” Doris shot back flatly. “I’m not going anywhere and leaving Dan and the farm unattended. If you’re hellbent on doing it, you’ll have to take me away by force.”
“Okay then,” Greco groaned. The girl’s manner and speech, defiant to the bitter end, reawakened his rancor at being spurned. He gave a toss of the chin to his thugs, whose eyes burned with the same shadowy fire as a serpent’s.
The rowdies were about to dismount in unison, but at that moment their horses reared up simultaneously. There was nothing they could do. Each gave their own cry of “Oof” or “Ow,” and every last one of them was thrown to the ground. The sunny air was filled with moans of pain and the whinnying of horses.
D returned his gaze to the sheriff. Whether or not the sheriff comprehended that a single glare from the Hunter had put the horses on end was unclear.
An indescribable tension and fear flowed between the two of them.
“I have a proposal.” At D’s words, the sheriff nodded his assent like he was sleepwalking. “Hold off on doing anything about the girl until I’ve finished my work. If we come out of it okay, that’s fine. If we don’t ...”
“You can rest assured I’ll take care of myself. If he’s beaten by the lord, I’ll drive a stake through my own heart.” Doris gave a satisfied nod.
“Don’t let her fool you! This jerk’s in league with the Nobility. You shouldn’t be making deals with him—he’s out to turn every last person in Ransylva into a vampire, I’m sure of it!” Having been thrown to the ground for the second time that day, Greco was still down on all fours, screaming. “Let’s do away with the bitch. No, better yet, give her to the lord. That way, he won’t go after any of the other women.”
With a pffft! a four-inch-wide pillar of flame erupted from the ground right in front of Greco’s face. The earth boiled from a blast of more than twenty thousand degrees, and the flames leapt to Greco’s greasy face, searing his upper lip. He tumbled backwards with a beastly howl of agony.
“Say anything else bad about my sister and your head’ll be next,” Dan threatened, perfectly aligning the barrel of his laser rifle with Greco’s face. Though it’s true the weapon had no kick, it was still unheard of for a child a good deal shorter than the weapon’s length to be skilled enough to hit a target dead-on.
Far from angry, the sheriff wore a grin that said, “You done good, kid.”
D addressed the sheriff softly.
“As you can see, we have a fierce bodyguard on our side. You could try and plow through us, but a lot of people will probably get hurt unnecessarily. Just wait.”
“Well, some of them could do with a little hurting if you ask me,” said the sheriff, glancing briefly at the hoodlums moaning behind him. “What do you make of this, Doc?”
“Why don’t you ask me?!” the mayor screamed, veins bulging. “You think we can trust this drifter? We should send her to the asylum, just like my boy says! Sheriff, bring her in right this moment!”
“The evaluation of vampire victims falls to me,” Dr. Ferringo said calmly, and then he produced a cigar from one of his inner pockets and put it in his mouth. It wasn’t a cheap one like the local knock-off artists hand rolled with eighty percent garbage. This was a high-class cigar in a cellophane wrapper that bore the stamp of the Capital’s Tobacco Monopoly. These were Dr. Ferringo’s treasure. He gave a little nod to Doris.
Her whip shot out with a wa-pish!
“Oof!” The mayor gave an utterly hysterical cry and grabbed his nose. With one slight twist of Doris’ wrist, her whip had taken the cigar from the doctor’s mouth and crammed it up one of the mayor’s nostrils.
Ignoring the mayor, whose entire face was flushed with rage, the doctor declared loudly, “Very well, I find Doris Lang’s infection of vampirism to be of the lowest possible degree. My orders are rest at home for her. Sheriff Dalton and Mayor Rohman, do you concur?”
“Yessir,” the sheriff replied with a nod of satisfaction, but suddenly he looked straight at D with the intimidating expression of a man sworn to uphold the law. “Under the following conditions. I’ll take the word of a damn-good Hunter and hold off on any further discussion. But let me make one thing crystal clear—I don’t want to have to stake you folks through the heart. I don’t want to, but if that time should come, I won’t give it a second thought.” And then, throwing the Lang children a look of pathos, he bid them farewell. “I’m looking forward to the day I can enjoy the juice of those Gargantua-breed grapes of yours. All right, you dirty dogs, mount up and make it snappy! And I’m warning you, any of you so much as make a peep about this back in town, I’ll throw you in the electric pokey, mark my words!”
.
The crowd disappeared over the hill, glancing back now and then with looks of hatred, compassion, and, from some, encouragement. D was about to go into the house when Doris asked him to wait. He turned to her coolly, and then she said, “You sure are strange for a Hunter. You might’ve taken on some work you didn’t have to, and I can’t pay you for it.”
“It’s not about work. It’s about a promise.”
“A promise? To who?”
“To your little bodyguard over there,” he said with a toss of his chin. Then, noticing Dan’s stiff expression, he asked, “What’s wrong? You hate me because I’m supposedly ‘in league with the Nobility’?”
“Nope.”
As he shook his head, the boy’s face suddenly crumpled in on itself and he started to cry.
The young hero who’d put Greco in his place minutes earlier now returned to being an eight-year-old boy. He blubbered away as he threw his arms around D’s waist. This child had rarely cried since the death of his father three years earlier. As he watched his sister struggling along as a woman on her own, the boy had secretly nurtured his own stores of pride and determination in his little heart. Naturally, life on the Frontier was hard and lonely for him too. When his youthful heart felt he might be robbed of his only blood relative, he forgot himself and latched onto not his sister, but rather to the man who’d only arrived the day before.
“Dan ...”
Doris reached for her brother’s shoulder with one hand, but D gently brushed it away. Before long, the boy’s cries started to taper off, and D quietly planted one knee on the wooden floor of the front porch, looking the boy square in his tear-streaked face.
“Listen to me,” he said in a low but distinct voice. Noticing the unmistakable ring of encouragement in his voice, Doris opened her eyes in astonishment.
“I promise you and your sister I’ll kill the Noble. I always keep my word. Now you have to promise me something.”
“Sure.” Dan nodded repeatedly.
“From here on out, if you want to scream and cry, that’s your prerogative. Do whatever you like. But whatever you do, don’t make your sister cry. If you think your crying will set her off too, then hold it in. If you’re being selfish and your sister starts to cry, make her smile again. You’re a man, after all. Okay?”
“Sure!” The boy’s face was radiant. It glowed with an aura of pride.
“Okay, then do your big brother a favor and feed his horse. I’ll be heading out on business soon.”
The boy raced off, and D went into the house without another word.
“D, I ...” Doris sounded like something was weighing greatly on her.
The Vampire Hunter ignored her words, and said simply, “Come inside. Before I head out, I want to put a little protective charm on you.” And then he vanished down the dark and desolate hall.