The Rose Princess (14 page)

Near the tent, the people still milling around were outnumbered by those now heaped
motionless on the ground by several to one. Occasionally there was the crack of a
gunshot, and the Blue Knight would reel as sparks danced on his chest or abdomen.
His charger would then race to the shooter with incredible speed, and the perpetrator
would loose their dying screams from the end of the knight’s lance.

Someone shouted at him to stop.

A child could be heard crying out for his father.

“That lousy murderer . . . ,” Elena muttered, and she was just about to dash forward
when a black shape passed her.

As the man in the long coat headed toward the flames, he looked like some gorgeous
idol of a god of war trimmed in crimson lotus blossoms.

Engaged in butchery some forty feet ahead of the young man, the blue figure whirled
around on his steed as if he’d been struck by a bolt of unseen lightning.

“Where have you been?” he asked with pleasure when he saw D. “I came down here because
the Black Knight told me to dispose of these scum, but my heart was actually set on
doing battle with you. I’ve already killed forty or fifty of them. Are you going to
try and stop me, D?”

“That’s my job,” D replied as his blade whined from the sheath on his back.

The Blue Knight adjusted his grip on his lance.

Both the hues and the crackling of the raging flames seemed to freeze solid from the
lethal intent that billowed between the two men.

D sprinted; his sword streamed along behind him. As the blade painted a silvery arc
aimed at the legs of the horse, the blue mount and rider leapt toward the moon. The
knight’s lance was aimed by turns at D’s chest and his back. While he held but a single
weapon, it looked for all the world like he had two.

Blocking both thrusts, D made a leap and blocked the second blow in midair. Surely,
even the Blue Knight had never considered the possibility of anyone human coming at
him from above while he was galloping along on his horse.

As the end of D’s blade was coming down, it suddenly changed direction. The sword
swung to the right in a parrying blow, and was assailed by a horizontal arc of black.
The Blue Knight had brought a second lance holstered on his horse’s flank into play.

D’s blade shattered, and the Hunter was thrown through the air. Amid the flames, his
coat danced like nightmare-shrouded wings.

A split second lay between life and death. As Elena watched the flying Hunter, her
brain burned with a feeling that was almost rapture.

This was precisely the moment the Blue Knight had been waiting for. In midair, no
target whatsoever would be able to avoid his lance. At least, so long as it was human.

With ample time to take aim, the Blue Knight hurled his weapon. And his aim was true—run
through from the belly to the back, D tumbled head over heels to the ground.

Reining his steed to a halt, the Blue Knight adjusted his grip on his remaining lance.
Thirty feet from him, D was down on one knee.

“Now it ends. Wait for me in the hereafter, D!”

With the thunder of iron-shod hooves, the steely knight charged. But before the rider
could ever bring his lance to bear, D would surely be trampled beneath the hooves
of his steed. As the Blue Knight swung his weapon around, he never took his eyes off
his target for an instant. But he couldn’t believe what he saw. Still impaled on the
other lance, the young man in black rose steadily to his feet. The knight’s exclamation
was louder than even the roar of hooves pounding the earth, but was it a cry of surprise
or a grunt of deadly determination?

Just as the rider passed the man, there was a sharp sound and a lance went sailing
into the air. Wheeling his horse around in front of one of the locals’ houses with
the skill of an expert horseman, the Blue Knight was about to embark on another attack
when he was dumbstruck. There was no lance in his hands. The instant he noticed this,
D appeared before him like some guardian demon with the very same lance that’d previously
impaled him in his right hand. The weapon in question scorched through the air to
punch through both the knight’s armor and his chest.

“You did it, D! You really did it!” Elena shouted.

But her jubilant cries were cut short by the sound of hoofbeats. Incredibly, the horse
had started to gallop off still bearing the Blue Knight, who’d clearly been pierced
right through the heart.

“Stop that thing!” someone shouted.

“Don’t let it get back to the castle!” cried another villager who’d
apparently seen what’d happened and feared the princess’s retribution.

With poles and spade-like implements they struck at the beast, but the horse shrugged
off the blows and dashed toward the rear gate to the village.

“D!” Elena exclaimed as she made a single-minded dash for him. But the Vampire Hunter
simply adjusted the brim of his traveler’s hat as if nothing at all had transpired.
“You got run through . . . Are you hurt bad?”

Seeing his bloodstained abdomen, Elena shuddered for the first time at the thought
of what this gorgeous young man was.

“Seems we’ve got a hell of a man in town now,” said a hoarse female voice. Mama Kipsch.
“The first time I laid eyes on you, I thought you were far too pretty,” she continued.
“And now that I see how fast you heal—I’d say you’re a dhampir, aren’t you?”

“That’s right,” the Hunter replied.

Elena was speechless.

“No second-rate warrior would ever think of getting their opponent’s lance to replace
their own broken sword. And seeing where you let yourself be impaled to do so, I don’t
suppose you’re an average dhampir, either. You did say your name was D, didn’t you?”
the old woman asked, staring at him with glittering eyes.

“That’s right,” D again replied softly.

Shifting her gaze from him, Mama Kipsch turned to the tent where the flames were almost
under control and saw the corpses littering the area. “From the very start, those
fiends never intended to let
all of us
get through this, I’d say. But using that moss you’ve got poking out of your pocket,
we’ll have everyone back to normal in two or three days. Elena, you’d best come back
to my place tonight.”

“I’ll help out any way I can, Mama Kipsch.”

“That’s not quite what I was talking about,” the crone said, her wise old eyes narrowing
sorrowfully. “The real thing we have to worry about is what the people who’ve been
put through all this will do, you see.” Turning to D, she said, “I’m sure you’d know
all about that.”

The leisurely nod of the Hunter seemed to satisfy the old woman.

“In that case, you’d best stick close to this girl,” she told him. “The real trouble
will start once the sun begins to shower its blessings on us again.”

—

Mama Kipsch’s prediction was right on the mark. The next day, every villager who’d
been spared the Noble transformation came storming out to the witch doctor’s house
to find Elena. As Elena snorted that she’d go out and give them a piece of her mind,
Mama Kipsch physically stopped her and tried to talk to them in her place. However,
she made no progress, and the crowd remained emphatic that she send Elena out, until
the biker finally appeared in the doorway.

“This is your fault! All of it!” shouted the leader of the pack—Gary, the guard from
the tent. “Yeah, all because of you and that young feller! Send him on out, too!”

“He’s not here,” Elena shot back, and a pain spread through her heart—D had ignored
her and gone back to village outskirts. “But, don’t you get it yet? He’s the only
one who can destroy those
bastards. His strength will free us from the oppression of the
Nobility!”

“Who in the world asked him to do that?” one of the women shouted.

That was the very question Elena had dreaded.

“We’ve had it pretty good so far, haven’t we? We’ve always managed to coexist somehow
with the princess up in the castle and her knights, right? Sure, there’s been some
ugliness. But if we just grit our teeth through it, there’s always peace again later,
isn’t there? There’s a hell of a lot more ugliness in this world we live in. We’re
lucky
we don’t have to see most of it.”

“Sure, just as long as we obey all their rules,” Elena snapped back. “We can’t leave
the village now. They carry off husbands and wives, children and lovers, and we can’t
say a thing about it. What the hell is so lucky about a life where all our loved ones
can be taken away on one of their whims?!”

“Well, people die from famine or fires all the time,” someone else cried out. “They’re
just like that—a natural calamity us mortals can’t do a thing about. Come what may,
we’ve got no choice but to just keep our heads bowed and our voices low, right? When
you think of it—”

“You talk like a fucking slave!” Elena groaned in the bottom of her throat as the
weighted end of her chain whistled out.

Although she shouldn’t have been able to see him very well from her location, the
man who flipped backward with a cry of pain was the very same person who’d just been
talking. His nose was now broken.

The crowd backed away, leaving a semicircular clearing just in front of the door.

As Elena hauled back on her chain for another blow, Mama Kipsch caught hold of her
arm. “Stop it,” the old woman told her. “Don’t do anything more to distance them.”

“I knew that crazy bitch would show her true colors!” Gary the tent guard howled.
“As far as we’re concerned, we’re in a lot more danger from you down here in the village
than we are from the Noble in the castle. Hey, take a good look at this!”

The crowd split down the middle, leaving a single figure between Elena and the others.

Seeing the feeble individual crawling across the ground, Elena exclaimed, “McCay!”

It was one of her compatriots.

“Take a good look at him. He was one of last night’s survivors,” Gary said with revulsion.
“But his right shoulder is broken, his left ear’s been torn off, and his left eye
popped. And I think you know who did all that.”

Elena stood stunned, as if she’d just been struck by lightning.

Her rose-cursed compatriot had one hand raised to ward off the sunlight as he writhed
on the ground. But his fingers were all bent in impossible directions.

“You did this. Back in the tent, you beat the shit out of one of your own. Yeah, you
talk a good game, but when someone winds up one of the Nobility, you don’t know a
friend from a piece of garbage. There are others that made it through the night, but
they’re all beat to hell thanks to you. So before you go acting like you’re something
special, take a good, hard look at what you’ve done. And he’s not the only one who’s
been through hell. Just how do you and that young feller plan on taking responsibility
for the forty people who died?”

It was a heartbeat later that the
coup de grace
was delivered to the dazed and speechless Elena.

“Give me back my Yohan!” a matronly voice cried. It was that of Mrs. Kaiser, a woman
who’d often given Elena milk when she was young. “They killed him yesterday. You used
to bounce my son on your knee. Oh, he was only eight years old!”

“I lost my Frida, too,” said old Mr. Bangs, who kept a herd of cows on the outskirts
of the village. Frida was the same age as Elena, and she’d been an excellent seamstress.

“I just want my Chauve!”

“Give back Pelt!”

Elena covered her ears. She didn’t even have Stahl or Nichou or Tan there anymore.
McCay writhed at her feet. She wished she were a million miles away, and a keen longing
for the forest or the plains of the previous night came over her.

“Give
’
er what she’s got coming!” someone shouted, but to the girl, the cry seemed to reverberate
in another world.

“Throw her in the stocks on the edge of town. Better yet, leave her chained out by
the castle for three days and nights!”

As one, the villagers grunted their approval. In that instant, the group became a
bloodthirsty mob.

Elena didn’t have the strength left to stop the people with bloodshot eyes bearing
down on her in a crushing wave. But a single bolt of lightning did it in her place.
It’d skimmed by the end of the lead vengeance seeker’s nose and imbedded itself in
the black soil. The man gasped in terror and the mob halted its advance.

The bolt of lightning had become a blue lance. But the reason the people remained
paralyzed like lambs before a two-headed wolf wasn’t because they recognized it as
the weapon the Blue Knight had left in town. Rather, they’d been frozen by the whistle
of it dropping from the sky and the thunder of it sinking into the earth. Not a single
one of them dared to turn in the direction from which it’d flown. The crowd froze
there in the swelling sunlight as they listened to the approaching hoofbeats.

“I just knew he’d come,” said Mama Kipsch.

At last, the people turned and saw the gorgeous young man on the horse. Before him
on the saddle sat a boy of about five, while a burly man with gray hairs scattered
among the black stood beside the mount.

“Blasko!”

“And that’s his boy Cusca up on the horse. What are they doing with . . .”

“They’re here because I had need of a blacksmith,” said D.

This was the first time the villagers had ever heard D’s voice. The cheeks of every
last woman flushed, while the men grew dazed and even enthralled.

Glancing up at D out of the corner of his eye, Blasko the smith said, “When I heard
you’d all headed off to string up Elena, I was gonna come out here and stop you. But
then this fella came by—” Swallowing hard, the smith continued, “My boy had one of
those roses blooming out of him, too. But drinking the medicine Mama Kipsch whipped
up last night cured him. Just look at him—sure, he’s still got a little trouble with
the sun, but at least we don’t have to keep him shut away in darkness. I’m sure some
of your kin have been saved, too. This feller told me what happened. It seems it was
Elena who went out and got the blue moss to make that medicine. So don’t go doing
anything crazy.”

“He’s making you say all that,” someone in the mob sneered, shaking his fist.

“Nothing doing. All he said was that Elena got the moss. I came here of my own free
will. There’s no way you can seriously believe deep down in your hearts that the Noble’s
way is the best. Elena only says what all of us think.”

“And I say that’s more trouble than we need. We’d be better off without Elena or that
guy. When the night comes, the Nobility will retaliate. What the hell are we supposed
to do then?!”

“Me and him will protect you,” Elena declared as she pointed at D.

“What good will the two of you do?”

“It’s not just the two of us,” said the girl. “All of you are gonna have to fight,
too.”

“Don’t make me laugh!” the man snarled back at her in the most passionate burst of
anger so far. “I’m sure you know just how powerful those four knights are, and they
ain’t even Nobility! The real sorceress is up in the castle. If things get ugly, she’ll
come down for us. And when that happens, a lousy stake of wood ain’t gonna do us a
whole lot of good!”

“He’ll take care of the bitch in the castle for us. He’s a professional Vampire Hunter.
If the knights come into town, the rest of us will have to kill them.”

Anxious chatter rolled through the crowd like a wind.

Before the murmur died out, the young man on the horse said in a voice heavy with
rust, “All three of the girl’s friends were killed. Her right shoulder is dislocated,
and she’s got a crack in her left femur. She’s also got countless minor injuries.
Yet she still went and got the moss and fought her way back. Isn’t that enough?”

The crowd fell silent.

D continued, “I’ll be heading up to the castle soon. And if things don’t work out
today, I’ll go up there again tomorrow. That’s my job.”

And saying that, the Hunter slowly rode away without anyone shouting at him to stop.
The blacksmith and his son went with him.

The villagers looked at each other. Although some of them still muttered misgivings,
they’d been robbed of the strength to veto the plan.

Nevertheless, someone said, “Okay, we’ll let this go for today. But if the village
loses even one more person, Elena, there’s gonna be hell to pay. You remember that!”

“I know! I know!” Elena replied, although it sounded more like the words were directed
at herself.

The members of crowd sluggishly turned around, then wasted little time in breaking
into smaller groups as they dispersed, but Elena alone remained with her eyes aimed
in the same direction as ever. That was the way the gorgeous young man had gone, seeming
to glow in the sunlight yet, at the same time, like a chunk of ice that sucked the
heat out of everything.

“D,” the biker tough mumbled as the first fat tear in many years welled in her eye
and traced a glistening track down her cheek.

—

III

—

Breathtaking sunlight poured through a rainbow of stained glass in the vast chamber.
Where the entrance to this room was located remained a mystery—all four walls were
solid stone. Aside from the figure who stood in its very center, the room was bare
of tables or chairs or anything else—an area so antiseptic, it seemed unlikely even
a mote of dust lay there.

The figure stood looking straight ahead like a sculpted temple guardian, completely
absorbed in his thoughts since the previous night, like a lifeless suit of armor.

“What is it, Sir Black Knight?” asked the crimson form who’d appeared from somewhere,
though neither the walls nor the floor showed any sign of having opened. “You’ve been
like this for a good five hours now. What holds your thoughts?”