Fangs of the Tiger King

Chapter 8

I

It was just before the sun was at its highest that the rebel army attacked the Pitch Black Gang in the northern forest region where they’d assembled. Even to Vulcan, who was busy tending to the wound he’d received from one of his own arrows, this came as the proverbial bolt out of the blue.

While other bandit groups preyed on isolated humans beyond the Nobility’s protection or bands of nomads, the Pitch Black Gang terrorized Nobles’ domains to their hearts’ content and fled with impunity entirely thanks to one of their leader’s superhuman powers—a precognitive ability. But this time, their enemy seemed protected by a force that kept Vulcan’s power from working. Perhaps it was that same force that allowed the rebels to neutralize the gang’s defensive shields and kill their hand-picked lookouts, striking the battle-hardened villains before anyone could notice and raise the alarm. In less than five minutes’ time, eighty percent of the Pitch Black Gang had been stabbed, shot, burned, or vaporized.

When Vulcan came out of the tent where he made his preparations, the enemy vanguard had closed to within fifty yards of him. He was already astride his unicorn. And every attack by the rebel army bounced off him, while his attacks proved effective. He had a weapon the Pitch Black Gang took great pride in—a rotary cannon. Fed by a belt from the hundred-thousand-round magazine that rested on the ground, the motor gun sprayed lead at a rate of six thousand rounds a minute, ripping horses and riders to shreds.

When a ring of over a hundred shredded men had taken shape, a man on a white horse came through the bluish smoke and halted right in front of the gun’s muzzles. “I’m Gilshark. I lead the rebel army,” he said by way of introduction.

Vulcan also introduced himself, and he added, “I’m surprised you made it this far.”

“All thanks to a certain Noble,” Gilshark replied.

“You’re human?”

The bandit leader easily had seven thousand rounds left. What’s more, his beloved steed was a unicorn, which rendered its rider indestructible.

Taking no particular care, Vulcan pulled the trigger. A fusillade of twenty-millimeter slugs should’ve reduced Gilshark’s upper body to bloody pulp, his flesh blasted into a fine mist. But no bullets flew from the weapon. The blisteringly hot motor merely spun its six barrels at incredible speed.

“Useless piece of shit!” Vulcan bellowed, raising the weapon with his right hand alone and swinging it down at Gilshark. The ammo belt trailed after it like a serpent’s tail.

“Easy there,” Gilshark said, bending backward as he caught the mass of steel, then swinging the muzzles around toward Vulcan and pulling the trigger.

This wasn’t a gun; it was a cannon. A direct hit from its twenty-millimeter slugs would blow apart a human torso. The stand of trees behind Vulcan was mowed down, and rocks were pulverized. The soil was blown so far back there, the scars would remain in the ground for a lifetime.

“You’re protected? Well, at least I got it to fire,” the rebel army leader said, discarding the weapon after discharging only a thousand rounds.

“Where’d you get that power?” asked Vulcan.

“In the deep, dark bowels of the earth.”

“You went down there?” the bandit leader said with a thin smile. “Then let me test something. I wanna see what his power’s like.”

Suddenly, Vulcan drove his boots against the unicorn’s flanks.

Kicking off the ground, the unicorn bent in its legs, turning itself into a bullet. Pierced cleanly through the heart and out the back, Gilshark was easily taken out of the saddle. The unicorn tossed him high into the air. The rebel leader’s body went as high as the top of the towering tree beside him, where it snagged on a branch and didn’t come down.

“Finished already? You weren’t as tough as you claimed. Is the supposed ultimate weapon the duke used equally disappointing?” Vulcan mused, spitting the words bitterly before pulling back on the reins.

The ground before him collapsed impressively. It wasn’t merely a matter of the material giving way. The ground at the surface had ceased to exist.

A gravity field generator?!

Before the bandit could even look up into the tree in astonishment, Gilshark landed with a thud. Rubbing the small of his back with exaggerated groans, he got back to his feet and said, “I’m getting too old for this. So, what say we see whose protector is more powerful? Petty though it may seem.”

The air rang with a sharp metallic sound. The bodies of the unicorn and Vulcan grew as blurry as a heat shimmer. A black sphere suddenly appeared in front of the steed and rider, and the instant the unicorn’s horn touched it, it swiftly vanished.

“Did science trump legend?” Gilshark said, bending backward with a laugh. “I hate to tell you this, but that science is backed by his power.”

As soon as he finished saying that, the harsh, grating noise stopped.

Gilshark squinted. There was no sign of the unicorn or its rider anywhere. They’d been sucked into someplace of nigh infinite mass and almost nonexistent volume.

“Seems the time’s come for Tiger King Van Doren’s reign of terror to end. I’m heading straight off to hit his castle now. Now it’s his turn to wait in fear, as we’ve done for so long.”

Astride his white steed, the rebel leader galloped off with his surviving compatriots.

Before long, there were signs of life and grunts from the forest that’d been filled by corpses and the stench of blood alone.

The forest’s oldest inhabitants had come to feed on the carrion—ghouls. But their grunts, rather shrill sounds that rolled across the ground, stopped dead. In one spot the ground had been disturbed—a semicircular depression about thirty feet across—and something wavered indistinctly at its center like a heat shimmer. Until it resolved into a human shape, the ghouls held their breath, and even the wind stopped.

In no time, what should come out of the depression with dusty earth crumbling from him but someone unmistakably human?

A mouth that hadn’t yet formed lips spun a voice packed with emotion, grumbling, “So, that idiotic human doesn’t know that the blood of Nobility flows in my veins? If he wants to know about the ultimate weapon, I’ll show him just what it can do.”

Less than an hour after the two leaders clashed, the duke received word that the rebel army was advancing. The duke in turn conveyed that information to D.

“It would seem they’re coming down the road at considerable speed. As a result, they should be here in a day’s time—about noon tomorrow.”

“What about your androids?”

“They’re being destroyed, one after another. To be honest, I didn’t think the humans were that strong yet.”

“The world keeps moving on,” D said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “What do you plan on doing? Nobody’d blame you if you made a run for it!”

Grinning wryly, the duke clapped the Hunter on the right shoulder and said, “How often the thought has occurred to me—yes, about a hundred thousand times. But not once could I do it. And this time will be no different.”

The Nobleman directed a nod to the air. What was projected there was the scene of a battle between android peacekeeping forces and the rebel army. All the peacekeepers’ light-based weapons were blocked by force fields or shields incorporating lenses, so they’d been forced to initiate an aerial bombardment that’d left the rebel army on the brink of annihilation.

The rebels’ salvation came when, following a heat shimmer like blur, a black sphere suddenly appeared. It was a void that sucked in everything within a thousand yards. That included laser beams and the flames left by the bombing.

The androids requested a strike from the plasma cannon on the surveillance satellite. When the duke authorized it, the rebel army moved into a nearby village. The duke then ordered a halt to the attack. The villagers were now hostages.

“Here comes the gravity field!” said the hoarse voice, and at that moment the image faded. “Camera got taken out. What a catastrophe.”

Right hand cupped behind his ear, the duke said, “The satellite was taken out.”

The hoarse voice continued, “Looks like he got some power from him down in the depths of the earth, too. And on top of that—”

“He altered himself,” the duke said, picking up the thread. “There’s no way a human being could supersede the power of the great one. He may believe himself to be in control, but he’s being manipulated. The fact that fear of the plasma cannon caused him to flee into the very village he should be protecting is proof of that.”

“Is he too strong, or is the human too weak?”

No one answered the hoarse voice.

After a little while, the duke turned to D and said, “I’ll thank you to keep out of this.” He was referring to the final decisive battle with the rebel army.

“I’ll be the one to slay you,” D replied.

Just then, the face of a beautiful woman appeared in the air. There was only her head. And it was gazing up at the group from where it rested on the ground.

“Shyna?!”

“Dr. Valerie ran amok at the excavation site,” the lovely android informed them coolly, and then the image dispersed in the air.

“What’s going on over there?” asked the duke, eyes still trained on the now-empty space.

“I’ll go see,” D told him.

II

Even before dismounting from his cyborg horse, D noticed something strange about the silence. Stillness alone didn’t mean death. If there were people alive there, the place would’ve burned with their life force. It would be a palpable presence. But here, there was nothing save unmistakable death.

Standing on the brink of the great subsidence, D looked down. And immediately leapt in.

Corpses were strewn there. The throats of all of them were rent. Each had been carved in a neat crescent, with deep red fluid still pooled in the wound.

Shyna’s head lay down by the Hunter’s feet. When D stooped down and reached for it, her lips moved faintly. Perhaps she was saying, Don’t . . . look . . . at . . . me . . .

“Where’s Valerie?” D said, asking only what was pertinent.

“She came . . . out of . . . the hole . . . Was possessed . . . by something . . . Can’t . . . control . . . herself.”

D looked all around.

“Can’t detect her,” said his left hand. “It’s his power. Done a hell of a job of erasing her presence.”

“What caused all this?” D asked, gazing at Shyna’s head.

“Something . . . underground . . . Valerie . . . wouldn’t let them . . . dig it up.”

“What was it?”

“Don’t . . . know,” Shyna said, her voice suddenly sounding distant. Her energy had run out.

“Thank you, Shyna. You did an excellent job.”

“Was I . . . of . . . service?”

“Very much so.”

She might have tried to smile then. But every trace of emotion vanished from Shyna’s face.

Taking her head in both hands, D stood up. Setting it at the edge of the subsidence, he backed away a step and tipped his traveler’s hat. He then turned right around and exited the hole.

From the north, thunderheads were starting to build in the otherwise clear sky.

“That’s the direction the rebel army’s coming from,” the hoarse voice remarked. “Looks like it’ll be a hell of a storm.”

D slowly started forward on his cyborg horse. Clouds and a storm—the story was beginning to set a fitting stage for the gorgeous young man.

When darkness fell, people always locked the doors to their homes, shut the windows, and drew the curtains. After that—all they could do was wait. But tonight would be different. The rebel army had just left. Though the tiny village hadn’t been turned into a battlefield, it still resembled one, with no less than fifty of the villagers shooting off fireworks to celebrate the army’s push forward.

“He was a good lord, though,” they would say. “But all that’s over now. There’s a world coming that’s ours alone.”

“Yeah, Captain Gilshark’s on the move. The rebel army’s going in. Our lord has had it. Let it all go up in flames,” others laughed.

We don’t have to fear the Nobility any more, they all thought. Therefore, every house in the village had its doors and windows open wide despite the distant rumbles of thunder and the wind rocking the tree branches, determined to be free of that which had held them for millennia. Now it was their turn to lick their chops, and an old protest song flowed from every house.

It’s only the night breeze coming in,

Not a Noble’s breath, so stop worryin’.

D.

The Hunter was certain someone had called his name. He turned toward the window.

The suite the duke had given him consisted of five rooms. It was so spacious, a hundred assassins could’ve snuck in and hidden there.

The voice he heard came from outside the window. D went over to it and looked down. His sword and sheath, taken from his back, were in his right hand.

He was on the fifth floor. At the base of the plunging walls lay a moonlit lawn. And there stood Valerie.

Come out, D.

Her voice couldn’t reach that high. However, D’s ears caught the words distinctly.

Opening the window, D inquired, “What do you want?”

Please, help me, the archeologist said, her voice colored by a mournfulness devoid of deception. Something else is controlling me. A little while ago, I drank the blood of some people in a village somewhere.

D threw himself out the window. Though he landed right beside Valerie, he still didn’t make a sound. He’d dropped five floors. And each of those floors was easily twice as high as in an ordinary building. It’d been at least a hundred and sixty feet.

“I know why this is happening. Some power possessed me when I was down there, underground. An incredible power. A power so great, it can turn humans into Nobility without ever drinking their blood.”

Valerie slowly opened her mouth. Captivating though they were, her canine teeth were plainly fangs.

“I haven’t completely turned into a Noble yet,” Valerie said, closing her mouth. There was a shadow at her feet. It was only half as dark as a normal person’s—just like D’s.

“I still have my own will. That’s what makes this so painful. I just—it was his will that made me do it, but I remember everything. In other words, it wasn’t my will, but it was still me that did it.”

“I got a firsthand account from Shyna,” D said.

Valerie covered her ears.

“It was his will that they not dig up the thing they found underground. You’re being manipulated to enforce it.”

Valerie nodded. “I came out tonight to get rid of that thing. But I was able to fight it and come to see you. The blood that I drank probably helped me. It made me stronger.”

Valerie’s shoulders trembled, and she squeezed her hands into tight fists. Her head hung low.

“Can you keep it in check?” D asked flatly.

“I can manage, for the moment. But ten minutes from now, I really can’t say. D—kill me,” Valerie said, looking up at him. Her eyes gave off a red glow.

In a single, fluid motion, D drew and struck with the sword he carried. It definitely went right through Valerie’s neck. The Hunter felt it slice through her vertebrae. However, Valerie didn’t budge, and her head didn’t fall off. She just grinned at him.

“D, who are you, anyway?” Valerie asked, her hands up by her chest, the fingers curled like hooks. “I understand just a little—about him, I mean. What does it mean when he says that you alone are special?”

She was slowly moving closer.

“Tell me, D, was he trying to change the world? Was he trying to make a world without Nobility, even though he’s a Noble?”

Suddenly, Valerie raised her hands and clawed at her hair. A scream split her lips. Anyone who heard it wouldn’t be sleeping again for quite some time.

Before D could take a step forward, Valerie kicked off the ground. Leaping away a good ten yards, she turned around and vanished into the darkness.

D went straight into a run. And while running, he whistled. As he left the garden, his cyborg horse came galloping from the direction of the castle entrance. He leapt on and galloped away.

“We ain’t gonna catch up to her, you know,” the hoarse voice remarked, its words streaming in the wind. “So, her destination—think it’s the excavation site?”

“It couldn’t be anywhere else,” D replied, his words torn and scattered as soon as they left his lips. “How long can she last?”

“Don’t know, but she can’t have long. It’s too much to carry. For him, he’s possessing her with maybe all the power in his fingertip, but to a human—”

The Hunter galloped on—and reached his destination. Everyone from the camp was dead, leaving the place lying there like a graveyard beneath the night wind and the moonlight.

Going to the edge of the ruins, D got off his cyborg steed. He placed his left hand against the ground.

“She’s underground,” the hoarse voice told him. “Something’s rumbling.”

“Think she intends to destroy it?”

“That’s what she said—but I wouldn’t call this the sounds of destruction.”

“What, then?”

“What if her will’s winning out?”

“Then she’d put that thing back into operation?” D asked.

“Well, looks like that storm’s the least of anyone’s concerns now.”

“Let’s go!”

“What the—?!” the hoarse voice exclaimed.

D intended to go below. It was the roaring from the earth that stopped him. First, the wind had billowed out. It came with such a lack of force, it was as if the ground, in its death throes, had seemingly breathed its last. Suddenly, there was devastation. To D’s eyes, it looked as if everything had become some weird beast aiming for the sky. Pillars, canopy ceilings, roofs, bulwarks, foundations—all of them leaving noise and shock and destruction in their wake as they flew upward willfully and generously. Was it outer space they sought, or freedom?

Had all that been buried down there? A billion tons of masonry, a hundred million of machinery, a thousand tons of art, and a million of frozen blood. And then they would fall. Rising to the heavens, hands grasping but failing to catch the stars—

Once again the earth rumbled. It was as if every sound since the dawn of creation had been assembled in one place. Pillar collided with pillar, smashing each other, ceilings clashed against the enormous idol with the force of a nuclear weapon, everything plummeting back down into the depths of the earth—

As D was struck from head to toe by waves of sound from the destruction that still roared across heaven and earth, his left hand inquired, “Her doing?”

“Wish I could say it most certainly is, but I can’t,” the Hunter replied. “What’s going on with that thing underground?”

“World will probably come to an end before it could ever be dug up. Is that what he wanted?”

As D was passing through the foyer, he encountered the duke. When the Nobleman asked him what’d transpired, the Hunter told him, “You’re too late.”

“I was off in a nearby village, you see.”

D explained the situation.

“So she did it,” the duke lamented. “Then she lives no more. However, this may be for the best. That thing must never be brought to the surface.”

“So long as it’s out there somewhere, the desire to dig it up will take root. Can you assure me it won’t?”

“No one can offer such assurances. Such is the world we live in,” the duke replied, heaving a sigh. “According to reports from the front, the rebel army will arrive at break of day. Once the battle begins, you’re to evacuate to another location. I shall supply you with a guide.”

“No, I won’t,” D told him flatly. “I can’t have you getting away from me.”

“I would never do such a—” the duke began to say, a grin rising on his lips. He’d just realized the meaning of D’s words.

In order to escape, he would have to be alive. And D knew the old man they called the Tiger wasn’t the kind of man to run from his foes with his tail between his legs. If he lived, it would mean he’d crushed the enemy.

You’ll be fine—that’s what D was saying.

Not saying a word, the duke clapped D on the shoulder. There was something feeble about the way he did so.

III

D suddenly opened his eyes. A shadowy figure was standing by the same window where he’d heard Valerie’s voice.

You?!

There was no need to ask.

“Why are you here?”

To meet you, probably.

“Probably?”

Sometimes, I can’t fathom why I do the things I do. Perhaps I’m not myself.

“That’s no excuse for all the things you’ve done.”

Take the long road. From what I’ve seen, it seems unlikely to change your fate. No matter where you go, the road leads to carnage.

The shadowy figure wavered.

When D got up, all his weight was focused on his left hand, which rested on the bed. Using the force of the springs, he took to the air. In midair, he drew his blade and struck at the shadowy figure’s neck in a single motion. A heartbeat earlier, something the shadowy figure hurled had pierced the left side of D’s chest.

“Your fate is an instantaneous death,” the figure said.

And as he listened to those words, D swung his sword down. It made contact.

Opening his eyes, D gazed down by his feet. A black iron arrow had been cut right in two. The front half was embedded in the floor. The blade he’d swung at his foe in the dream had cut down an arrow that had flown in through the window in reality.

The sky was an ashen gray. The wind was strong. Night was already at an end.

“That apathetic bastard the Tiger seriously doesn’t have any force fields up?” the left hand groused, its curses flowing through the faint gloom.

D went over by the window.

The far reaches of the grounds around the castle were swarming with countless people and weapons. The air whistled. Thousands of black streaks were flying into every window in the castle. Catching one in his left hand, D used it to bat down a second, then a third.

“The rebel army’s here,” the hoarse voice noted. “But what the hell’s wrong with the defensive forces? How did an army that big get so close without anybody noticing?”

“It’s his power.”

“It can’t be. Then those footprints we saw?”

“Gilshark’s, apparently,” the Hunter replied.

“Wow,” the left hand groaned, a fresh arrow grazing the back of it.

More arrows flew in through other windows, sticking in the wall and ruthlessly laying waste to the furniture.

Suddenly, bursts of flame went up in scattered parts of the horde of humanity. Blobs of black and vermilion shot skyward. For the defenders had begun their counterattack. The bursts of flame spread with breathtaking speed, and where one patch met another the flames grew enormous, swallowing up people and weapons alike.

The hoarse voice said gravely, “When a Noble sets his mind to it, he can end a battle in seconds. So, what’s the rebel army’s next move?”

The rebel army called off its offensive. They’d lost half their number in this most recent counterattack.

Unexpectedly, several crane-like mechanical arms went up. At the end of each was a bucket the size of a small house. And in those buckets were tiny figures with weapons held at the ready.

“They’re freaking kids,” the left hand groaned. “That’s a hell of a thing. Has ol’ Gilshark finally lost even his soul to the bastard and his power?”

D was silent.

“So, what’ll the duke’s next move be?” the left hand murmured.

Just then, a loudspeaker called out, “Your grace, most merciful lord of our domain!” It was Gilshark. “Knowing it may bring an eternal curse upon us, we have come to light the fires of resistance on your castle this very day. The children presently raised high in the sky are all valiant warriors prepared to give their lives, the equal of any normal soldier. Shoot them down. If for some reason you are unable to do so, then I request that you, O lord, come out of your castle alone to face me, the leader of the rebel army.”

His tone was bitingly polite. The deluded challenge came from his certainty that the duke couldn’t refuse. However, using children as a shield while he issued his challenge, or even making warriors of children who were human like him, showed that Gilshark was no longer himself.

D headed to the duke’s chambers. He wasn’t there.

The Hunter went back down to the hall. He caught sight of the old man’s back as he was trudging toward the foyer.

“You intend to go?” D asked.

Halting, the duke turned and said, “He’s asking for a battle of champions. Naturally, I don’t care that he’s sent children out onto the field. In the old days, I would’ve burned them alive, and laughed while I did it.”

“Think you can win? He’s—”

“I know. But long ago, they called me the Tiger! I intend to take him down with me, at the very least. D, swear to me you won’t interfere.”

“My job is to slay you before anyone else has the privilege. And I won’t have anyone getting in the way of that. Leave him to me.”

“I’m old, D. I don’t mean my flesh, but rather my spirit. Perhaps it’s what the humans would call a soul. But old as I am, I don’t believe I’m decrepit. You’re to remain on the sidelines.”

“You’re supposed to meet a glorious death in battle against me. I can’t let you go out there.”

“I thought you’d say that. Lord Greylancer was right! That’s why I’ve taken precautions.”

Regardless of what D might’ve sensed, he couldn’t move faster than light. And it was moonlight that poured down on him. Beneath it, the young man of unearthly beauty was driven down on one magnificent knee. All the power had left his body.

“That beam reverses the flow of the moonlight energy,” the Nobleman told him. “I’ll hold on to your strength for the time being. And on my return, I shall give it back to you.”

And then, with a gait that didn’t seem at all that of a man burning with an urge to fight, the aged duke exited through the foyer. There was no one there to stop him, nor was there anyone to rally behind him.

A black carriage was waiting. It was drawn by a team of six horses. Once the duke had climbed in, the android coachman cracked his whip, and the old-fashioned vehicle raced toward the main gates, its wooden wheels creaking all the while.

In about ten minutes, it reached the square before the main gates to the castle. The castle grounds were that vast. There wasn’t a single member of his defensive force out there.

Looking up at the dark sky, the duke murmured, “That will never do.”

His was a life meant to be spent battling in moonlight, but would he risk it by the light of the sun, gloomy though the day was?

He thrust the staff he held in his right hand toward the sun.

It was about ten minutes later that the Nobleman sensed someone bearing down on him in waves from three directions. The rebel army had arrived.

A terrific amount of murderous intent was focused on the duke. It was enough that it would’ve physically damaged the mind of the average human. If true isolation was having the whole world turned against you, then that was what Duke Van Doren now experienced.

The edges of the square were packed with people. Behind them, scattered tanks and mobile thermal ray cannons, old-fashioned trebuchets and siege towers were visible, while even further in the distance, flames and black smoke rose to the heavens. Scars left by the bombardment.

With all of that in his field of view, the duke was shrouded in a sort of nothingness. Having been in battle thousands of times and witnessed tens of millions of deaths, the Noble, who’d died himself and returned to life, may have found it quite pointless the way these humans, teeming with vitality, waged war. Mountains of corpses would rot away, rivers of blood would run to the sea, and there they would combine with bacteria, giving rise to trillions of new forms of life. From them, only a few chosen by the hand of fate would advance on the path of evolution, and after receiving light from the goodness of the sun, they would leave the sea by the glow of the moon to walk the land. A long, long time—perhaps longer than even a Noble could wait.

As if plowing through the front rank of soldiers, a siege tower that looked at least ten stories tall appeared. Three sides of its long, trapezoidal shape were covered with boards, with the back alone still open. From behind, it was plain that it’d been divided with boards into ten floors or so of small rooms, which housed heavy machine guns, fiery arrow launchers, ballistae, and soldiers. Gilshark was standing atop it.

“Leave it to a Noble to know how to save face. How nice of you to come out here alone. As stated, I am the commander of our army—Gilshark, at your service.”

Shooting an emotionless look upward, the duke said, “You said ‘I’—but that hardly suits you!”

For some reason Gilshark’s pale face was distorted by anger, and he sprang into action. When he landed about fifteen feet in front of the duke, he did so with movements that were captivatingly sharp and beyond human ability.

“You know how I’ve changed now, don’t you?” the rebel leader said, his tone of voice, his expression, and even his bearing triumphant.

Perhaps the people packed in behind Gilshark saw it in the eyes of the giant who dominated the square.

“I know. And I know that you are a fool who’s been given an expensive toy and mistakenly believes he makes it do his bidding, not realizing that it is toying with him.”

Gilshark alone knew how terribly accurate that assessment was. Baring his teeth, he switched on his gravity field controller.

The black globe that’d suddenly appeared between the two of them stretched toward the duke like taffy. The instant any object touched the outer edge of it, it would sink into the Dirac sea created by hydrogen atoms.

When the deadly black sphere had closed to a distance of three feet, the duke brought his black staff down on it. The end of the staff touched the edge of the gravity field, and both forces shot off in the direction they were meant to go. Even as half the duke’s staff disappeared, Gilshark was thrown back thirty feet, slamming against the trunk of a colossal tree.

The rebel leader spat up blood. And he would again—but he choked it down before it could come out, opened his mouth as wide as it would go, and howled. Stark white teeth lined his crimson maw. Two of them were tapered like a beast’s.

A roar like an explosion erupted right in front of Gilshark, spreading to either side of him like waves. As far as the people there were concerned, what they were witnessing had suddenly become a battle of Noble versus Noble.

“How does it look?” D asked softly in a hall without another single person.

“All we’ve got is wind,” his left hand responded.

The voices of both were so weak and hoarse, they wouldn’t have reached the ears of anything but an ant. D’s vitality had been drained to the very limit.

The blue light seemed to carry a spell with it as it descended, but something quietly slipped into the light. A pale female hand. It touched D’s left hand.

D looked up. That was proof he brimmed with power from head to toe.

“Just as I thought. This power suits you better than it does me.” Valerie smiled feebly, showing her stark fangs. “You’ll be back to normal soon,” she said. “I’m going on ahead.”

“Going where?”

“To where the duke and Gilshark are doing battle.”

“Did he order you to?”

“I don’t know. I get the feeling that’s it, but also that it’s not. My blood—thanks to his power, I seem to have remembered something. If I don’t make it, you have to help the duke.”

As the woman spun around swiftly, D fired a question at her back.

As soon as Valerie had answered him, soldiers came down through the ceiling. Undoubtedly they’d been watching the two of them via monitors.

“Leave this to me,” Valerie said, running for the door.

A particle beam struck her back, making a vibrantly colored flower bloom there. There was a second, and a third—and then she was gone, like a drop of paint dissolving in water.

Those who’d shot her didn’t notice that the vision of beauty in black had been set free and that he was closing on them. A flash of his silvery blade sent the heads of all five sailing through the air.

IV

Noble.

Vampire.

Every voice to be heard in the square was saying one of those two words. Everyone could tell. Their bubble had been burst. They wouldn’t see as excellent a leader as Gilshark for another five hundred years. Having him now meant, in a sense, that this was humanity’s last chance to triumph over the Nobility. However, the person before them wasn’t Gilshark, but rather a Noble who could walk in the light of day and who wore Gilshark’s form.

At that moment, the people were no longer concerned with the outcome of the battle, crying, falling silent, or even vomiting the instant they realized their laudable efforts had turned to despair. The gunshots that occasionally rang out were from people committing suicide.

“Die! Die! Die! Die! Die!” Gilshark repeated over and over again. He didn’t really understand that he’d been turned into something else.

I’m human—the leader of the proud rebel army. I can wipe that decrepit old vampire away with one hand! And once I do, the fame of being a slayer of Nobility and the vast fortune that lies somewhere in his castle will be mine. No, that’s not right. I have to leave the money to finance our anti-Nobility movement in the future. I’ve already thought that far ahead. And yet, something’s wrong. Why is everybody looking at me that way? Do they hold me to blame for some crime?

Power and an overwhelming self-confidence welled up in him. There was nothing here to fear.

Bellowing all the while, he charged the duke. The duke countered with his staff. What remained of the staff pierced Gilshark’s face, and thanks to the impetus of the rebel leader’s charge, it broke through the back of his head.

Gilshark didn’t slow down at all. The staff sank even further into his face, his brain, only stopping when Gilshark seized the duke by both shoulders. Locked together, the two twisted to the right once or twice before Gilshark lifted the duke up, then kicked off the ground with the Nobleman still in his grip. The Noble’s struggles meant nothing to his upgraded flesh.

A colossal tree towered about a hundred yards away. The rebel leader had spotted a sharp branch that jutted from it in a spot about three feet from the ground. A hundred yards wouldn’t even take five seconds.

The duke had noticed it, too. Though he tried to plant his feet, they just skidded over the ground.

About ten yards shy of his goal, Gilshark halted. His lips, nearly split in two, almost seemed to tremble, yet they formed words clearly enough.

“I may no longer need it, but tell me the truth about this ultimate weapon they say you built—one that means death for any and all Nobles. I’ll put it back into service, and eradicate the Nobility.”

He stopped there. The duke had gouged his face with the staff he still gripped.

“Damn you, old man!”

Once more Gilshark zipped in a straight line without hesitation, but ahead of the pair, a figure came from the left at a seventy-degree angle to intercept them. No one watching would’ve noticed, but even if they had, the figure’s speed was so insane no one could’ve stopped them. Their straight line swerved wildly, and the two of them went off in different directions.

“Val . . . erie . . . ?” Gilshark said, both his voice and his physical form shaky. A rough wooden stake was planted deep in his chest.

“I’m the only one who can kill you,” Valerie groaned, and she, too, was unsteady on her feet.

By that, did she mean that they were both being controlled by the same force?

Saving D and the blow against Gilshark had exhausted the archeologist’s power.

“But—I’m at the end of the line, too,” she continued. “It seems all my power is spent.”

Like perfectly matched dancing partners, the two of them fell to the ground simultaneously.

“I don’t understand,” Valerie murmured as her whole body began to break apart and scatter like dust. “He was told to dig it up, I was told to destroy it—in the end, humans and Nobles alike can only do his bidding . . . What’s the point of history . . . ?”

A gust of wind scattered the black dust, leaving behind something almost human in shape, but that, too, soon crumbled away.

There was nothing in the grass- and dirt-covered square but sunlight carrying an oppressive silence and wind bearing the stench of blood, filling the place with a languid air.

It’s all over. What should we do now? I don’t know. I don’t know anything at all. No, there’s one thing I do know—that humanity must ever wander.

The duke was about to say something. But he stopped, looking toward his castle.

The young man in black astride a cyborg horse stopped right beside him. Dismounting, he said, “Am I too late?”

“No, you’re just in time.”

The duke extended his right arm toward the carriage that’d carried him there. The coachman unfastened the fresh long spear that was secured on the vehicle’s roof before climbing down and running over.

The weapon whistled around in the Nobleman’s grip.

“Just in time to fight me, that is.”

“One thing you oughta know first,” the hoarse voice said. It actually put a rather nostalgic look on the duke’s face. “The rebel leader’s name was—gaaah!”

Staring at D’s left fist, the duke furrowed his brow.

D said nothing, heading toward the center of the square.

Just before Valerie had left the castle, her response to the Hunter’s question had been Gilshark’s last name. Gilshark Lanaway. Most likely the grandson of Sirene/Cecilia Lanaway. D had silenced his left hand out of concern that this knowledge might dampen the duke’s enthusiasm to fight.

The two of them faced each other in the center of the square. There, with only the eyes of the dead focused on them, D drew his blade. Its gleam was reflected on a golden spearhead as the duke also held his long spear at the ready.

Would the Tiger King roar once more?

D’s form became a blur. There was fifteen feet between them, and then D was at the duke’s chest. The blade he swung was parried by the spear. The sharp clanging sounds pulled lengthy tails through the midday sun.

The instant blade locked with spearhead, both of them knew the next move would mean defeat. Any attempt to press forward or pull back would leave them open to a fatal blow. One shadowy form clung to another.

“This can’t be . . . ” the duke said, his voice quavering with shock. “I don’t believe it. It’s not possible. The source of your power—you had no need of the moonlight energy. Because this power comes from—”

A different force came into play. Before anyone could even shout Earthquake! fierce tremors created a great fissure in the ground. Enormous trees toppled, their far-reaching roots and all the soil they clutched pouring down into the crevasse like a great river. The duke and D were thrown apart. People and tanks, siege towers and trebuchets all followed suit.

On seeing that even the ramparts of his distant castle were tilting, the duke shouted, “To the excavation site!”

A moment later, a silvery aircraft appeared above the duke, drawing him up.

D had already broken into a run. The earth beneath his feet subsided. His cyborg horse galloped alongside him. D bounded, and the instant he settled in the saddle, the ground below gave way. Throwing his weight toward the falling ground, D tugged on the reins. The cyborg horse galloped up a piece of turf that was almost vertical now. Just when its power was nearly spent and it was about to be thrown off balance, the steed kicked off the sheer chunk of ground decisively. Horse and rider climbed the last five yards, leaping up to level ground.

For a brief time, the collapse had stopped.

The cyborg horse galloped on. Part of a gigantic building loomed up ahead. The ruins were in their death throes.

The duke stood at the brink of the hole.

When D got off his horse, another shock hit the world. The ruins were sinking. However, that was of no interest to the two who stood there, side by side.

Behind all the dust shooting up from the earth, the ruins sank, and from the depths something else was lifted. It called to mind a plinth more than a hundred and fifty feet wide as it rose. Atop it stood a shadowy figure who was glaring down at the ground.

“That’s Vulcan, eh?” said the hoarse voice. “Seems like everybody and his brother heard voices from heaven telling ’em to go below.”

It was just cursing him as a power-hungry bastard when the bandit leader leapt into the air. He landed midway between the two—about ten yards away, where he straightened up impassively.

On seeing that, D said, “You’re a dhampir, aren’t you?”

“That’s right. A pale imitation who’s lost his guardian angel.”

“I’m surprised you were able to get that thing up from the depths of the earth,” the duke said, staring at Vulcan intently.

“Don’t play dumb with me, old man. You already know the story, don’t you? Does our handsome friend here know, too? The first time I laid eyes on you, old man, it struck me. There really is quite a resemblance. To me—and to my dad.”

Silence enveloped the three of them, though the quaking of the earth and its rumbling resisted. Behind them, the plinth rose blackly, now three hundred feet high, and boards had appeared that seemed to run through it horizontally.

“And it was my dad who taught me how to operate the weapon buried underground,” Vulcan continued. “Someone destroyed him when I was ten, but he hated you right up to the very end. Said your stupid pride made you kill one son, and you gave up another like a gutless coward. Dad and I swore to each other that one day we’d bust in on you and drive a stake through your heart. You know, Granddad, you made a big mistake by not killing me. Look! The ultimate weapon you built is out in the open again, and that’s not a good thing, is it? It’s the ultimate weapon against all Nobility, isn’t it?”

The crossbeams were out now. They were thirty feet wide and a hundred and fifty feet long. And the thing was still rising.

Vulcan charged forward. The sword he had braced by his side went right through his grandfather’s heart. The duke didn’t move. A small item Vulcan pointed at him with his right hand had immobilized the Nobleman. It was the same item Valerie had forgotten had been taken from her—a small cross.

“I . . . drank the villagers’ blood . . . Granddad,” he whispered, and something seemed to glitter in his eyes. “And then I came here to destroy you. You understand, right? That’s the only way I could beat you. I had to become just like you . . .”

The old man patted him gently on one trembling shoulder. I know, it’s all right, you can rest at ease.

“Granddad.”

That was all Vulcan said, and then he shuddered. Fresh blood spilled from his mouth and nose, soaking both the duke’s chest and his own. The duke had driven his long spear through his grandson’s heart from behind, piercing himself as well, and letting out a breath, Van Doren then extracted it. First, Vulcan dropped to his knees, then the cross fell from his right hand. Next, his upper body fell away, his hands slid from the hilt of his sword, and he breathed his last while hugging the earth.

Looking down at him for a short while, the duke then turned back toward D. He no longer wore the expression of an exhausted old man. His was the face of a tiger ready to slay the enemy he faced and roar long and loud.

“You have my thanks, D,” the duke said, smiling. Vulcan’s sword jutted from his chest. “You were most kind to refrain from interfering as I did away with the traitors. However, now it’s your turn.”

“The Tiger has returned,” D said softly. “But you’re not the Tiger King, you’re the Orphan King. Make your move.”

The gleam off the blade the Hunter had just drawn caught the duke’s eye as he said, “D, this morning I drank the blood of a girl in a nearby village.”

The world glowed with white. Lightning. And then thunder followed it like a laughing sneer.

Something enormous was stretching up into the heavens. Its shadow was creeping toward the two of them.

“I have returned now. The Tiger is back in the northern Frontier. Everything shall be as it was. The benevolent lord charade was just nonsense done for Sirene’s sake. The lowly humans will tremble before Julius Van Doren, and offer up their lovely daughters every night and every day.”

D ran. His body glowed white. The aircraft overhead had irradiated him with moonlight energy.

The duke, who was about to start running at the same time D did, stopped and shouted something toward the sky. The light vanished.

Just as the duke was poised to advance, his body was enveloped by shadow. The shadow of a huge cross.

D leapt at the chest of the Tiger, now frozen in his tracks. With a new stark blade running through his chest and out his back, the duke vented a cry of agony that was swallowed by the rumbling of the earth.

“I could withstand Vulcan’s blade, but not yours. You truly are the great one’s—”

The duke looked up. Bloody foam bubbled from his lips. He addressed someone who wasn’t there, saying, “As you bade me . . . I have served you . . . O great one . . . and saved . . . your . . .”

Lying in the shadow of the cross, his face wore a terribly serene expression. Managing to maintain it, the duke said, “D, kindly tell the people of my domain something . . . Tell them the Tiger returned.”

“You have a deal, Tiger King.”

But those words were heard by dust scattering on the wind.

D sheathed his blade without saying anything.

“He’s gone. The Tiger,” the hoarse voice said, its tone carrying a rumble of thunder.

After looking up at the titanic cross that still towered there, D started walking toward his cyborg horse.

“They say the sight of it destroyed tens of thousands of Nobles.”

Pale people of the night reduced to dust, their bodies burned by the shadow of that colossal cross.

“Seems there are accounts on the human side that in death, they had real peaceful looks on their faces. But what would humans think when they saw that? You know, D, I have to wonder if that wasn’t what he really wanted to find out when he had it left there underground.”

Not replying, D got up in the saddle. Just before he galloped off, he turned his eyes to where the duke had fallen. Something small streamed out of his right hand, landing on the Nobleman’s cape and what little dust remained. Vulcan’s cross.

“He really was the Tiger King—that’s what I think.”

Only the hoarse voice’s words remained.

Three thousand feet tall, the gigantic cross towered over the region for the next six months, but because the people in surrounding villages said there was something about it they couldn’t fathom and children found it disturbing, part of it was carried home by villagers for use as firewood. It’s said that nearly a thousand homes in the area had no trouble keeping warm for an entire year. Even after that, the cross loomed in the air for a long time. One wintery night, lightning struck and it was engulfed by flames. Lighting up the darkness, the enormous flames from the cross continued to burn for six months, making people tremble with fear, but then it was quickly and completely forgotten.

END