Vampire Hunter D Volume 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight Parts 1 and 2 (9 page)

“A foe? You mean the Nobility had enemies?”

“Even now I don't know exactly what it was. Come.”

The pair started forward. Due to the humidity, Mia was winded before they'd walked for ten minutes.

“I've had it. Can't you do anything about this heat?” the girl panted.

“It's geothermal. The thermostat is irreparably damaged. Put up with it.”

“I can't walk anymore,” she said, turning her face to the floor, and just then, an arm like steel slid under her left arm.

“What—”

Before Mia could finish speaking, her body was lifted off the ground, turned, and loaded onto the fake D's back.

“What do you think you're doing? Put me down . . .”

She knew she could fight him all she wanted, but it still wouldn't do any good. The fake D had already started walking. Because of her exhaustion and the stifling heat, Mia quickly slumped against the black back.

And it was just then that the hair-raising screams resounded overhead. A vile-smelling wind seemed to strike her back, there was a shrill screech, and something brushed by her neck as it fell.

“Time to run,” the fake D said, his voice beginning to slice into the wind.

“What in the world's going on?”

“After the great destruction, the surviving guard beasts that were kept here spread all through the place. At present, this is a highly dangerous environment.”

“Then what are we doing here, pray tell?”

“You'll see soon enough.”

“When you say soon—”

Mia's words were cut short by the flapping sound of approaching wings overhead. She had no idea what shape these creatures
took. But the unusual number of wings Mia heard beating
terrified her.

The sound spread. They were all swooping down at once. The slicing noises that she heard one after another began to reverberate like one drawn-out sound. There was an echo of things falling around them. However, the sound of approaching wings hadn't dwindled in the least.

“It would seem we've got some of their blood on us. The scent is drawing them out.”

“Do something!”

The pair raced on.

Mia didn't yet know what fate awaited them up ahead.

 

-

I

-

Pain shot through her back as though it were being shredded. Desperately fighting back an explosion of agony, Mia sank her fingers into the fake's shoulders. Her hand reached for the pouch on her waist.

“I've got some caustic powder,” she whispered in a low voice. “When I give the word, hit the deck.”

“Sure.”

Mia, though somewhat dissatisfied with the fake D's amused tone, pulled the capsule of powder from her pouch. Once it spread through the air and the lighter at the top end of the capsule ignited it, it should melt anything, including rock, in a thirty-foot radius. But for Mia to remain safe, it was necessary to give due consideration to the timing of that ignition. Ordinarily, the powder wasn't really suited to a situation where she was moving so quickly. However, she didn't have time to be picky.

“Stop,” she called out, but as she turned the emitter upward, the capsule slipped.

“Oh!”

The tiny container struck her wildly grasping fingers once or twice before falling right through them.

“What is it?”

“I dropped the capsule.”

“What'll you do?”

There was the sound of demonic wings closing in on her from behind. A shriek rang out, and it sounded like a number of the creatures dove downward.

“I'm gonna look for it. Set me down.”

“Is this it?” the fake asked, holding the capsule out under her nose.

“B-but how?”

She needn't have even asked that. He'd caught it before it hit the ground. Mia was laid low by a feeling of utter defeat.

“Hurry up. The enemy isn't about to wait around for you.”

Once again she heard a strange flapping sound. It was followed by a slash, and what felt like wings fell onto Mia's back. She pressed the button as if she were spraying insecticide. It expelled the contents for two seconds—and then the sound faded. Holding her finger over the rough wheel of the lighter, she cried out, “Hit the dirt!”

And as she sank down, her finger rolled across it.

An iridescent sphere of light swelled into existence. A powerful acid tore into the creatures in the air, melting them.

“Good enough,” the fake D said, but how much time had passed was unclear.

As a weight resting on her suddenly vanished, Mia realized that she'd been on the bottom—the fake D had narrowly managed to shield her from the caustic flames. For the longest time Mia couldn't take her eyes off the back now exposed by his ruined coat.

“What are you looking at?” the fake asked, his back still to the girl.

Somewhat flustered, Mia hurriedly replied, “The monsters' corpses. They're all melted. I didn't get to see what they looked like after all.”

“Let's go.”

“Okay. I'll be right—”

In the middle of her reply, the ceiling and floor seemed to switch places.

Swiftly catching Mia as she fell, the fake D could feel the warm wetness on her back with his fingers. Torn open by an attack from the monsters, Mia's back had lost about as much blood as it could.

“You mentioned my true appearance,” the fake D said, his eyes beginning to gleam fiercely. “Okay, I'll show you. Now.”

Telling her this in a voice that prickled like frost, he brought his handsome visage closer to Mia's pale throat.

-

The next thing she knew, she was lying in bed. On remembering everything that had happened up until that point, she looked around in shock at her ravaged surroundings, which bore some resemblance to a sickroom. The ceiling and walls were ruined, and by the barest of illumination she made out what seemed to be melted beds and medical equipment. Here lay death, heavy and dark.

“Are you awake?” Mia heard a voice above her head ask abruptly, and the girl thought the shock would snuff her breath. Was the D looking down at her the real one or the fake? After some consideration, she let out a disappointed sigh.

“If you're awake, I'll have you join me,” the fake D told her.

“What is this place?”

“A hospital. Of course, it doesn't really resemble one much anymore.”

That much Mia could understand. But what sort of being would go to such lengths to destroy one of the Nobility's facilities? This new puzzle occupied her brain.

Mia got up. Her back hurt terribly.

“I wouldn't jump around too much if I were you. I couldn't do any more than a makeshift treatment. You lost a lot of blood.”

Terror drove a pillar of ice through Mia's spine. Bleeding in front of a man with the blood of the Nobility in him? In all her life, she'd never done anything with the same speed that she now used to bring her hands to either side of her neck.

Once her fingertips told her that the skin remained smooth, the fake said to her, “Feel relieved now?”

He seemed quite pleased with himself.

“Although it was a very alluring aroma, I have no intention of making you my servant at present. You see, without a body that can live in the odious light of day, I can't accomplish my aims.”

Mia didn't hear these words. Her relief at not having fallen to the pernicious fangs of the Nobility had blotted out all other thoughts. And it was due to that that she failed to notice the fearsome meaning of his last remark.

A short time later, Mia brought up a different matter. “You took care of my back, didn't you?”

“Well, I couldn't have you dying on me.”

“I'm fine now. So, what's next?”

The fake D's eyes gleamed.

“Down here—” he began to say, but just then, the darkness grew deeper.

Though Mia didn't notice it, the walls of this room also retained the same light-emitting properties. When she looked up at the fake D's face, Mia found the first traces of tension in his expression.

“He made it through the defense systems faster than I expected. He truly is . . .”

The words that went unsaid made Mia's heart race.

“What happened? D?”

“Stay here,” the fake ordered her, and then he turned around. “There are strange things prowling around outside. Don't go out there.”

The voice was swallowed by the depths of the darkness.

If this impostor called D “me,” what manner of being could get him so agitated? Mia became more intrigued. Her curiosity had made her call on this dark abode, and it was safe to say it was now once more inviting her into pitch black danger.

Somehow keeping the pain in her back in check, Mia got out of bed and began to walk off toward where the fake D had disappeared. She was still dressed. Her pouch remained safe and sound, too. Searching for anything else that might serve as a weapon, she picked up a foot-and-a-half-long piece of steel pipe off the floor. When she swung it with both hands, it seemed like it would suffice. But in return, a sharp pain shot through her back.

She could see only darkness ahead of her, but upon entering it, she found the door. Once she stood before it, it opened by itself.

Great, she thought, but as soon as she stepped out through it, it closed right behind her. Flustered, she tried stepping on the floor in front of it a few times, but now the door wouldn't budge at all. Which was why the fake D had told her not to go outside.

“This is bad,” she told herself, but she quickly gave up on stewing over it. In studying divination, Mia had learned that if one method didn't give you the answer, you should switch to another right away. If astrology didn't work, try a reading from the winds—and that was exactly the philosophy that guided her now.

Mia was standing in a broad corridor. Although everything, including the doors set into the walls, was made of the same luminescent metal, the surfaces were melted, twisted, and smudged with oily smoke, speaking volumes about how a savage destroyer had torn through here mercilessly. Nevertheless, Mia couldn't do anything to stop the admiration and the fathomless fear spreading through her heart. Here was a facility beyond the imaginings of the humans up above—what on earth could've laid such waste to it?

I have to know—Mia's new curiosity flashed so brightly that even when she shut her eyes, it burned into her eyelids.

Where had the fake D gone? That was the first thing she should consider.

“It's been a while, but I suppose I should give it a try,” Mia said, moving to the center of the corridor and standing the steel pipe on end. Chanting the spell for directional divination, she took a step backward. The pipe floated about four inches straight up in the air. This was the most important part of any divination—an impartial view.

“Now!”

With that, the pipe dropped, pointing off to the left when it landed. Picking it up, Mia started off to the right side without a moment's hesitation.

The air was terribly hot, but at least it didn't have an odd smell to it. As she walked for the next ten minutes, she came to a number of corners and stairways, and each time Mia used the same method to decide her path. She didn't run into any of the “strange things” the fake D had mentioned.

Though the degree of destruction in the underground facility grew greater the farther she went, Mia grew inured to it. She only realized that'd been shortsighted of her when she came to an area that reminded her of a factory. Ruined machines of staggeringly huge proportions towered to either side of her, all of them half melted and misshapen. Some had their inner workings exposed, and those had also melted away. While many of the massive machines were recognizable as cranes or furnaces, there were also amalgamations of spheres and cubes that seemed to suck her in as she looked at them, and the mere thought of the purpose they might serve formed ice on the nape of Mia's neck.

“Incredible—but they're all out of commission,” she murmured.

The faint light never failed, throwing Mia's shadow across the floor.

When she came to a sixty-foot-high cylinder that called to mind a rectifier, Mia sensed the presence of someone behind her. She turned and looked. A shadowy figure swiftly hid itself behind an iron pillar. Although it was a human shape, it wasn't that of the fake D. For starters, he wouldn't be one to hide.

“Who's there?” Mia called out in a firm tone.

Stillness returned to the world.

“C'mon out. We're just spooking each other this way.”

As Mia glared at the spot where the shape had vanished, her right hand slipped into her pouch. Groping blindly, she found the capsule of phosphorous powder and pulled it out. After spraying it at her feet for a second or so, she opened the lid, spilling its contents out as she backed away.

When she'd gone about fifteen feet, the human figure reappeared in its original position. Leaning forward somewhat with both arms crossed in a disagreeable manner, it was headed toward her at a good clip. Apparently it wasn't about to let her get away. But when it came close enough that she could clearly discern its features even in the faint light, a cry of horror rang from Mia's lips.

“But you're—Zoah!”

Partly it was the gloom and partly it was her own reaction that left her aghast, but the youth with a complexion as pale as paraffin was indeed the same young man who'd been decapitated two days earlier. The proof was on his neck—black stitches ran all around the base of it.

“Zoah . . . Who in the world could've . . .” Mia said, tears spilling from her eyes. While they were tears of mourning at the pitiful sight of the young man who'd loved her, they were also tears of rage toward whoever would subject the dead to such a ghastly procedure.

However, the way the young man approached her devoid of expression was truly unsettling.

“Zoah, say something.”

A pale face. And at its center, eyes as cloudy as those of a dead fish.

“Don't come near me, Zoah,” Mia finally cried out.

But he was coming.

Fear dictated Mia's course of action. Crouched down, she struck the capsule's lighter. Defying the gloom, a blinding flash of light zipped over to Zoah's feet. At that instant, Zoah stepped onto the phosphorus powder she'd scattered seconds earlier. Though Mia's eyes were shut tight, she was assailed by images of the white seeping through her lids and used both hands to hide her face.

“I'm sorry!”

Opening her eyes a crack, she turned and ran for all she was worth. The sound of burning followed her for a brief period. The living corpse hadn't even let out a scream.

“Zoah . . . Zoah . . .” Mia cried, sobs spilling from her lips.

At that point, heaven and earth traded places. A tremendous jolt twisted the world, throwing Mia's body in a direction even she couldn't determine, where she was swallowed up.

-

II

-

She had the sensation of sliding downward. At the very least, she wasn't flying. Beneath her body she could feel an incline.

What's gonna happen? she wondered—and just then, a shock tossed her body up. Mia was just in the midst of a scream when she landed on her ass against hard ground.