CHAPTER 5

-

I

-

After giving first aid to the four barely breathing thugs, the Dyalhises brought them to the hospital. It was late the next morning before they were ready to head out. Their last piece of baggage was still in town.

Having treated all four of the boys by herself, Adele was exhausted and didn’t talk much. When the hospital and the sheriff’s office wanted to know about the quartet’s eerie medical condition, Matthew maintained that they’d been found like that near his house. Apparently word of what had happened had gotten out, as every person the family passed gave them suspicious looks. There’d never been a case of any creature in the world sucking the life out of people without leaving a mark on them. From the state these four were in, the prime suspect was the Nobility. So why hadn’t the Dyalhis boy testified to that effect?

The wagon that carried the mother and children took the main street through town, halting in front of the village’s only inn. This is where the barmaid their father was so smitten with rented a room.

“Go get this stuff at Mr. Gamish’s shop,” Adele said, handing Sue a list before she climbed down from the wagon.

“Mom, you want me to go with you?” Matthew called out to her.

“If I had to bring my son along to drag out my drunken husband, I’d be a laughingstock. Whether you’ve got that shopping done or not, be back here in twenty minutes.”

-

Her husband wasn’t there. Seeing Adele walk past the counter and toward the staircase, the innkeeper told her Baird wasn’t in. He said at this hour, her husband would be in the bar or at the coach stop, looking for handouts from travelers and acquaintances.

Closing her eyes and thanking him, Adele headed over to the bar. He wasn’t there.

The coach stop was on the western edge of the village. Not everyone coming into town was necessarily an upstanding person. There was no guarantee a traveler wasn’t an illusion beast that could read people’s minds and take the shape of someone they knew, a camouflage creature called a magai, or a servant of the Nobility with orders to scout for fresh prey. Allowing coaches carrying all sorts of passengers to ride into the center of town might cost the villagers their lives—or their souls. Therefore, armed officials at the Somui coach stop checked every traveler.

When the stop, which looked like a large barracks, came into view further down the road, the coach that was halted in front of it tore down the path, leaving a cloud of fine dust behind. After Adele had walked on for another five minutes and was about thirty feet shy of the coach stop, men’s shouts assailed her ears.

“There’s no damned reflection!”

“Fire!”

Even though she couldn’t see what was happening, she knew in an instant what it had to be. One of the travelers hadn’t cast a reflection in the mirror held by an official.

The roar of an old-fashioned firearm overlapped their cries. Another thunderous shot rang out.

A man who looked like a farmer in his baggy coat and trousers had just come around the corner of the coach stop and into view. He was running straight at Adele. Behind him, she could see two officials stained with crimson. One of them raised his gun and shouted, “Hit the dirt!”

As Adele leaped to the right, to her left the man screamed and leaned backward. The report from the gun reached her a split second later.

Still tilted backward, the man advanced another five or six paces, then dropped to his knees and toppled back as if forming a bridge.

Adele had already jumped up. Like a good Frontier woman, she held the bolt gun she carried for self-defense in her right hand. The man shuddered feebly, but he soon became motionless.

“You’re not hurt, are you?” asked the official who came over, dragging one leg behind him, his gun trained on the man all the while.

“I’m all right. You got it worse than me.”

Realizing that the man stained with gore from the waist down was alone, Adele turned toward the coach stop. The second man had slumped to the ground in the same spot where she’d seen him before. Doubled over like a snapped twig, his upper body seemed to be bleeding, and the blood dripped from his knees to stain the ground. The god of the soil would feed well.

By the time Adele turned her gaze back to the figure at her feet, it had finished dissolving with a foul stench. Its dissolution had come through a chemical reaction that took only seconds.

“This is a new one—some new kind of monster,” the official beside her said, finally lowering his rifle. “I’ll go get help. Don’t suppose I could ask you to look after that fella, could I? See, that thing tore his chest to ribbons with its claws, and he’s not gonna last long. There’s no one else around.”

“Sure.”

Parting ways with the man, Adele hastened over to the coach stop. The man who sat there was dead. The wounds in his chest were more like punctures than slashes, reaching into his heart and lungs. It was a miracle he’d even made it that far.

“I bet he had some final words he wanted to say.”

Kneeling, Adele clutched the rosary that hung around her neck and recited a prayer. There were a number of gods in the area. Instead of the one governing the colossal beech tree that stood next to the coach stop, Adele selected the one that represented the towering rock five or ten feet away. She felt that when it came to protecting someone called to heaven, the god of a rock would be much better suited to the task than that of a gentle tree.

Before the woman could end her prayer by calling out the god’s name, she noticed somebody was coming up behind her.

No, it can’t be. Please, God, anyone but him.

“Hey, Adele.” There was no mistaking her husband’s voice. “Fancy meeting you here. I sure am lucky it’s you. Would you just shut your eyes for me for a sec?”

Averting her face from his boozy breath, Adele got up. Once more she wanted to close her eyes. Over the past twenty years, there’d been a number of times she wished she couldn’t see anything, but never had she wanted it more badly than now.

She could see her husband clearly. The face puffy and pale from too much drink, the lifeless eyes of a dead cow, the scraggly growth of beard, and arms so scrawny the veins bulged from them. Her husband was already dead to her. She knew that well.

“What are you up to?” she asked as if she were interrogating a criminal.

Sheepishly avoiding her gaze, her husband replied, “Isn’t it obvious? This guy’s probably got some stuff on him he’s not gonna need anymore.”

Adele gazed at his profile. It was the face of a man who knew what he was doing was wrong and wanted to stop, but had done it so often that no matter how badly he wanted to change, he never would. He apologized, but went right ahead and stole anyway. He could swear it would only be this once, then turn around and kill someone. Her husband had become a monster.

Adele backed away a step.

Unconcerned, her husband wiped his sweaty hand on his tattered coat, straddled the dead man, and began going through the pockets of his leather vest. The left one was empty, but Baird found something in the right one. Opening the leather bag, he grinned. Pushing it into his own pocket, he said, “This’ll keep me in drink for a while, I suppose. It’ll be our little secret, Adele.”

When he turned to look at his wife, Adele drove her knife into his belly. As Baird backed away, he clutched the hilt of the knife with both hands. He made an effort to pull it back out, but his face contorted with pain and he stopped.

“What the hell was that, Adele?” her husband said, his tone still sharp.

“Don’t think that it was on account of what you just did, dear,” Adele said, standing still as she spoke. “See, while your four little friends were being looked over, I heard what happened. Seems you had them all set to rob us as payback for what went on yesterday. And you told ’em if things got hairy, you didn’t give a damn if they killed the lot of us and burned the place down when they were done. You must be out of your mind!”

“No,” her husband said, his now-purple lips trembling as he denied the accusations. “That’s a lie. I didn’t say anything like that. Adele, you’ve gotta believe me. They’re my kids . . . I’m their father!”

Her husband thudded down on the road, his face twisting with the shock.

“Only on the outside. Inside, you’re a whole different person. The you the kids and I knew died ten years ago.”

“Adele . . . Oh, Adele . . . ,” her husband called out feebly, his upper body bending backward until he lay flat on his back. He was nearly at an end. The knife handle jutting from his solar plexus shuddered with each sharp breath.

“You can’t go with our kids. But this is the least I can do. Better you be sent to your reward by me instead of being murdered by some Noble. Don’t worry, though. Once I’ve seen that our kids are safe, I’ll follow along behind you. After all, on the other side, you’ll probably be back to your old self.”

Adele turned her gaze toward the village. There was no sign of anyone.

“I’m so sorry. It’s time to go,” she told her husband, and then she put his body over her shoulder and jogged toward the path to her left.

It was a shortcut that would bring her to the general store without running into any villagers. She ran for all she was worth—she had to get out of town with Matthew and Sue as soon as possible. If she were to hide her husband’s corpse somewhere off this path, no one would find it for a while.

Suddenly Adele had a strange sensation. Although she was progressing down the familiar path, it felt at the same time as if she were on another route. Stopping, she checked her surroundings, and it was the right path. The scenery to either side of it was familiar. And yet, something in the back of her mind whispered that it was different. Her husband’s shudders were transmitted through her shoulder.

Going off the left side of the path, Adele slipped into thick woods. Suddenly, she came to a clearing. Nearly circular, the empty lot seemed to cover between one hundred fifty and two hundred square feet. Adele was sure she’d never seen this place before . . . nor had she ever laid eyes on the figure that stood at the center of the clearing. He wore a dark brown hood and a long robe, but whether the two were a single garment or not was unclear. About the same height as Adele, he didn’t have a particularly muscular build, and the great ax he held with its blade resting on the ground seemed completely disproportionate.

What’s he doing out here dressed like an old-fashioned headsman?

Not even a second after this question occurred to her, so did an answer.

Has he been waiting for me?

“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said. Though he had the look of a man in his late forties or early fifties, his voice was terribly hoarse—much like the voice of an old man she’d met long ago who’d said he was a hundred and twenty. “My name’s Jessup. I do all Lord Valcua’s beheading.”

“Valcua . . .”

Suddenly the name that had been part fantasy became a hard reality slamming down on Adele’s mind.

“It’s all true—isn’t it?”

“You and the man you have over your shoulder belong to the family of an old enemy of my master, Lawrence Valcua, for which you must be executed. I don’t care which of you we start with, but someone better come over here and put his neck on the block,” said Jessup. His left hand wasn’t touching the ax handle, but pointed down by his feet.

He stood near a U-shaped stand that looked like an iron plate bent from both ends with terrific force, supported by a sturdy pedestal about a foot high.

Realizing its purpose in an instant, Adele was terrified. Instinctively she tried to turn, but her feet wouldn’t move.

“There’s no point in trying to flee. You came here precisely so you might die by my hand. You walked the road to the beheader,” Jessup said, his mocking gaze trained on Adele’s feet. From his feet to hers, and over the ground Adele had just covered, lay a red cloth a foot and a half wide that ran down the path like a river of blood. She couldn’t remember walking on it.

“Having set foot on it, you can’t get away without my ax passing through that wrinkly neck of yours. Come here.”

Perhaps there was some mystic power to his voice, or perhaps it was the bloody path she’d trod. Showing no signs of resistance, Adele began to walk toward the assassin in dark brown.

-

II

-

Of course, that’s not to say she advanced of her own free will. But it wouldn’t have been correct to say that she was fighting it the whole time, either. Perhaps the best description of the way she walked would be to say that it seemed natural—or even inevitable. Adele had fully accepted that she was walking toward her own death.

She stood before the chopping block. In this clearing that wasn’t supposed to be there, sunlight draped through the gaps between branches like gorgeous lengths of fabric.

“Stick your neck out.”

Adele set her husband down, knelt, and put her collar on the block with the semicircular scallop.

Seeing the woman’s powerful, suntanned neck, Jessup’s eyes narrowed with satisfaction.

“Here we go,” he said in what was actually a somewhat pathetic tone, and he raised the great ax. He staggered a few times under it, a ridiculous counterpoint to his earlier boasts. Reeling under the weight, his body jerked from side to side as he swung the great ax toward the ground and regained his balance. A tree growing nearby got chopped halfway through its twenty-inch diameter trunk.

“Damn, that’s embarrassing,” Jessup said, cursing himself like someone in a comedy as he braced himself a little better this time and managed to pull his ax free. As he walked over to Adele, his gait was steadier, but still somewhat uncertain. Giving a huff, he cried out to focus himself as he raised the great ax high.

It was unclear what Adele was thinking, but she made no attempt to flee. Perhaps that was the true power of the bumbling beheader.

He raised the ax high, and then swung it down with all his might. A heartbeat later, a pale, thin stake flew out of nowhere and pierced his right shoulder.

“Waaaagh!” he shrieked, staggering and dropping the ax that was his very raison d’être.

As he pulled the stake out, he looked around and sputtered, “Wh-wh-who the hell did that?”

He needn’t have bothered. On the red road to the beheader that ran through the trees stood a figure in black of inhuman beauty.

“That hurts, damn you. And I’m bleeding. What did I ever do to you, you bastard?”

But the cries he spewed suddenly died. He’d noticed how handsome his foe was. With golden light from between the branches shining on his face, the young man was not of this world.

“Who—who are you?” the beheader stammered.

“D,” the man replied in a voice that could make the light freeze.

“Are you trying to—to stop me or something?”

“Not at all.”

“What do you mean, not at all? Look what you’ve done. I’m bleeding!” Jessup said, sticking out his shoulder. “Does this look like not at all? Explain why you’d do something like this. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry.”

D’s form shimmered like a mirage. As he’d started walking toward Jessup, the glow from the sunlight spilling through the branches was there to watch over him.

“S-stay away from me!” Jessup shouted. He tried to raise his ax to menace D, but his legs wouldn’t quite support him and he tottered drunkenly.

“Don’t let your guard down, okay?” said a hoarse voice from the vicinity of D’s left hip. “This guy’s part of the advance guard for a Noble who came back from the stars. There’s no way he could be such a mess. If he was, it’d make Valcua’s blood boil having this clown guarding him while he slept.”

“Does he even have blood?” D inquired in a monotone.

The voice fell silent.

To their side, there was a desperate scream as the great ax fell. If the blow launched from this weak stance had hit its mark, D’s head would’ve been taken off at an angle. However, the Hunter’s right hand caught Jessup’s wrist with lightning speed and gave it an easy twist, sending the beheader flying neatly through the air to land head first on the grass a good ten feet away. Letting out a groan, he grew quiet.

“Oh, he’s good,” the hoarse voice remarked. “There’s a method to his screwups. Be careful. Something’s going on here for sure. This guy raised a blade against you. Take him out.”

Saying nothing, D went over to Adele, who still had her head on the chopping block. He touched his left hand to the nape of her neck.

The woman jumped up and looked around restlessly.

“D? What are you doing here?”

“I was asleep, but something woke me up.”

Adele dazedly murmured, “Here in these woods?”

“Outside the clearing. This place doesn’t exist—it’s a pocket dimension that man created.”

“That makes sense. I was sure I’d never seen this spot before,” she said, adding, “Don’t tell me I was the one who woke you up.”

“Yeah, at the coach stop.”

Shortly after hearing these words, Adele’s shock set in. Could it be that the gorgeous young man had seen her murder her husband?

Adele didn’t get a chance to find out. D suddenly caught her shoulder and shoved her to the left. In that instant, a flash of silver skimmed past the tip of her nose.

After creeping up on the pair to launch a new attack, Jessup found himself once again evaded with ease when his second swing buried his blade in the ground. He was down for only a split second. Apparently he still had some fight in him.

Spewing expletives all the while, Jessup tried without success to free his ax, and then leaned on its handle as he fought to catch his breath.

D had been reaching for the hilt of his sword, but he brought his hand away. Even if this was all an act, D wasn’t the kind of man who had to look for an opening before defeating someone.

Ignoring Jessup, D turned his gaze to Adele’s fallen husband.

Adele closed her eyes. She heard a voice that sounded like a death rattle, and her fate changed once again.

Jessup had launched a third attack. It was wide of the mark, slashing through the air more than three feet from D. Who would’ve thought it could hack open D’s back from the right shoulder down to the left hip and send bright blood gushing out?

Leaping back without a word, D reeled as he hit the earth. The fresh blood that poured from him slapped against the ground. Great as he was, the Hunter had no way to defend himself from someone who could slash open his opponents without even aiming for them. Especially not after he’d successfully avoided two attacks by the same person and seen how pathetic his foe was.

“How’s that? Now do you see what I’m really made of?” Jessup asked, but again he staggered and had to cling to his ax, the head of which was stuck in the ground once more. “When I aim, it never goes well, but when I don’t, I do some cutting. This is what you get when you screw with me!”

Although he was putting on a bold front, his legs were wobbly, his face was slick with sweat, and his voice cracked uncomfortably high. Here was a rare case of a loser turning out to be a winner.

He stopped talking. His eyes went wide with disbelief, their retinas emblazoned with the sight of D standing like a vigilant deity.

Seeing that the wound had no effect on the Hunter, Jessup tried to flee. He dashed for the closest stand of trees with uncharacteristic speed, clumsily grabbing his ax and chopping block as he went.

As he ran, he swung his left hand out. A grayish lump flew into the bushes. But when a single streak of light zipped toward Jessup’s back, the shape popped up again.

The rough wooden needle thrown by D was caught in the mouth of a lump about the size of a fist. With eye sockets like little caves and black hair that dangled like threads from the dried skin, it was a shrunken human head. Most likely Jessup had made it through some fiendish technique practiced on a head he’d personally lopped off. In midair it spat out the needle it’d clenched between its teeth, and then it whizzed straight at D, the wind swirling in its wake.

A second needle flew from D’s right hand. The shrunken head bit down on it. But the needle kept on going, coming out through the back of the head. Its course rapidly thrown into disarray, the shrunken head fell at D’s feet. Even after it fell, it continued to gnash its tiny teeth loudly and attempted to bite D’s foot, but it soon became motionless.

“So, he can use the heads he’s cut off? Must piss them off to be under his control. That little loser is something else!”

The weird little voice that spilled from the vicinity of D’s left wrist brought Adele back to her senses. Even to a woman like her, accustomed to the strangeness of the Frontier, this deadly conflict had been like a nightmare. But the lifeblood that dripped from the back of the young man in black declared that it was all too real—as did the corpse of her husband, which lay at her feet. Adele still had to deal with that.

“D—I had to . . .”

A blisteringly hot pain pierced her back and chest. Falling just as she was about to turn, Adele was caught by D in time to see her husband sitting upright, his arm still posed from throwing the knife.

“A strong constitution was the only thing he had going for him—oh!”

Adele turned in D’s direction. Hers were desperate movements—there were still things she had to do. She had to watch over Matthew and Sue. Once they’d made it through this unbelievable twist of fate, she had to see Matthew’s bride with her own two eyes, and she couldn’t die until she’d seen Sue properly married off.

“D . . .”

“Don’t talk.”

“Bring me over there—to my husband.”

Adele asked to be set down by his side. Once that had been done, Adele pulled the bag of coins out of her husband’s pocket. Grabbing D’s arm, she pulled him closer. She shoved the bag against his chest. It was the money her husband had stolen from the corpse. Adele clung to it for dear life.

“Take this . . . to protect my kids . . . I can’t . . . do it anymore. See to it . . . Matthew gets himself . . . a redhead for a bride . . . He’s a real hard worker, that one . . . so his bride . . . can be lazy . . . just so long as she’s kind . . . and cheerful . . . Now, in Sue’s case . . .”

Saying nothing, D just listened. As he watched the dying mother, his gaze was the epitome of sternness.

“My daughter . . . She needs . . .”

Adele’s hand slipped from D’s arm.

Holding her body up, D asked, “What kind of man would be good for Sue?”

A single tear fell from Adele’s eye.

“She needs . . .”

And then, all the strength left the mother’s body.

-

III

-

As the siblings waited in front of the inn for their mother, all sorts of activity suddenly started up at the sheriff’s office, and a crowd began to form. They saw a number of people run off in the direction of the coach stop. The sheriff’s wagon headed that way as well. One of the people who remained walked over to Matthew, related what had happened at the coach stop, and told him that his mother was keeping a body company there and that he should go get her.

When they were halfway to the coach stop, the Vampire Hunter appeared on a black steed and informed them of their parents’ deaths. Though they asked him how they’d died, he wouldn’t say. Instead, he took them by a back road into the forest where the brother and sister saw the pair’s corpses and finally accepted everything.

Once the lifeless husks had been loaded into the wagon, D told the children their mother had hired him, and that they had to leave town immediately.

“Before we do, let us go back to the farm,” Matthew countered vehemently. “I wanna bury my mom and dad. ’Cause that’s the house the two of them made into a home.”

Oddly, a hoarse voice from nowhere in particular exclaimed, “What are you talking about, you idiot? As soon as the sun goes down—”

That’s certainly what it sounded like, but almost immediately there was something like a short scream and it became quiet.

Turning in the direction of the farm, D tossed his chin.

Once they were closer to home, Sue—who was back with the bodies—started sobbing in a low voice. After they reached the farm, Sue couldn’t stop crying. The two bodies were placed on the bed in their mother’s room, and Matthew told his sister to stay with them before he went out back to dig a grave. The location had already been decided. At the top of a hill to the east that overlooked their land was a spot their mother had loved. When the weather was nice, she’d often set a table out there for them to eat dinner, and the three of them had never tired of watching the sun set behind the mountains to the west. As everything else was stained red, his mother’s white apron waving in the breeze had lingered in Matthew’s eye. Though she’d never once said she wanted to be buried there, the idea had occurred to Matthew as he recalled his mother’s red profile gazing at the sunset.

A short time after he started digging the hole, Matthew sensed someone behind him and turned around.

D stood over the hole looking down at him, and he asked the boy if he could take his place for a while.

“I’ll do it alone,” Matthew said flatly. “This is our home. As long as even one of us is still alive, we don’t need anyone’s help deciding where to plant our own. Please don’t take that the wrong way.”

Saying nothing, D looked over his shoulder, and then remarked, “It would seem you’re not alone.”

Sticking his head out of the hole, Matthew looked in the same direction and saw Sue coming out of the barn carrying a shovel.

-

By the time they were done digging, the sun had disappeared, but enough light remained to aid them in their work. Since they didn’t have any coffins on hand, they’d wrapped their parents in some curtains their mother had loved and gently set them at the bottom of the hole. After getting five years of use out of those curtains with white peach blossoms against a field of blue, their mother had said it was a waste to throw them out and had stuffed them into the back of a cabinet instead.

As she took up her shovel to cover them with dirt, Sue said, “Mom has to be happy to be together with Dad, don’t you think?” She began to tremble and sob.

“Yeah, I suppose she is. After all, Dad has finally come back,” Matthew lied.

There wasn’t time to dig two holes. Even if there had been, if he’d dared to suggest burying them separately, Sue probably would have cried and made him stop.

Once they’d filled the hole with dirt, Sue laid some flowers she’d prepared on top of the grave, white ones. Matthew didn’t know what they were called.

“Matt, say a prayer.”

On hearing his sister’s request, Matthew found himself in a bind. Though he’d been to a number of funerals, he’d never paid strict attention to the prayers said there.

As he stood with his lips buttoned, to his rear a voice like steel rang out. The words it spoke were a prayer from a distant land that he’d never heard before. The brother and sister traced the voice back to the young man in black.

The white flowers stirred in an almost imperceptible breeze.

-

Once they hit the road that led into town, Matthew halted the wagon. He’d seen the enormous car that was stopped up ahead before. The way it was dented all over made it easy to remember. No matter how solidly it might’ve been constructed, it was still unbelievable that it could remain intact after falling from such a height. If Matthew had known that this vehicle had dropped from an altitude of one hundred fifty thousand feet, he’d have been speechless.

The huge figure standing in front of the car raised one hand, calling out to them, “Perfect timing for our departure. But we seem to be short two people.”

Matthew and Sue sat up in the front seat.

“I went into town, but Mr. Dyalhis wasn’t there,” the count continued.

The brother and sister looked at each other. The giant must have made a strong impression on the person he’d talked to. By now, the whole village would be in a panic.

“He’s dead,” D responded from beside the wagon. “So is their mother.”

“Oh, my,” the giant said, his eyes wide as he looked at the siblings and D. Though members of the Nobility were known for their disinterest in human affairs, he undoubtedly wanted to know what had happened. But he didn’t ask, merely nodding instead.

“Okay, so there are two of you. I will protect you without fail. You may depend on that.”

“Just so you know,” D said, “their mother hired me.”

For an instant, Count Braujou had a stunned expression, but then it became a smile some would call unsettling.

“This is a surprise! That means if we get crazed for blood and attack the children, the world’s greatest Hunter of Nobility will be there to stop us.” Turning that smile toward the brother and sister, he said, “You’ve got a very good guard. That must be reassuring.”

No reply was forthcoming from the pair of stiff faces.

“Very well, then. Climb inside your wagon and get some sleep. I shall take the reins,” the count said, and without waiting for the pair to reply, he went over to them and put one foot up on the wagon. Even standing on the ground, he was taller than the two seated in the driver’s seat.

Matthew looked at D.

“Go on inside,” D said, tossing his chin in the direction of the wagon’s interior. “It’s okay. He’s not as heavy as he looks.”

The siblings complied.

“Upsy—” the giant began in an all-too-human fashion. When his enormous form climbed up to the driver’s seat, creaking sounds immediately emanated from various planks and metal fittings.

“—daisy!” he continued, but just as he settled into the seat, bolts tore loose and boards began to snap.

“You’re gonna have to pay to have that fixed,” D said. After all, the vehicle belonged to his employer.

“I know. Don’t worry. But this thing is quite tiny, you know.”

Finally getting his legs stretched out between the team of four cyborg horses, the count cracked the reins against the animals’ rumps. Though he was easily three times the weight of the children, the horses began to move forward without any difficulty.

D rode along beside them. The count’s car, driverless, followed behind.

“Whom did you tangle with?” the count inquired, his face still looking forward. “I can see the split down your back. Valcua had a bizarre ax wielder working for him. It was Jessup Tolleran—his official beheader.”

D briefly recounted the situation.

After hearing the story, the count was expressionless as he said, “In the old days, Valcua had seven warriors. Speeny must’ve been one of them. I think it’s safe to assume all seven have been brought back to life.”

“Do you know the other five?”

“No, only Jessup. But I did hear tales about the eerie corpses they left in their wake—in my capacity as a Frontier sector controller, that is.”

Twisting his upper body around, he turned toward the wagon’s door. He was surprisingly flexible. Giving a light knock on the flap, he said, “Come out here—what I have to say will have some bearing on your lives from this point forward. You should hear this.”

After waiting a while, the count made a sour face and remarked, “That’s odd. I wonder why they won’t come out.”

“The flap won’t open,” D said with a toss of his chin.

The giant’s enormous buttocks were blocking the entrance.

“Oh, that won’t do. Can you hear me?” he roared in a raspy voice that echoed through the darkness. D’s stare had unsettled him. “If you can hear me, answer. Won’t you do that for me?”

Hearing a knock on the other side of the flap, the count was satisfied.

“Okay, the servants of the Nobility who are after the two of you have the following powers, going by the condition of the bodies they have left behind.”

First, there were decapitated corpses—which would probably be the work of Jessup the Beheader. The incident with the shrunken head explained why the heads of those people had never been located.

Second, there was a lake that had filled with the bodies of drowned victims in the course of a single night. Nearly half of them had had their flesh shaved off as if they were roasted pigs. Undoubtedly that was the work of the water witch, Lucienne.

Third, there were bodies that had been mashed flat as if they’d been dropped from high in the heavens—that would be Speeny the spider man’s handiwork.

Fourth—and from this point on, there was no intelligence regarding the guilty party—was the disappearance of the entire population of a town. One day, everyone in an eastern Frontier village of about twenty thousand suddenly disappeared. It was said that in the saloons, half-empty glasses were left on tables, and smoke still curled from cigarettes half-turned to ash. A resident who’d just returned from out of town discovered this disappearance. The situation was the same in every home, making it seem as if they’d all been going about their normal daily routines when something happened that made all of them decide to leave town for good—without stopping to see to anything else.

Fifth was an incident involving the army of a certain Noble. In a bizarre turn of events, roughly a thousand soldiers had committed suicide. That day, a certain singer from the Capital had paid them a visit, performing a dozen songs before leaving. According to the one soldier who miraculously survived—a man who’d lost his hearing in battle—nothing had been out of the ordinary during the singer’s performance, but that night everyone else decided to die. On the word of this lone soldier, a search was made for the singer, but her whereabouts were never discovered. The army’s commander was one of the Nobles who’d opposed Valcua.

“As for the other two—I don’t know anything,” Count Braujou said. “Of course, the aforementioned examples are things Valcua’s seven are assumed to have done. At any rate, they’re sure to be a troublesome bunch. My shoulder still hurts.”

While he’d described Valcua’s seven warriors as “troublesome,” his remark would’ve made Speeny, the spider man, turn pale—for the giant remained fine after dropping out of the stratosphere. But the expression of the handsome young man in black riding beside him had not changed at all as he listened to the tale.

No matter what lay ahead, when they met the Ultimate Noble’s assassins, clouds of blood were sure to fly. Whether this was something to be desired or mourned was no matter; the darkness ahead only grew denser, and an eerie breeze buffeted the two vehicles and the men that might be described as their dark guardians.

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DARK-MAGIC BOUNDARIES