CHAPTER 3

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I

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After D galloped over a mile in under five minutes, a vast ranch suddenly appeared. Out on the rich pasture there was a herd of meat beasts, several of whom were munching the grass. Seven feet long and easily in excess of fifteen hundred pounds each, the barrel-shaped beasts were covered with armor-like plates that could deflect lasers. Their snouts were reminiscent of power shovels with a pair of curved buckets, which were actually their upper and lower jaws loaded with massive molars. Yet, despite their daunting appearance, nothing tastier had ever graced a dinner table. Though the aesthetic sensibilities of the Nobility had given shape to many ghastly creatures for the sole purpose of terrifying humanity, these beasts were perhaps the greatest exception to that rule in that they also provided food. What’s more, so long as the beast wasn’t fatally wounded, the flesh that’d been carved from it would begin growing back twelve hours later, while the creature itself felt no pain at all and offered no resistance. It was said that with a pair of these treasured beasts, a family of five would never go hungry. Unfortunately, these meat beasts were extremely limited in number, and they rarely produced offspring. Usually, if someone found one, they’d have a creature that could fetch them enough money to buy one of the Nobility’s flying machines, and that’s usually what they did rather than keep them for food. By the look of it, there were at least thirty of them on the ranch, leading D to the conclusion that not only was this region peaceful, it was rich as well.

As D headed straight for the main house, scarlet streaks of fire occasionally skirted the periphery of his field of vision. The streaks were flames disgorged by the scarlet moles that were supposed to guard the place, although their numbers were less than a fiftieth of what an ordinary ranch would have. With so few of them, you could never hope to see the hundreds of fiery pillars that usually erupted from the earth to greet intruders on the surface or in the air.

A sensor set forty feet away from the main house was tripped, and before D’s horse had stopped, a woman appeared from the front door carrying an old-fashioned Tommy gun with a drum magazine. D halted.

As the woman stared at his face, a faint red glow rose in her cheeks. “Um . . . Can I help you?” she asked in a voice that had a touch of good-mannered timidity to it. Her black hair was tied back in a light brown scarf and her face was that of a woman long past her prime, hard around the mouth and razor sharp through the eyes in a way that let the bitter precipitate of her life bleed through. And yet, there was something refined about her, the clear line of her nose and her gracefully thin eyebrows suggesting a life far removed from that of her faded cotton shirt and long skirt. In addition to the Tommy gun, she had a well-weathered knapsack slung on her back.

“Are you Ai-Ling?” the Hunter inquired.

“Yes.”

D advanced on his horse.

“You . . . Stop right there. I can’t let you come barging onto our land.”

“Sorry, but this is urgent,” D said from up on his horse. Dismounting by Ai-Ling’s side, the Hunter said, “I’d like to ask you a few things about the girl sleeping in the hospital—Sybille. My name is—”

“D,” Ai-Ling muttered as she slowly lowered the barrel of her weapon. “I can tell you what I know. But right now, I’ve got to feed the beasts . . .”

“I’ll wait.”

An expression flitted across the middle-aged woman’s face that straddled a line between resignation and delight. Shouldering the Tommy gun, she slowly headed toward the fence. D walked right alongside her.

“What did you come here for?” Ai-Ling asked. Perhaps she, too, sensed that D was dangerous.

D didn’t answer. As Ai-Ling opened the gate and walked out to the middle of the pasture, D leaned back against the fence and watched her. It was clear he didn’t have the slightest intention of helping.

Tucking the Tommy gun under her right arm, Ai-Ling stripped off the knapsack about forty feet from D. Quickly opening it, she knocked it on its side. Glistening crystals of synthesized feed for the meat beasts spilled out, and shrill cries arose from all sides as the ground began to rumble. The fifteen-hundred-pound mountains of black came running in unison. The thirty of them had a total weight of over twenty tons, which made the earth tremble and even shook the fence as they stampeded toward her. D alone was unaffected, with not so much as a single hair stirring. It was almost as if the vibrations of the fence the young man was leaning against were absorbed by his black coat before they could reach him.

Ai-Ling stepped away from the tremendous beasts as they greedily consumed the food they loved, but soon she was lost again in a mad scramble of black armor that seemed sure to trample her to death. And yet, when her slender figure stepped out from between the massive, thrashing forms, she suddenly delivered a kick to the rump of the closest beast.

“Bad boy, Ben!” Ai-Ling scolded the creature. “You’ve already eaten more than your share, haven’t you? Be a good little beast and give Pluto some room. Don’t give me any trouble now.”

Although fierce, the meat beasts were also highly intelligent, and if handled properly, could be tamed. Doing so, however, meant risking life and limb day after day. It was said to take as much patience as finding a single grain in a mountain of sand, and yet, it looked like this woman with the cultured upbringing had managed to do just that. The beast she’d kicked ambled aside, but the one called Pluto seemed to miss the point entirely and just continued to hang back. “Get a move on, Pluto. You’ve finally got an opening, so get in there and chow down.” Seeing that the beast still wasn’t responding, Ai-Ling shouted, “You big dope!” and kicked it in the rump. It didn’t move.

Ai-Ling took a step back and folded her arms. Eyes filling with determination, she grabbed the Tommy gun by the stock and held it like a bat.

“Now there’s something,” D muttered.

The woman had just taken the gun and smacked a creature taller than she was right in the middle of its ass. Beads of sweat flying from her, she delivered five or six blows before the idiotic beast finally nosed its way into the opening and started scooping up feed with its power-shovel jaws. Once she was sure of that, Ai-Ling went over to D again. Although she was probably mentally and physically exhausted from what she’d just done, her gait was incredibly steady.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, but I have to check the thermostats in the chickener coop, too.” Her breathing ragged, the woman had D’s face reflected in her beads of sweat. Her body shook. “Would you like to come with me? Ordinarily you could wait in the house, but I can’t very well have a man in my home while my husband’s out.”

“Out here is fine with me.” As D said it, he took a place by Ai-Ling’s side and they walked off toward the building that stood to their left. “Don’t seem too suited to farm life,” he said after they’d walked a short distance.

It took a few seconds for Ai-Ling to realize he was talking about her. Shooting a look of surprise at D’s face, she asked, “You concerned on my account?” Her expression was almost a tearful smile.

“Farm work is tough, even for a man,” D remarked. “So, why did you give the meat beasts names?”

“The work’s not really all that hard,” Ai-Ling answered in a cheery tone. “You keep at the same thing for thirty years, and you’ll get used to any kind of labor. And I gave them names because it makes it easier to work with them.”

Upon reaching the building, Ai-Ling opened the steel door. A nauseating stench billowed out—the stink of wild animals and their excrement. Ai-Ling turned her face away and coughed. “I just have to check the thermostats, but we can talk while I’m walking around. Ask away.”

Her voice traveled back from the darkness. The sunlight peeking in through the doorway provided a modicum of illumination for the building’s interior, where there were rows of massive chickeners—giant chicks standing up to six and a half feet tall. The way they simply stood there motionless behind the high-voltage lines strung along either side of the pathway, scrutinizing the pair with glinting blue eyes but not displaying any of the rambunctious behavior of normal chicks, was as unsettling a sight as any.

These giant chicks were a crucial food source out on the Frontier. There were only a few special species that could produce chickeners, and they had extremely sensitive constitutions; a temperature deviation of a few degrees from their usual conditions could quite easily spell death for them. In addition, there was
a multitude of problems involving their feed and their vicious disposition, so a family of five would usually face tremendous hardship in raising just one of them. What was taking place in this filthy, dimly lit hut was nothing short of a miracle.

Pale sparks shot out in the distance as a chickener touched one of the high-voltage lines. Oddly enough, the chick didn’t let out a single cry of pain.

“As I recall, chickeners love human bones. Are you able to
get them?”

Ai-Ling shook her head at D’s question. “Not too easy to come by in our village. So I buy them off the dead carrier.”

A wide variety of merchants came to Frontier villages from the Capital or other commercial districts. The fur trader, the repair man, the parts dealer, the fruit seller, the ice man, the dressmaker, the weapons broker, the magician, the traveling picture show—some stank of blood while others were cheery, some were stained with grease while still others were dressed in the finest of clothes, but each and every one of them was an indispensable part of the Frontier. The dead carrier was another such merchant.

Living as they did in such a brutal environment, people didn’t always view the dead with reverence. Organs had their use in transplants, and human hair could be treated with a special animal fat to make communication lines that could carry a
signal any distance. Even bones had an important role to play
in fertilizer, thanks to their high calcium content. In addition,
a guitar made from a carved pelvic bone and hollowed-out vertebrae, and strung with tough intestinal material by a veteran tuner, would make absolutely exquisite music. While the bodies of relatives were handled differently, those who died out on the road might receive a perfunctory memorial service, after which a coffin bearing only their meager possessions would be carried off to the communal cemetery while arrangements were made to bring the cadaver out to a “butcher” on the edge of town for dissection.

When they still didn’t have enough corpses, dead carriers would sometimes supply bodies they’d preserved with their own flash-freezing equipment, while other times they would prowl around villages and towns like ghouls in search of fresh cadavers. Corpses were often sold as they were when demand called for it; otherwise, certain parts were marketed in their raw state, or were processed and then sold.

Ai-Ling checked the antiquated temperature equipment at each pen, which each held a trio of colossal, wily eyed chicks. When she got to the second pen’s thermostat, she paused and turned around to face D. “You still haven’t asked me anything. Afraid of distracting me? Even my husband isn’t that considerate.”

Saying nothing, D watched the chicks.

Smiling sadly, Ai-Ling reached for the machine. Suddenly, one of the chicks craned its neck, flames shot from the high-voltage line, and Ai-Ling pulled her hand back, a scream trailing out after her. The chick’s sharp beak had gouged the flesh on the back of her hand. Instinctively, she pressed the wound with her other hand, but blood seeped out around it anyway. D’s elegant white fingers touched the wrist of her topmost hand. Ai-Ling was speechless. She could only watch D’s face raptly as he moved the hand she was using to keep pressure on the wound and looked down at her injury.

“It’s nothing serious,” the Hunter told her. “Put a compress of vajna leaves on it, and before the day is out—”

Suddenly, Ai-Ling jerked her hand away roughly. In the feeble darkness, it wasn’t clear if D noticed how flushed her face was all the way to her ears. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled softly. “It’s just, it’s been a long time since a man took my hand.”

“Does that happen a lot with the chicks?” D asked as he watched the chick. Blue flames rose from its downy white chest—the work of the high-voltage lines. “And not a peep out of it—that’s very polite of it.”

“Every once in a while they get me,” Ai-Ling said as she pressed a handkerchief to the wound. In a matter of seconds, vermilion laid claim to the white cloth. Seeming uneasy as she looked up at the rapacious bird, she continued. “But it sure caught me off-guard today. You know, I can usually tell whenever they’re in that mood.”

“We should go.”

“Still got some to do yet,” Ai-Ling said with a smile before moving toward another pen. Stopping in front of the equipment, she hesitated a bit before reaching out her hand. The upper body of the nearest chick shook a bit, and then it froze. D was reflected in its glassy eyes. It seemed as if the creature had suddenly developed an appreciation of beauty, but actually the remorseless eyes of the vicious bird were filled with a shade of horror that was beyond description. D’s eyes were tinged a pale shade of red. Perhaps Ai-Ling also sensed something, because she looked up at the young Hunter with a pallid countenance, and then quickly went back to work. After that, the inspections were finished without further incident.

The sunlight was waiting to greet the two of them again. Once outside, Ai-Ling locked the door and tipped her head appreciatively to D. “Thanks for the help. Uh, try not to look
at it so much. I mean, it’s not a very pretty hand.”

She wasn’t talking about the hand she’d injured. The hand she covered it with had countless scars on the back, and the skin had hardened in a condition unique to toxic bites so that it was now like the scaly hide of a fire dragon. Perhaps D had noticed from the moment they’d met that she’d been trying to keep it hidden.

“What kind of girl was Sybille?” the Hunter asked, his voice cold and devoid of emotion.

Ai-Ling’s expression grew stiff, remembering again why D was there. “Oh, she was a romantic,” she replied flatly. “And she was so kind. What more could she possibly need? I’m sure she must be having some really nice dreams. If she’s not, there can’t be a God.”

“What kind of dream would be a good dream?”

Thinking a bit, Ai-Ling turned her gaze to the depths of the blue sky. She had a faraway look in her eyes, like something important was up there. “The kind of story that traveling writers come up with for the young girls.”

D remained silent.

Ai-Ling licked her faintly colored lips, and her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “A dream,” she began, “where people in love hold hands when they walk down the street. Where the library has all the books you ever wanted to read. A dream where no one threatens anyone else, and everyone thinks about other people and does things for them without ever being asked. Where new fashions arrive from the Capital every week. A dream where the pharmacist has all the medicine you need to soothe your child’s fever. Where you can make ends meet without working like a dog. A dream where everyone goes down to the pond on a moonlit night to catch fireflies. And a dream . . .”

The rest of the final sentence was spoken by another voice.

“. . . where humans and Nobility walk down the street side by side?”

Dazed, Ai-Ling stared at her mysterious visitor. “Are you some kind of sorcerer?” she asked.

“The Noble who bit Sybille chose her specifically.”

Ai-Ling’s eyes were glazed with perplexity. “What do you mean by that? Why was Sybille chosen?”

“An ancient mansion and blue light, white evening gowns and black formal wear, a cotillion—does that remind you of anything?”

Something sparkly pooled in Ai-Ling’s eye. “And here I thought we’d just dreamt about you . . . but you had Sybille’s dream, too, didn’t you?” A tear rolled down her cheek. “That was what she wished for—to wear a white gown and dance the night away with a man in a tuxedo in the hall of some old mansion. The night wrapped in a blue light.”

“She got her wish.”

“The night in her dream never ends, does it?” Ai-Ling asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think Sybille is happy?”

D had no response.

Ai-Ling pushed back the hair dangling before her brow. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m satisfied with the life I have now. I really can’t complain. We manage to get by, and I can feel how real the earth is beneath my feet. I may not have lovely dreams like Sybille does, though . . .”

“They may be lovely dreams, but that doesn’t mean they’re good dreams.” D lightly touched his hand to the brim of his hat. That was his way of saying goodbye.

Ai-Ling stood completely still, wanting to say something else; she watched the black expanse of his back as he quietly walked away. The silhouette of her visitor made it quite clear it was all over. His outline was a steadfast refusal.

Not entirely convinced she was ready to say anything, yet realizing something important was on the tip of her tongue, Ai-Ling took a few steps forward. Before she reached him, D stopped and turned. It wasn’t Ai-Ling that he faced, but rather the chickener coop. As her own dark eyes followed his gaze, the steel door burst outward and fell to the ground, pieces of its frame flinging everywhere. The frantic white creatures inside came into view and jostled out into the sunlight in a wild tangle of downy feathers.

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II

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The silence was shattered by a shrill cry every bit as horrifying as the roar of a gray bear before it attacks its prey. Seeing the blue light and purple smoke that rose from the white breast of each creature, Ai-Ling shuddered. “But that’s just . . .” she stammered. “How on earth did they get by the high-voltage lines?”

“Go back to the main house. They’re probably after me,” a voice like bronze whispered in her ear, realizing just then that the Hunter was at her side.

“But—”

“Just go.” His order was even gentler than his ordinary speech.

Without waiting to see that Ai-Ling made it back to the house, D turned the other way and sprinted into action. His coat fluttered out in the wind like a pair of huge black wings. Perhaps the reason he moved forward was because he’d sensed that the speed of Ai-Ling’s retreat was far slower than that of the colossal birds as they charged toward her. Chicks or not, each of them was over six-and-a-half feet tall, and a blow from the beak or talons of one of these foul-tempered beasts was enough to punch a hole in titanium . . . to say nothing of what they could do to flesh.

When they had closed within ten feet of the Hunter, one of the death-dealers in downy white bounded up toward the heavens. Built to carry the creature’s seven-hundred-pound frame, the chickener’s legs had enough spring to leap over fifteen feet in the air, even from a complete standstill. With all of its talons spread as wide as they could go, the bird started to drop from the air right at the point where it would intercept D.

Perhaps the eyes of the bird caught the silvery path of D’s weapon as it sliced off both the attacker’s legs in midair. As D plowed straight into the flock of screeching chickeners, more black beaks than could be counted came down at his head. The human skull would be soft as a grape to them, but the parabolic arc of the vicious bird beaks was rewarded not with a taste of D, but with the glittering slashes of his sword. Bright blood scattered in the sunlight.

Less than two seconds later, over a dozen chicks lay on the ground. Fresh blood stained the green grass. Gory blade in one hand, D stood motionless. Though had he slashed away with his sword in the middle of a wild mist of blood, not a drop of it marked his clothes or his gorgeous face. The question was, why not?

Moments later, that small bloody part of the vermilion pasture started to rise without warning. But then it wasn’t alone—the ground around it trembled and began to rise as well. Dirt and grass still sticking to them, these things rolled free of the ground and floated up into the air. They were bubbles, up to a foot and a half in diameter. Given their crimson color, the name “blood bubbles” suited them well. Like lava boiling from a caldera, like poisonous foam spawned by some crazed chemical reaction, these horrific offspring were born from the earth that’d drunk the blood of the vicious birds. Almost like sentient beings, the bubbles stopped at a height of six feet. One by one, their numbers grew. Perhaps that was all they were waiting for.

“What do you make of them?” D asked someone.

“Think maybe we should call them ‘bloody foam eggs’?” someone replied. “I’ve never seen ’em before either. They’re bubbles, so they’ve gotta burst sometime. When they do, shut down your senses. Just a second,” the voice added. “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Want me to take a bite out of one?”

“That would be nice.”

“Hey, don’t be so damn casual about it. This concerns you, too.” The indignation of its tone was further colored by swirls of weirdness that knew no depths. “Hey! Come and get us!” the voice shouted.

At some point, D had taken his left hand from his side and turned the palm toward one of his airborne foes. The wind roared. And with that, one of the mysterious blood bubbles quivered and was drawn toward D’s hand. As its rounded contour touched the Hunter’s palm, it stretched thinner, as if it was being drawn through a hole, and the other extreme of the bubble swelled grossly. The suction didn’t end there. The swollen portion didn’t pop, but appeared to be struggling even as its shape continued to change. In no time it shrank, displaying the sort of fear a drowning creature does, before it sank completely into the palm of D’s hand.

“Wow! Pretty darned tasty,” a voice said cheerily, but a second later, it became a cry of pain the likes of which the world rarely heard.

“Rather strong poison?” D inquired calmly.

“This stuff . . . it’s pretty damn lethal . . . Don’t think even I could take a second one . . . Better fall back.”

And with that, there was movement. Not on the part of D, but by the blood bubbles. Perhaps the groans of their victim had filled them with confidence, or maybe they’d finally amassed the numbers necessary, but the bubbles split into two groups and zipped through the air in a beeline for D.

“Sheesh! Don’t cut those things . . .” his left hand squealed.

D covered his nose and mouth with a scarf at the very same time the first rank of blood bubbles was bursting. A crimson fog stained the air, but there was no figure in black within it. Not making a sound, D ran through a world of red, where one blood bubble after another exploded. Up ahead of him, he saw Ai-Ling frozen in her tracks as other blood bubbles were flying straight for her.

“Hold your breath and hit the ground,” D shouted, coughing a split second later. He’d been hit by the bloody mist from a bubble he’d shattered overhead. The bright blood seemed to pry his lips apart as it spewed from his mouth.

Though his own lifeblood streamed out behind him, D didn’t falter in his pace. Grabbing the vulnerable Ai-Ling around the waist, he bolted for the fence. When the blood bubbles zipped toward the leaping figure, a flash of silver shot out for them. As if pushed away by the wind in his sword’s wake, the blood bubbles receded. D slipped right through their midst. Sprinting a good forty feet, he turned to look behind him. There didn’t seem to be any way to escape the swarm of bubbles fiendishly closing in on them. Just how much of their poisonous fog could he endure?

“It’s okay now,” D said, not seeming pained at all as he let Ai-Ling know it was safe to breathe again. “How about it?” he asked someone else.

“Do whatever you like. You’re a regular slave driver.”

On hearing that irritable reply, Ai-Ling started looking all around them with her flushed face.

Gently setting the woman on the ground, there was no telling what D was thinking as he dashed right for the blood bubbles that were closing in on them. Suddenly, the vermilion globes rose as one. Spacing themselves uniformly, the blood bubbles formed a circular canopy. Anything beneath that ceiling was sure to be attacked and trapped by their deadly mist, but D went right under the center of it. They were forty feet above him, a distance that, for all D’s leaping ability and skill with a sword, would be too much of a gap.

D’s left hand rose. If the blood bubbles had been equipped with eyes, they might’ve seen the human face that formed there. Eyes reminiscent of the tiniest bamboo leaves sparkled wickedly, and thin lips pursed. With a loud whooosh the air began to rush in one direction: toward the tiny lips. Caught in the extreme suction, every last blood bubble sank in a straight line toward the palm of D’s hand. D’s blade danced about and, with no way of escaping, the globes of blood burst wide open. Before the blood raining down from them could cover his body, D leapt back. Bubbles trying to rise to the sky once more were pulled along with the madly howling wind and then popped without ever being able to form a bloody and inescapable curtain around D.

Leaping back from where he’d dispatched the last of them, D drove his blade into the ground and fell to one knee, coughing horribly. A crimson stain spread across the blue scarf covering his mouth. His coughing stopped in a matter of seconds, and D got up. Taking the scarf away, he turned to Ai-Ling. Her deathly white face was struggling to form a smile. “You’ll want to take a bath in the antidote later.” And saying that, D took a few gold coins from an inner pocket on his coat and closed Ai-Ling’s fingers around them. Payment for the chickeners he’d dispatched.

Ai-Ling was about to shake her head, then thought better of it and accepted the money. Out on the Frontier, even a single bucket could be a precious commodity. “What just happened?” she asked. “I’ve never heard of anything like that coming out of chickener blood.” Her voice was tremulous—no doubt due to the fact that while hers was a hard life, up until now it’d also been a relatively uneventful one.

“Isn’t your husband around?” D finally asked her.

“This morning, he headed off to town. He’s got other work to do.”

“Do you want to come with me? I can’t tell you if staying here would be safer, but I can take you to your husband. After all, those blood bubbles went after you, too.”

Ai-Ling bobbed her head with its fright-stiffened features
up and down. After shutting the gate so the meat beasts wouldn’t run off, the two of them got on D’s cyborg horse and galloped away.

“Never seen fighting like that before . . . What in the world are you?” Ai-Ling asked, her arms wrapped tightly around D’s waist.

“You said you dreamt about me, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I did.”

“And what did you think?”

Ai-Ling fell silent. Her hair, already tinged with gray, fluttered in the wind. “Do I have to tell you?” she finally asked.

“Not if you don’t want to.”

“It made me hate you so much that I could kill you.”

One person said he was a dangerous man. Another said she despised him. Who could say that everyone in the village didn’t fall into one of those two camps? Even in their dreams, D was something unsettling, something they found detestable.

“I don’t know why that was,” Ai-Ling continued. “I just found you truly hateful. Like you were going to destroy this life and everything we’ve worked so hard to build—but then, when
I woke from the dream . . .” Her words trailed off there. It was some time before she resumed speaking. “I know I said I was happy before . . . but I envy Sybille. Never aging, just dreaming her dreams . . .”

“They’re not necessarily pleasant dreams.”

“That’s what everyone says. But any dream that you never had to wake up from would have to be better than reality . . . even a nightmare. If she woke up, I wonder what she’d think of him . . .”

How did the first real emotion in the woman’s weary tone sound to D? As he sat there on his horse, his face remained as cold and emotionless as ever.

They came to a road that ran back to the main street. As D was about to turn his mount toward the village, Ai-Ling said, “Go left—to the hospital. At this hour, my husband should still be there.”

The horse galloped to the outskirts of the village, and in no time they were out in front of the white hospital building. Just as D was about to take off, Ai-Ling politely requested that he explain to her husband what had happened. Though this might be the Frontier, the battle that D waged at their ranch was like some conflict from the very depths of hell. No matter what she said, her husband probably wouldn’t believe it. For once, indifference on the young man’s part might cause a lot of trouble.

After some consideration, D got off his horse.

“This way,” Ai-Ling said, walking ahead of the Hunter. After going down a familiar corridor to stand before a door he’d seen before, D realized what was going on. Ai-Ling knocked on the door, and when it opened from the inside, a man’s face peeked out. The Hunter didn’t even need to see him. The solemn face toughened by countless blizzards was that of Sheriff Krutz.

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III

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In a hospital room forever locked in feeble darkness, the three of them talked for several minutes. Of the three, it was actually Ai-Ling who explained what had transpired, with D merely offering a terse confirmation at the end that her account was accurate.

Giving no indication of being disturbed or even surprised, once the sheriff had finished listening, he said, “Earlier, you got into some trouble with Clements and got a hotel room burnt down. Now you’ve gone and killed the chickeners at my ranch, eh? What in blazes did you come to our town to do, anyway?”

“I don’t know the answer to that either,” D replied.

“Ai-Ling—go wait in the lobby,” the sheriff ordered.

The woman wore an expression that suggested she had something she wanted to say, but a shade of something that resembled resignation came over her and she nodded.

When the door had closed again, the sheriff offered a chair to D.

“This is fine,” he said, leaning against the wall instead.

The sheriff threw a dispassionate gaze at D. “Would that be part of the iron code Hunters have about never leaving their back open?”

“Was she the love of your life?” D asked, not answering the lawman.

The sheriff’s eyes shifted to the girl in the bed. “That was thirty years ago,” he said.

“As far as your wife is concerned, she is even now. It must be painful, watching you go off to see your old girlfriend every morning.”

“Drop the subject. What do you know, anyway?”

“I was led to this village by a dream the girl in that bed had. When I tried to leave, something got in my way and someone died. The key to solving these mysteries is held by your old girlfriend as she sleeps. The reason I was called here and the reason I can’t leave seem to be one and the same. That’s all I know.”

“You mean to tell me you don’t care about my personal life, then? Just dandy. Get out of town before you stir up any more trouble.”

“That’s fine with me, but there’s something that just won’t let me leave.”

“Hogwash—I’ll see you to the edge of the village myself. And don’t you ever come back.” Just as the sheriff stood up, D stepped away from the wall. And then someone knocked on the door. The sheriff went over and opened it. “Well, hello there, Dr. Allen,” he said.

Men and women in white slipped in through the open doorway. The cart the nurses pulled in had several trays of surgical implements and a white device that made harsh mechanical sounds.

“Would you look at that . . .” the sheriff muttered in wonderment as the hospital director first smiled warmly at him, and then turned a sharp gaze at D. The figure in the black coat had already disappeared through the doorway. “Wait in the lobby,” the sheriff called out after the Hunter before turning back to the director.

The director’s heavily wrinkled fingers stroked the power generator as he said, “This just arrived from the Capital this morning. It’s the latest development in brain surgery technology. I believe we just may have some success using this to transmit signals directly to her brain cells instructing them to wake up. It may seem like ex post facto approval, but we figured you’d be here at this time anyway. So, what do you say? Should we give it a try right away?”

The thoroughness of Dr. Allen’s preparations, to say nothing of his strangely coercive manner, left the sheriff a bit confused. “You’re talking about sending stimulus directly to her brain. Couldn’t that be dangerous?”

“Even if I’m just putting medicine on a bug bite there’s some danger, however small, involved.”

“But we’re talking about someone’s life here,” Sheriff Krutz said as he looked the elderly physician right in the eye. “If there’s any possible danger, however small, I can’t go along with this. Besides, if Sybille were to wake up, would she be able to stay the way she is now?”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Let’s just suppose for a second that she might not sleep for all eternity, even if the wound on her throat remains. As long as Sybille has that wound, she’ll remain a young girl . . . albeit a young girl in a dream. But when she wakes, isn’t it possible her dreams and her flesh will return to reality?”

The hospital director heaved a heavy sigh. “Well—I suppose there’s no way around that. But of the two, Sheriff, which scares you more?”

The sheriff’s expression shifted. As if sunlight had suddenly shone down onto dark thoughts he’d been oblivious to, he let his eyes wander absentmindedly across the ceiling. “Which one?” the sheriff muttered.

“When the Noble’s spell over her is broken, her physical body will lose its youth, and her dreams will be robbed of their youthfulness as well. But isn’t that a fair enough trade for what she’ll regain? Which scares you more, Sheriff?” The director’s voice had the sharpness of a steely blade.

The silence began slicing into everyone present in the room; one of the nurses hugged her own shoulders.

“I don’t know . . .” Sheriff Krutz groaned in a low voice.

In a room packed with ghastly expressions, Sybille’s face alone was serene as a slow breath trickled from her.

.

As the figure in black returned from the far end of the hall, a faint voice called out his name. It was Nan. Her innocently smiling face blossomed like a flower in the gloomy lobby. Getting up off the sofa, she came toward him as if pushed along by a wind. “Thought you’d be here,” she said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“How’d you know I’d be here?”

Furrowing her brow as if troubled, Nan touched her forefinger to the tip of her nose. “Intuition, perhaps? Yes, I’m sure of it.”

“Ai-Ling was supposed to be here.”

“She left a few minutes ago. I knew in an instant you must’ve brought her here.”

“You have good instincts,” D said, heading for the front door.

“Wait just a second, Mr. Impatient!” Nan called out as she scampered after him. “What are you gonna do next?”

“Leave the village.”

“What?!” Nan gasped, her eyes going as wide as they possibly could. “But you haven’t even gotten to the bottom of the mystery yet. And that other incident is still under investigation. Like I told you yesterday, the sheriff will go after you if you try to leave.”

Turning his face back the tiniest bit in Nan’s direction, D said, “That’s right.” His lips were molded in a rare wry smile. As they went out the front door, he turned to Nan and said, “The sheriff and Sybille were lovers, weren’t they?”

Nan nodded. “If Sybille hadn’t wound up like that, I guess they would’ve gotten married. They got along really great—and they were the best-looking couple in town.”

“On the way up here, I heard that the three of them were apparently friends.”

“You don’t give a lot of thought to other people’s feelings or relationships, do you?” Nan remarked sadly, but of course the comment garnered no reply. “What do you think it’d feel like having your husband go off every single day to visit your old best friend in the hospital? Especially when she’s waiting there for him, looking just like she did way back when? I should think it hurts his wife just seeing herself in the mirror. And all of this . . . every last thing . . . is the Nobility’s fault. If only he hadn’t bitten Sybille . . .”

Savage emotions shot from the girl’s innocent face, but D didn’t divert his gaze.

Suddenly, Nan was looking at D through eyes damp with tears. Her pale hand pressed down on his black-clad shoulder. In a piteous tone hardly imaginable from such a naive young girl she said, “You’re a Hunter, right? Then do something for her—help Sybille. If you can destroy the Noble, you should be able to save his victim.”

“What do you mean?” D asked, keeping a grip on his reins. It was a question that would probably draw a frightening response. A gale carried the smell of fallen leaves through the sunlight around them. The distant mountains turned red and gold with the changing foliage; autumn was quietly strengthening its hold.

Nan didn’t answer. Tears crept from under her closed eyelids, leaving trails on her pale cheeks as they rolled down. The hand pressing down on D’s shoulder shook with her sobs. Even after he had pulled away, her hand remained extended for the longest time.

No word of parting was spoken, but soon enough hoofbeats could be heard growing ever fainter. Nan didn’t turn around—for a long time she stayed there. She thought maybe someone would come for her. She was sure if someone would just speak
to her and ask her what was wrong, she’d go back to being herself. A voice addressed her just then, but not the one she had in mind.

“What happened to the Hunter?” the sheriff asked.

Quickly wiping away her tears, she looked back at him and said, “He left just now.”

“Well, I’ll have to make sure,” Sheriff Krutz said, going down to the end of the fence and getting on his horse.

“What’s gonna happen to him?” Nan asked out of the blue.

“Not a thing. I’ll see him to the edge of the village. After that, it’ll be up to him to decide.”

“I wonder if he’ll be able to go.”

Getting the distinct impression the Hunter had said nearly the same thing to him not so long ago, the sheriff forgot to goad his horse forward with a kick to the flanks. “He tell you anything?” he asked.

“Not at all,” Nan replied, shaking her head. In all her life, she’d never shaken it so hard. Her hair swung out and around in arcs, and her glittering teardrops flew out on an identical course. “What’ll happen to him?” she asked. “What’ll happen to Sybille . . . or to you, Sheriff? And what’ll happen to all of us?”

“Nothing’s gonna happen,” the sheriff said firmly. At one time, the villagers had been able to hear those words and sleep peacefully through dark nights rife with fluttering demons. When a trio of wanted men came down the main street, the sheriff told the frightened populace the very same thing before he coolly went off to deal with the matter.

The lawman drove his spurs into his mount’s flanks. There was the sound of horse and rider thundering across the earth, and then Nan was once again left behind.

.

It took him less than five minutes to find D—there was only one road that connected back to town. About a third of the way from the hospital to that junction, D was out in the middle of the road. A sense of incongruity filled the sheriff’s heart. D had stopped. And he was facing the lawman. Having halted his horse for a moment, the sheriff then closed the remaining distance with one burst of speed. At first, he thought this might’ve been some sort of setup, but he quickly thought better of the idea. He was convinced this Hunter would never resort to anything so crude. Scattering pebbles everywhere, the sheriff pulled up alongside the Hunter. The other man made no attempt to look at Krutz, but had his eyes trained straight ahead.

“I take it you weren’t waiting around for me, now, were you?” said the sheriff.

“How did you come here?” D asked.

“What?”

“Rode straight from the hospital for about five minutes, didn’t you?”

“Sure did,” Sheriff Krutz replied, feeling somewhat bewildered. There was nothing unusual about their surroundings or the way the Hunter was acting. His voice had been ordinary when he asked the question, too. Only he was pointed in the opposite direction.

“Then this is where normalcy ends, I guess.”

“What are you talking about? Didn’t forget anything back in town, now, did you?” Although the last question had a pressure behind it meant to dissuade D from breaking their agreement, the Hunter didn’t seem to notice in the least.

“I went straight,” D said.

While Sheriff Krutz thought it was obvious the Hunter meant he’d come straight back from the main road, a heartbeat later another impossibility crossed the lawman’s mind, making him squint suspiciously. He can’t mean to tell me he’s been riding straight on since he left the hospital, could he?

Before the sheriff could get the question out of his mouth, D had turned his mount around. The Hunter rode off without even asking the lawman to come along. It was only natural that the sheriff went right after him. Side by side, the two of them continued down the road.

“This is a peaceful village,” Sheriff Krutz said. “Always has been—since long before I was born. It’s not the sort of place for those with the scent of blood all over ’em.”

“What did you want to be when you grew up?”

At that unexpected question, the sheriff turned toward D in spite of himself. By the look of him, he was a young man, no more than twenty. Being a man of the law, Krutz was accustomed to a certain level of formality, but for some reason this question didn’t bother him. “This,” the sheriff said, pointing to the badge on his chest.

“Did you ever tell Sybille that?”

“Why would you ask that?”

“You had the makings of a sheriff. That’s probably what Sybille wanted for you. Your dream was her dream, too, wasn’t it?”

“We never even talked about it. I was supposed to run the general store.”

D didn’t say anything.

“But forget about me. I want to know why you—” Realizing in the blink of an eye that he’d ridden ahead of D, Sheriff Krutz hastily pulled back on his reins.

“See if you can go on,” D said.

“What?”

“Go straight ahead. I’m going to wait a minute.”

About fifty feet ahead of them the road twisted to the right. Beyond that it was swallowed by the densely packed greenery of the woods. Throwing a sharp glance at the Hunter, the sheriff started off on his horse. Nothing happened. Slowly he turned into the woods. The sheriff couldn’t believe his eyes. A black horse and rider suddenly stood before him. It was D, but even after Sheriff Krutz had ridden close enough to confirm the rider’s gorgeous face, he still wasn’t ready to accept it. To the Hunter still keeping his silence, he said, “Is this a sealed dimension?”

“Well, I’ve had some experience with those. This is something else.”

“So, this is what you meant when you said something wouldn’t let you leave the village?”

D gave no answer, but kept his eyes trained straight ahead. The sheriff turned around. Out of the woods, a low singing voice was growing louder.

.

“Go take a peek if tomorrow’s not along,

Those old Nobles just might’ve been wrong,

A world full of twisted creatures and such,

Don’t seem to bother anyone much . . .”

.

First, a pair of horses became visible. They were followed by a second pair, and then a third, before a wagon covered by reinforced vinyl finally appeared.

“Looks like people can still get through from the outside, though,” the sheriff said in a low voice.

“You there—what are the two of you up to?” the middle-aged woman sitting in the driver’s seat with the reins and an electronic whip in hand asked in a voice so big and bold it was clear she wasn’t the least bit afraid. Come to mention it, her body was fairly huge, too. She was built like a keg of beer, unlike some other women who had waists thinner than this woman’s upper arms. “Well, if it ain’t the sheriff,” she shouted. “How’s life been treating you?”

D gave a quick look to the lawman.

“An acquaintance of mine,” the sheriff commented morosely. “That’s Maggie, a jack-of-all-trades. Comes by twice a month. Damn!” he added suddenly. “I’d better stop her, or she won’t be able to get back out again!”

“It’s no use,” the Hunter said.

The covered wagon was far enough away that the driver couldn’t hear what the two of them were talking about, but it stopped right in front of them soon enough. “Quite the looker you’ve got with you,” Maggie said to the sheriff. “Seems like the rough-and-tumble sort, but I hope you weren’t planning on running him out of town, were you? If you are, I’ll thank you to hold up until we’ve been introduced.” To the Hunter, she added, “Hello there, you sweet young thing. I’m Maggie the Almighty.”

“They call me D.”

“Well, I’ll be!” The round eyes and mouth set in her big dinner-roll of a face all opened in unison. It took a few seconds before she could speak again. “You . . . you mean you’re . . . Well, now, it’s a pleasure to meet you. This is an honor.”

“Any strange business on your way here, Maggie?” the sheriff inquired in a stern tone.

“Why, I haven’t done a blessed thing! What’d I ever do to have you put a question to me like that? The nerve of some people! Say, handsome,” she said to the young Hunter, “why don’t you come into town with me? I’ll even act as your guarantor. Though in your case, I’m sure there’s no shortage of ladies who’d want to be with you, even if it meant getting bitten,” she said rather impudently, quickly adding, “Oops,” and clapping a plump hand over her mouth.

“Have we met before?”

With that question from D, Sheriff Krutz also trained a grave gaze on the hefty figure.

A bewildered Maggie replied, “Nope, never seen you before. Not even in my dreams.” The last remark she said completely casually, but, with the way the sheriff’s expression quickly hardened, she must’ve realized she’d said something wrong. Still, she hardly seemed unnerved. “Well, guess I’ll be getting a move-on. I’ll get my permission to set up shop later, thank you,” Maggie said coolly, shooting a wink at D before she called to her team and gave a shake to the reins.

“What’ll we do?” D asked Krutz as the lawman watched the departing wagon. “The other roads are probably just like this, in which case all we can do is head back.” Without another word, D wheeled his mount around, and then suddenly behind him he heard the metallic click of handcuffs, so well known that even the smallest child on the Frontier would recognize the sound.

“I’m sorry, but we’re gonna have to detain you until we can get this situation sorted out,” Sheriff Krutz told him. “No matter how you look at it, you seem to be the cause of all this. If I don’t do something, there’s no telling what could go wrong next.”

“And if I’m locked in your jail, nothing else will happen?”

“Not really. But as the law here, I can’t very well leave you free, either.” In the lawman’s rough hand was a weapon that was exceedingly hard to come by, graceful and fierce and glittering in the sunlight—a sol gun. Amplifying the power of natural light, the gun could channel it into a fifty-million-degree beam that could go through three feet of titanium in a thousandth of a second. Unlike laser blasters or photon cannons, which were rendered useless if their ultra-compact nuclear power sources were destroyed, the sol gun only needed a piece of resilient photosensitive film to keep it running indefinitely. Thirty minutes of exposure on a sunny day or six hours on a rainy one was enough to keep the beam charged for over two hundred hours. Even D wouldn’t fare very well if shot through the heart with that, never mind what would happen if it was fired at his head . . .

The sheriff quickly put some distance between D and himself. “See, I’ve heard that the Vampire Hunter D has a sword that’s quicker than a laser beam,” he explained. “Move along, now.”

D showed no signs of resisting, and the two of them started back up the road that’d brought them there. Neither of them spoke at all. Soon, they could see the hospital once again.

“Aren’t you going to swing by?” D asked out of the blue.

“What are you talking about?”

“I recognize the new equipment the doctors had. Are you sure you shouldn’t be there?”

“I’m busy being the sheriff—or are you gonna give me your word that you won’t take off?”

“If I did, would you believe me?” D asked.

“Nope.”

The white building came up on their left, and fell behind them in no time.

“I suppose they just may wake her up after all . . .” the sheriff said, as if rationalizing. For words born of his iron confidence, they sounded strangely frail.

“So, if you plan on locking me up to prevent any trouble, I doubt that’s going to do much good.”

“Don’t give me any more of your speculation. This happens to be part of my job. I’m not letting my personal life get mixed up with business here.”

After remaining silent for a short while, D said, “You should let her keep on dreaming. No matter what those dreams may be.” And then he quickly added, “Or is it too late?”

Realizing there was something more to the Hunter’s words, Sheriff Krutz moved his horse to one side and turned his eyes to a little path that D’s body previously blocked. It was as if the very balance between heaven and earth had been upset. “Sybille . . .” he said, calling out the name of the beautiful girl on the path in a voice that was thirty years older, but carried three decades of emotion. The golden hair that fluttered in the breeze was like a blessing from the goddess of fall. Clad in a white blouse and a blue skirt with stripes, she was an icon of youthfulness that had utterly absorbed the four seasons. “Sybille . . .” he called out once more, as if trying to gently cup his hands around some treasured possession.

.

How’s that?” the old man in white asked, the silver needle he held still stuck deep into a blonde’s head. A colored cord ran from the end of the needle, connecting it to a monitor on a nearby cart.

The woman watching the monitor, also dressed in white, looked up and said, “There’s been a disruption in her brain waves. According to our data bank, we’ve got some leakage to the outside.”

“Not good,” the old man muttered as he pulled out the needle. “We can’t have this leaking to the outside. Give me a reading on what needs to be modified.”

“The seventh sector, point 989.”

The needle moved to the new position and sank in.

“It’s gone,” the nurse announced as the elderly hospital director wiped the sweat from his brow with one hand.

“Well, at the very least, we’ve made the necessary arrangements to eliminate dangerous individuals. Transfer Sybille to the isolation ward.”

A number of figures in white nodded in acknowledgment and dispersed in a flurry of activity.

The old man gently looked down at the placid expression of the girl who lay there sleeping. “I’m sorry, Sybille. I really don’t want to interrupt your sleep. No matter what happens to me, you should just go on sleeping. We’ll protect you.”

There was no way the tragic tone would register in her ears. As Sybille Schmitz slept, her face was peaceful, as if all had been forgotten.

THE DREAM ASSASSIN