CHAPTER 3

-

I

-

In the village of Somui, the giant onions and hallucinogenic blue wheat had brought a hundred dalas. That would hold them a month. Around the middle of next month, they’d harvest twice what he had today, and that would be enough to tide them over until fall. Tapping the leather bag of coins in his coat pocket, Matthew Dyalhis hurried down the road that led to the edge of town. That’s where he’d left his covered wagon.

Undoubtedly the fact that he’d pulled in twice as much as he’d expected had served to distract him from how harsh fate could be. No sooner had he spotted the black mass near the spot for parking wagons than it resolved into five separate figures. What made Matthew despair was that out of them, one of the faces was very familiar. The other four were considered ne’er-do-wells—he’d known them since he was little—but the familiar one was a good deal older.

“Hi, Dad,” Matthew called out to him. Somehow he managed a smile. “Mom and Sue are worried about you. Hurry on home, would you?”

“Aren’t you the cold one,” his father—Baird—said, letting out a belch that reeked of alcohol. “You’re not even gonna ask me to go back with you?”

“Do you plan on going home?” Matthew asked, slipping past his father to reach the wagon. To his right were Otto Flanagan and Mizz Quarona, to his left Ogen Shaway and Joppes Lallacksiski—but aside from Joppes, who’d been practicing martial arts since he was a kid, they weren’t much of a threat to him. He’d taken the other three all at once before and whipped them, and the two or three times he’d squared off against Joppes, it’d been a good fight. He believed he would’ve won if no one had interfered. As a result, these four rarely gave Matthew any trouble. But one of these days, there would have to be a reckoning.

As he reached for the driver’s seat, he heard, “C’mon, Matthew. Give your old man a little help here.” His father’s tone was pathetic—he always sounded that way when he asked for money.

Stopping, Matthew heaved a sigh. Though he thought about looking back, he decided against it and raised his foot to the step. There was a dull thud behind him. It was drowned out by a cry of pain. He now had no choice but to turn around.

Clutching his solar plexus, Baird was collapsing. Before he could do so, Joppes got his right arm around the man’s waist. Ogen kicked Matthew’s reeling father in the stomach. When he tumbled forward, Otto and Mizz started kicking the hell out of him.

“Please, just stop it!” Baird groaned, shielding his head.

“How are you supposed to pay us back, you old shit?”

“I don’t care if you have to peddle your wife and daughter; you get us that money!”

With every word the two thugs spoke, there was the sound of them striking the man in the back or stomach.

“Okay, take his right arm—and bust it!” Joppes ordered.

Mizz, the biggest of the bunch, got on the man’s back. Poking out between the two figures, Baird’s arm was pushed up toward his head. He began to let out a long cry.

Matthew turned around. He knew perfectly well what this would mean. If it hadn’t been his father, he would’ve kept going. First, he faced Otto: the thug quickly stepped over Matthew’s father and fled. Taking time to kick Baird in the hip, Mizz lost his chance to get into a stance, and Matthew landed a kick to his side. No matter how big or heavy Mizz was, his bones and nerves were no tougher than an ordinary person’s. When he let out a cry and landed on his ass, the end of Matthew’s boot caught him squarely in the middle of his face. That one blow sent him toppling backward.

Not even bothering to watch Mizz’s landing, Matthew spun around. Joppes and Ogen were both waving him away to show they had no intent of fighting.

Still tense, Matthew walked over to his father and asked, “You okay?”

He heard whimpering for a response. It made him both exceedingly angry and sad.

The boy looked up at Joppes. A curse on all of them rolled out of his mouth. He didn’t know how much they were owed, but this was more than just collecting on a debt.

“Come and get it,” he said, standing up straight again. But the instant he felt power filling him once more, his legs were pulled out from under him.

“What—”

He fell face first, putting his hands out like he was doing a push-up to save himself from the impact. Joppes’s boot knocked his hands out from under him. Somehow managing to keep the kick that came at him from hitting him anywhere important, Matthew put his right hand against the ground, then swung it hard at Joppes and Ogen. Catching a face full of dirt, both stopped what they were doing.

Matthew got up. A sharp pain shot through his right side. Swinging his right arm around, he grabbed his attacker by the scruff of the neck. He had a good idea who it was.

“Gimme some money, Matthew,” his father said. His breath stank of liquor.

“Sorry,” Matthew replied, and then he turned to Joppes and asked, “You’re all in cahoots, aren’t you?”

Joppes shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “Yeah, I guess we are. It was your old man’s idea. Said he wanted to get some serious cash.”

“Matthew,” the man said as pain encroached further into his son, “hurry up and hand it over. Are you gonna give it to me or not?”

Baird twisted his knife, and his son fell into a sorrowful unconsciousness.

-

The next thing Matthew knew, he was in the wagon and it was moving. He didn’t know whether he’d climbed in himself of if they’d put him in it. Knowing the way, the cyborg horses had started back toward the farm. The leather bag of coins was gone. Though he was lucky the wound to his side hadn’t extended to any of his internal organs, he hardly felt like celebrating.

His surroundings had already been annexed by the dominion of darkness, and the road that led straight to their farm on the outskirts of the village stretched like a white ribbon across the hilly terrain. The moon was out.

Fighting through his pain, Matthew put on his moonlight goggles. Magnifying the faint light of the moon to make the world seem as bright as day, such goggles were essential items for any traveler who might find himself on the road at night. Off to the left-hand side he could see a black depression. Though it was said to be a crater caused by a major earthquake about two centuries earlier, it was simply too vast—it must’ve been nearly a quarter of a million acres. Apparently local bandit groups used it to stash their loot, while a variety of avian creatures left partially devoured human remains there. Since it also hid marshes that gave off an eerie glow, fields where only poisonous weeds grew, and no dearth of strange creatures, Matthew thought it best to get past the great depression as quickly as possible and raised his whip toward that end.

“What’s that?” he exclaimed, catching a speeding black object out of the corner of his eye. It was coming from the west at a good speed. A horseless carriage—a car, and quite a large one at that.

“Don’t tell me that thing’s headed for our house!”

Before he could turn his head, fear blew its frosty breath into his heart. No one owned anything like that car except the Nobility. And it was headed toward his very own house, at night.

Just then, his fearful gaze was replaced by one of shock. Without slowing at all, the carriage, which must have weighed five tons, had floated up into the air. Matthew stopped his wagon in spite of himself. His eyes remained riveted on the vehicle, now stopped thirty feet off the ground, as he pulled out the first-aid kit under the driver’s seat. He had an intense desire to see what would happen next. But to do that, he’d need something for his pain.

Rubbing an antibiotic ointment on his wound, he’d just popped a painkiller into his mouth when a figure descended head first from the heavens and stopped thirty feet from the front of the car. It was a man with limbs so long and gangly they looked like a spider’s. His tight brown shirt left the lines of his body perfectly clear.

Matthew strained his ears. He caught fragments of a man’s voice.

“Come out here and . . . Count Brau . . . Didn’t you . . . how General Gas . . . wound up?”

On seeing the car’s roof open and a man appear from it, Matthew let out a gasp. It was a giant who had to be at least ten feet tall. The spear in his right hand was long and thick. It looked like one swipe from it would be enough to start a tornado.

“Put . . . car . . . this instant,” the giant commanded, pointing toward the ground.

“Why don’t . . . try . . . make me?”

That was obviously an attempt to provoke the giant. Matthew had noticed that a thread of hostility stretched between the two of them.

“I would . . . your name,” the giant said.

“It’s Speeny.”

The boy heard that statement clearly.

And with those words, the spindly man extended both arms and sent white strands billowing from his fingertips toward the giant. It was a spider’s web—or so Matthew believed, since the man bore such a resemblance to a spider, and the streaks of white were like thread.

The giant didn’t wait for them to make contact. Not moving from his position, where he’d taken a stance like a stern temple guardian, he shifted his grip on his spear to the very center, holding it up vertically as he spun it madly. The wind groaned. A colossal windmill appeared—the bottom of which just missed his toes, while the top reached far above his head as it spun in a blur. When the drifting threads struck it, they disappeared.

“Oh!” Matthew cried out.

As Speeny’s body was shaken by an unmistakable surprise, the count hurled his spear. It was a streak of black light that jabbed through the center of Speeny’s torso and out his back. With a disturbingly inhuman scream, the spiderish man twitched from head to toe, and then he moved no more. His limbs bent, pulling in toward his torso.

All this had transpired in less than a minute. Though Matthew was in a completely safe place, the tension of the deadly battle left him paralyzed.

For a short while the count stood like a wrathful deity on the roof of his vehicle in midair, with the impaled corpse swaying in the air before him, but then he unexpectedly made a remark that caused Matthew’s eyes to widen.

“That’s quite . . . playing dead.”

Suddenly, Speeny’s arms and legs extended. His narrow eyes opened.

“Ah . . . should’ve expected . . . Count Brau . . . Well . . . this back!”

Reaching for the spear with both hands, he smoothly pulled it out again. The man threw it easily, and the count caught it in midair.

“It would . . . you didn’t see . . . General Gas . . . The very least . . . is give you . . . same death . . .”

The moment Speeny finished talking, the long spear pierced his face, came out of the back of his head at an angle, and jabbed into the ground below him.

Matthew gasped. When the spear was hurled for the second time, the car had already begun to rise, shooting up into the starry sky with such ferocious speed the count couldn’t leap off. On returning to his senses, Matthew turned his attention to the spiderlike man. It was unclear where he might’ve vanished to, and there was no trace of him anywhere.

Feeling as if he’d just awakened from a nightmare, Matthew returned home. With one look at the bloodstained boy, his mother and sister set to patching him up without even bothering to listen to the tale of the bizarre battle he’d witnessed.

Once she’d finished taking care of him, his mother told him, “The first aid you did closed the wound and stopped the bleeding. But just to be on the safe side, go in to Doc Freddy’s and let him have a look at you tomorrow.”

Matthew nodded, and then said he wanted to turn in.

Saying nothing, his mother simply stared at him.

“What is it?”

“You really mean to tell me those four were the only ones in your fight?” she asked.

“That’s right.”

“Well, the way they stabbed you was pretty haphazard. Seems kinda—I don’t know—hesitant?”

Matthew simply shrugged.

“You know, every time I go into town, I ask around about your father. All I ever hear is that he’s still at her place, and that he drinks constantly. Seems he’s been over to Mr. Harnja’s general store a number of times to borrow money. He always apologizes and promises to pay after the next harvest. I wouldn’t put him above hitting up his own son, too. And if that didn’t work—I suppose he’d even stab you.”

“Mom,” Matthew said reproachfully. He knew nothing he could say would do any good. Her eyes held the absolute determination of a woman who’d raised two children alone on the Frontier.

“It was him, wasn’t it?”

Matthew nodded.

Clapping him lightly on the shoulder, his mother told him, “Take it easy for the next couple of days. Sue and I will handle the rest of the harvesting.”

As his mother headed for the door to his room, Matthew called to her, “Mom—don’t tell anyone what happened.”

His mother never paused on her way out of his room. The door closed.

Letting out a sigh, Matthew lay down on his bed. Maybe the painkillers had kicked in, because he felt groggy. A sharp rap snapped him wide awake. He thought hazily about what could’ve made it. It was the sound of glass. He turned to the right.

Beyond a window framing darkness, a pale face swayed—a blond woman of unearthly beauty. It wasn’t her lovely face that shook off his sleepiness, but rather the strength of the eerie aura that billowed from her, blasting him through the glass.

-

II

-

Shutting his eyes, Matthew slowly counted to five, and then opened them again. The face had vanished.

I’m so beat my brain must be playing tricks on me, he thought. Come to think of it, as pretty as she was, she only had one eye.

There was another rap. He had enough presence of mind to tell that this time it was a knock at his door.

“Come in,” he called out, taking his gaze off the window.

Sue came in. She wore a long robe over her pajamas.

“You’re still up?”

“I was worried,” Sue replied.

There’d been something fleeting about the girl ever since she was born, and although there was nothing physically wrong with her, her parents had always thought she wouldn’t be long for this world—a thought Matthew himself sometimes shared. She remained that way even now, but having reached nearly fourteen years of age, she inspired hope that she’d somehow manage to keep on living.

“My wound’s gonna be fine. After a full day’s rest tomorrow, I’ll be back in the fields.”

“I’m glad,” Sue said. The smile her bloodless lips formed was heartbreakingly sweet. Matthew always fought the urge to grab her by those dainty shoulders and give her a big hug.

“What’s the matter?” Matthew inquired gently, seeing that his younger sister was staring at a single point, unable to hide her anxiety.

Bringing one hand to her lips, Sue bit the knuckle of her forefinger.

“Hey!”

“Matt, have you had that dream again?”

“What dream?”

“The one from the other day!”

“The other day, you say? You mean when we all had the same dream—ten days ago?”

Sue nodded. “We dreamed about a falling star. The northern Frontier was in a terrible state. And ever since, I’ve had the scariest dreams every night.”

“What sort of dreams?”

“You mean you haven’t been having them, too, Matt?”

“What sort do you mean?”

“Scary ones,” Sue mumbled, eyes closed and hands folded before her chest. “There are these shadowy figures approaching out of a fog—a whole bunch of them. When I counted them last night, there were eight. One of the shadows was huge—like a mountain standing behind them, with the others at the foot of it—and they seemed to spring from his feet.”

“You sure you’re not reading too much into this? They’re just dreams. Hell, there are dream demons to be found hereabouts.”

“I just know something,” Sue said as if making an entreaty, her body quivering.

“Know what exactly?”

“That someone’s out to get us. We’re the ones they’re after!”

“When you say we—you mean me and Mom, too?”

“Yes, and Dad.”

“Well, then, let’s let him handle it.”

“Matthew!”

Waving one hand at his sister’s pained visage, Matthew said, “I was just kidding. But there’s no reason why someone like that would be after us. I bet all kinds of people had weird dreams when that meteorite fell in the northern Frontier. That’s just how dreams are. Even supposing someone were after us, what would that have to do with that meteorite? You mean to say these are assassins from the stars? And you don’t find that strange?”

“That’s why I asked if you’d been having them too, Matt.”

“Nope. Not at all.”

“Well, I’m glad then. It must just be me.”

Sue leaned back against the door. From her expression it was clear that the anxiety hadn’t left her. But the quiet girl was relieved for the rest of her family.

Matthew was going to ask her about whether their mother had the dreams or not, but then thought better of it. Just let sleeping dogs lie, he thought.

Climbing off his bed, he went over to his younger sister and took her hand. “Go to bed already. Dreams end as soon as you wake up. And even if you don’t wake up, a knight will come to your rescue on a white steed.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Sue said, smiling. Her smile was truly heartbreaking. The bastard Fate had plenty of pain in store for her, and the girl undoubtedly knew that better than anyone.

“Sue,” he called out to her, and her expression changed.

She had the kind of eyes that people always complimented, saying they looked like they were full of dreams. It wasn’t her brother that they now reflected; it was a figure standing outside the window.

Not bothering to see if the reflection was that of a man or a woman, Matthew turned around. The glass revealed only darkness.

Shaking his sister by her shoulders to bring her back from her mannequin-like state, Matthew asked, “Was there someone there?”

“A woman,” Sue replied, the words like a gasp. “A really beautiful, but really terrible, woman. She’s one of them. She’s out to get us. I couldn’t see her face clearly in my dreams, but now I know it’s her.”

“Go back to your room. Lock your door and windows, and keep some amulet grass with you. You’ve got a bolt gun, right?”

“Don’t worry. I’m not scared at all,” Sue told him, her hand over her heart to vouchsafe the statement. If he had touched it, Matthew was sure he would have felt it hammering like a broken bell, but he hugged his little sister for being so intolerably dear, fragile as a piece of spun glass and yet tough at the same time.

-

Tucking a hatchet and some rough wooden stakes in his belt, he went outside. Thanks to a pair of starlight goggles, he could see fine. Stars filled the sky above his head. But Matthew couldn’t look up at them—the starlight goggles took the light from those stars and amplified it, turning night to day. If he were to look at an ordinary light source with them, it would sear his retinas in an instant, blinding him. Though he checked around the main house, there was nothing out of the ordinary.

He headed toward the barn. Packed full of cultivators and automated planters, machinery for repairing farm implements, gunpowder, and all sorts of chemicals, the eighteen-hundred-square-foot structure was less than two minutes from the main house. All that stood between the two buildings was an old well.

When he reached the entrance to the barn, Matthew halted. Putting his hand against the door, he pushed. Since he’d oiled the hinges just the day before last, it opened smoothly.

The barn was choked with darkness. He drew his hatchet, and then adjusted his grip on it. In a flash he thought, Maybe somebody’s hiding right behind the door, and then he had to check. He slipped into the gap behind the door. And then someone appeared.

“What the hell?” he cried out in a hushed tone, stopping his raised hatchet in midair.

“Easy there,” said a terribly familiar voice.

“Mom—what are you doing out here at this hour?”

“I saw something strange. But there’s no one in the barn.”

Across her muscular and hardly motherly arms rested a sawed-off shotgun. She’d gone out into the perilous night without saying a word to her children.

That’s just like her, Matthew thought, trying to hide the fire in his heart as he said, “Don’t do stuff like this, Mom. When you don’t come to me for something like this, it’s like you don’t think I’m capable of handling it myself.”

The boy’s mother looked at him with pride, but her face soon grew stern. When he got up to mischief or talked back to her, that face meant he had a slap coming, and if he’d caused trouble for anyone else, that got upgraded to a punch.

“Don’t be stupid. It’ll be years before you’re ready for this,” she said, giving her son a sharp look as the two of them stepped outside. Matthew closed the door.

“Well, I say we head back to—” he began to say, and then he noticed that his mother had frozen. He looked in the same direction.

Beside the well stood a woman in a white dress. It left the better part of her bosom prominently displayed, was cinched tight around her hips, and had a wide, bell-shaped skirt. It was the sort of fancy attire the Nobility wore to a ball.

“Adele Dyalhis and her son Matthew,” the woman remarked as she stared at them with glowing eyes. Her eyes had a golden sparkle, and the moonlight played across her blond hair as if it were the Milky Way.

The woman stepped forward.

“Keep away from us,” the mother said, leveling her shotgun. She had probably loaded it with the same triple-ought buckshot as always. At this range, it could easily blow something the size of a person’s head to pieces. “We’re just the caretakers. The family that lives here’s off on a trip. Won’t be back until next year. What did you want from them?”

“Their lives,” the woman said, grinning. Her smile was as still as a wintry night, and it left the mother and son feeling just as chilled. “I have come here to give you new life. If you would be so kind as to dispose of that gun.”

Her bright tone echoed alluringly through their heads. Matthew and his mother both closed their eyes. The woman’s golden gaze was emblazoned on their retinas. The mother slowly lowered her gun. Matthew couldn’t move his hands.

“Come to me,” the woman said, beckoning them with her hand. Like marionettes on invisible strings stretching from her fingers, the mother and son walked with unsteady steps to the woman. First the woman looked at Matthew, and then she shifted her eyes to his mother.

“You poor thing,” she said, but her sarcastic remark swayed with pity. “These countless wrinkles, sagging flesh, and hardened gaze—all are products of the curse called aging. You must’ve been stunning when you were young. Now you shall reclaim the beauty of your youth.”

Extending her pale forefinger, she slid it from the mother’s chest all the way down to her belly, and the front of her shirt split down the middle. Adele didn’t have anything on underneath. The other woman’s hand brushed along her full breasts.

“Oh, what a fine chest you have. I can tell how nice and full of blood it is. Human blood is hot. All of my kind yearn for it. And I intend to drain it from right here.”

Her hand came away from Adele’s breasts, creeping across the mother’s skin like some exquisite insect until it’d climbed to the nape of her neck. A finger merely scratching the surface was enough to make the mother pant faintly.

“Do you see how blood traces blue lines through my pale skin? You’ll do well to remember where they are.”

And then the woman pressed her vermilion lips against the nape of Adele’s neck. From the space between those luscious and monstrous lips and the graceful neck there came a retching sound. Matthew and his mother backed away, while the woman staggered about with both hands pressed to the left side of her chest. From between her fists, the bloodied end of a wooden stake jutted.

“Damn you . . . Who . . . ?”

As the woman tried to turn, she was caught by the hair and yanked toward the well. Making no show of resistance at all, her body was dragged down into it. As Matthew and his mother looked at each other, they heard a splash.

“That woman’s a Noble, Matthew!”

“I know. But what happened to her? And who’s responsible?”

Matthew gripped his hatchet, and his mother quickly scooped up the shotgun.

Something shiny had risen to the well’s surface. It spilled over the rock edge and spread out at the pair’s feet. Water. There was no time to be surprised by it, for an alluring female shape had risen from the depths that even now continued to flow over the edge. She had golden tresses that hung down to her waist, a white dress, and features so lovely they seemed to put the moonlight to shame. However, it wasn’t the same beauty who had just been there. Her dress was so sheer, it let every maddening curve of her body be seen. What’s more, she only had one good eye.

“Who—who the hell are you?”

As Matthew raised his hatchet high, the woman’s lips formed the words, “You’re Adele Dyalhis and Matthew Dyalhis, aren’t you? My name is Lucienne. I’ve come here on orders from a certain esteemed personage.”

The droplets that fell without end from her hair and her chin were jewels with all the luster of moonlight. The way she’d made her appearance and the might she’d displayed in dispatching the Noblewoman said it all: this was the same water witch who’d done battle with D by daylight at the great river, being struck twice with his blade before making her escape—Lucienne.

-

III

-

Even the eerie aura billowing at them must’ve carried molecules of water, because droplets formed on the faces of mother and son, and Adele had to wipe her eyes with the back of her hand.

“Take Sue and get outta here!” she shouted.

“No, Mom, you take her and run. I’ll handle this on my own.”

“This freak destroyed a Noble. There’s no way you’d be able to do anything against her. Go!”

“The hell I will!”

Digging his feet into the now mucky earth, Matthew charged forward.

The woman touched back down on the ground. The thin little smile she donned was cold enough to make the boy feel as if his heart would freeze solid. Grunting, he swung his right arm down with all his might. He was aiming for the woman’s head. Finding its mark, the blade sank into her, and then his hand—followed by his shoulder and the rest of his body—pushed through her. Matthew came out behind the woman covered with thousands of beads of moisture and feeling like he’d taken a tunnel through the water.

Twisting his body as he fell forward, he put both hands out to pick himself back up as he exclaimed, “I went right through her. She’s made of water!”

“Out of the way!” Adele cried, not even waiting for Matthew to run before she pulled the trigger.

There was a boom like a rumble rising from the earth, and then Lucienne’s head blew to pieces. Barely straightening herself up again after the weapon’s kick sent her reeling backward, Adele turned the gun with a second shot in its left barrel toward the woman, who stood stock still.

From the base of Lucienne’s neck, a transparent lump had risen. In no time, it took on eyes and a nose, a silvery hue coursed into it, and then golden hair flowing in the breeze completed the woman’s lovely face. Lucienne grinned smugly.

Despite the blood-chilling horror climbing her spine, Adele fired the second shot. The gun made an unsatisfactory sound, and black smoke curled from its barrel. It had misfired.

The water witch laughed without making a sound.

“It wasn’t natural conditions that made your powder wet. It was my power. Perhaps I should use it to turn you and your son into mere bags of skin to hold the water that is so dear to me.”

Lucienne took a gliding, smooth step forward.

Matthew grabbed her around the waist. “You goddamned freak! Run for it, Mom!”

The arm he’d wrapped around the witch sank deep into her waist. Once Lucienne’s right hand had gone through her solar plexus and out her back, it caught Matthew by the scruff of his neck and jerked him forward. Though Matthew’s flailing hands went through her arms, the hand the woman clamped on his neck was as solid as iron.

“I’ll start with your dutiful son.”

As the woman said this, her left hand went down Matthew’s throat.

Matthew coughed. Crystal-clear water spilling from his mouth and nose, the boy writhed. In the moonlight—on dry land—the young man was on his way to drowning.

“Stop it!”

Discarding her shotgun, Adele drew a knife from the leather sheath on her belt. With a blade eight inches long, the knife was one she always kept close while she slept, and such weapons were absolute necessities on the Frontier. Realizing that she was inviting the same fate as Matthew, the mother still knew neither fear nor hesitation. Raising her knife, she dashed into action.

But a strange thing happened right in front of her. Something white, like a sort of fog, enveloped Lucienne. Letting out a scream that sounded like her throat was being crushed, the water witch writhed. Her arm slipped out of Matthew’s mouth and the boy’s head passed through her body as he hit the ground on his back. As Lucienne squirmed, the eyes and nose left her face, her arms fused with her torso, and her legs melded together. Barely retaining the shape of a human body, the watery mass remained shrouded in the glowing fog as it bounded toward the well, then fell again as if the last of its strength had been spent. Perhaps freed from the bonds of the fog, the woman who’d turned into water rained down into that dark hole like a waterfall.

Neither Adele nor Matthew could make a move. The weirdness they’d witnessed was far beyond the bounds of what the psyches of even two iron-willed Frontier natives like these could bear.

The fog was changing. It took on the general shape of a person. Four limbs formed, and blond hair swayed. A Noblewoman in a white dress stood quietly before the pair.

“That was an arrogant thing for a servant of the Nobility to do. Did she think a lackey could actually best a master?”

Turning to the pair, her vermilion lips poised to form a smile, the woman noticed the cause of the mother and son’s shock. The tip of a tree branch protruded from the left side of her chest. The woman’s smile became a wry grin as she grabbed one end of the branch and pulled it forward. Though there was the sound of tearing flesh, her expression betrayed no discomfort. Unless she’d been stabbed through a vital point, she wouldn’t feel any pain. However, wasn’t the left side of the chest—and the heart within it—supposed to be the Nobility’s one great weakness?

“I shall deal with that woman later.”

Throwing the branch away, the woman slowly extended a hand toward the pair. Once again, her eyes took on that mysterious golden hue.

“Come to me,” the woman said. But no sooner had she beckoned to them than something fell from the sky into a pile of hay five yards to her rear.

There was an impact that sounded like a hundred cracks of thunder, and the earth quaked. The mother and son were both knocked back fifteen feet, slamming against the barn door and leaving the barn itself leaning a bit to one side. Even the Noblewoman was left shaken, and she clung to the well to steady herself. Flames went up. Heat from the friction of the object’s fall had set the hay ablaze.

How far did that thing fall? The unspoken question was visible in the eyes of Adele and Matthew as the pair lay flat on the ground. The beauty’s expression also seemed to pose the same query.

The answer soon presented itself.

A huge figure stood up from the flames in a wine-red gown. He had a great, fifteen-foot-long spear in his right hand. Though he appeared from the flames, when he took one massive stride out of them, there wasn’t anything burning on him. Still, the prospect may have bothered him, as the giant used his free hand to slap at his shoulders and hips before peering down at the three of them intently and saying, “It’s been ages, hasn’t it, Miranda?”

“I’ll thank you to address me as duchess, Count Braujou,” the Noblewoman replied with a smile, looking up toward the heavens. “Where are you arriving from?”

“One hundred fifty thousand feet up,” Count Braujou said, pounding the back of his own neck. “Some rascal calling himself Speeny, or something like that, managed to string me up in the sky. I was able to cut myself free, of course, but I ultimately ended up being dropped. Ah, the humiliation!”

“I see you are, as always, the same carefree man, full of fight. Do you think you’re up to keeping your oath? Shaking off the dust of five millennia is no easy task,” the pale beauty—Duchess Miranda—said reproachfully.

Count Braujou gave her a personable grin in return. It was the sort of smile that suggested that on a deeper level, the two understood each other.

“So,” the giant began, looking at the mother and son who stood, stunned, in front of the barn, but he quickly headed off to the left.

Sue had just appeared from the front door of the main house. She was wrapped in a blue robe. An atomic lamp swayed in her hand.

“Mom! Matthew!” the girl called out. On noticing their bizarre callers, she became a statue.

“Sue, get in the house!”

But despite her mother’s shout, the girl’s feet wouldn’t budge. She was stupefied. A ten-foot giant towered in the yard, in front of a gorgeous woman in a white dress that glittered in the moonlight, while behind them flames from the burning haystack lit up the night. It would’ve been strange if she’d actually been able to do anything at that point.

“Don’t you lay a hand on my kids!” Adele said, standing in front of Matthew to shield him—not that there was anything an unarmed human could do against the Nobility. “Just try something funny. Before you can sink those filthy fangs of yours into my children’s veins, I’ll tear you to pieces!”

“That sounds amusing,” Miranda said, her lip curling up. White fangs peeked from the corners of her smile.

“Stop it,” the giant said, laying a hand on the Noblewoman. Her shoulder was so dainty, it seemed as if this gesture alone would’ve been enough to destroy it, yet she gave it a slight toss that easily knocked the giant’s hand away.

“Stop it,” the giant repeated, taking her shoulder again. It wouldn’t move an inch.

“Why are you against me? Doing this would be in the family’s best interest. Even the servants of the Nobility couldn’t do any harm to humans who’ve been turned into Nobles. Nor could other Nobles.”

“There is something to what you say.”

“In that case, I’ll thank you not to interfere.”

“No, wait. Regardless of our opinion, we must first find out their thoughts on this matter. Would you like this lovely woman to drink your blood?” the count said, his question directed to the family.

“Hell, no! Don’t come any closer,” Adele said firmly.

It was an odd situation. Two Nobles had turned up at their house when there weren’t supposed to be any in the area at all. And they hadn’t come to drink the family’s blood. Something else was going on. These two had a secret.

At any rate, they were Nobility—bloodsucking monsters. Adele’s family absolutely could not let their guard down around them. Though her body was close to freezing, hot blood started to pump through it as her determination grew.

Gazing down at Adele from his lofty vantage point, Count Braujou remarked, “She appears firmly opposed to this. You’ll have to abandon your plan, Duchess.”

“Ah, but it would be to the greatest benefit of us all. Will you not be so good as to reconsider, human mother?” Miranda said, her eyes beginning once more to carry a golden glow. A gleam of the same color sparked in the depths of Adele’s eyes, and her resolute will began to melt away.

“Hey!”

“Be silent,” Miranda said. Her voice was laden with malice, though her demeanor was that of an amiable Noblewoman. “Even you must know in your heart that this is for the best. I merely ask that she change her mind. I’ll thank you to keep your remarks to yourself, Count. Come.”

Adele responded to her summons, her sizable breasts still bare to the moonlight. The sturdy farmer’s wife was about to fall into the vampire’s bloody trap.

When the distance separating life from death had closed to just six feet, there was a bang and a flash by Miranda’s feet, and pale-blue atomic flames spread. The flames leaped to her dress, instantly transforming the duchess into a human torch.

“Mom!” Matthew and Sue shouted as they raced over to the reeling Adele.

“Oh, my,” the giant said with admiration from his lofty vantage point. It was a compliment for the slip of a girl who’d lobbed an atomic lantern at Miranda to save her mother from peril. She also had the bolt gun she always carried when she went outside in hand as she stood in front of her mother and brother to shield them.

“This family certainly has pluck. Now, Miranda . . .”

Although the Nobleman hadn’t sought her agreement, the human torch replied, “Indeed. They may even be able to weather my response.”

Raising her blazing arms by her sides, she let out a sharp breath as she swung them down again. The flames vanished . . . along with the atomic lamp. Neither the skin of the pale beauty nor her dress showed the slightest hint of being charred.

“Come to me. No, on second thought, I will come to you.”

Before the count could stop her, she started walking, but halted after the second step. Duchess Miranda turned to look. As did Count Braujou. But what did they hear, and what did they see?

About five seconds later, the human mother and son learned the answers to those questions. From the darkness beyond the main house—and the entrance to the farm—the sound of hoof beats was drawing nearer. Who in the world could it be? The looks on the faces of Miranda and Braujou were hardly those of fearless Nobles.

“Who is it?” the duchess asked, her voice trembling.

“Someone with power,” Braujou replied.

“Who?” Adele murmured. And the light of the moon picked the answer out for her.

The beautiful darkness that had appeared from the depths of the night took the shape of a black horse and rider as they rode into the moonlight. As he passed by a haystack, flames painted his body red. He halted at a spot about ten feet from Miranda and the giant.

“I don’t know whether to say you’re late or just in the nick of time—but at any rate, here you are, D!”

Catching the fear the count’s tone carried, Duchess Miranda swallowed hard in spite of herself.

-

THE NOBLE WHO CAME FROM THE STARS