A PORT TO THE STARS

CHAPTER 6

—

I

—

He was at a bit of a loss. On account of the girl. He wasn’t entirely sure what he should do with her. Though the girl was as vibrant as a sunny day, she hadn’t said anything about where she lived or why that huntsman with the countenanced carbuncle was chasing her. Of course, in this form Grove couldn’t very well ask her, so he had no choice but to wait for her to tell him about it. When the girl had regained consciousness, she’d tried to go into the forest right away. Grove made a move to go with her, but she seemed troubled by that so he decided to stay out of it. But, on further consideration, it would be dangerous for a woman to be in the woods alone.

According to what the girl had said, she was going through the woods in a carriage with someone else when that huntsman attacked them, or something like that. Grove had his doubts that the story was as simple as that, because some parts of the girl’s tale just didn’t fit together right. He got the impression the fuzzier parts of her story were somehow connected to him and his brothers, but that didn’t present a problem for him in his current state.

Seeing the girl off as she thanked him repeatedly and left, he started after her a few minutes after she’d vanished into the woods, but she hadn’t gone more than a stone’s throw from the entrance—she was just standing there. Ultimately, he ended up going with her in search of her lover, just as she’d asked him to.

After an hour of walking around looking for the love of her life, the girl was nearly exhausted. She was breathing hard and beads of sweat were strung close together on her brow.

So weak, he thought, confident in his own healthy body. At that thought, he felt a swell of pity. He really wanted to help her find whoever she was looking for. After all, there was no telling when he’d have to go back.

Getting the girl on her feet again, he was helping her continue the search when twilight came calling. The woods were dangerous at night. He tried to lead the girl out of the forest, but it didn’t go very well. Now he was lost, too. When the girl saw him with his shrugged shoulders, Grove was afraid she might get scared, but to his great surprise she giggled. Whether she’d been traveling with her lover or not, she must’ve had guts to take a carriage ride this far off the beaten trail on the Frontier.

Though her brightness seemed to know no end, there was just a hint of melancholy in her smile that whipped up Grove’s protective instincts. At this point, the girl said something rather odd—that as soon as it was night, her lover was sure to come looking for her. Dubious of her confidence-filled eyes, he couldn’t believe that would be the case. They’d be better off asking his brothers—who should be getting closer by the minute—for help.

Circling around behind the girl so as not to startle her, Grove sent a bolt of lightning into the air. The white-hot streak stretched up into the deepening blue of the evening sky without a sound.

—

Borgoff was in the driver’s seat of the bus coming out of a cramped valley, and his narrow eyes sparkled at the sight of the energy bolt. “Wow, if ol’ Grove has gone to all the trouble of giving us a signal—Well, he must’ve found something.”

—

Dashing through woods sealed in darkness, Caroline glanced up at the heavens and grinned broadly. “That’s the same light I saw back in the village,” she said. “Surely it’s a signal that boy has found something.”

—

Deep in thought as he bent over the corpse of what had been Mashira, Mayerling snapped to attention at the heaven-splitting bolt of light rising from a part of the woods not so far away. “I was wondering who might’ve slain Mashira,” he muttered, “Such raw power . . . Well, I don’t care who it is. If they’ve laid a hand on that young lady, it won’t be pretty, by my oath.”

—

The girl felt oddly at peace. That was thanks to the youth in front of her. His innocent face and baby-soft complexion gave her an unrivaled sense of security. The young man didn’t seem to fit into the forests of Frontier, but seemed like he’d be more suited for a life in the Capital.

The sun would be setting soon. Her love would probably be here in no time. No matter where she might be, she knew he’d find her. The girl was positive of that. As she played her gentle gaze over the youth standing before her in the caress of the evening breeze, the girl thought how sad how it was that he looked so healthy and yet couldn’t speak a word.

Suddenly, the girl blinked. The young man turned her way, seeming surprised. A grove of trees was visible through his bright face. The youth was fading away.

His sad eyes gazed at the girl, and his lips formed a word. Goodbye.

The girl reached out to him. The youth was growing ever more transparent, like glass disappearing in water. Goodbye, the girl said frantically. Regardless of who he really was, she wanted to thank him as he left. Goodbye, goodbye, thank you and goodbye.

And then the youth vanished. In a corner of the woods growing darker and duskier, the girl was left alone.

The wind seemed to grow chillier. The eyes of countless blood-crazed beasts peered out at her from the depths of the forest.

I’m scared, the girl thought from the very depths of her soul. So scared. Hurry and save me, my love.

There was a rustling of the tree branches. It came from somewhere behind her and off to the right. The girl spun around. Someone was approaching. She couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, or how they were dressed. Fear wound tight around her throat. It was coming closer. The sound of moss being trampled and twigs snapping. Fifteen or twenty feet ahead of her, the figure stopped moving.

A probing voice asked, “Who’s that over there? That you, Grove?”

Even though the girl knew it was a woman’s voice, her fears hadn’t dissipated. She remembered that the man who’d attacked her earlier had two partners, and one of them was female. As for the name of the other man, she couldn’t recall it.

When the figure took a step forward and she could make out the face of a woman she’d never seen before, the girl finally gave a deep sigh and let the tension escape from her shoulders.

“Let me guess—Are you the passenger from the carriage?” Well suited to the black hue of the scarf wound about the base of her neck, the woman was none other than Leila Marcus.

“And you are . . . ?” The girl’s face, which had filled with joy when it turned out the new arrival wasn’t Caroline, grew tight as soon as she saw how Leila was outfitted. A javelin and a sliver gun—there could be no mistaking the trappings of a Hunter. There was no way a Hunter would just be hanging around a place like this alone. Which could only mean she’d come here after her. First Mashira, now a Hunter—with one terrifying encounter mounting on the next, the girl’s shoulders fell despondently.

“I didn’t get to see your face back there, but you’re the girl that was in the black carriage, aren’t you?” Leila said nonchalantly. “I’m Leila Marcus. I’m a Vampire Hunter here to get your boyfriend.”

The girl braced a hand against the ground.

“What’s wrong?” Leila asked incredulously. “You get to go home now.”

Though she listened to the Marcus woman’s words with suspicion, the girl wasn’t focused enough to catch how Leila’s voice seemed a little feeble. “Go. Please,” she urged the Hunter. “Just hurry up and get out of here.”

“I asked you what’s the matter?”

“I’m sure my love will be here soon,” the girl said. “The two of you will fight until one of you is dead. And I don’t want to make either of you kill on my account.”

Leila looked at the blue darkness steadily filling the vicinity. She nodded. “I suppose you’re right. The night is the Nobility’s world . . . ” For an instant, the fierce expression of a warrior steeled for battle arose on her face, but it was soon replaced by one that was strangely filled with half-hearted hatred. And once again, this time in a surprised manner, she asked, “Are you . . . you’re still human, aren’t you?”

The girl nodded.

“So, the Noble didn’t have his way with you and drag you off then. Seriously, you didn’t go of your own free will . . . That’s what happened, isn’t it?!”

“Yes, I did,” the girl said with a nod. The pale beauty gazed at Leila. There was a powerful light to her eyes. So long as they had that, a person could endure just about anything.

“So that’s what happened . . . ” A feeling of envy and sadness softened Leila’s tone. “You love him, don’t you? In love with a Noble.”

The girl didn’t answer her. Her silence was her answer. But her eyes were sparkling.

Leila leaned up against the trunk of the gigantic tree. At her core was this hot stickiness. It was spreading through her whole body like a fog borne on the wind. It was fatigue. Twenty years worth of fatigue had finally seeped into her body.

Leila gazed at the girl. This girl had been carried off by a Noble and had given up being human, yet still had infinite confidence and trust. She, on the other hand, was renowned as one of the greatest Vampire Hunters on Earth but was now merely awaiting a horrid fate. Could it be that the pursued was happier than the pursuer?

“Doesn’t it bother you?” Leila asked the girl.

“Huh?”

“Doesn’t it bother you? Living on the run. He has no place to go back to, no tomorrow.”

“Neither do I,” the girl replied.

“Yeah, I suppose that would help the two of you get along.”

The girl smiled thinly. “Never mind about me. Get out of here while you can. He’ll be here soon.”

“I don’t care,” said Leila. “I’m plumb exhausted. I’ll wait here for your beloved. So, why don’t we continue our little chat.”

A low voice from behind them said, “I don’t suppose you’d let yours truly listen in as well?”

The girl screamed, and Leila whipped around with ungodly speed. The face that greeted the eyes of both was that of the huntsman.

—

II

—

At the entrance to the same woods where he’d seen the streak of light, Borgoff stopped the vehicle. For a while, he didn’t move from the driver’s seat. A strange expression arose on his face when he got to his feet. An expression stripped of every emotion—almost the face of an imbecile.

Slipping through the sleeping quarters, Borgoff went into the arsenal and pulled a small timer and explosive from a wooden crate, then returned to the bunks. Going over to Groveck’s bed, he carefully pulled away the blanket. An emaciated face appeared. He put his rough thumb to the barely colored lips. There was a faint flow of air. Groveck was still alive.

A single tear coursed from Borgoff’s eye. When that shining bead snagged in his frightful beard, it hung there forever.

“It looks like it’s down to just you and me,” Borgoff said to the dearest of his brothers. It was this, the third born, that he loved more than Nolt or Kyle, or even more than Leila. “But this job’s just about up to the big finale. I really need your power here. Which is all well and good, but you just got back from an attack and there’s no reason you’d be having another one right away.”

At this point, Borgoff sobbed. “That’s why it’s gotta be this way. I hate to say it, but you’re gonna have to let me give you one. Looks to me like you ain’t gonna stand but one more of these attacks. Once you have the next one, there’ll be no saving you. That being the case, I want you to give your life for me.”

His words could be taken as both sorrowful and unsettling, but what Borgoff did as he wept was horrific. Turning down the blanket even more, right about where his brother’s heart was—over the thin sternum and above the jutting ribs—he taped the time bomb. Though the time bomb was just four inches of plastic tubing, the explosive packed in it would easily blow away the ribs and take out part of Grove’s internal organs.

That couldn’t possibly be what he planned to do to his brother’s chest as Grove lay fighting for breath, could it?

Borgoff said he was sorry. His tears flowed without end.

Give your life for me.

While one strip of tape would’ve been enough to guard against the bomb slipping off, Borgoff put on a third layer, then a fourth, just in case Groveck tried to peel it off. Once he finished his work and had gently replaced the blanket, Borgoff lightly stroked his brother’s forehead. “So long,” he said. “I’ll make it back for sure.” And then, with his deadly bow and quiver of arrows across his back, he headed outside with an easy gait.

Evening was about to change from blue to black.

Borgoff ran. His gut told him from which way Groveck’s streak of light had come.

His pace gradually quickened. The muscles in his legs creaked and popped as they swelled, and, perhaps more surprisingly, even the bones grew thicker. His upper body remained as massive as ever, but his lower limbs had been transformed into the legs of a veritable giant. And yet, his feet made almost no noise as they struck the mossy ground. In fact, they barely left a dent in the moss.

Perhaps this was a behest from his parents, who were said to have possessed genetic engineering technology. But why was it that when he walked up a slope, his body remained nearly perpendicular to the terrain?

He entered the woods. At a speed nearly five times that of an ordinary person, he headed deeper into the trees. The way his feet moved, it seemed like they didn’t know the meaning of the word stop. Soon, however, they came to a sudden halt. He’d just run into a bizarre area. There he could see what looked like a model of the Capital made entirely out of dirt. A cluster of conical buildings roughly fifteen feet high were connected by transport tubes a foot and a half thick. The Capital seemed to run on forever into the forest.

However, Borgoff’s gaze was not trained so much on the structures themselves as on the ground beneath his feet. There were white things scattered about—a skull staring fixedly at him with gaping black sockets, a femur that looked like it would make an improvised ax, ribs, a humerus . . . They were all bones. Most of them were from species Borgoff recognized, the rest were from birds and beasts he wasn’t familiar with, but the human bones were certainly easy enough to spot. Despite all the remains, the air here didn’t have the slightest stench of decay. It was as if something had stripped them of their flesh and blood.

Leaving only his startled exclamation of “Whoa!” in his old position, Borgoff jumped forward a good six feet. He landed without disturbing the moss. At the spot he’d just leapt away from, there were a number of creatures that looked like black grains of rice scurrying around. “Sorry, I can’t afford to be dinner for you guys just yet,” he called back to the minute creatures. “So long.” There was something horrifying about his voice as he spoke, and then, when he was about to make another bound, a shudder ran down his spine. In that instant, he realized who he was going to be up against. The distance to the foe he sensed was twenty-five feet ahead and a little to the right, with the eerie model of the Capital lying dead in the middle.

All the power drained from Borgoff’s body. Preparing for battle, he struck a pose that would let him use his muscles just as he wanted. The tension others might feel when a fight to the death was imminent meant nothing to a Hunter of Borgoff’s class. Crouching to escape the fierce, unearthly aura shooting through him, Borgoff let an arrow fly with lightning speed. He already had another arrow cocked and ready.

The unearthly aura died out.

The Hunter didn’t know where his arrow had gone or what effect it had. But from the way there was no sound of leaves or twigs swaying, he could well imagine.

The air stirred by his right cheek. He jumped forward for all he was worth. What had just split the air and then stuck itself into the ground was the arrow he’d fired. While the fact that someone had stopped his shot with their bare hands didn’t surprise him, the awesome power with which it’d been hurled back gave Borgoff goosebumps. Any stone or branch out there might become a deadly weapon in the hands of his enemy.

Up ahead of him, the Hunter sensed someone moving. Picking himself up and preparing to loose a second arrow, Borgoff stiffened. There against the backdrop of blue darkness, a figure in black suddenly stood. Borgoff’s Hunter-sharp eyes caught the pair of fangs poking out from the corners of his foe’s proper mouth.

“So you’re my prey then? We meet at long last,” Borgoff said in a tone brimming with delight as he aligned the neck of his deadly arrow with his foe’s heart.

“I have no words of greeting for a stray dog out prowling for human flesh and blood,” the figure garbed in black said quietly. “However, I have no desire for needless conflict. If you put your tail between your legs and scamper off, I won’t do anything to you.”

Borgoff laughed. “That’s kind of you to offer.” The direction his arrow was aiming was gradually changing. Towards the sky. “But I’m afraid I can’t!”

What Borgoff did next was nearly miraculous. At almost exactly the same time as the two arrows he shot vertically left his bowstring, he took two more from his quiver and launched them at his target. The speed of his attack was so great, the Noble—Mayerling—was clearly shaken. Another shaft flew through the air as if to block Mayerling’s way after he barely blocked the first two and moved to the right. The Noble had to twist in midair to avoid it. The instant he landed, two more arrows thunked into the ground at his feet in rapid succession.

Mayerling leapt backward. A shout of rage split his lips. How could a mere mortal with no more than a primitive bow and arrow put him in such peril?!

However, one last surprise remained in the trap Borgoff had laid. When Mayerling tried to twist out of the way of the whining menace dropping from above, his eyes caught sight of a black light knifing though the darkness. No matter where he leapt, he’d be under fire! And, when his movements stiffened for an instant, two arrows dropped out of the sky on an almost perfectly vertical path and pierced both of the Noble’s shoulders with what seemed like calculated precision.

Groaning in agony, Mayerling went to pull the arrows out, but his hands wouldn’t move.

“It’s no use,” Borgoff chortled. “I don’t care if you’re a Noble or not, you ain’t gonna be able to pull them out. For starters, you can’t raise your arms. So, how do you like my chaser arrows bit?”

Borgoff’s confidence-choked laughter was certainly fitting praise for his own masterful skill. Taking into account where the first two arrows he fired would drop, he’d driven Mayerling there with his relentless waves of attacks. However, Mayerling had been free to move as he liked. What could possibly rope in someone with several times the speed and strength of a human, and herd him right into the target in the instant the arrows fell? Borgoff’s ungodly skill—and the chaser arrows—could.

At that moment, something about the scene changed. The ground at Mayerling’s feet suddenly had a blackness to it. Something like an inky stain was surging forward, headed in his direction. When he tried to jump out of the way, callous steel whistled past him on either side.

Shrilly, Borgoff asked, “Well, what’s wrong? Aren’t you gonna run away? Can’t escape now, can you? If you move, I’ll put an arrow through your heart. Of course, them mints have caught the smell the blood, and if you stand there you’ll be their next meal.”

He was right. The wave of black steadily approaching Mayerling’s feet was in fact a large swarm of fearsome flesh-eating ants, otherwise known as mints. This spot so reminiscent of the Capital was indeed a metropolis—a cathedral for hundreds of millions of the smallest and fiercest of creatures.

“Well, well, well. You don’t have time to think it over,” said Borgoff. “What’ll it be—one right through the heart, or are you gonna wind up in the belly of them mints with nothing but your bones left behind? Nobility or not, you can’t come back from just bones. What’ll it be?”

When Borgoff had slowly pulled his bowstring taut, he saw the Noble’s hands go into motion.

—

Who the hell are you?” asked Leila. The man didn’t look like someone she’d need anything as heavy as the sliver gun against, and she held her javelin casually as she stood in front of the huntsman. It was only when Leila caught sight of the charring on Mashira’s stomach that her face hardened. I’d swear that’s a wound from one of Groveck’s power rays, she thought. And yet, this guy’s still—

“That’s not him,” the girl cried out in a quavering voice. “Originally, he was one of our bodyguards. But he transferred himself into a different body. He’s got this other face on his stomach that—” Before she could finish, the girl doubled over like a shrimp, as if victim to agonizing stomach pains.

Unsure what was happening, Leila let the javelin fly. Her “shoot first, ask questions later,” Hunter habits had come to the fore. The man didn’t move. The javelin should’ve sunk into his stomach, but, when the tip of it was stopped by a sharp clang, Leila leapt back. As she leapt, her right hand grabbed hold of the sliver gun at her hip. The handle of the weapon shooting back out of the man’s stomach knocked the gun out of her hand.

“Knock it off already,” the man said. Apparently he could manipulate the nerves and vocal cords of a corpse, and this threatening outburst from the mouth of the deceased huntsman coupled with the raised barrel of the high-caliber rifle rooted Leila to the spot. “It’s been a good while since I ran across a scrappy little hellcat like you,” the huntsman said in the countenanced carbuncle’s voice. “That’s just perfect. I’ll make both of you my women. Come on.”

As if beckoned by that evil voice, Leila took a few steps forward. The huntsman’s free hand lifted his shirt. Seeing the human face that swelled up on his belly, Leila cried out in surprise. Its lips pursed, and a terrifying brown ligament shot out at Leila’s stomach.

A scream arose. It belonged to neither Leila, nor the girl. It’d been loosed by the countenanced carbuncle. There was a single needle of rough wood stuck right through the middle of the brown umbilicus the countenanced carbuncle apparently used to transfer itself. When the pain-wracked huntsman spun around in search of his foe, more needles pierced him through the heart and right between the eyes. Of course, the corpse didn’t fall.

Though she didn’t know exactly when he’d appeared, Leila launched an impassioned cry of “D!” at the rider and mount pausing in a shower of brilliant moonlight.

Watching as the dashing Vampire Hunter got off his horse, the huntsman didn’t move.

“D, that’s really . . . ”

Nodding faintly at Leila’s words, D reached back over his shoulder with his right hand. He hadn’t let the countenanced carbuncle get away. The needle sticking through the transfer membrane also prevented it from sinking back into its body.

When the whine of a blade leaving its sheath rose from D’s back, the huntsman’s stomach suddenly bulged. With a splat like a stone thrown into a muddy ditch, a gray mass flew from the huntsman’s abdomen. Blood and viscera streamed after it. The mass disappeared into the bushes with alarming speed.

“Oh, now this is a surprise,” said a low voice issuing from around D’s waist. “I didn’t think any of my kind could fly through the air. What fun, what fun!”

Sheathing his naked steel, D didn’t say a word as he walked toward Leila and the girl. Recovering from the sunlight syndrome took days, and, usually, the tougher a dhampir was, the longer it took for him to recuperate. But D already seemed to be over it, and the eyes he trained on the two young ladies swam with an impossibly black spirit. Perhaps this youth was no average dhampir after all.

“Oh ho ho. It looks like both of you are safe. You ought to thank me for spotting that light. Pretty boy here was still snoozing at the time.” The faint voice from the Hunter’s hand didn’t reach the ears of Leila or the girl.

Following D’s line of sight when she realized it wasn’t on herself, Leila saw that the girl was slumped on the ground. She ran over in a panic. “C’mon, snap out of it!” she shouted.

D came over and bent down by the girl’s side. Laying his left hand on top of the hands she had pressed against her own solar plexus, he asked, “Is it that thing we just saw?”

“Yep.” At the answer emitted by his left hand, Leila’s eyes went wide. “There’s still time to save her if you do it now,” the voice added.

D nodded. He lay the girl flat out on her back in the under-growth, and gently placed her hands back down by her sides. His gorgeous hands went into action, exposing the girl’s stomach.

Leila stifled a scream. In the center of that smooth, porcelain stomach, an ugly human face was rising to the surface. Its features were exactly the same as the one that’d been attached to the belly of the huntsman just moments earlier.

“All his little pals look the same,” D’s left hand stated. “What’s more, they’ve got a collective consciousness. The thoughts of one are immediately transmitted to the others. These things can be a real pain in the ass.”

“Why would it infect her?” asked D.

“Out of lechery, pure lechery. These critters have an appreciation for beauty and the finer things. On top of that, the dirty little bastards enjoy sex through the senses of the humans they inhabit. I imagine that’s what he wanted to use her body for.”

A naked blade glittered in D’s right hand.

Perhaps realizing what D intended to do, the startled face was about to magically sink back into the girl. But the blade D thrust at its forehead lanced down into the oral cavity of the countenanced carbuncle with matchless precision. Screaming in anguish, it rolled its eyes back in their sockets. Streams of blood erupted from either side of its mouth before it started to fade back into the girl’s body.

“That should do it! Now I guess it’ll just be assimilated by her normal organs,” said the voice.

Whether the procedure had been painful or not was unclear, but the girl had fainted. D stood up.

“What’s the story with your left hand, D?” asked Leila.

D only replied, “You were bitten by that woman, weren’t you?”

Leila nodded, her expression gloomy.

“Then that’s someone else I have to put down.”

“Huh?” Leila said with surprise.

“I repay my debts.” D replied succinctly. He knew about the deadly struggle Leila had joined.

—

When the Noble’s hand reached not for the corresponding shoulder but for the opposite armpit, Borgoff grew pale. Forgetting to fire his next deadly shot, he watched the impossible happen.

Getting a tight grip on the arrowhead sticking through his armpit, the Noble pulled it right out with one yank. Not up, but down. The other end, of course, was fletched with vanes to make it fly straight. Just like the shafts and heads of all Borgoff’s arrows, the vanes were made of steel. Gouging flesh and shaving bone, the vanes went in the one direction that’d give the Noble his freedom again—they were pulled down. The Noble’s actions and his supernatural strength flew in the face of logic.

Now he’ll go for the other arrow . . . But just as Borgoff was thinking that, something whizzed through the air. The arrow the Noble had just removed.

An acute pain seared through Borgoff’s abdomen. The arrow his foe had just thrown back at him had been going faster than those Borgoff shot. Borgoff stared dumbfounded at the end of the arrow that went in through his belly and jutted out his back. Blood traveled down the shaft in dribs and drabs. He heard the Noble address him.

“Our duel is over, stray mongrel. It shall be you that the mints feast on.”

Borgoff opened his eyes wide. “I’m afraid not. This fight is just getting started.”

Saying that, the Hunter ran. Right to the mint nest. The nest of the flesh-eating ants was little more than a fragile metropolis of soil hardened by an adhesive the ants themselves secreted. A large bird landing on it would be more than enough to crush it—to say nothing of what the weight of a grown man would do to it.

But Borgoff stood on the ant nest. Or rather, he stuck to it. Both his legs were at a right angle to the wall. What’s more, he must’ve been using some sort of trick, because the fragile tower didn’t show a single crack.

In that outré pose—which, not surprisingly, drew a cry of astonishment from Mayerling—Borgoff let his arrows fly. They no longer had the same power they’d had a few moments earlier. Mayerling’s right hand went into action, and the murderous steel implements were struck down one after another.

Confusing his foe by moving over to one of the passageways and hanging upside down from it like a monkey, the Hunter dipped once more into his quiver. Suddenly, a strange sensation came from his legs. His profuse bleeding had robbed his legs of the ability to render him weightless, and he fell with the crumbling dirt into the very heart of the flesh-eating ants’ nest.

His next sensation was that of countless insects swarming all over his body.

Borgoff screamed. Squeezing every last bit of power from his body, he got up and ran. Each footfall crushed towers, destroyed passageways—he didn’t even feel the pain in his belly now. The fear of being eaten alive had his heart in its talons.

Deep into the woods he ran, his screams resounding through the trees.

—

III

—

The moonlight limned three faint shadows on the ground. D, Leila, and the girl.

Leila let out a deep sigh. The girl had just finished telling them the circumstances that’d brought her there. Only the wind moved near the trio, and darkness had fallen around them.

“There’s just one thing I want to ask you,” D said. He was still admiring the moonlight. “Are you aware that the Claybourne States are now . . . ”

The girl nodded.

“I see,” said D. “Then I guess you may as well go. But what’ll you do then?”

“I don’t know,” the girl replied. “Once we get there, our journey will be over. One way or another.”

D fell silent. The wind was singing a sad tune in the treetops.

“But it’s something good,” Leila muttered. “Love’s so great . . . So why does it have to go so wrong?”

For a long time, none of the trio moved.

D made the moonlight sway. “It seems he’s come for you,” he said. His eyes indicated the depths of the forest.

Tears glistened in the girl’s eyes. “Don’t do this, I beg of you. Please, just let me go to him. If we keep going at this rate, we’ll reach the Claybourne States by tomorrow night. Everything will end there. After that . . . ”

D faced the forest.

“Don’t move,” Leila said. D turned to face her. She had the barrel of the sliver gun aimed at his chest. “Let her go. We can settle things once they reach the Claybourne States.”

D didn’t move.

“Thank you,” said the girl. “Thank you—thank you both.”

In the depths of the woods, a tall silhouette hove into view. The girl ran to it. Pausing for an instant, the two silhouettes vanished among the trees as if embraced by the forest. Once they were gone, Leila lowered the sliver gun. “Sorry, D,” she said.

“Why the apology? I should thank you again.”

Leila said with surprise, “You don’t mean you would’ve—”

“Go to sleep already. Tomorrow morning I’ll take you to where to left your car. There we part company. After that, you can tail me, go back to your brothers, or whatever you like. You can count on me to take care of the female dhampir.”

“I . . . ” Leila swallowed the rest of the words. She was going to say she wanted to go with him. But how would she go about traveling with a shadow?

A blanket was tossed at her feet. D took another one in hand and walked over to the trunk of a nearby tree. Spreading the blanket on the ground, he sat back against the tree trunk and crossed his arms. The sword off his back had been placed by his left side.

After a moment’s consideration, Leila sat down next to D. D gazed at her steadily. His pupils seemed deep enough to swallow her. Suppressing a wave of rapture, she asked, “Does this bother you? You know, where I’m a vampire victim and all?”

“Nope.”

“Thanks,” she said. Pulling the blanket up to her chest, Leila lay down on the ground, using her arm for a pillow.

There was a fragrance to the wind. Night-blooming jasmine, moonlit grass, nocturnal peonies, moonshine . . . Sweet and heart-rending . . . There was life by night. The croaking of frogs, music from the jaws of longhorns, the whispering of great silkworms . . . All small and tough and full of life . . .

For a moment, Leila forgot she was the prey of a female dhampir. It’d never been like this for her. “Funny, isn’t it,” she said as she scratched the tip of her nose.

D didn’t move, but he seemed to be listening.

“The night doesn’t frighten me a bit. None of my brothers has ever done this . . . Every single night, we had the feeling there were beasts and evil spirits out to get us . . . Even inside the bus, we were still on edge.” And yet, now she seemed perfectly fine. “I wonder why I don’t mind the night now?”

After she’d said it, Leila was surprised. Had she actually thought that stern young man would give her an answer? She said it herself, quietly, in her heart. Because I’m with you . . .

Even after Leila fell asleep listening to the song of the wind, the young Vampire Hunter still trained his gaze patiently on the darkness of the night, anger and grief far from the void that was his eyes.

—

At about the same time, in a part of the forest not very far away, a strange and truly disturbing event was unfolding.

Borgoff could feel his internal organs being bored through and devoured. There was no longer any pain. Ants were swarming all over his body. They were inside his face, too. He saw his right eye fall out. The sensation of ants crawling around in his eye socket was strangely tickling. Tens of thousands of them were dining on his flesh. Each and every trifling bite splashed a chill over him. It was cold. So very cold.

A strange thing clawed its way out of the grass and came into view of the corner of his remaining left eye. It was a gooey gray lump. Oddly enough, though it lacked arms and legs, it clearly had eyes and a nose.

“Oh, this is a nice little find I’ve made,” said the lump. “It’s a little beat up, but if I knock all the freaking ants off it I should be able to get some use out of it. Yessir, when it comes to traveling, you can’t beat a human body.” Moving over to Borgoff’s mouth, it said to him, “You’ll have to excuse me. I’m kind of in a hurry, too.”

The gooey limbless lump pried open lips that the man himself lacked the strength to open, and Borgoff felt the thing sliding down his esophagus and into his stomach.

—

IV

—

There wasn’t really any place called the Claybourne States any longer. Neighboring sectors had only heard about the Ninety-Eighth Frontier Sector’s capital region because the spaceport was there, and the Claybourne States had come to be known by the spaceport’s name as well. But that name, too, had long since been forgotten, and people hadn’t mentioned either in ages.

With its automated housekeeping-systems destroyed, the interior of the terminal building was left to the rampant dust, and the winds that blew in through shattered panes of reinforced glass traced thin, swirling patterns in the accumulated grit.

A drifter who was calling one of the spaceport rooms his home that particular evening found his meager dinner interrupted by the untimely arrival of guests. A black carriage drawn by a half-dozen horses came in through the central gate. Once it halted at the entrance to the terminal building, two passengers got out. There was a man and a woman. What astonished the drifter was the fact that the couple consisted of a Noble and a human. Both of them went into the building, but the way they held each other’s hands only added to his consternation. A human and a Noble? he thought to himself. It couldn’t be! He slipped quietly out of his room and headed out of the spaceport as if he’d just had a nightmare.

—

The pair stood dazed in the blue dusk of the lobby. Or, to be more precise, only Mayerling was dazed. The pity in the girl’s expression was directed at her love.

“No . . . This can’t be . . . ” Mayerling mumbled. His words echoed through the emptiness.

The only ships for sailing to the stars visible in the vast complex were horrible derelicts. A photon-powered spaceship with melted engines, a galaxy ship crushed in the middle, a dimension-warping schooner wrecked beyond repair . . . It was a quiet and cruel death that covered the apron. There was no road out there that might carry them together on a voyage among the stars.

“It can’t be . . . ” Mayerling stammered. “The rumors said . . . ” In his mind, rumors that the spaceport still operated on a small scale must’ve seemed more and more real with each passing day, taking shape and becoming the absolute truth to him. Knowing his kind was doomed, even declaring as much himself, he remained a Noble after all.

As he stood paralyzed, a hand gently pressed upon his shoulder. He saw the girl’s face. Her perfectly placid expression.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’ll go somewhere else now. So long as I’m with you, I’ll go anywhere. Together forever . . . until death do us part . . . ”

“But—I can’t die,” Mayerling replied.

Tears welling in her eyes as they clung to him, the girl said in a determined tone, “In that case, make me just like you . . . ”

“I can’t do that.”

“I don’t mind.” The girl shook her head. “I don’t mind at all. I was prepared for that from the very start . . . ”

Blue light tinged the faces of the young couple. Mayerling’s face slowly approached the nape of the girl’s neck. The girl had her eyes shut. Her long, lovely eyelashes trembled. When she felt the lips of her beloved on the base on her neck, her eyes snapped open.

A scream echoed through the lobby.

Mayerling stared in amazement at his love, who’d pulled free of him with that scream.

The girl’s violent emotions quickly passed. A tremendous feeling of remorse showed on her face. Her lips quivered. “I . . . I . . . That was a horrible thing for me to do . . . ” she stammered.

Mayerling smiled. It was the smile of a man who’d just lost something. “It’s okay,” he said gently. “We’re fine the way we are. If you should wither and die first, I shall follow after you.”

The girl crushed herself against him and hung on for dear life. She said not a word, but he softly stroked her quivering shoulders.

“Shall we go then?” he suggested. “Though the pathway to the stars is barred to us, we may yet journey across the earth.”

The girl looked up at him and nodded. Stroking her waist-long hair in sympathy, he let his eyes wander to the lobby’s exit. A figure in a black coat suddenly stood there. The blue pendant at his breast and his unsettling beauty burned into the Noble’s retinas. Holding his tongue, Mayerling pushed the girl aside.

“Your trip’s over,” D said. “Give me the girl.”

“Take her then. That is, if you survive,” Mayerling said gruffly. He made no effort to keep his ladylove by his side and avoid the fight.

“This way, if you don’t mind,” Leila said to the girl as she came over from one of the other walls, took the girl by the hand, and brought her to the corner of the room.

D walked toward Mayerling. He stopped with ten feet still between them.

“You know, D,” Mayerling said, discharging the words like a sigh, “there’s no road to the stars after all. But then you knew that all along, didn’t you?”

D didn’t answer.

Vampire and Vampire Hunter discarded hatred and anger and grief, and readied for battle. Trenchant claws grew from the fingertips of Mayerling’s right hand. Neither of the men seemed to move, but the distance between them shrank nonetheless.

A horizontal flash of black shot out, and D took to the air without a sound. The eldritch blade that howled with the Hunter’s downward swipe hit Mayerling’s left arm with a shower of sparks. Again the black claws swiped out in an attack, and again they met only air as D leapt back six feet.

This lobby, where nothing save ages of decay sat in stagnation, was playing host for this one night alone to a condensed conflict between life and death.

—

While her eyes were riveted to the pair’s deadly battle, Leila felt warm breath brushing the nape of her neck. “Come this way,” someone said to her. The voice was seductive and female. Oddly enough, the girl didn’t seem to notice it at all. “Come this way,” it said again.

Even when Leila quietly slipped to the rear, the girl and her soul remained prisoners of the deadly duel before them.

A knife of some sort was placed in Leila’s right hand. “Take this and stab the girl,” the voice told her. “Kill her!” The speaker must’ve still believed Mayerling would be hers if only she disposed of the girl.

Leila nodded. Her grip tightened on the handle of the knife. Circling around behind the girl, she stealthily raised the blade.

“Now!” the voice commanded.

Leila did a flip. Caroline’s rapture-twisted face was right in front of her own now. Before the Barbarois woman’s expression could register her shock, the silver knife was gouging deep into the female dhampir’s heart. What’s more, out of apparent concern about distracting the pair of combatants from their battle, Leila took the added measure of clamping her left hand down like a lid over Caroline’s lips. Blood gushed out between Leila’s fingertips.

As Caroline’s eyes went from a look of agony and disbelief to a haze of death, Leila stared into them and smirked. “Too bad. You know, I noticed something while you were ordering me around. Seems there’s at least one woman you bit who didn’t wind up your own personal marionette.” Leila, it seemed, possessed an unusual resistance to the demon’s call, though she had not known it until now.

When Leila turned her eyes from the falling body of the beautiful woman, the death match seemed about to be decided.

As soon as he’d batted down all of the rough wooden needles D hurled at him during a leap back, Mayerling felt composure coming over his mind. It was the next instant that he saw a thick flash of silvery light. His injured arms hadn’t recovered their previous speed yet. D’s longsword, thrust with calculated precision at this hole in Mayerling’s defenses, slid neatly into the Noble’s stomach.

As the Noble thudded to the ground in a bloody mist, the girl ran like the wind to his side. “Please, try not to shake me so much,” Mayerling told her. He smiled wryly under his pained breathing.

D came over. Two pairs of eyes met, the huntsman and the prey. Both men’s eyes had a mysterious hue of emotion to them.

“You did well to dodge that strike,” D said softly. No matter how deep the wound to Mayerling’s stomach, it wouldn’t be the end of a Noble. Once the sword was pulled out, even a wound from D would eventually heal.

“Why did you miss?” asked Mayerling.

The girl and Leila—who’d also come over once her own deadly little battle was done—looked at D in surprise.

Giving no answer, D bent over and took several strands of the girl’s lengthy hair in hand. Pulling out a dagger, he cut off a lock about eight inches long and put it in one of his coat pockets. “So long as I have some of her hair, the sheriff’s office will be able to confirm her identity,” he said. “Baron Mayerling and his human love are dead. Never show yourselves before mankind again.”

An indescribable light welled up in the girl’s eyes.

D took hold of the hilt of his longsword and pulled the metal out of Mayerling’s body. His blade rasped back into its sheath. “There’s the ten million right there. Easy money.” Without another word, D walked toward the exit.

“D!” Leila shouted. She was about to go after him, but at that moment a roaring wind caught her ear.

When D whipped around at the sound of flesh being penetrated, he saw the steel arrow that pierced Mayerling’s chest. From the angle of it, he gleaned where it’d been fired from, and a flash of silvery white flew from D’s right hand. It rebounded off the high ceiling and was barely blocked by a figure who made an easy, spider-like dash sideward.

“Borgoff!” Leila cried out.

D saw her brother, too. But was it really Borgoff? There was a huge, gaping hole in his stomach that did nothing to conceal the deep red scraps of entrails, sinew, and bone within. Half of either thigh was exposed bone, and the right side of his face was just a skull. Such was the fate one met when attacked by flesh-eating mint ants.

Laughing maniacally, he shouted, “You’re next, jerk!”

Black bits of lightning streaked at D, but each and every one was struck down. The corpse didn’t have quite the same skill it’d possessed in life. Hoping to attack from a different angle, Borgoff ran across the ceiling to the wall. He was confident of his speed. Of the speed he’d had in life.

A second later, his shoulder and the top of his head were pierced by flashes of white that shot vertically from below, where by all rights no one should’ve been able to get him. If that’d been the extent of the damage, the already dead Borgoff wouldn’t have had any problems. Due to D’s ungodly skill, however, one of the wooden needles rebounded and shattered his right ankle, which was just denuded bone. His remaining leg couldn’t continue to support his weight of nearly two hundred and twenty-five pounds, and Borgoff’s massive frame fell head over heels from a height of some thirty feet before smashing against the lobby floor.

“Damn it all!” He spat the words down at his own barely fleshed chest. “But if his memory serves me, there’s still something I can do.” Borgoff’s grotesque right hand—bones with chunks of flesh still clinging to it—went into his pants pocket.

At that moment, the drifter who was searching for food in the bus parked right in front of the spaceport jumped as he heard a tiny explosion from one of the beds lined up in the back.

D was cloaked in a ghastly aura as he walked toward Borgoff, but, suddenly, a young man stood between them.

“There you are, Grove,” Borgoff’s corpse said in Borgoff’s voice. “Do your thing! Kill all of these fuckers.”

Before he’d finished speaking, D leapt. His longsword sank into the youth’s shoulder and went through it like water.

The youth wasn’t looking at D. He was gazing at the long-haired girl in a corner of the lobby as she cradled a figure in black and sobbed. A hue of sadness suddenly invaded his flushed face. He shook his head ever so slightly from side to side.

“Gro . . . Grove?!” Borgoff stammered in disbelief.

Before his brother had finished saying his name, the young man became transparent, then quickly faded away.

When agony seemed to force Grove’s desiccated form to sit up in bed, the horrified drifter inched ever closer to him, but, the instant the youth appeared before him, the intruder was scared out of his mind. The youth’s sad gaze was trained on the convulsing body, and then he put himself against it. The second he did, he started to melt into the feeble form, and a shudder ran through the still upright body. Then it moved no more.

Walking to Borgoff’s body, D quickly pressed the palm of his left hand to its chest. There was an anguished cry. From Borgoff’s feet.

Something squirming around inside Borgoff’s thigh seemed to be gradually rising toward his chest, inch by inch, as if it was being pulled up on a string. Past the stomach it went, slipping through organs left exposed by the gaping wound, and when it reached the spot directly under the palm of D’s hand, the crunch of meat and bone reverberated. It gave a scream in its death throes, but that ended soon enough.

D pulled his left hand away. The tiny mouth in the middle of his palm opened. From it, something like a catfish tail wriggled out, but it was soon sucked back in. Once again, there was the crunching sounds of mastication, and then its tongue lolled out to lick its lips before disappearing, lips and all.

Without even a glance at Borgoff, who was now a true corpse, D turned in the girl’s direction. She’d fallen by Mayerling’s side. Checking her pulse, Leila looked at D and shook her tear-streaked face from side to side.

One of Mayerling’s claws was jabbing into the girl’s chest. The girl had taken hold of it and thrust it into her own bosom.

D’s gaze was somewhat weary as he looked down at the amazingly serene countenance she wore in death. He heard Leila’s voice from somewhere. Love’s so great . . . So why does it have to go so wrong?

The human and the Noble—each died as they’d lived. The human as a human, the Noble as a Noble . . .

“She said thank you,” Leila said absentmindedly.

D took the lock of hair out of his coat pocket. That was all that remained of the girl now.

Some time later, the drifter—who’d received a large sum in gold from the gorgeous young man in black to bury the pair—stepped into the lobby. The wind that slipped in with him blew the strands of hair from where they’d been placed on the girl’s shoulder, scattering them randomly across the empty hall.

—

At the entrance to the spaceport, Leila got down off D’s horse. “I’m going to this town up north,” she said to the gorgeous countenance trained on her. “It’s a little place, and it’s always covered with snow, but this young guy who runs the butcher shop there asked me to marry him once. He’s the only guy who ever knew my last name and said it didn’t matter. By now, he’s probably got a wife and kids already, but then he said he’d wait as long as he had to. I’m sorta counting on that.”

D nodded. “Godspeed,” he said.

“Right back at you.”

D urged his horse forward. Leila remained stock still behind him, and about the time the blue darkness was starting to hide her, a faint smile slipped to D’s lips. If Leila had caught sight of it, she probably would’ve reflected with pride on how her parting words had inspired it until the end of her days.

It was just such a smile.