Off to the Distant Capital

Chapter 8

I

Hold it right there—” Louise told the young man. Though she said it in a low voice, Claire, Harman, and JJ all poked their heads from their seats.

“The duke doesn’t lie,” Dorleac said, his tone that of one drifting in the nothingness of the universe. A face of unearthly beauty shimmered in his blue eyes. D, he murmured. “D . . . Who . . . who are you? Could it be . . . you are someone . . . before whom even the duke need genuflect?”

No one was looking at his face. D was silent, leaning back against the wall. There was only the clattering of the wheels.

There was something tremendous here. And that something alone was going to make something happen. It would be without any consideration for the thoughts of these people or their fate.

Claire’s mouth hung agape. Harman’s eyes were open wide. JJ’s expression could be described as painfully sad. Al was ready to faint.

“You misheard him,” D said, gazing at Dorleac.

And then—the young man nodded. At that point, he was a prisoner of fear. Not just ordinary fear. Dorleac didn’t go pale, and not a drop of sweat rolled from him. He wasn’t even shaking. Just as someone tormented by hellish pain could be left unable to say a word, so he was bound from head to toe by a fear surpassing fear.

“I must’ve misheard. Just . . . as he says.”

And as soon as Dorleac finished saying that, he collapsed on the spot. His sweaty face was completely drained of color, and his shivering body rattled the floor of the cage noisily.

All eyes focused on his body, which had finally returned to normal. And they were all glad of that.

“Ah, fine weather we’re having,” Claire said over the back of her seat. “Wonder if we’ll be there soon.”

Harman pulled back into his seat.

There was no sign of JJ.

Letting out a yawn, Al adjusted his grip on his rifle.

Louise shrugged her shoulders and said, “That was quite a disturbance.” At that moment, she didn’t realize that she, along with everyone else, had experienced a fear so great it had erased itself from her memory.

It was a few minutes later that the hatch opened. One of the men from the driver’s seat poked his head in and said, “There’s a carriage coming the other way!”

For a second, the vehicle’s occupants seemed to bristle at the interruption, but the feeling was immediately quelled. Passing another carriage on the highway wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.

“Oh, dear,” a hoarse voice from the vicinity of D’s left hip said in a mocking manner.

When Louise and Al turned in that direction, D had already begun walking down the aisle toward the front of the vehicle. Louise followed after him.

“Where are you going?” she asked.

“I’ll handle the horses.”

“Why?”

“That carriage bothers me.”

“I’ll go, too,” said the sheriff.

“You’d better stick with Dorleac. He’s not all that he appears to be.”

“But . . .”

Who made the judgment then, the Louise in the dream or the one in reality?

Turning around, she called out to Al and tossed him the keys to the handcuffs. As Al caught them, she told him, “Get those cuffs off JJ. JJ, kindly head up top with D.”

First, Louise poked her head out of the roof and informed the members of the escort brigade that D and JJ would be taking their place.

The switch was executed smoothly. By the time D and JJ were in the driver’s seat, the carriage up ahead had closed to a distance of about a thousand yards. Like their vehicle, it had a team of six horses. The point where they would pass each other was about thirty feet wide.

“Oh, what have we here? No driver and no one riding shotgun, either!” JJ declared, and once he’d cocked the hammer of his rifle, he stared at D’s left hand with a puzzled expression.

A hoarse voice had just stated its agreement with him.

“What was that just now? Ventriloquism?”

“That’s right,” the hoarse voice responded pompously. “Don’t worry about it. A man’s gotta keep a grip on himself.”

The former Hunter didn’t know what to say.

Fifty yards until they would pass each other—

Without warning, the other vehicle changed direction. Kicking up a cloud of dust, it came barreling straight at them.

“It’s a phantom carriage!” JJ exclaimed as he pulled the trigger.

It wasn’t the carriage he was aiming at. One of the cyborg horses staggered. To stop a car, you aimed for the engine. But the horse didn’t stop.

“They’re gonna hit us!” JJ cried, his body rising along with his scream. Not just that, but the horses and stagecoach rose, too.

D must’ve worked a miracle with the reins, because all six horses had kicked off the earth and the stagecoach jumped into the air, easily clearing the enemy trying to ram them and landing some thirty feet away.

The interior of the vehicle was thrown into chaos. No one had been properly secured, so they were all pitched out of their seats, slamming into the seat in front of them or colliding with the person next to them before rolling to the floor.

The stagecoach continued forward. The unearthly, beautiful driver didn’t seem to give any thought to returning to the highway.

“They’re coming after us!” JJ shouted, shouldering the rifle. “It’s the restless spirits of folks attacked and killed on the highway by Nobles or bandits. They sure are persistent.”

A gunshot reverberated.

“Wow!” JJ exclaimed, ducking his head. “They’ve started shooting at us. That thing’s got passengers!”

JJ’s eyes had caught the pistols poking out of the carriage’s windows and the shriveled hands that held them. The hands were those of men, women, and even children.

On the highways of the Frontier, monsters and bandit groups were a certainty. On the other hand, aside from someone riding shotgun next to the driver, stagecoach passengers had no choice but to defend themselves. In the face of overwhelming numbers, firepower, and cruelty, besieged passengers could be forced to surrender, but even after that they might be killed on the spot or left stranded there as food for monsters.

Restless spirits collected on the Frontier. The ghostly fires that burned by night across the vast plains were the pooled souls of those angered by their untimely deaths. That resentment could reanimate broken-down carriages and cyborg horses, with the dead becoming passengers once more and attacking those who traveled the plains in peace—which made sense in its own way.

“What’ll we do, D? They’re right on our tail—actually, they’ll overtake us any minute! They’re vengeful spirits, after all.”

“We oughta have a funeral for ’em.”

“Quit it with the ventriloquism!”

JJ’s angry shout was erased by a bullet whizzing through the air.

“Son of a bitch!”

JJ fired another shot at them, and then all the hands pulled back into the carriage.

The former Hunter didn’t think he’d had any effect. He wasn’t that simple-minded.

A thick cylinder poked out of the window.

“It’s a bazooka!”

A small amount of powder set in the bottom of the fat, high-explosive projectile would send it flying more than a hundred yards, where its shrapnel and shock waves would bowl over the cyborg horses.

“Hold on tight,” D said, cracking the reins.

The ground swelled. With a roar, red-hot chunks of iron flew at the horses and stagecoach. All of them struck the bottom of the vehicle, which was tilted sharply to one side.

JJ had just about rolled out of the driver’s seat before latching onto one of the handholds for moving about up top, and as he clung to it, inside he was shouting with surprise, What the hell is this guy?! He’s a freak! It was almost a scream of heartfelt emotion.

Suddenly the stagecoach slowed down. Their fifty-yard lead was swiftly diminishing.

“Hey!” JJ called out.

Before the man could ask the reason for slowing, D told him, “Take the reins.”

“Sure thing!”

As he accepted them, a black shape flew past him. D had bounded. His leap had taken into account the speed of the pursuing carriage.

Landing on the roof of the vengeful spirits’ carriage, the Hunter drew his blade. Not a single motion was wasted.

“Watch yourself. We’re dealing with ghosts here!” the hoarse voice said, its words mixing with the sounds of gunfire.

Shots from inside the vehicle were ripping through the ceiling. One bullet hole after another gouged the roof, but every shot missed D. Though they’d seen D’s leap, they didn’t know exactly where he’d landed. His body had touched down without making a sound.

The shooting moved to the rear. Advancing to the bullet-riddled front portion, D used the tip of his sword to scribe a circle about three feet in diameter. It looked perfectly round. As soon as he’d finished tracing the figure, D planted one foot in the center of it. A round hole opened in the roof. And the figure of beauty leapt into the hole.

As JJ was straining to see, Louise came up beside him. The stagecoach was finally running normally again.

“You sure you should be doing this?” JJ asked, tossing his chin toward the rear of the vehicle. He was referring to Dorleac.

“It’s fine. Everyone’s okay. I asked Al to watch him. But we’ve got some injured folks. Stop the stage.”

“No can do. D’s—oh my God!”

The enemy carriage had halted its mad run. D appeared from its roof. His blade was back in its sheath. The deadly battle within the vehicle was at an end.

Working the reins, JJ drove the stagecoach over by the carriage. When it was within range of D’s earlier jump, the black form once again leapt up and sailed down onto the roof of the stagecoach.

“Get below,” the Hunter told the sheriff.

Louise got up to leave without putting up a fight. She’d confirmed that JJ was okay.

“The carriage is going.”

JJ’s words made Louise and D turn their heads.

The carriage spawned by restless spirits had slowly begun to roll off to the west.

“Where do you suppose it’s headed?” the sheriff mused.

“Somewhere there’s no people,” JJ replied. “And there it’ll wait, until some fresh hate becomes its passengers.”

“It never ends, does it? The anger and hate. And yet the good memories never seem to last.”

Raising a cloud of dust, the masterless carriage disappeared into the far reaches of the wilderness.

II

“Get everyone up.”

Having been left with those instructions by Louise, Al immediately got to his feet. In the seating area, Claire and Harman still seemed to be unconscious. Al wondered rather dubiously why Louise hadn’t bothered to wake anyone else up. Being unconscious was the same as being asleep. What if the enemy were to appear in their dreams?

A cold hand was placed on Al’s shoulder. He was going to pull away, but piercing pain in his neck and waist stopped him. The hand on his shoulder moved to his neck. A pleasant chill spread over his pain, astonishing Al.

The pain had vanished.

“Wh-what are you—?”

“Hold still, please. I learned this technique from Duke Sinistre. If I make contact long enough, it can cure even chronic conditions.”

“Isn’t your arm supposed to be broken or something?”

“It’s better already,” Dorleac said with a laugh.

“Are—are you serious?”

“Surely you must see by now. Oh, you’ve got a crack in one of your cervical vertebrae. Does it hurt?”

“No—I don’t feel a thing.”

The cold, magic touch dropped to his waist. Pain that went back half a decade quickly receded.

“Judging from your condition, I’d say you’ve been this way for about five years. I could fix it in an hour or so.”

“You—you could?”

“Yes. But a human doctor never could.”

“You mean nobody but you can do it? But you could fix me up?”

“Yes.”

“Can you do other illnesses, too? Like the wounds from the bite of a bloodsucking gnat?”

“Child’s play.”

Al fell silent.

The dashing young man read the chaos in the deputy’s heart.

“Your children’s ailment—I’ll make it better. It’s not just itchiness, is it? After you’ve been bitten, the skin dissolves, and no matter what medicine you put on it the skin just keeps oozing pus. The itching is so painful, most children last less than a year.”

“Stop it.”

“I’ll cure it for you,” Dorleac said, his voice blowing cool breath and fearful notions into Al’s ear. “If you get me out of here. Later, I promise I’ll call on your home.”

Ordinarily, these were words no one would ever believe. However, his healing touch had easily turned Al from harsh reality.

A lovely, sweet voice was whispering in his ear.

I wanna believe it, even if it’s a lie, Al thought.

“I can’t do it . . . I won’t betray the others . . . after we’ve come all this way together.”

“If I escape, it’ll only be a problem for the sheriff and the escort brigade. Yes, you’ll probably be punished, but it’s not as if they’ll execute you or anything. I won’t get you into much trouble. You’ll be thoroughly reprimanded, and you won’t get paid, but in return you’ll have treatment for any disease for the rest of your life. As well as for your children.”

Al was at a loss for words.

“What will it be?”

“What should I do?” Al said, his own voice sounding terribly distant.

The hand from Al’s waist took hold of his.

“You have my thanks,” Dorleac said. “Kindly unlock the cage. Then you need only feign ignorance, and I shall do the rest.”

“But the key—”

“Look, it’s right there.”

Even without the young man pointing to it, the deputy knew the location just from his tone. It had fallen right beside the last row of seats. And Louise had gone up to the driver’s seat without noticing.

“If she comes back, she’ll spot it immediately. Hurry and unlock the cage, please.”

“But . . .”

“I’ll cause you no trouble. Once you’ve unlocked the door, simply put the key somewhere else out of sight and pretend you don’t know anything about it.”

Al became confused. And his consciousness suddenly drifted away.

It was dark beyond the windows. Pitch black. However, the entire family knew it was still midday. The flapping of countless wings was the cause of it.

“There’s no cracks anywhere, are there?” Al asked his family, who were clustered in a corner of their living room.

“We’re fine,” his wife replied. “I checked it all the day before yesterday. Not one of them gnats can get in here.”

The faint buzz of wings assailed the group’s eardrums, skimming by the end of his wife’s nose.

“They’re inside! How’d they get in?!” the young farmer exclaimed. Though his body was frozen, apparently he hadn’t forgotten how to turn his head.

His son looked over at the eastern window and said, “Yesterday, me and Daphne were fighting, and a book hit the wall over there. I looked, but didn’t see anything—”

“You idiots!” Al bellowed, spinning around, but by that point a black gale was swirling through the living room.

A heartbeat later it had vanished, and Al looked down to see both his children on the floor scratching all over.

“Ow, it’s so itchy!”

Letting out screams of something far more terrible than pain, his children's skin was peeling away, and their bodies were quickly stained with red.

“A dream,” Al muttered. “This is just a dream. A nightmare.”

“That’s right,” a steely voice from behind him concurred.

When the farmer turned, his eyes met those of the young man in the cage.

“This is a dream,” Dorleac continued. “Therefore, I can save your children right away. Lend me your aid.”

“Can you really do it?”

Although this was a dream, Al knew of the young man’s ability.

“Will you accept my conditions in return?”

“I’ll do anything—just save them!”

“Kindly kill him,” the young man said, pointing toward the children.

Lying there was a young man in black far more lovely than the source of the voice.

“It was this man who allowed your children to be feasted upon by insects. Once he’s gone, I shall provide everything you will ever need for your little ones.”

Al knew his name. He was the man called D. However, he’d never seen him before. Could he weigh that man’s life against those of his son and daughter?

“Okay. I’ll kill him for sure. So, what should I do?”

“As a start, kindly get that for me.”

The young man pointed down by Al’s feet.

“The key?”

“Get it for me, please.”

For a fleeting moment, Al hesitated. Somewhere in his heart a voice was trying to tell him to stop.

“I can’t reach it,” Al said, looking at the young man.

“It’s all right. You can take hold of it. Pick it up and hand it to me, if you please. I can’t reach it myself.”

Al’s determination was as heavy as a stone. He reached out his hand.

The young man nodded.

The tension was so great, the farmer blacked out for a moment.

The first thing Al did was to turn his gaze to the floor in front of him.

The key was right where it’d been.

Good, he thought, relief flooding his chest.

Al went over to the key and picked it up. Turning, he said, “I didn’t give it to you!”

Son of a bitch, he thought, what are you smiling about?

“That’s too bad,” Dorleac said, sounding crestfallen.

Once Al had woken the others, Louise came back down.

“That carriage has taken off,” the sheriff announced. “How’s everyone?”

On hearing a chorus of replies to the effect that they were fine, Louise seemed satisfied, but when Al stealthily handed her the key, she stared at him with an ashen face.

“He’s the one who spotted it. It’s okay. He asked me to let him out, but naturally I refused.”

Planting a hand on one of his strong shoulders, Louise said, “That’s great.”

“But why didn’t you get everybody up before you headed up top? We weren’t supposed to fall asleep, right?”

“Being asleep and unconscious aren’t the same thing, you know.”

“They’re not?”

“I’ll thank you to remember that.”

“Understood,” Al replied, satisfied. He had a good enough head on his shoulders to know it wasn’t wise to question the sheriff any further. On the other hand, he suddenly thought of something. D had to have known that everyone had been knocked out. Yet since he hadn’t come down here, he probably didn’t suspect anything.

Once the stagecoach returned to the highway, Chauvet and two members of the escort party—who’d all been left behind—pulled up on either side of the vehicle. A man like Chauvet probably would’ve loved to chew somebody’s ass over starting a fight without his permission, but after seeing the deadly battle on the carriage and how the stagecoach had moved as if possessed, he couldn’t say boo about it.

“By the way, shouldn’t the rest of the escort brigade be along anytime now?” JJ said, squinting his eyes to scan the far reaches of the wilderness.

“That’s right. Soon enough—oh, here they come!”

At the very edge of JJ’s visibility, a number of figures came into view, shimmering like a heat mirage. It was an approaching group of horsemen.

Twenty elite riders halted in front of Chauvet. D even stopped the stagecoach. One of the men rode forward, saying, “Captain, here’s a special delivery hot from the Capital.”

He handed Chauvet a communiqué tube. There was only a single sheet of official correspondence inside it. Running his eyes across it, Chauvet banged on the stagecoach’s door. Harman opened it.

“The sheriff around?”

When Louise came out, Chauvet handed her the paper from the communiqué tube and grinned. Putting it back in the tube, Louise said, “I’ll hold on to this.”

“Do what you want. Just don’t forget that an hour from now, all responsibility for the prisoner goes to me.”

“Of course.”

Louise went back inside the stagecoach.

“What was all that?” Harman asked the sheriff.

“Seems there was a little bit of an uproar in the Capital.”

“Huh?”

As Louise went back to the cage, Harman and Claire trained odd looks on her.

“I wonder if something’s up.”

“Definitely,” the bar girl replied.

“Maybe the sheriff got her walking papers?”

“Oh, that would be perfect.”

The two of them purposely spoke loudly enough so that Louise would hear them.

The stagecoach rolled out.

In front of the cage, Louise said to the occupant, “It’ll be time for us to say goodbye soon.”

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

“Made arrangements for your escape?”

“More or less.”

“You’re just as composed as always,” Louise said, and leaning back against the wall, she began to plot how she could slay D.

III

On the distant plain an expanse of verdant green came into view. The town of Canaluda, with the airfield on its outskirts, was the intersection point of four highways and a key point on the Frontier. The District Control Center and many other administrative agencies were in this hub, which was nearly ten times the size of Happy Gringo, with a population to match. The manmade forests and lakes that surrounded it were a product of generous budgets and the tax revenues from the booming business in their enormous pleasure district.

The group arrived just as a somewhat deeper blue was staining the eastern sky.

“Al and I will be heading back to Happy Gringo from here. The flight to the Capital leaves at four o’clock—two hours from now. The carriage out to the airfield leaves in an hour. So, I guess this is goodbye,” Louise declared. “Thanks for bearing with us on the long haul. I’m glad we’re all here, safe and sound.”

“So long!” Harman exclaimed, raising his suitcase.

“Bye-bye,” Claire said with a wave of her right hand. “Don’t you have anything to say?”

JJ met Claire’s gaze with a shake of his head. “This is the end of the line for me, too. It’s been a pleasure, folks.”

“Take care.”

And their unexpected passenger had vanished as soon as the stagecoach had stopped at the station.

He’s not the kind of man I could picture in a flying machine. Those weren’t just the thoughts of Louise, but something the entire group pondered when the Hunter left them.

Some men wearing badges came over, stood right in front of Harman as he was about to veer away from them, and said, “You’re Harman Briggs, a.k.a. Norman Brave, aren’t you? There’s a complaint out on you for a fraudulent wedding proposal to a Ms. Akida of Katcharishaw. Actually, the little lady’s in town, having come all this way to personally spit in your face. You’re coming with me, sir.”

“I don’t know anything about this!” Harman Briggs/Norman Brave bellowed, foam flying from his mouth. “So, you got a warrant?”

“Right here!” Louise said, handing the tube she’d got from Chauvet to one of the men with a badge—the local sheriff.

“You tricked me, you bitch!” Harman snarled, baring his teeth.

“You must’ve been feeling pretty smug up until now. Goodbye.”

Shouting obscenities and demanding to be allowed to speak to the woman, Harman was led away.

Louise then turned to Dorleac in the cage and said, “I think you’re probably all right now, but I can’t say for sure Sinistre can’t get to you here. I’m gonna have them take you straight out to the airfield. So this is where we go our separate ways.”

“Are you sure?” Dorleac inquired meaningfully.

There was no one else around.

“Yeah,” Louise said forcefully.

“In that case, I ask that you remain silent.”

Dorleac touched a slim finger to the door of the cage. As Louise watched the door open without a sound, she drew the stake launcher from her belt. She couldn’t believe it. When they’d reached town, she’d checked that the cage was locked.

“In reality, the door is still locked, but you can see that’s not the case in the dream.”

Standing right in front of her, Dorleac put his hands on her shoulders.

This is a dream, the sheriff told herself.

The handsome face drew nearer. When lips touched the nape of her neck, Louise shivered all over. After doing only that, Dorleac pulled away again.

“Goodbye,” he said.

The dashing young man walked right past her and headed toward the front of the stagecoach, but Louise made no attempt to follow him.

Dorleac went outside. Had the mood struck him, he could’ve done this much sooner. If only that Hunter, ten thousand times more beautiful than himself, hadn’t been there.

The escort brigade as well as a sheriff and his men were outside, but even after seeing Dorleac they didn’t try to stop him. They were once again having a dream.

Now all the young man had to do was wait for Duke Sinistre to come and collect him. For the first time in a long while his heart buoyed with joy as he headed for the exit from the station building.

First of all, he had to find D. On that point, JJ believed he need not worry. Now, the dream was reality for him. That being the case, D, who’d been in LUI’s dream once, would be unable to escape from this world.

The former Hunter had gone into a bar with a good view of the station building. He knew that D wouldn’t go far from Dorleac’s vicinity. The reason JJ had left the stagecoach was simply to avoid any trouble with the escort brigade.

However, just after the former Hunter finished downing the beer he’d ordered, Dorleac came out of the station. As the young man walked down the middle of a well-traveled street through the heart of town, he had a tremendous spring to his step.

Paying the bill, JJ began trailing after the man.

Five minutes later, the young man came to an area where the shops and their signs were gaudily colored. More than a few of the women standing out in front of the establishments were dressed in what might be mistaken for underthings, and the streets were so packed with pedestrians you’d think the town was being evacuated. Captivating and provocative music rose like smoke from a number of places. This was the entertainment district.

On seeing Dorleac’s face, women called out to him, making the first move. While treating them courteously, the handsome young man went into a certain shop. Painted on the sign in virulent shades was the name “Illusions.” This was a shop where patrons inhaled hallucinogens, then went on to enjoy their fantasy worlds.

JJ walked through the door. He wondered if he was already tripping.

The interior of the shop was shrouded in evening. Beneath the vast heavens was spread a land that called to mind a garden run wild, and before him a marble mausoleum loomed.

“But this is—?”

He recognized the place. Was LUI making him dream this? Or was it a dream of reality caused by the smoke filling this shop called Illusions? Whichever it was, now that the stage had been set, the actor’s role was decided.

Going over to the mausoleum, he battled the Nobleman who appeared, and just when things looked darkest D stormed in and slew the Noble with consummate ease before leaving again. That was just the same.

He had to change it.

“D,” JJ said, managing to wring out the sound.

The rider halted his steed, then turned.

“I’ve been waiting a long time. If I don’t do something about this humiliation, I’ll have to live the rest of my days as a coward.”

“Where is Dorleac?” D asked.

Is this really a dream after all?

“Fight me. He’s got nothing to do with this.”

D got off his horse without any hesitation.

“D, is this a dream or reality?” asked JJ.

“Can’t you tell?” D asked, drawing his blade.

JJ’s sword already glinted dully in his right hand.

“If you don’t know, then it makes no difference.”

D sprinted first. The instant the man parried D’s blade, his black-garbed foe loomed over him like a mountain. The overwhelming difference in power pushed JJ’s blade back, and the moment the man felt cold steel on the base of his neck, his opponent staggered.

There were two kinds of sounds stake launchers made. One was the hiss of compressed gas, the other the bang of gunpowder. The stake that took D through the back and out through his chest was accompanied by the former.

“Louise!”

Stake launcher at the ready, the female sheriff ran over to JJ as soon as she saw D drop.

“I let Dorleac get away,” she said. “I hurried after him as fast as I could.”

JJ set one hand on the shoulder of the raggedly breathing beauty.

“I don’t know if this is a dream or reality,” he said wearily. “Looks like our work in this world is done. All we have to do now is track down Dorleac and dispose of him.”

“Do you think we can get out of here?” the woman asked.

“We’ll manage something—if we’re together,” JJ said, softly stroking Louise’s hair. It smelled of sweat, but an awfully sweet scent also assailed his nose. Louise had pulled him close.

An instant later, JJ shoved away the woman he loved.

“Louise, you’re—?!”

JJ gazed down at the hand he’d touched to the base of his neck—and his carotid artery. Bright arterial blood gushed from a pair of teeth marks, streaming down to his chest.

“That’s what happens in this world. JJ, we’re not going after Dorleac.”

The fangs that poked from Louise’s mouth were stained crimson. Winding a pale arm around JJ’s neck, she whispered to him in a sweet voice, “Let’s go, just the two of us. Out into our world. A world for just the two of us, different from both dreams and reality.”

JJ nodded.

“You idiots,” a hoarse voice cursed at them from off to one side. D was standing there. In his left hand he gripped a bloodstained stake.

With a low cry Louise leapt back. D slowly turned in her direction. The unearthly aura billowing from him as he stood there with his blade in his right hand turned Louise to ice. When he raised his sword high, the last light of evening slid down its blade.

Sparks flew.

“Run for it!” JJ shouted, his sword locked with the Hunter’s.

Grabbing D’s right arm and shoving it away, JJ made a horizontal sweep with his sword. That slash went through D’s ribs, coat and all, and came out the other side.

Staggering badly, D swept his left arm around. The wooden stake took the motionless Louise right through the heart.

The sheriff fell in a bloody mist.

Running over, JJ cradled her in his arms.

“You saved me, didn’t you? My wonderful coward . . .”

“But the world for just us two—no, hold on a minute.”

JJ turned to look at D.

Astride his cyborg horse, the Hunter in black already had his back to JJ.

“D!”

“I knew that she’d arrived,” D said from the back of his steed. “But your sword kept me tied up. Your next time is now.”

Not waiting for an answer from the man, D galloped off. Even after his form was swallowed up by the trees, JJ didn’t move. The former Hunter looked terribly ephemeral, like someone who wished he could fade away into the even chapter 9

ing along with the light.