---

---

Realizing in a heartbeat she didn’t stand a chance of victory, Doris reined her horse toward the ruins and took off at full speed.

In her haste to take flight, she forgot the might of her foe’s weapon, and the way it had taken off the crone’s head from a hilltop over sixty feet away. Rei-Ginsei didn’t throw his weapon immediately. As Doris’ mount neared the heart of the ruins, he finally let the weapon fly with an underhanded throw. Whirring as it chased down the rapidly dwindling speck of Doris and her steed, it mercilessly slashed through the horse’s right-rear leg and right-front leg, turned a graceful loop, and came right back at them, severing both legs on the left side. As the loss of one leg would’ve sufficed to prevent the girl’s escape, this was a display of sheer brutality. A bloody mist went out as the horse fell.

“Oh! Just beautiful!” As he felt the weight of his weapon returning to his outstretched palm, Rei-Ginsei admired the scene before him.

As the horse toppled over, a lithe body leapt into the air, somersaulted, and landed on the ground with only the slightest break in form.

But Doris’ face was deathly pale.

She hadn’t forgotten her foe’s weapon, or his unholy skill with it. With those very things in mind, she’d had her horse galloping along a zigzagging course. The black weapon seemed to take their movements into consideration nonetheless as it cleanly severed the first two legs. The falling beast threw them into the air as Rei-Ginsei came back and visited a similar fate on the remaining pair.

Doris realized she’d run into a foe that in some ways was even more fearsome than the Nobility. There was a javelin and a longsword strapped to her saddle, but she had the whip in her right hand. Still, the weapon felt strangely light and ineffectual in her grasp.

Rei-Ginsei leisurely rode into the ruins. “After seeing that last display of agility, I find myself even less inclined to kill you soon. Will you not lay with me before you depart this mortal coil?”

“Who’d be low enough to do that? I’d sooner have my head bashed open on one of these rocks than lie down with a self-important snake like you,” Doris replied, quickly slipping behind the closest of the massive sculptures. Almost twenty feet high, the statue of a figure with a pair of bared fangs tilted slightly forward, set off balance by the long years and the shifting of the ground. Rei-Ginsei’s intimidating, ranged weapon couldn’t be expected to do much through this stony shield, but with no way to strike back, Doris remained in the same predicament.

“The stronger the prey, the greater the huntsman’s thrill. Even more so when it’s such an exquisite beast. Oh, I’m sorry—you’re supposed to be a Hunter as well, aren’t you?” Rei-Ginsei ended the question with scornful laughter. The second he looked down from that hill, and spotted Doris with Witch’s body loaded on her horse, he had decided to kill her. If the connection were made between the disappearance of the FDF squad and the corpse of an old woman who’d been working some sort of sorcery, it would only be a question of time before the name of his gang came up.

Witch had been like a reserve unit no one knew about. Operating independently, her job was to summon a creature more ghastly than the human mind could bear. Her creations left the bandits’ foes psychologically devastated. When Rei-Ginsei lopped off the head of the demonically possessed Witch and saved Doris, part of the reason was because of the natural sexual attraction he felt toward the beautiful girl. On the other hand, he’d also intended to get rid of the burdensome old sorceress eventually. Now he had the girl cornered like an animal, she was largely unscathed, and her eyes blazed with animosity as she glared at him from behind the monolith.

“It would be so easy for me to send you into the hereafter, but I fear dispatching you so quickly would leave you ill-equipped to testify to my infamy in the afterlife.” The weapon in his right hand glistened in the sunlight. “I believe I shall have to make your frail heart quake a bit more in fear of me. Ah, yes, I recall one of the cardinal rules of the Hunter—first you must flush the elusive prey from its hiding place.”

Something howled through the air, and there was an incredible noise from the base of the monolith sheltering Doris. Giving a cry of astonishment, Doris wisely leapt out of the way. Stuck in the ground at an angle, the several tons of sculpted stone didn’t look likely to budge an inch, even under a sizable impact, but suddenly its balance seemed to upset, and it started to tilt in her direction.

The weapon that had done this was already back in Rei-Ginsei’s hand. It resembled the boomerang the ancient natives of Australia used so effectively. Unlike the boomerang, however, Rei-Ginsei’s weapon was razor sharp on both the inner and outer edges. What’s more, it was made of iron. Most non-Aborigines had trouble throwing a plain wooden boomerang effectively, yet this handsome youth, as limber as a sapling swaying in the breeze, could throw the iron blades any way he pleased with just one flick of the wrist. His unholy skill lent blades of mere metal the kind of cutting power reserved for magic swords, pushing them through a human body, or the trunk of a tree, or even through stone.

Furthermore, they didn’t just strike in a straight line. They could come at the target from the right or the left, from above, even from the feet—there seemed to be nowhere they couldn’t go. And while it was impossible to defend oneself from even one of these blades, it seemed unlikely there was anyone in the world that could fend off two or three successive attacks, let alone multiple blades thrown at the same time. The iron blades were liable to slice through any shield as easily as they went through their usual prey. Such were Rei-Ginsei’s “shrike-blades.”

The ground shook and verdant moss flew everywhere as the monolith fell.

Doris stood at the bottom of a lush green bowl of a depression, stock still with amazement. It was ten feet to the nearest stone wall.

Swaying like a flower in the morning breeze, Rei-Ginsei laughed. “What’s wrong? I thought the nature of the beast was to flee when hunted—”

Suddenly, he swallowed his words.

Doris’ expression filled with hope, because two things had suddenly changed.

A heavy white mist from nowhere in particular had begun to fill the ruins. It clung to Rei-Ginsei’s hand as he held his weapon, and to Doris’ cheeks, forming tepid beads. And far off, a horse was whinnying.

Doris made a mad dash for the stone wall. While the fog might protect her from an attack, she didn’t think it would blind her foe long enough for her to get away. She would try to get close enough to whoever was riding the horse she’d just heard to call out, and would try to borrow some weapons, though she might lose an arm or a leg in the process. Of course, she didn’t think that would be enough to beat him anyway.

Nothing came knifing through the air after her. Leaping over the wall headfirst, she held her breath and tried to judge the distance to the next bit of cover.

The voice that echoed across the distance rendered her determined gaze as lifeless as that of a corpse.

“Boss, I’m gonna help myself to your playmate.”

In a dimly lit world, where a dripping, white veil hid the blue of the sky, the shadow of death crept ever closer to the one, lone girl. Rei-Ginsei and his three henchmen—any one of them was more than a match for her.

“What happened to Witch, boss?” another voice inquired.

“She got put down. Lost her head to a pretty little bird.”

A low, rumbling stir went through the fog. The voices she heard were choked with blackest rage.

“I’ll gouge her eyes out.”

“I’m gonna twist the arms and legs off her.”

“I’ll tear her head off.”

Then Rei-Ginsei was heard to say, “And I shall take my pleasure from what remains of her body.”

Doris hadn’t spoken. She couldn’t even be heard to breathe. The men had simply sensed the presence of a girl paralyzed by imminent death. The milky fog reduced everything to vague silhouettes.

Rei-Ginsei held a shrike-blade ready in his right hand. Without a single word of prompting, at that same moment elsewhere in the fog, Golem drew his machete, a bowie knife gleamed in Gimlet’s hand, and Chullah’s hump split in half.

“Well, now…”

Just as they were about to unleash their murderous assault, Rei-Ginsei suddenly froze.

There’s something out there!

Yes, out in the eddying mist, out in the sticky, unsettling fog that steadily gnawed away at their psyches, which soaked through their skin to threaten the flame of life, Rei-Ginsei clearly sensed the presence of something other than his group and their helpless prey. Not only was there something out there, but it was enough to stop a man like him in his tracks. Rei-Ginsei couldn’t physically see it, but he felt the presence near the monolith he’d toppled with his lightning-fast throw.

He’d hadn’t known anything about this. How could he have guessed the monolith had stood there since time immemorial, blocking an entrance to the subterranean world? The fog around them was one that had risen from the bowels of the earth.

“So, this is the outside world?”

The query came in just the sort of unsettling voice one would expect from a demon of the mists. It had such an inhuman ring to it that Rei-Ginsei and his three brutal henchmen found themselves swallowing nervously. Stranger yet, it was a woman’s voice.

“It’s so chilly ... I like it so much better down below,” said another woman.

A third said, “We really must find something to fill our bellies—oh, well, isn’t there something right over there? One, two, three, four—five in all.”

Rei-Ginsei shuddered, realizing that the three speakers could see perfectly well in the fog that left all others blind. Due to the weirdness of the presence he sensed out there, he’d forgotten all about lowering the shrike-blade he’d raised earlier. He felt there were two things out there. And yet, he couldn’t help thinking that one of those was split into three!

“Your guide duties have been fulfilled. Get below again,” a rusty but much more human voice commanded. No doubt that was the other presence he felt. But while the voice was more human, the presence itself was far more daunting than the source of the disturbing female voices.

“Oh, you can’t ... Look at how handsome he is ... He looks absolutely delicious ...”

Quickly surmising that these plaintive cries referred to himself, Rei-Ginsei got chills.

“No, I forbid it.”

He felt extremely thankful for this second command.

“Let us go, my sisters. We have our orders.”

“It’s such a waste, but I suppose we must.”

“But, well … when shall you visit us again? When will you come to our abode far below, oh beloved one?”

The last voice was entreating.

There was no response, and before long, the strange thing with three voices and one presence moved reluctantly through the fog and disappeared back underground.

The source of the remaining presence spoke.

“I’m not interested in fighting anyone but the Nobility, but if you’re hellbent on starting something, then step right up”

He’s challenging us! Even with this realization, the quartet found that their will to fight remained weak.

“D ... I know it’s you, isn’t it?”

Doris sounded on the verge of tears.

“Come to me. Relax. There’s no need to hurry.”

Out in the fog, there was the sound of teeth grinding together. He said there was no need to hurry because he was sure the quartet wouldn’t do a thing to stop him. The gnashing teeth testified to the gang’s resentment of his scathing insult. But the fact of the matter was the unearthly aura radiating from somewhere out in the fog bound the villains tight, preventing them from so much as lifting a finger.

The little bird that had almost been in hand walked over to the source of the voice. Shortly after that, the bandits felt the two of them moving far away.

“Wait ... wait just a minute.” At long last, Rei-Ginsei succeeded in forcing words from his mouth. “At least tell me your name ...” Forgetting his customary eloquence, he shouted into the fog, “So, is that your name, asshole? D?”

There was no response, and he felt the pair getting further and further away.

The spell over him was broken.

With a scream, Rei-Ginsei hurled his weapon. Extraordinary in its power, speed, and timing, nothing could stop it; with complete confidence in that fact, he let the shrike-blade fly.

Out in the fog, there was the sound of blade meeting blade. After that there was no sound at all, and silence settled over the white world. All trace of the pair was gone.

“Boss?” Golem inquired dejectedly a few minutes later, but the beautiful spawn of hell-sent supplications just stayed there with his right hand stretched out for a shrike-blade that never returned, his countenance paler than the fog as he sat frozen in the saddle.

.

A sculpture of a gargoyle with folded wings trained its mocking gaze on the room from its lofty perch. The room was one of many in Count Lee’s castle. Completely windowless and far from spacious, it was simple in design, but the robot sentries lined up along one wall, the chair on a dais a step up from the stone floor, the person in black scowling from a colossal portrait that covered much of the wall behind the chair, and the general air of religious solemnity that hung about the room suggested it was a place of judgment—a courtroom of sorts.

The defendant had already been questioned about their crimes, and as the ultimate judge, Count Lee raised his eyebrows in rage.

“I will now pronounce the sentence. Look at me,” the Count commanded. He spoke with the dignity of a feudal lord, in a low voice from his place on the dais as he desperately fought back the flames ready to leap from his throat. The defendant didn’t move. Brought to the room earlier by the robot sentries, the defendant remained sprawled on the cold stone floor. Three pairs of vacant eyes wandered about the room, across the floor, into space, and then up to reciprocate the gaze of the gargoyles near the ceiling. The black hair that reached to the end of the defendant’s massive tail made the floor a sea of silky black. It was the three sisters from the subterranean aqueduct—the Midwich Medusas.

“You have forgotten the debt you owe me for sheltering you three long millennia in the waters of the underworld, safe from the eyes of man, and fed to the point of bursting. Not only did you fail to dispatch the worm I sent you, but you even aided his escape. This sort of betrayal is not easily forgiven. And so I condemn you here and now!”

The three heads didn’t seem to be shaken in the least by the Count’s barrage of abuse as they drifted through space and their eyes seemed to be covered by a milky membrane. Then, all at once, they let out a deep sigh and murmured, “Oh, the divine one ...”

“Kill them!” Before his indignant shout was done—a cry that some might even call crazed—the robot sentries unleashed crimson heat-rays from their eyes, vaporizing the trio of heads. Without so much as a glance at the corpse still smoking and wriggling on the floor, the Count curtly ordered, “Get rid of it,” then looked sharply to one side.

He hadn’t noticed her entrance, but Larmica stood beside the dais. Even garbed in a snow-white dress, the girl had an air of darkness about her. Returning her father’s bloodshot gaze with eyes full of icy mockery, she said, “Father, why have you done away with them?”

“They were traitors,” the Count spat. “Of course, there were extenuating circumstances. The stripling drank their blood and made them his slave, and they led him back to the surface. You see, when I awoke, the computers informed me that one of the entrances to the subterranean world had been opened early this morning. My first thought was to have them dragged from their lair for questioning, and they confessed everything. Not that it was difficult—they seem to have been robbed of their souls. They were only too happy to answer my questions.”

“And what of the entrance?”

“The robots have already sealed it.”

“Then you mean to tell me he made good his escape?”

Averting his gaze from his daughter’s face as her expression became ever more fascinated, the Count nodded.

“He got away. But the fact that he beat the three sisters ... not by killing them, but that he bit their throats like one of us and made them do his bidding ... I get the feeling he is no ordinary dhampir ...”

Dhampirs with less self-control fed on human blood from time to time, but there had never been a case where the person they fed on became the same sort of marionette Nobles made of their victims. Being only half-vampire, dhampirs’ powers didn’t extend that far. Stranger yet, this victim hadn’t been a human, but rather a true monster among monsters—the Midwich Medusas.

Larmica’s eyes began to sparkle with an ineffable light. “I see. You let him get away from you ... Just like the girl.”

Not surprisingly, the Count’s visage twisted in rage, and he glared at Larmica.

The girl, of course, was Doris. Larmica referred with sarcasm to how he’d set out flush with confidence to claim his prize, but had been forced to flee after meeting brutal resistance. Even more filled with the pride of the Nobility than her father, Larmica sternly opposed elevating any human to the ranks of her kind, no matter how much her father might be attracted to his prey.

With feigned innocence, she asked, “Will you be sneaking off again this evening to see her? Will you pay another call to that beastly smelling excuse for a farm?”

“No,” the Count replied, his voice once again composed. “I believe I’ll refrain from that for a while. Now that the stripling is back with her, it might prove difficult to have my way.”

“Then you have abandoned your plans for the human girl?”

Now it was the Count’s turn to grin slyly. “Again, no. I must pay a call on someone else. Before I had the Medusas executed, the eldest of the sisters made mention of some curious characters.”

“Characters? You mean humans, don’t you?”

“Yes. Using them, I shall see to it the whelp is destroyed—though you shall have my condolences.” There was nothing whatsoever of a consoling nature in his tone.

In a low voice Larmica asked, “Then you will have the girl, come what may?”

“Yes. Such exquisite features, such a fine, pale throat, and such mettle. These last few millennia, I’ve not seen such a precious female.” Here the Count’s tone changed. “Seeing the grueling battle she gave me the other night, never giving an inch, has only increased my ardor. Ten thousand years ago, was there not the case of our Sacred Ancestor failing to attain a human maiden of his heart’s desire?” As he said this, he gazed with reverence, equal to what any of the Greater Nobility would show, at the colossal painting occupying the wall behind him. “I have heard that the woman our Sacred Ancestor desired was named Mina the Fair, and she lived in the ancient Land of Angels. And it seems our Sacred Ancestor found the blood coursing beneath her nigh translucent skin sweeter and more delectable than any to ever wash across his tongue, though he had already drunk from the life founts of thousands of beauties.”

“Because of that woman, our Sacred Ancestor was reduced to dust,” Larmica added coldly, giving her father a plaintive look that wasn’t at all like her. “Then you won’t reconsider this under any circumstances, Father? The proud Lee family has occupied this region of the Frontier for five long millennia, and no human should ever be allowed to join it. All you have ever preyed upon have been drained of blood and left to die, and never have you suggested bringing any of them into the family. So why this one girl? I am certain I’m not alone in questioning this. I have no doubt my late mother would ask exactly the same thing.”

The Count gave a pained smile. He nodded, as if acknowledging the inevitable.

“That’s the point. I have been meaning to bring this up for some time now, but I intend to take the girl as my wife.”

Larmica looked as if a stake had just been pounded through her heart. Nothing shy of that could have delivered the same shock to this proud young woman. After a while, her characteristically pale skin became the color of paper, and she said, “I understand. If you have considered that far ahead, then I will no longer be unreasonable. Do as you wish. However, I believe I shall take my leave of this castle and set off on a long journey.”

“A journey, you say? Very well.”

For all the distress in the Count’s voice, there was also a faint ring of relief. He knew in the very marrow of his bones that his beloved but temperamental daughter would never be able to coexist with the human girl, no matter how he might try to persuade them both.

“So, Father,” Larmica asked, her face as charming as if the problem had completely been forgotten, “how exactly do you intend to destroy the young upstart and claim the girl?”

.

By the time Doris got back to the farm with D, the sun was already high in the sky. Having heard an account of the previous night from his babysitter, Dr. Ferringo, Dan’s little heart was steeped in anxiety as he awaited his sister’s return. When he saw the two of them return safely he was overjoyed, though his eyes nearly leapt out of his head at the same time.

“What the heck happened to you, Sis? You fall off your horse and bust your behind or something?”

“Oh, you hush up! It’s nothing, really. I’m just making D do this to make up for all the worrying he put us through,” Doris shouted from her place on D’s back. D was carrying her piggyback.

Her nerves had borne her through heated battles with two equally fiendish adversaries—the Count last night and Rei-Ginsei this morning—but the instant she stepped out of the foggy world and heard D tell her, “You’re all right now,” her nerves had just snapped. The next thing she knew, she was on his broad back and he was treading the road home. “Hey, that’s not funny. Put me down,” she had cried, her face flushing bright red. D quickly complied, but Doris, seemingly overcome with relief, couldn’t muster any strength in her legs. They wobbled under her when they touched the ground, forcing her to sit on the spot. And so he had carried her the rest of the way to the farm.

D carried Doris right on into her room and put her to bed. The second she felt the spring of the mattress beneath her, she dropped off to sleep, but at that moment she got the distinct impression she heard a vulgar voice laugh and say, “She had a nice big butt on her. Sometimes this job has its perks.”

When the sun was getting ready to set, Doris awoke. Dr. Ferringo had long since returned to town, and D and Dan were busy repairing the door and hallway damaged in the previous night’s conflict. “Don’t bother with that, D, we can take care of it ourselves. You’ve got to be worn out enough as it is.”

On the way back to the farm from the ruins, D hadn’t really told her the circumstances that had prevented him from returning the night before. He’d simply said, “I blew it.”

She understood that he meant he’d failed to destroy the Count. But beyond that, he didn’t say anything like, “Sorry I was gone so long,” or ask, “Did anything happen last night?” Quite peeved by that, Doris subjected him to a somewhat exaggerated account of the evening’s events. She didn’t even think it particularly odd that things she’d normally be too terrified to speak of now rolled right off her tongue, simply because D was with her.

Once she’d finished, D said, “Good thing you are all right,” and that was the end of it. It seemed a cold and insolent thing to say, but it left Doris thoroughly satisfied nonetheless, and if she was a fool for that, then so be it.

At any rate, she somehow knew D had done battle with the Count, and that, in addition, he’d had some other far from ordinary experience. That was why she said he must be worn out.

“Aw, that’s okay,” Dan countered. “My big brother D here is great at this stuff. Sis, you and I couldn’t have handled all this in a month. Take a gander outside. He took care of everything—he refilled the weed-killers, fixed the fence, and even swapped out the solar panels.”

“My goodness,” Doris exclaimed in amazement.

Earning premium pay, a Hunter might keep up his own home, but she’d never heard of one helping his employer with repairs. Especially in D’s case, where his reward was only…Doris’ train of thought got that far before she flushed red. She remembered what she’d promised him before she brought him there to work. “Anyway, sit down over there and have a rest. I’ll get dinner going straight away.”

“We’ll be done soon,” D said, screwing the door hinges back into place. “It’s been a while since I did this, and it’s tougher than I thought.”

“Yeah, but you’re great at it,” Dan interjected. “You tie the knot with him, Sis, and you’re set for life.”

“Dan!” Her voice nearly a shriek, she tried to smack the boy, but the little figure ducked her hand and scampered out the open door. Only the gorgeous youth and the girl of seventeen remained. The sun stained the edge of the prairie crimson, and the last rays of light spearing through the doorway gave the pair a rosy hue.

“D ...” Doris sounded obsessed as she said his name. “Uh, I was wondering, what were you planning on doing once your work here is done? If you’re not in such a hurry, I was thinking ...”

“I’m not in a hurry, but we don’t know if my work here will get finished or not.”

Doris’ heart sank. In her frailty, the girl instinctively reached out for support and piece of mind, only to run into this sledgehammer. There was no guarantee her foe would be destroyed. She’d been lucky to weather two assaults so far, but the battle still raged on.

“D,” Doris said once again, the same word sounding like it came from a completely different person this time. “Once you finish up with that, come on back to the living room. I’d like to discuss what kind of strategy we should take from here on out.”

“Understood.”

The voice that came over his shoulder sounded satisfied.

.

Their enemy was extraordinarily quick about making his “visit.”

That evening, Greco was out carousing with his hoodlum friends, trying to work off some of the rage they still felt from the beating they’d taken at the hands of Rei-Ginsei’s gang. He was headed down a deserted street for home when he happened to see a strange carriage stop in front of the inn, and he quickly concealed himself in the shadows.

Stranger than strange, from the time the black carriage appeared out of the darkness till the time it came to a halt, it never made a single sound. The horses’ hooves beat the earth clearly enough, and the wagon wheels spun, but not even the sound of the scattering gravel reached Greco’s ears.

That there’s a Noble’s carriage…

This much Greco grasped. His drunken stupor dissipated instantly.

So, this is the prick that’s after Doris? Curiosity—and feelings of jealousy toward this rival suitor—held Greco in place. The door opened and a single figure garbed in black stepped down to the ground. By the light of a lamp dangling from the eaves of the inn, the pallid countenance of a man with a supernatural air to him came into view. I take it that’s the lord of the manner then.

Greco knew this intuitively. Though he’d never seen the man before, he matched the reliable descriptions of the fiend that’d been hammered into his head by village elders when he was still a child. Soon the carriage raced off, and the Count disappeared into the inn. What the hell brings him into town? Clouded as they were by low-grade alcohol, his brain cells weren’t up to neatly fitting the Count, the inn, and Doris together, but they did manage to give him a push in the right direction and tell him, Follow him, stupid.

On entering the inn, Greco found the clerk standing frozen behind the counter. The clerk seemed to be under some sort of spell; his eyes were open wide and his pupils didn’t track Greco’s hand as he waved it up and down. Greco opened the register. There were ten rooms. All of them were on the second floor. And there was only one guest staying there. The register put him in room #207.

Name: Charles E. Chan. Occupation: Artist.

Careful not to make a sound, Greco padded lightly up the stairs and made his way down to the door of the room in question. Light spilled out through crevasses around the door. The guest is a guy, so I don’t suppose the vampire is here to drink his blood. Maybe he’s one of the Count’s cronies? I wonder if this clown had to call in help to try and make Doris his own. Greco pulled out what looked like a stethoscope made of thin copper wire. Hunters swore by this sort of listening device. Quite a while back, Greco had won it in a rigged card game. The gossamer fairy wing, set in a tiny hole in the bell, could catch the voices of creatures otherwise inaudible to human ears, and those sounds were conveyed up the copper wire and into the listener’s ears. Ordinarily, the device would be used when searching for the hiding places of supernatural creatures too dangerous to approach, or to listen in on their private conversations, but Greco had made an art out of putting it to the windows of all the young ladies in town. Securing its bell to the door with a suction cup, he put the ear tips in and began to listen. An eerie voice that was not of this world reverberated from the other side of the door. Greco put his eye to the keyhole for good measure.

.

Rei-Ginsei was astonished when the supposedly bolted door opened without a sound and a figure in black leisurely strolled in. Quickly realizing the intruder was a Noble, he puzzled over the meaning of the visit even as he reached for the shrike-blades on the desk.

The intruder gazed at him with glittering eyes as he made a truly preposterous proposal. “I know all about you and your cohorts,” the figure in black said. “That you wiped out a Frontier Defense Force patrol, and that you tried, and failed, to kill a certain young lady. I have business with that particular girl. However, someone remains in my way. That was the person you encountered out in the fog, the one you were powerless to stop.”

“What on earth could you be referring to?” Rei-Ginsei asked, with feigned innocence. “I am but a simple traveling artisan. The mere mention of such sordid goings-on is enough to chill my blood.”

The black-garbed intruder laughed coldly and tossed a silver badge onto the bed. It had belonged to an FDF patrolman. “I know you believe all the horses and corpses were eaten or burned, and their ashes scattered to the four winds, but unfortunately such is not the case,” the voice said coolly. “Monitoring devices in my castle are linked to a spy satellite stationed overhead, and when I awake, it keeps me minutely informed of movements on the Frontier. That badge was reconstructed from molecules of ash recovered at the site, and I also have images of you and yours taken during the attack, and beamed down from the satellite. I needn’t tell you what would happen should this information be sent to not only this village, but also every place the lowly human race calls home.”

Having heard that much, Rei-Ginsei hurled a shrike-blade. It struck an invisible barrier in front of the fearsome blackmailer’s heart and imbedded itself in the floor. In truth, it was then that Rei-Ginsei gave up.

“There is the girl who eludes me to consider as well, “ the voice continued. “I shouldn’t be surprised if she were to pay a call on the sheriff tomorrow, and I assure you she would tell him all about you and your cohorts. I suppose the reason you’ve taken up lodging here in town alone is to kill the girl before she can do so, but as long as she has that man by her side, you’ll not have an easy time of it. After all, your foe is a dhampir—he has the blood of my kind in him. No matter which course you choose, naught save doom awaits your group.”

“Then why would you tell me this? What would you have us do?”

The reason Rei-Ginsei’s tone was surprisingly calm was because the intruder had been right on all points but one, and he’d decided that putting up any more of a struggle would be futile.

“I thought I might lend you some assistance,” the voice said—a remark that was quite unexpected. “So long as the stripling that’s frustrating my efforts is slain, and the girl comes into my possession, I have no interest in what happens in the lowly world of mankind.”

“But how?”

A vicious, vulgar light shone in Rei-Ginsei’s eyes. He realized he might have a chance now to slay the young punk—his opponent back in the fog. That was the one point on which the Count had been mistaken. He hadn’t left his three henchmen camped in the woods and come into town alone to keep the girl from talking. Well, that had been part of the plan, but his true aim was much more personal. He’d had the little bird where he could rip her wings off, tear her legs off, and wring her dainty neck, and his foe had taken her right out from under his nose. Worse yet, he’d known the humiliation of being paralyzed by a ghastly aura that kept him from lifting a finger against his foe, and he’d had the invincible shrike-blade he prided himself on knocked from the air with a single blow. He’d gone into town to see to it his foe paid for all these things. It was malice. Just as full of hatred and longing for vengeance as he was, his henchmen agreed to his plan. He returned to town alone to be less conspicuous as he looked for the girl and his mysterious foe.

However, wait as he might at the entrance to town, there was no sign of his prey. In asking around, he only managed to learn what the girl’s name was and where she lived. Normally he would’ve gone right out there and attacked her, but the proven strength of this other enemy—who no one in town had been able to identify—was enough to throw cold water on the wildfire that was his malice. He’d left town again briefly to meet with his cohorts and order them to keep an eye on Doris’ farm. Then he went back into the village to gather as much information as possible on his enemy for his own murderous purposes. And, while he hadn’t exactly gathered any information, he now had a more powerful ally than he ever could’ve imagined standing right before him.

“How shall we do it?” Rei-Ginsei asked once again.

“This is what you should do.”

Discussions between the demon in black and the gorgeous fiend went on for some time.

Presently, the visitor in black dropped something long, thin, and candle-like on the bed.

“That’s Time-Bewitching Incense. It’s a tool for turning day to night, or night to day. This is an especially potent version. Light it when you’re near him, then quickly extinguish it again. That should throw his defenses off. That’s when you kill him. However, just to keep you from getting any ideas about other uses you might put this to, it can only be used twice. You have only to give it a good shake and it should light.”

“Please, wait a moment,” Rei-Ginsei cried out, hoping to stop the departing figure. “I have one additional favor to ask of you.”

“A favor?” The shadowy figure sounded both puzzled and angered.

“Yes, sir.” With a nod and a smile, Rei-Ginsei made his outlandish request. “I ask that you make me one of the Nobility. Oh, you needn’t be so angry about it. Please, simply hear me out. I have to wonder why you bothered selecting me as your partner in this. If this incense alone is enough to do the trick, there must be any number of humans you could have entrusted this to. We live in times where parents will kill their own child for a gold coin and a new spear. And yet, the very fact that you went to all the trouble of coming to see me is proof enough that you need someone of my skill in order to kill the dhampir. I know a thing or two about dhampirs myself. I know they tend to be the very worst sort of enemy you could ever make. And there’s something so powerful, so terrifying about the one we’re dealing with now, it cuts me to the quick. That is no ordinary dhampir. With all due respect, it’s not enough to merely have you overlook my group’s misdeeds. I do not ask the same favor for all four of my party—I alone would like to rise to the hallowed ranks of the Nobility.”

The shadowy figure fell silent.

Anyone with a heart who heard Rei-Ginsei’s overture would’ve wanted to scream “Traitor!”—to say nothing about what his three henchmen might have done—but then the world has never lacked for turncoats. Even as they hated and feared them like demons from hell, deep in their heart of hearts people looked at the dreaded vampires with a covetous gaze. Power and immortality had such an alluring scent.

“What say you?” Rei-Ginsei asked, pressuring his visitor for a response.

The shadowy figure gave a nod, and Rei-Ginsei nodded in return.

“Then thy will be done.”

“See to it.”

The shadowy figure left the room. He still had another visit to pay before he returned to his castle. By the guttering lamplight, he failed to notice the other person in the hallway.