CHAPTER 2

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I

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Leaving his cyborg horse at the hotel stable for inspection and repairs, the first thing D did when he got back to his room was draw the curtains. As a thin darkness claimed the room, the languor slowly wicked away from his body. Only those of Noble blood ever experienced such things. However, even a dhampir who’d inherited the better part of their Noble parent’s strength and their human parent’s tolerance for sunlight would be short of breath after half a day spent walking under a cloudy sky, and would need several hours in pitch darkness to relieve them of the fatigue that would accumulate in their flesh. After spending three hours out in the blazing sun, they’d need to sleep nearly half a day to recover. D, on the other hand, was no ordinary dhampir.

Descending as they did from the vampiric Nobility, all dhampirs took only what nutrients they needed to live rather than subsisting on solid food as humans did. Dropping a pair
of dried blood plasma capsules into his palm from a case he kept in his saddlebags, D quickly swallowed them.

If some uninformed child had been there by his side, the Hunter’s actions would’ve thrown the youngster into convulsions. Dried blood plasma was extremely hard to come by unless one went to questionable doctors who skirted the law or bought it on the black market. Purchasing of a jar of a thousand capsules would allow a dhampir to go a year without food. Given D’s constitution, those two capsules would sustain him for at least
a week, and possibly as long as two.

Settling into the room, D removed his longsword. Just as he was about to take his coat off, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in.” Low as it was, the Hunter’s voice traveled well. It had a chilling ring that would’ve brought the person in even if they’d knocked on the wrong door by mistake.

The door opened at once, and the hotel manager appeared with his gleaming bald pate. Staring down at the wooden platter he had in his left hand and the thick wad of bills resting on it, the man quickly turned his steady gaze in D’s direction. “I finally managed to get your change,” he said. “You know, it’s been a good long time since anyone in town’s seen a ten thousand dala bill. Had to go down to the saloon and borrow the difference.”

Even after D had taken his change, the manager showed no sign of leaving.

“Sure does come as a shock, though,” the bald man continued. “A dream is one thing, but I never thought I’d see a man with such good looks in the real world. What I wouldn’t give to have even one hair like that on my head.”

“Why are you letting me stay here?” D asked dispassionately, his left hand resting on the longsword.

Seeming a bit startled, the manager replied, “Why? Because you want to stay, I suppose. I’m running a business here. Oh, you mean because you’re a dhampir? Put your mind at ease, friend. The owner of this establishment isn’t as narrow-minded as all that.”

Underlying their conversation was the fact that a dhampir who wasn’t traveling with their employer wouldn’t ordinarily be permitted to stay at a hotel unaccompanied. The reason really went without saying. In order to let a dhampir sleep under the same roof as ordinary people, a hotel needed a reasonable guarantee of reparations in the event that the dhampir started killing people in a blood craze. This was why the people who hired the half-breeds were usually among the wealthiest individuals on the Frontier. While dhampirs disposed of the Nobility, only the very rich could afford to pay out the ensuing damages. In light of that, the actions of the hotel manager were so unusual that it was difficult to reduce them to human tolerance or generosity—even in a village where humans and Nobility had coexisted.

“And it seems you also put that Clements in his place, am I right?” the manager said, a smile beaming from his face. “That jerk acts all high and mighty just because he has some land. We’ve got ourselves a fine sheriff here, so he can’t get too far out of line, but I’ve still had about all I can take of that bastard. Why, old Jatko said he’d never seen such a fine display of skill in all his years. He was a good ways past excited—almost in a trance.” Perhaps noticing at that point that he’d been letting his mouth run, the manager held his tongue, coughed nervously, and made a show of fiddling with his bow tie with his thin fingers. “But please, watch out for yourself. For someone prone to flying off the handle like he is, you couldn’t find a more vindictive bastard, either. He won’t just let this sit. The sheriff’s busy with his own work and can’t be worrying about the town every minute of the day, so Clements might get away with something like throwing a bomb into your room here.”

“I’ll be careful.”

“Please do. Well, I’ll be off now. If you need anything, kindly press the buzzer.”

Once the manager had gone, D stripped off his coat and took a seat on the sofa. There were a number of things he had to consider. The fact that everyone in the village dreamt of him could be attributed to the incredible power of the young lady who summoned him. It was a fairly common occurrence for those with certain mental powers to have an effect on people around them, so it wouldn’t be that strange for the girl to draw others into her dream. Still, for what purpose had the girl called D there? What did she get out of the dance in the blue light? And another thing—the thug who’d attacked D had been shot with a steel arrow that should’ve existed only in dreams. Was that supposed to mean the same man who’d shot D in his dream the night before didn’t want the Hunter dead? No, his incredible shot in that dream had been charged with murderous intent. Then why had he helped D later? Or was it just a coincidence? There was only one way for him to shed some light on these matters.

D lay back against the sofa and closed his eyes. Dhampir or not, he still needed sleep. As fighting at night was unavoidable to curb the night-prowling Nobility, the daylight hours were naturally the time to rest. The superhuman biorhythms of the Nobility had their nadir at high noon, but were depressed for a good two hours both before and after that. Veteran Hunters usually arranged to dispatch their prey during that time frame, and if all went well they would ordinarily sleep after that until night fell. If they botched their assignment, the complete advantage they had over their foes would last only until the sun sank and the afterglow was gone. After that, they could either fight a battle that was already a foregone conclusion or hole up somewhere and wait for dawn. Either way, a Hunter didn’t have any time to rest. That was why only the most outstanding individuals—only those who could survive under the most extreme conditions—were fit to be called Vampire Hunters.

At present, it was coming up on one o’clock Afternoon, the most suitable time for a dhampir to sleep. What would D dream about? What worlds awaited him, and who dwelt there? The calm breaths of slumber that soon trickled from the Hunter were far beyond the range of human hearing, and the room alone was privy to them.

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Fog flowed around his ankles. The grove of trees that surrounded D had become as thin and flat as a paper silhouette. There was just enough breeze to carry the vapor. Every time he took a step, the fog was brushed out of his way. Suddenly D was greeted by an iron gate, which he recognized as that of the mansion.

He heard voices alive with laughter, plaintive dance music played by an orchestra, the chime of crystal-clear glasses meeting in midair, jokes rich with humor. He saw amber liquid being poured, shadowy forms of men and women meandering in the gardens. It seemed the party was taking place this evening as well. The question that remained was whether D was invited?

Slipping through the gates, D headed down a path through the elaborately landscaped gardens. He was just stepping onto the magnificent mansion’s veranda when all the noise receded like the tide, leaving the Hunter surrounded by nothing but the embrace of the blue light. The slight sound at his feet as he walked was from a carpet of fallen leaves, now yellowed and tattered. It was not clear whether the countless cracks lacing the mansion walls caught D’s attention or not as he entered the building.

Standing inside the mansion, a thin shadow flickered beyond the still blue light. It was Sybille.

Without a word, the young lady in the white dress and the Hunter in black faced each other. Distance no longer existed. At the same time, the few yards between them were infinite.

“What business do you have with me?” The blue light flickered before D’s lips like an illusion as he spoke.

There was no answer. And yet, that somehow seemed appropriate for this girl. Sybille gently pushed a single lock of hair that had strayed across her brow back into place. A mysterious glimmer resided in her eyes—one that could be taken both as pleasure and as pain. Perhaps both were one and the same hue?

D turned his back and started to walk away. Seeing Sybille directly ahead of him again, he stopped in his tracks. Apparently, the door was behind him now. “So, you invite me here, but won’t answer me or let me leave?” D muttered. “I can’t stay around here forever. You may not wake from this dream, but I—”

Sybille nodded. “I know.” Her voice seemed somehow feathery. “I simply had to have you come here. Please—you must help me.”

“What can I do?”

Sybille fell silent.

“Then I suppose I can’t do anything for you. I’m a Vampire Hunter. There’s only one kind of job I perform.” Once again, D turned sharply. The door was straight ahead of him and he began walking toward it, scattering blue light all around him.

“Please, wait.”

Sybille’s words halted his steps, but D didn’t turn around.

“I know you’re a Hunter. In which case, there’s only one thing you could do for me. Put an end to him.”

She hadn’t said to kill him, she said put an end to him. This young lady knew her own fate and what the one who’d consigned her to it truly was. There was only one person she could mean by him.

“This is a dream world. I don’t know if I can even find him, or if beating him here will put an end to him. And then—”

“And then—?” Sybille repeated after D, swallowing hard.

“What was it he wanted from you?” He stopped himself, asking the question not as a continuation of what he’d just been saying.

During the brief silence that followed, Sybille’s expression stiffened. “You . . . you know him, don’t you?” she stammered.

“Answer me. What was he after when he bit you?”

“Stop it!” Sybille cried, her whole body quaking. “Don’t ask me such a horrid question.”

“That’s how this all started. That’s why you called me here. I have no problem with doing away with him, but first you must answer me.”

Sybille said nothing. Tears spilled from her eyes, but as she gazed at D, there wasn’t a trace of hatred or resentment in them.

The black Hunter loomed with frosty indifference in the blue light. “Answer me,” he repeated. Was this D’s dream, or the world that Sybille controlled?

At the ice-cold query, the young lady’s throat moved imperceptibly. “He wanted . . . the whole world to . . .”

An instant later, D unexpectedly faded away.

Sybille couldn’t say another word. She grew as rigid as a stone statue, leaving only shimmering blue light at the end of her outstretched hand.

“He wanted . . . the whole world to . . .”

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D awoke.

The opening of his eyes was nearly simultaneous with the twist of his body. There was the sound of shattering windowpanes and a black cylinder rolled to the center of the room, but only after D had leapt to one side. Most likely, it’d been propelled there by a grenade launcher mounted on a rifle.

The ceiling, walls, and floor all bulged out at once. The explosive energy from the special gunpowder packed in the cylinder ripped through what resistance the room offered in a thousandth of a second, and material from the hotel flew out
of the building.

Several minutes later, the manager, fire extinguisher in hand, raced into a room that bore no resemblance to its former state. “What?!” he coughed, although his choice of words was a bit tame for the horrible spectacle that froze him in his tracks.

The ceiling and walls had been blown away so that beyond their shattered remains the fair afternoon sky could be seen. Somehow, the figure garbed in black stood aloof amidst the rubble. The manager surveyed the scene with utter amazement. There wasn’t a single flame anywhere. Wisps of smoke rose from the few scraps of the curtains that remained, but the smoke was quite thin for a weapon that was supposed to produce a thick cloud of it, and the air was just as clear here as it was outside. It was almost as if something had swallowed it all.

“Damnation! What in the world happened here?!” the wide-eyed manager asked the Hunter. But he quickly added, “Oh, you don’t have to say a word. I can see that someone lobbed a bomb in here. What I want to know is what happened after that. Like, what happened to all the smoke and flames?”

“It seems retribution was swift.” D glanced down at the wispy purple smoke coming from his long coat. No one would’ve thought its thin fabric could’ve protected him from the blast and flying fragments. “Thanks for the hospitality,” D said as he held several gold coins out in front of the manager’s face.

“I’m terribly sorry about this. We’d truly love to have you stay here, but this is likely to happen every night.” And scratching his pate nervously, the manager took just a single coin, saying, “This will suffice.”

“Go on and take the lot of them,” the extended left hand said.

The manager gasped. Thinking he had just heard the words come from the Hunter’s limb itself, his eyes fell reflexively, but by that time D’s left hand had already dropped the remaining coins into the chest pocket of the bald man’s shirt and settled back at his side.

“I can’t believe the nerve of them, pulling something like this,” the manager snarled. “Must be Clements’s bunch. But this time he’s bitten off more than he can chew. After all, you’re a Vampire Hunter. You’ll teach him a thing or two, won’t you?”

Not saying a word, D walked over to the devastated door.

“Wh . . . where will you go, sir?”

“There’s a windmill out by the hospital.” Then, saying nothing more, the figure in black headed down the stairs.

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II

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As the sun sank, there was the sound of footsteps on dead leaves moving through the forest. It was Nan. The last few days seemed to be the worst for falling leaves, and every ten feet or so she had to bring her hand up to brush off bits of foliage that’d lodged in her hair. A nasty cold that’d been making the rounds the last couple of days put all the teachers out of commission and cancelled school as a result, so Nan’s parents didn’t object to her just hanging around. But they most certainly wouldn’t approve of her paying a call to the Vampire Hunter. Going there was a bit of an adventure for Nan.

For all intents and purposes, this visit was to talk about her own dreams and Sybille at greater length, and to resolve some of the mystery surrounding D. But while she had these thoughts in mind, her heart of hearts beat feverishly on account of what could only be described as the young Hunter’s dazzling beauty. Nan had dreamt of him three days before the rest of the town. And from the first time she’d laid eyes on him, his solitary figure had been chiseled into her bosom with all the detail of the finest engraving. Gorgeous was the only way to describe the man. Nan was only eighteen years old, after all. And who could laugh at something that made a young lady’s heart beat fast?

The windmill tower was suddenly visible in the golden glow of evening. The four massive blades cast a deep black cross of a shadow on the ground. Treading across a lawn that still retained some of its green, Nan headed for the living quarters that stood to the left of the tower. With its roof on the point of collapse, the rusted hub of the windmill blades and the walls with boards that looked like they’d fall off if someone breathed on them too hard, the structure was terribly dilapidated. A decade earlier, it had the most powerful generator in the area and was the village’s main energy source before it was abandoned. All things considered, the village was lucky that monsters hadn’t made it their home.

The door to the living quarters was open. A foul, musty stench assailed Nan’s nostrils, and she used one hand to cover her nose and mouth. There were bedrooms to either side of the hall that ran straight from the entrance way. By all accounts, eight people had worked here around the clock. But D wasn’t in any of those rooms.

Taking the semi-cylindrical passageway that connected the living quarters to the windmill, Nan entered the tower, where a thin darkness had congealed. A huge conical space greeted the girl. The distance from the ground to the uppermost reaches of the tower was easily fifty feet, and was split into three tiers. The first floor was intended for the power-generating facilities, but anything serviceable had been hauled off to the nuclear fusion power plant three miles away. All that remained now were a few pieces of machinery red with rust. That other power plant was out of service now, too.

The force of the gigantic rotating shaft and the rollers that relayed the blades’ revolutions to the energy transformers would’ve been enough to inspire something akin to dread. The sunlight glittering off the shattered windowpanes was beginning to take a bluish tint. Cables that ran up to the ceiling hung like vines, and as Nan took a few steps forward in her search for D, her shoulder brushed against one, causing her heart to stop for a moment. If the generators had been operating as they used to, she would’ve been given a lethal jolt at best, or more likely burnt to a cinder. Slowly exhaling, Nan started walking again. Along the way, part of the floor she stepped on gave way and her right foot sank up to the ankle, leaving her ready to scream.

“I hate this place,” Nan fumed quietly as she pulled her foot out. Just as she did so, something black cut across the circle of light ahead of her. It was the doorway to a passageway that ran around the hut. “D?” she cried out in a tone unavoidably tinged with reliance, but the shadowy figure didn’t show even a moment’s hesitation as it disappeared down the passageway.

Anxiety enveloped Nan. Clements’s bunch might be here, she thought. She started running for all she was worth. The floor groaned, and dust flew up in a dingy curtain on her surroundings. She went out into the corridor, but the shadowy figure wasn’t there. It had simply vanished, without the sound of footsteps or any sign it’d passed this way. Running to the stairs, Nan charged up the creaking wooden steps as fast as she could. The door to the second tier was right at the top of the stairs. Nan leapt through it—then stopped suddenly so that only her hair and the beads of sweat on her body still surged forward.

In the blue darkness stood a figure in black raiment. He seemed like he’d been standing there for ages. D.

Nan wanted to call out to him, but couldn’t say a word. She’d already felt the ghastly aura emanating from his being. It was a call to battle.

The second tier was where adjustments were made to the windmill. A few dozen gears, both large and small, and a series of large energy rods ran across the room. The energy rods connected to the revolving shaft that went through the ceiling and ran all the way down to the floor, and they dispersed the excess energy generated by the wildly spinning shaft. There were hundreds of gears ranging in diameter from ten feet down to eight inches or so, and to keep them from interfering with human activity they were set on rods at least ten feet overhead or higher. Given the utterly chaotic way they were meshed horizontally, vertically, and diagonally, they would’ve been a disturbing sight to see back when they were in action.

While Nan was frozen in place, her eyes gazed at the thin darkness around D. There was nothing else there. All that was behind him was a worn-out locker with a toolbox beside it. Her vision grew blurry and she felt a sharp pain in her eye as a bead of sweat dripped into it.

Just as she shut her lids reflexively, a hard clang startled her out of her black field of view. Snapping her eyes open again with single-mindedness, Nan dimly viewed the collection of gears and rods, realizing that they were turning now. But how? At the same instant that she had a memory that the windmill controls had locked in place a decade earlier, D’s shadowy figure began to move. The stub of the longsword over his shoulder grew to twice its previous size. Just as Nan realized the Hunter was drawing his blade, she felt the familiar sting that always accompanied a drop of sweat in her eye and her vision again blurred.

In darkness, Nan could only hear the sounds. A shudder ran through her soul. That noise just couldn’t be right. It was definitely the creaking of gears, but even to a girl who knew nothing about technical things, it was clear from the sound that there was something wrong with the way they were running now. High and low, to her left and to her right, over her and under her. And along with the gears, there were indications the rods were moving differently, and the windmill’s shaft spun as well. If Nan hadn’t been troubled by her eyes, perhaps she would’ve noticed they were all moving in the opposite direction from normal. The windmill wasn’t driving them. Instead, the rods and gears were turning the enormous upright shaft. And, although there was no way Nan could see them, the windmill blades remained wrapped in twilight, without the slightest tremor.

The question was, had D noticed that all this activity was trying to supply energy to something else?

There was the sound of hinges snapping, and the door to the locker fell to the floor. When a black shadow within the locker stood up, D turned around, and at the very same instant Nan was freed from the paralyzing grip. Rubbing her eyes desperately, the girl tried to catch a glimpse of the battle taking place right in front of her. Perhaps she was lucky to at least see D’s leap the instant her eyelids opened. A cry of astonishment spilled from her mouth.

The shadow was leaping as well. The two figures passed in midair, and the second the beautiful sound of their meeting blades reverberated, the strangest sensation took hold of Nan.

Black garb swishing out around him, D landed right in front of Nan. But D then leapt away from that spot, turning about-face in midair.

Nan thought her eyes were going to explode into flames of astonishment. The person opposite them—he was D, too, wasn’t he? There were two of him?! Not only that, but the pose they both took now, with right hands holding longswords at the ready and left hands extended before their respective chests, were the same as their movements in midair—virtually identical!

Nan felt like there was a huge invisible mirror stretched between the two Vampire Hunters. Perhaps it was only natural that they both kicked off the ground at the same time. The movements of the two Ds were perfectly symmetrical—slashing down over their right shoulders for the left side of their opponent’s neck, their blades then flashed to the side, spitting blue sparks as they met. Their weapons touching but not locking together, the two Ds once again switched positions and landed. While Nan was aware of the fact that the D who landed in front of her again was the original, the two of them looked so similar her mouth simply hung open. This eerie battle, where the true tussled with the false, would tolerate no interruption by a human voice.

But if both of them were D, just how would the real one defeat the false? The glittering sword reflected in an unseen mirror would doubtless cut both of them clear to bone.

Step by step, the first D advanced. His opponent followed suit. Though it may have been her imagination, Nan thought she caught a cruel smile on the other D’s face. It was only a second later that the same face donned a perplexed expression. Without breaking his stance, D had turned his back to him. His foe didn’t move. The thread linking the false to the true had suddenly been severed.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” a voice spat mockingly. “Why don’t you try getting some help from the other me?” the voice spoke to the other D—the one frozen behind the Hunter’s back.

Nan got the impression that the words had spilled from the end of D’s left hand, and no sooner had her eyes snapped wide with shock than the other D kicked off the ground without a sound. His blade ripped through the air, snarling like the breaking surf.

Making no attempt to parry that slash, the black darkness of D’s coat spread its wings before the attacker. A blow that should’ve severed bone merely ripped the cloth on the Hunter’s sleeve, and was no match for the blade that shot up from below and ran deep into the torso of the shaken and despairing attacker.

D dodged the body as it dropped in a bloody mist, and backed away. Though the corpse was the very image of him, it didn’t seem to stir any deep emotion in the young man. As he put his sword away and turned to Nan, his face was completely devoid of sentiment.

“D, what in the world—” Nan finally managed to say, but the Hunter cut her short.

“Why did you come here?”

Cold was the only way to describe his question. Her eyes were trained on the shafts above her. All movement had stopped. “I thought I’d talk to you . . . about my dreams, since we never got to finish our conversation back in the bar.” Nan’s voice caught in her throat. Though she was a child of the Frontier, she’d never seen someone die up close like that before.

“The sun will be setting soon. You’d better go home.”

D’s curt dismissal finally drew a recognizable human emotion out of Nan’s heart. Anger.

“You’re awful. After I came all the way here—” she began to say, but no further words came from her mouth. Just what did she mean to this Hunter? Though she was fully aware it wasn’t much, she certainly didn’t want to be reminded of that fact.

“The night doesn’t belong to mankind yet,” D said quietly, as if the deadly encounter moments earlier had been merely a dream.

“That’s not a problem in our village. I think . . . I can’t say for sure, but it really should be safe. In the century since the last of our Nobility disappeared, no one’s ever fallen victim at night.”

“Maybe tonight someone will.”

Nan was dumbstruck. Her eyes were hot and they stung, though this time not from sweat. “I’m going home,” she said, trying to sound self-assured, even as she had little confidence it’d come out that way. Her voice quavered with anger. Just turn and walk away and that’ll do it, she thought. She’d dreamt of him two nights more than the rest of the town. What was that supposed to mean? Didn’t that count for anything with this young man?

Nan raised her face. Almost glaring, she said to D, “I have to finish telling you what I didn’t get a chance to say back in the bar. You want to know why I’m concerned about Sybille? Because I used to be in the hospital room next to hers.” And having said it all in a single breath, she turned herself around and walked away.

Going out into the corridor, Nan was on her way down the stairs when the tears spilled out. She tried to think about something else. Kane, a childhood friend who lived just a few houses from there, came to mind quickly enough. Though she could picture his face, no particular emotion was attached to his memory.

Outside was a land of darkness. At a loss for words, Nan came to a standstill and hugged her own shoulders. The autumn night had been lying in wait for her, armed with a terrible chill. It was a coldness that pierced her to the very bone, and she couldn’t recall another like it. Without knowing why, Nan looked up to the heavens. Stars glittered in the night sky, each as sharp as the point of an awl. The wind whisked across a grove in a scene that hadn’t changed at all since she was a child. It greeted her the same way now. It’ll be hard-cider season soon, Nan thought hazily. But before she knew it, the chill was gone and she was left all alone.

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III

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Old Mrs. Sheldon’s house was at the west end of the orchards. All of the evergreen grass bowed in unison with the breeze, changing the shape of the ground and hills every time they bent. The dilapidated old house with a weathervane on its red roof looked like the perfect place for a one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old crone to pass her lonely later years.

Mrs. Sheldon was sitting in a rocking chair on her front porch. Years must’ve passed since the last time anybody came to see her. Aside from the fact that her last callers had been schoolchildren, the old woman couldn’t recall anything about that visit. From time to time the face of a gray-haired old man flitted through her mind, but she didn’t understand why it made her feel strangely nostalgic. The fact that he was the man whose gravestone stood on the top of the little hill out back was something she’d long since forgotten. Thanks to a cyborg-conversion procedure she’d undergone more than a century earlier, all she needed now was to have her nutrient-enriched blood changed once every thirty years. Perhaps that was the reason people from town rarely called on her. That morning, as the old woman rocked back and forth for the two thousandth some-odd time, she saw someone for the first time in who-knew-how-many days.

Dismounting, D headed over to the old woman sitting in her antiquated but sturdy-looking rocking chair. “Mrs. Sheldon?” he asked.

“That’s me. And you are?” the woman replied without a second’s delay, watching D’s face for a while before she smiled at him. “I’ve lost my touch. Back in the old days, I used to catch everyone off-guard when I shot back an answer real quick like that, whereas now they all take me for some sleepy old dotard who don’t know which way is up no more.”

“I came out here to ask you about something. They call me D.”

“A name like that seems to say you come from somewhere else, and you’ll be moving on soon. Of course, before you turn to leave, I reckon a lot of folks will be dying or crying. Step inside.” Slowly getting up out of her seat, the old woman opened the door before her.

The interior was well-kept. Motes of dust dancing up in the morning light glittered like flecks of gold.

“Have a seat over there,” the old woman said, indicating a chair as she headed for the kitchen. “I’ll fix us some tea.”

“Thank you.”

The old woman disappeared, letting the door bang shut on its own, but soon enough she returned with a pair of steaming cups on a tray. “I got this from a merchant from the Capital fifty years ago. You know, I’d never use it for any of the folks from town. It’s just for special visitors from far away.”

“How do you know I’ve come far?” D asked, looking not at the cup her light brown and thoroughly creased hand had set in front of him, but at a face that seemed wrought entirely with wrinkles.

“You figure any man with the look you’ve got in your eye could stay put in just one village?” Pounding the small of her back a few times, the old woman settled into a chair. “You see, human beings pull around a whole heap of chains that the eye can’t see. The other end of ’em is set in the earth, so folks can walk a mile or two, but they just can’t go no further than that. Sometimes the chains are named ‘home’ or ‘belongings,’ and sometimes we call ’em ‘sweetheart’ or ‘memories.’ When we’re young, we try to pull ’em out of the ground, but ten or twenty years go by and those chains just get thicker, and you’ve got more of ’em than ever. And when that happens, all you can do is set yourself down wherever seems proper. Once you do that, those chains start looking like solid gold to the human eye. What most people don’t know is that it’s just a thin layer of gold plating. See, the good Lord made it so humans can’t see ’em for what they really are. You follow what I’m saying? What it comes down to is, people who aren’t like that—whose eyes aren’t clouded, and don’t have a single chain on ’em —they must be made by someone other than God. Now, I wonder who that could be?” And with that she cast an all-knowing gaze directly at D and set her cup down on the table. “I’m sure you’re in a hurry, so I thank you for indulging me in a cup of tea and listening to the ramblings of a foolish old woman. You’d probably cut anyone else’s head off for saying what I did, so I reckon I have bragging rights there.”

“Actually, I’d like to hear about the days when humans and Nobility coexisted,” D said when he finally opened his mouth. “Anything at all. If you’d be so kind as to tell me about that time.”

The old woman squinted a bit and folded her hands on top of the table. After sitting like that for several seconds without moving, she said, “There’s too much to tell. So much that it’d be the same as me not telling you a blessed thing. But the lot of ’em went somewhere far away back when I was just a wee toddler. No one knows whatever became of ’em all. And after that, there was only one time they ever came back—and that was thirty years ago. If something’s going on here now, I suppose that’s the cause. Looks like when you come right down to it, Nobles can’t change what they are.”

“A girl was bitten,” D said. “She sleeps even now, never aging. And as she sleeps, she makes other people dream about me.”

The old woman picked up her cup. When she tipped it to her mouth, the steam seemed to billow from her lips. Pulling the cup the tiniest bit away, she said, “Thirty years ago, that girl was found lying in the woods just north of the village. There was a pair of bite marks on her neck. Truth be known, they were supposed to banish her on the spot, but they didn’t. It’s still anybody’s guess which course of action would’ve been better. And she’d never met you before, is that right?”

D nodded.

Gazing steadily at the Hunter’s face, the old woman continued, “As good as you look, I suppose she’d want to see you even if she couldn’t. But, you know . . .” And then the old woman caught herself.

D didn’t say a word.

“If it was me,” she continued, “and I’d met you a million times, I still wouldn’t want to dream about you because in the end, I’d wind up crying—no two ways about it. I doubt you can find a woman on the Frontier who’s not used to shedding tears, but it doesn’t get any easier—it still hurts just as much every time we do it.”

And yet, Sybille dreamt of him. A man she’d never met.

“What kind of man was the Noble who bit Sybille?”

This time, D’s question brought results.

“There was someone who actually spotted him. Sybille’s grandmother. She passed away twenty years ago, but she used
to tell people every single day how she’d seen him while she was searching for Sybille. Why, she made me listen to it so much I practically needed me a set of earplugs. Yes, he was a giant of a man dressed in black.” And there the old woman stopped. Her eyes held a mysterious spark, and the spark became twin beams of light that could have bored a hole through D’s face. “As for his features . . . he looked too good to be of this world—like you, you know.”

D brought the cup to his mouth. His eyes seemed be gazing at Old Mrs. Sheldon, watching something else, and not focused on anything all at the same time.

“Why did he have to bite Sybille?” the old woman asked, the light in her eyes growing more intense, flickering with a touch of madness. “Why did he have to go and make her dream? And what kind of dreams did he give her, anyway?”

Of course, there were no answers so D answered with another question, because, after all, that was the whole reason he’d come. “Who was closest to the girl?”

“Let me see . . . Ai-Ling.”

“Where is she?”

“Her home’s a farmhouse a little over a mile southwest of here. I wager she’ll be around at this hour.”

D stood up, prepared to leave.

“Wait—” the old woman said, and the Hunter stopped. “Have another cup of tea, won’t you? I don’t want to let my first chance at conversation in a long time run off so easily. For all I know, it may be another ten years before I get a chance to chat with anyone again. The children don’t even come out here to catch the sticky bugs anymore. This may be a peaceful village, but I’m lonely.”

D reluctantly took his seat again.

“Not only are you handsome, but you listen to people, too. Someday I’m sure you’ll settle down somewhere. Find yourself a good wife.” And leaving him with those words, the old woman went into the kitchen.

“A peaceful village, isn’t it?” D muttered.

“That it is,” a hoarse voice responded from his left hand as it rested on his knee.

“Is it a good village?”

“That I can’t tell.”

“We’re in the same boat then,” D said.

“Just because it’s peaceful doesn’t mean I’d call it good. The same can be said for villages that aren’t so peaceful. There’s nothing good in this world. Not in Nobles, or in humans—or in you, for that matter.”

D turned his face to look out the window. The plains changed from minute to minute; each and every verdant leaf was charged with the vitality of morning, declaring that there was still more of the blazing season of fall to come. In contrast to the white light that surrounded him, D alone was a wintry shadow.

Accompanied by a faint aroma, the old woman returned. “Here you go!” she said, setting down his cup. In the middle of the cup of thin, amber fluid floated a single blue petal. The petal was like a tiny blue sea.

D brought the drink to his mouth with his left hand. Needless to say, he kept his right hand free to be ready for any sudden attacks. Though his left hand stopped, it didn’t seem like an interruption to his fluid movements.

“What is it?” the old woman asked, smiling happily.

“Drink some,” D said.

“Huh?”

“Taste yours. It smells different.”

“Oh, that? You know, I went and changed the tea leaves. This is homemade, grown in my very own garden out back. The last pot was some cheap stuff I got off a merchant from the Capital.” Winking at her guest, she drew the steaming liquid through her wrinkled lips. “There. Are you satisfied there’s no poison in it now, my suspicious Hunter? You’ve gone and spoiled the mood. It’s okay; you don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to.”

D brought the cup to his mouth. The old woman watched with pleasure as his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. Setting the cup down, D got to his feet. He was headed for the door, but halfway there he turned around and asked, “Did you dream about me, too?”

The old woman nodded.

“And what did you think?”

The brief silence that followed may have been her wrestling with concerns about what it would be polite to say. “I can’t speak for the rest of ’em,” Mrs. Sheldon finally ventured, “but I thought you were dangerous.”

“Dangerous?”

“In the dream, you seemed to say you were a dangerous man as you walked along. Even though you didn’t actually come right out and say it, I could definitely tell.”

That was probably the best way to describe him.

“Thanks for the tea,” D said simply, and with that he left her home.

“Godspeed to you,” the old woman called from the porch. “We’ll meet again soon. Next time, you’ll have to listen to one of the songs I wrote. It’s a good one, since I made it back when I was young.”

Saying nothing, D mounted his horse, gave a single kick of his heels to its sides, and was off.

When the house was hidden behind the hill, a hoarse voice snapped, “I can’t believe how stupid you can be sometimes. Drinking that tea of all things! It was probably poison.”

“You mean to say you don’t know what was in it?”

“Well, I could make out the tea well enough, but there was some other unknown substance in it.”

“You’ll have to do better than that,” D said as if the matter didn’t involve him at all. “A dangerous man, am I?” he muttered.

“That’s for sure, as far as anybody’s concerned. But remember what the old lady said—she said the whole village felt the same thing.”

What they felt was that he was clearly a dangerous man. Dangerous for them, that is.

The voice continued, “That would mean the folks in the village called you here even though they think you’re a threat to them. It’s possible they called you here to kill you. If that’s the case, what that farmer did would stand to reason . . . But I don’t think that’s it. Despite what the old lady said, I’m not so sure every last person in town felt the same way. It’s pretty clear they weren’t hostile. After all, this is a peaceful village.”

“A peaceful village, is it?” As he rode, the words D muttered sailed off on the wind and the scenery streamed by on either side. To any bystander, this conversation would’ve been unparalleled in its weirdness.

“You were gonna leave town . . .” the hoarse voice continued indifferently. “On your way out, you were attacked, but your attacker was killed with an arrow from your dreams. He must’ve wanted to keep you alive. And as a result, you wound up staying here. It may very well be the farmer who attacked you was part of his plan, you know.”

Then suddenly, the hoarse voice was gone. Without a single world, D kept gazing straight ahead. The young man didn’t seem to be concerned about the uncanny ring of this voice that seemed to come from nowhere, nor did he seem the least bit worried about the subject of its discourse. Perhaps the weirdness that existed beyond the mortal realm was something the inhuman never even noticed.

.

Back at the house, Old Mrs. Sheldon watched her departing guest until both he and his mount had vanished behind the hill. Then, in a manner that was totally unbecoming for her age, she seductively winked in their direction, before stepping off the porch and heading around to her back yard.

Mrs. Sheldon’s yard was a fenced-off plot of over a thousand square feet, where colors beyond numbering competed in a floral arena. Stopping at a certain patch of pretty flowers with the same blue petals that were floating in the tea, the old woman said to herself, “Oh, he’s a dangerous man all right, but I wouldn’t mind getting into danger with him. In some ways, I want that tea to work, but in other ways I suppose I don’t. Lordy me, it’s been a long time since I felt like a mixed-up schoolgirl.” And then, casually glancing down at the blue flowers at her feet, she said, “Well, this is certainly where that tea was picked . . . but I wonder how long it’s been growing here? I’ve never seen it before.”

And just as the old woman bent over to pick a bit more of it, she heard the strident sound of something whistling through the air right by her ear.

THE SHERIFF