II
Turncoats
Chapter 5
I
Before the morning sun had risen, the farmers were at work. Headed down the village lanes toward their respective fields with plow and hoe, they shouted greetings to each other as their wagons passed. Elsa’s house was silent once more, the front door shut tight and curtains drawn across the windows. A number of those who passed her place figured she must be taking the day off, and though they noticed that no smoke from cooking breakfast rose from the chimney, it didn’t particularly stand out in their minds—in other words, this was like the better, peaceful times of antiquity.
The first of her farming neighbors to notice something was wrong galloped off for the sheriff’s office on a cyborg horse, asking a friend he met along the way to go inform the town hall as well. When the sheriff arrived there at top speed at 5:43 AM Eastern Frontier Time, other farmers had already broken down the Garrys’ door, exposing the tragedy of the night before to the light of day.
The gorgeous visitor halted his cyborg steed in front of the farmhouse strung with “Restricted Area” ropes just as the shimmering sun was reaching its highest point in the heavens. Having called in people from the town hall to assist, the sheriff had finished investigating the scene and was walking around questioning people, and onlookers, now convinced that the situation was in hand, drifted away, finally leaving only a few children there. They looked on dumbfoundedly as D ducked under the ropes and slipped onto the property, walking right into the farmhouse.
He came out again about ten minutes later. And someone was waiting for him.
“It’s me—Habaki,” said the young man, smiling stiffly. He added that he’d already looked around inside, too. “Did you find Elsa or her family?” he asked.
“They weren’t inside,” D replied.
“Figured as much,” the resistance leader said, his shoulders falling.
“I owe her a debt,” the Hunter told him. “That’s what brought me here. I’m going to tell you something that’s only for your ears and Leiden’s. Elsa was turned into a vampire.”
The young man was at a loss for words.
“The two of you are free to do as you like, but I’m going to put her at rest and dispose of the one who corrupted her.”
Cold sweat soaked Habaki from head to toe. “I’d like to help you if I can.”
“You’d just be in the way,” D said, his tone low but his words as sharp as the wind’s edge.
Leaving Habaki there frozen in his tracks, D went back to the road. As soon as he wheeled his cyborg horse around toward the castle, the hoarse voice said, “Would it have killed you to explain the situation even a little to that kid? Leave him like that, and there’s no telling what screwed-up thing he’ll get it in his head to try! Probably ain’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about when you say you owe Elsa.”
“All he has to do is ask Cornet.”
“Well, from the look of things, Cornet doesn’t exactly seem to expect much out of ’em. Seems more like they just went and decided he was one of them.”
“Doesn’t matter either way, so long as this gets taken care of.”
The cyborg horse broke into a gallop.
If he could break into the Nobles’ crypt at this hour, it would be an absolute massacre. And D would doubtless be just as merciless in dealing with opponents who couldn’t raise a hand to defend themselves.
When the dignified form of the castle came into view down the road, there was the sound of a bustling engine approaching from the Hunter’s rear. It was accompanied by three sets of hoofbeats.
“The top banana finally shows himself—and the other three are the hired muscle we ran into out in front of the castle.”
Before the hoarse voice had even finished saying that, a startling vehicle pulled alongside D on the right. It had a body that looked like a number of oil drums welded end to end, with ten pistons relentlessly pumping up and down on top of it and sputtering engine sounds scattering all across the area. It had six rubber tires. All of them were worn to the point the tread was now imperceptible.
D didn’t so much as glance over at it.
Professor Chaney’s head projected from the rearmost oil drum, wearing goggles and a steel helmet. “Such a handsome man,” he remarked, peering through his deep green goggles and barely keeping his vehicle under control. “You’re D, I take it? I’m Professor Chaney. No need to get into trivial details, but I’d like to speak with you a while.”
“I’m working.”
“A moment, if you will. This shan’t take long. I know the location of the grand duke’s hidden grave,” the Professor added in a tone that said he was quite sure D would want to hear him out. However, not only did the Hunter not slow down in the slightest, he didn’t even look at the man, which prompted him to say, “I also have something to tell you about the Sacred Ancestor. I’ve decoded the message he left for a certain someone.” His expression swiftly becoming one of astonishment, Chaney asked, “How can that have no effect on you? Who are you?”
The Professor’s surprise was inviting an accident, and the lengthy vehicle and its aged driver both screamed in unison. His desperate turn of the wheel had come when D’s cyborg horse suddenly pulled away.
“Ha, what a load of tripe,” the hoarse voice chortled. “Serves you right for running your mouth. Ran yourself right into the forest, you dolt!”
“Careful,” D told his left hand. Did he sense something?
Smoke and flames rose from the right-hand side of the road. A miniature missile.
D galloped straight ahead. Whipping the right sleeve of his coat up for all he was worth, he used it to deflect the flames. When the Hunter returned to the darkened road, whitish smoke was rising from his traveler’s hat and the hem of his coat. Reaching backward with his left hand, he spread his fingers.
“Something weird’s sticking out of the front of that car,” the hoarse voice said. “I think it’s—Get down!”
A harsh wind ripped right over D’s head. There was a sound like a fine blade hewing flesh and bone.
D raised his left hand, blocking the blood and oil being thrown his way. There was nothing wrong with the gait of his steed. Nevertheless, the horse’s neck had been nearly cut through. A spinning blade had been launched at them. But such skill D had, making his steed press on without the reins ever going slack!
“Hell of a guy,” the left hand groaned in a mix of resignation and admiration.
Another man said almost the exact same thing, forgetting to floor his car’s accelerator or line up his next attack as he slumped back in his seat and sighed in despair, “You’re a hell of a man, D.”
Seen in broad daylight, the castle looked terribly worn. Much of the rock used in building the fortresses of the Nobility had been transported from quarries around the world. When the stone they desired couldn’t be found there, there were cases where they’d leveled entire mountain ranges. All of this was done in service to the Nobles’ sense of “nostalgia.” Though there were those who’d synthesized stone, it was said they became the objects of derision, either replacing the offending material with the genuine article or else taking their own lives with wooden stakes. What’s more, there were also Nobles who used elemental conversion technology to age freshly quarried stone so it looked weathered.
Massive stone fortifications had such an imposing presence on their surroundings it made them difficult to approach, but that may have been due less to the stones themselves and more to the tenacious architectural ambition they represented. And this castle was no different.
However, what D felt was an awfully different atmosphere. The coarseness of the walls exposed to the light of the sun, the shadows cast on the ground by stone pillars, the light itself stark yet languid. That’s right. As the enormous castle loomed there in the light of midday, it was encircled not so much by an air of corruption as by one of absolute ruin.
“I was just thinking how funny this is. A castle of this scale should have defenses out the ass to deal with daytime intruders. Are you trying to tell me either they don’t have any, period, or they do but haven’t even bothered to turn ’em on?” the Hunter’s left hand murmured as soon as the drawbridge had been lowered, just as it had the night before, and D had ridden into the square within the castle walls.
Needless to say, the Nobility’s castles were their last redoubt. As a result, they focused more on defending against daylight threats than other attacks. These defenses included dimensional labyrinths where no amount of travel would bring you closer to the castle, old-fashioned force fields that could weather direct hits by nuclear warheads, amnesia generators that could wipe out any memory of the castle, swarms of monsters and supernatural creatures living around the stronghold, and so on, and so forth.
This castle made use of none of those things. It seemed not merely unguarded, but that the inhabitants had no intention of defending it.
“The way it’s going, I figure it’ll be a cakewalk inside, too!”
As the left hand had said, once the doors had been pushed open, the rooms and corridors that lay beyond were left utterly exposed.
When D halted, it was in the same dance hall he’d passed through the night before. There was nothing there. Only a sadly vacant expanse of floor lay exposed to the sunlight.
“Was that all just illusions?” said the hoarse voice.
Not replying, D surveyed their surroundings. “Not all of it, it seems,” he said.
“Huh?”
The hoarse voice’s puzzled grunt was overlaid with the thud of an impact.
With ferocious speed, D swung around the black arrow he gripped in his left fist.
Several iron arrows had been embedded in the floor. D’s superhuman skill, however, had allowed him to catch the first of them in midair.
Five people were racing toward him from a door set in the west wall. All were clad in bulky suits of powered armor.
“These ain’t androids or synthetic beings—they’re real, live human beings!” the hoarse voice exclaimed.
Simultaneous attacks with sword and spear saw those weapons batted forcefully into the air, the attackers clutching their left wrists and squatting down on the spot. They’d suffered dislocations just being parried by D’s blade.
“Are you in his employ?” D asked.
Tears in his eyes, the one who appeared the eldest of them managed to squeak out the words, “Yes, we work in the castle. But everyone has the wrong idea about the grand duke.”
“That’s right.”
“Please, just leave him be,” the others added, unanimous in their support. The look on their faces declared that they spoke in earnest.
“And just what sorta man is he?”
The sudden change in D’s voice left the employees looking all around, but they quickly remembered the pain in their own wrists and stiffened.
“A good one. He gives us proper credit for the work we do.”
“Not once has he ever asked us to do anything we didn’t wanna do.”
“And the wages he pays are more than fair.”
“He even pays subsidies to the families we left behind in the village. If we’d stayed in the village, there’s no way we’d be doing as well as all that.”
“That very same village has struck a deal with the grand duke to provide human sacrifices at regular intervals in exchange for his technology,” D said, his gaze penetrating the men.
Falling silent, they looked away.
“You admit it’s true, then?” D asked, pressing them mercilessly.
“Well—it can’t be helped,” the first one replied. “Whether they’re offered up on a set day or just taken out of the blue, it’s all the same to the victim. And without ’em, the grand duke can’t survive.”
“So as long as things are good for you, you’re fine with him draining the villagers, are you?”
“Like hell we are!” the man shouted so hard his body quaked. His fists shook violently. “But our village only survives thanks to the grand duke’s power. That being the case, it’s only sensible we offer him a little blood to show our gratitude, isn’t it?”
“Oh, this is a symbiotic relationship, eh?” the hoarse voice laughed.
“Those who are fed on become creatures like the Nobility,” D said in a terribly soft tone. “Then they attack their families and neighbors, until at some point they end up getting a stake hammered through their hearts—is that sensible?”
“Th-that can’t be helped,” a young man called out, the words emerging like a creak from a door. “It’s for the good of the village. A couple of folks will have to be sacrificed.”
“How old are you?”
The Hunter’s unexpected query gave the young man pause.
“Me? T-twenty-two,” he stammered.
“That’s the age of a grown man. In which case there’s only one thing to do. Protect the weak, even at the cost of your own life. Has all this time getting rewards from the Nobility and growing fat in their castle made that the most important thing to you instead? Seems like you’re trying to defend the wrong thing.”
Not only that young man but all the others as well went pale.
“It’s not the village that’s important to you. It’s your current lifestyle. A life where you have to flatter the Nobility and say what they’re doing is right. Try to defend that with this arrow.”
The wind whistled. On seeing the arrow that’d been embedded in the marble slab at his feet, the young man backed away with a squeal, then collapsed in a heap.
“Where’s the grand duke’s resting place?”
The question, in a low voice, made the turncoats freeze. They felt as if they were looking upon a gorgeous Grim Reaper. And if they didn’t answer, he’d have no qualms about lopping off their heads. There wasn’t a second to spare.
“In the subterranean crypts.”
The answer came from behind them—and the other side of the door.
II
When a semitransparent globe glided in, the human servants all exclaimed in unison, “Vyken?!”
More than six feet in diameter, the globe hovered by magnetism—a fact attested to by the blue glow from its bottom. Seated in the bronze device that filled the lower half of the globe was a young man with black hair. His electric blue cape was a majestic sight.
“I believe we met last night, D,” the young man in the globe said to him. “I’m surprised you fought the grand duke and lived to tell the tale. Although from the look of the grand duke, it was abundantly clear you’re no ordinary individual.”
“Where’s the grand duke?”
“Allow me to show you the way.”
A buzz went through his colleagues. The glow of hope had been extinguished in less than ten seconds.
“Vyken, how can you say that?”
“Would you betray the grand duke?” they protested, their words falling from their mouths like gouts of blood.
But the young man silenced them with a single sentence.
“The grand duke instructed me to do so.”
He turned the globe around without a sound and glided out the door.
“Come with me.”
D wasn’t about to decline. Not giving the Nobleman’s servants another glance, he turned to walk off, the hem of his coat flying out around him.
Continuing down the corridor, the Hunter was greeted by a gigantic hole before he’d gone fifty yards. It was fifteen feet across, and the globe had stopped right on top of it.
“There are stairs, but they’re a bother,” said Vyken. “I’ll thank you to jump down.”
And with that, the sphere was swallowed up by the hole. D followed after it without a moment’s hesitation.
Falling over five hundred yards, he came to a gentle stop as if he’d been caught by invisible hands. It was probably a gravity buffer.
“Go through this doorway and you’ll find the grand duke’s grave,” the waiting globe said, and then it went through.
Without so much as a door, the grave was a simple, unassuming place surrounded by stone walls, floor, and ceiling. Unlike those of other Nobles, the walls weren’t adorned with golden busts of the departed or paintings depicting things they might never look upon—the sun and its radiance. Nor was there a chorus to praise the dead the instant they set foot in here. All there was, was a stone coffin of the same frugal material as the walls.
“What’ll you do, D?” Vyken asked after a deep bow to the coffin from within his globe. “You could probably pierce the grand duke’s heart right through that ten-ton sarcophagus. But that would mean death for everyone in the village of Schwartzen and the surrounding area.”
Still gazing at the coffin, D said, “A nuclear strike?”
“You can tell that at a glance? Well, that’s D for you. Lay so much as a finger on the grand duke’s coffin and the village will be engulfed by a ten-megaton blast. If you’re fine with that, turn your blade on him.”
“Are you fine with that?”
A turbulence that D alone would know flitted across Vyken’s face.
“You haven’t been made one of the Nobility. Are you fine with that?”
“All I do is in keeping with the wishes of the grand duke.”
“Are you fine with it?”
“I am.”
Before Vyken had finished saying that, the globe made a harsh sound. Though supported by a gravity field that could stabilize a million tons of mass, the globe leaned to one side. It was a blow from D’s blade, brought low as he landed from his leap—but when had the Hunter leapt, or drawn, or struck?
Unable to right the globe, the man tried to put it into motion. And then there was another blow to the globe—and a white crack appeared in the semitransparent metal. Such strength the Hunter had, but even more amazing was his precision.
Vyken thought he must be having a nightmare, yet a grin still rose on his lips. So, he credits me as an enemy, does he? the man mused.
Steering the globe to the far side of the room, he then went on the offensive. He couldn’t weather a third blow from D. The instant the figure of beauty in black passed overhead, Vyken struck a key.
A split second before D could bring his blade down he saw something that resembled a slim antenna shoot from the bottom half of the globe. The scenery around him changed.
D was at the center of blistering white light.
“A sealed dimension!” the hoarse voice said with amazement. “I can’t believe they can transport things so easily. I knew teleportation itself had been perfected, but I didn’t think it’d be possible to move at such close range.”
“Can you get us out?” D asked, not sounding the least bit upset. However, his left hand perceived something unusual in his tone. As a dhampir, D had the blood of the Nobility in his veins. And being in a flood of eye-searing light was affecting the normal operation of his body. For this wasn’t just any light.
“Th-this is sunlight!” the hoarse voice cried in despair. “I ain’t talking about just the composition of it. It’s the real deal. This dimension is a magical space. Shit, this is just the kinda trap a Noble’d come up with!”
It was common knowledge that sunlight had a fatally destructive effect on the Nobility. Both the OSB and the human armies had spent considerable time fighting the Nobility, and both had analyzed sunlight and created rays mimicking its composition, blasting Nobles with them in the hopes of destroying them. Those using them learned, to their great horror, just how ineffective such tactics were. For the Nobles had bared their fangs in that sunlight, utterly unaffected.
At present, it was clear that both the legends and fact of Nobles’ destruction by sunlight—what could be described as demons being defeated by a holy symbol—conformed to religious principles. Vampires, as demons, could not prevail against holy symbols, and sunlight was one such emblem of divinity. From the time it rose in the east until it set over the western horizon, the sun could destroy Nobility with its light.
Nevertheless, the light that currently seared every inch of D’s flesh was that of a sacred sun that’d sprung into being in the middle of the night. That being the case, the only explanation that came to mind was that he was being exposed to sunlight that ignored time through magical means. D was indeed being bathed in the sacred rays of the sun.
“How you holding up?” his left hand asked in a stiff tone.
“I’m managing. Destroy it,” the Hunter replied in a forceful tone. And by “it” he meant the sealed dimension.
“Gimme a sec—this is gonna be a little tricky.”
A tiny mouth opened in his left hand. And in it, a blue flame danced alluringly.
“Now then, as mayor, I’d like to announce the undertaking of a new venture,” Bezo Shakuri declared with such aplomb it was difficult to believe that a day earlier he’d been deputy mayor and fawned over the previous leader.
The staff of the town hall, who were arrayed in a straight line, bowed in unison. They had no choice but to do so. In accordance with the laws of the village, when the mayor died, he or she was succeeded by the deputy mayor. Sensing the tone of his announcement, the staff remained silent.
Hostilities had already begun between those who supported Bezo as mayor and those who opposed him.
Perhaps disheartened by their utter lack of response, Mayor Bezo coughed once, then continued, “Professor Logo Chaney has been sent here to our village by the Capital’s Noble Ruins Survey Office to act as an intermediary with Grand Duke Bergenzy. It has been decided that in exchange for learning the secrets of the Nobility’s devices in his grace’s possession, we will grant him once sacrifice per week, four in total every month. No disobedience will be tolerated.”
“Isn’t that tyranny?”
It wasn’t unexpected that somebody would voice such an objection. In this case, it came from secretary Jacos.
The dam broken, others followed suit.
“Yeah!”
“We should call an assembly!”
“Human sacrifice? What the hell are you thinking?”
“Don’t get too big for your britches, baldy!”
As the protests and insults continued to fly, the new mayor just leaned back and laughed heartily.
The chatter ceased.
“Excellent. It’s clear to see who has no regard for the best interests of the village. Since you’ve turned your back on your mayor, you’re prepared to pay the price, I take it?”
The catcalls instantly resumed.
“Yeah, we’re willing to lose our jobs!”
“You’d better have eyes in the back of your head!”
“We’re gonna look into all your dealings and have you brought up before the circuit court, you know.”
“Say what you like,” Bezo replied. “Everyone who just hurled abuse at me is to leave town hall immediately. Your salary will be paid through today.”
Nearly a third of them left.
As soon as they’d indignantly stomped out of the town hall, someone else said to them, “So, are we all going to take him down or what?”
Each member of the opposition group gave her a look that was a mix of distrust and appreciation. On account of they’d all thought of her as being neutral. There was no saying which side she’d end up on.
“I left with the rest of you,” the woman continued. “Trust me.”
Several of them nodded at her words.
“Could we get together somewhere today? Somebody said something about looking into his dealings, and I’ve got mounds of dirt on him. Did you know he’s got a woman on the side?”
“Who is she?” a man from General Affairs asked, the piqued curiosity keen in his voice.
“The one from the bar—Marcella.”
“Really?!” a number of them exclaimed, and the woman got a depressed look on her face. But the next voice was determined enough to wipe it off again.
“Okay, how about this: come to the former mayor’s house before sundown. We’ll hash out a plan there. His wife asked us to. I’m not about to let anybody so quick to throw around the word ‘human sacrifice’ call himself our mayor,” said Jacos.
The heads of the determined revolutionaries nodded in unison.
Suddenly, the light receded.
He could feel the coldness of the stone from where one knee made contact with it. D was in an area surrounded on all four sides by stone. The torments of more than an hour in that light were made manifest in the way he breathed raggedly and wasn’t able to immediately stand up straight.
A figure glided up behind him like a shadow.
“Are you okay?” asked a feminine voice.
Letting out a breath, D got to his feet.
The woman backed away.
“Incredible . . . You’re back on your feet after so much sunlight . . .”
“Françoise, wasn’t it?” asked the hoarse voice.
“Excuse me?”
“We met last night.” This time, it was D who spoke.
The woman became confused.
“The you I met last night—was an imitation.”
Eyes with a mysterious gleam locked onto the woman in the lavender dress, perplexing her still further.
“And where did that happen?”
“Where am I?” D inquired.
“Beneath the castle’s west tower.”
