Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane Read online

  Although his squat form looked to be less than five feet tall, he had a considerable amount of fat on him—evidence of days spent in pursuit of culinary delights. He didn’t bother to cover himself as he slipped on his underpants. Once the man was wrapped in a robe, he actually looked quite dignified. Digging a thick pair of glasses out of his coat pocket, he put them on. He almost looked like he could pass for a scholar from the Capital.

  “This isn’t exactly the most appropriate place to receive a guest who’s traveled so far, but, you see, I wasn’t expecting to see you so soon.” Glancing then at the electric clock on the wall, he added, “Actually, you’re right on time. But back at the hotel, I heard that a cloud of moving miasma had shown up on the road, and that no one would be able to get through for a couple of days . . . Guess I should’ve remembered I was dealing with the Vampire Hunter D.”

  In what was surely a rare occurrence for the young Hunter, he received a somewhat sheepish smile from the other man, but when the man in black failed to move even a single muscle in his face, Thornton shrugged his shoulders and said, “Well, I suppose I should tell you about the job, then.”

  The reason he averted his gaze at this point wasn’t so much to change the tone of the conversation, but rather because he’d reached the point where he could no longer stand looking at D head-on. Regardless of gender, those who gazed at the young man’s gorgeous visage for too long began to hallucinate that they were being drawn into the depths of his eyes. Actually, the women that Thornton had shoved out of the way had been ready to voice their dissatisfaction when D suddenly entered their field of view and left them frozen with their mouths agape.

  “Okay, get your asses out of here! I’ll pay you twice what you had coming,” the little man—Thornton—said, but even as he shoved them out, the women kept their dumbstruck gazes trained on D until the very end.

  “Care for a drink?” Thornton asked the Hunter as he picked up the bottle of liquor sitting on the table, but then he shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, that’s right—you dhampirs like to say, ‘I never drink wine,’ don’t you? Sorry. I may be a lawyer, but I’m still just a plain old human. Pardon me while I have one.”

  Filling his glass to the very brim with the amber liquid, Thornton pressed it to his lips. Time and again, his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down before he exhaled roughly and set his empty glass back on the table.

  As he nervously brought his hand up to wipe his lips, Thornton began by saying, “I wrote to you for one purpose and one purpose alone. I want you to cross the desert. To go all the way to the town of Barnabas, across this ‘Desert of No Return’ where so many have never been seen again.”

  “For what purpose?” D asked, opening his mouth at last. “In your letter, you said you could furnish me with information about someone I have a great interest in.”

  “That’s correct,” Thornton said, nodding his agreement. “And the reason I can do so is because the request to send you out into the desert comes from that very person.”

  .

  II

  .

  Now that it was late at night, the sound of the bugs had only increased in its plaintive rhapsody. A few minutes later, blossoms covered the town and the sounds died out, began anew, and then vanished again . . . as if the night would never end, and the song of parting would never cease.

  It was at that moment that a wrinkled hand knocked on the door to a room in a hotel on the edge of town. There was no answer. Without waiting very long, the hand pushed against the door. It opened easily. The interior was claimed by the same shade of darkness as the world outside. The reason Granny Viper turned to the right side without hesitation wasn’t because she’d memorized the location of the bed, but because she could see as well in the dark as she could at midday.

  “Pardon the intrusion,” the old woman called out in a hoarse voice, and although she received no reply to her greeting, she could see the tall figure that lay on the bed clearly enough. “Ordinarily, I’d call you careless, but for the Vampire Hunter D, having the door locked or unlocked probably makes no difference. Anyone who came in here with evil in mind wouldn’t live to tell about it.” Her tone was buoyant, and she meant her words as a compliment. As always, there was no reply, so the hunched-over figure said, “Sure, I’d heard of you before, but I never could’ve imagined you’d be so incredible. Obviously, you’re awful good-looking, too, but what I couldn’t believe was that someone actually ignored the Bullow Brothers. That’s when I thought to myself: That settles it. At first, I was aiming to ask the two of them to help, but forget that now. Who needs a couple of punks fresh outta short pants, anyway? I’ve decided to go with you instead.”

  Here the old woman paused and waited for the Hunter to respond, but there was no reply. Perhaps he was just a shadow that had taken human form? She strained her ears and still she couldn’t hear him draw a single breath, nor could she catch the beating of his heart. The crone realized that if her night vision wasn’t so keen, she’d never have noticed his presence.

  Any ordinary person would’ve lost hope at this exercise in futility, or grown indignant at his cold-heartedness. But the old woman went on talking. “When I first came in,” she said, “I didn’t feel the urge to kill from you, and I don’t now, either. I’ve been to other Hunters’ rooms, but it’s unbelievable. They’re always on edge, never knowing when somebody’s gonna try and get the drop on them, and you can feel the violence just hanging around in the air outside their rooms. No matter how big they are, you’re above them all. If someone came in here, they’d take you for a stone until the second you struck them dead. On the other hand, if you wanted to, you could stop a foe cold through a stone wall with just a harsh look in their direction. But I suppose I’d be surprised if you had a mind to do that even once in your life. And that’s why I’ve pinned all my hopes on you.”

  In a manner of speaking, all the old woman’s efforts were rewarded.

  “What do you want with me?” asked the shadow of all shadows.

  “I already told you, didn’t I? I want you to come with me. You know, across the desert to the town of Barnabas. There’d be a nice piece of change in it for you. Enough for all the booze and broads you’d ever want. I just know you couldn’t say no to a sweet deal like this.”

  “No.” His concise reply had an intensity that completely severed the discussion.

  “Well, why the hell not?”

  “Leave.”

  “Stop mucking around,” Granny said to him. “I just told you how set I am on having you. Maybe you think you’re too good to listen to some old bag, eh? Well, I’ll show you. You might not think so, but I’m pretty well known across the Frontier. And while they may not be quite as dangerous as you, I know a lot of people—folks that’ll come running just as soon as I give the word. No matter how tough you are, up against a hundred of them—”

  The crone’s voice died there. As if pushed by something, her stooped figure leapt back. Perhaps unable to weather the other-worldly air that staggered the imagination, she flew out of the room with terrific speed. Light flowed in from the corridor.

  “Stop it,” Granny shouted. Her words had the ring of an entreaty. “What, do you plan on killing me? I’m more than a hundred years old, you know! What’ll you do if you give me a heart attack or something?”

  Yet the unearthly air continued to creep toward her.

  “Just stop it, or this kid—this girl—will die, too!” she shouted, slipping around the door and reappearing in the rectangular space pushing another figure. Someone with eyes that could pierce the darkness would see the shoulder-length black hair and the soft lines beneath the simple flesh-tone dress, and might even determine that the girl was about seventeen or eighteen years old. Without saying a single word, she just squatted there, hugging her own shoulders. The Hunter’s ghastly aura was merciless.

  “Please, stop,” the crone cried out from behind the door. “The girl’s name is Tae—she was one of the hidden. What’s more, it was t
he Nobility that hid her!”

  The girl’s rigid body collapsed unexpectedly. Bracing one hand against the floor, she heaved a few short, sharp gasps. Rather attractive in its own way, her face was as expressionless as stone now, as if it terrified her to draw even the smallest of breaths. The girl seemed to have the world crushing in on her from all sides.

  Granny’s face peeked around from behind the door as her expression turned deadly serious. She came out slowly, moving with a weighty and plaintive gait. Circling around behind Tae, she put her hands on the girl’s pale shoulders. Turning to the darkened depths of the room, she asked, “Do you know what my trade is?” Quickly realizing she wasn’t likely to get a reply, she said, “I’m a people finder. I’ve been nicknamed Viper, like the snake, but I’m not one of them dala-a-dozen orphan trackers they’ve got hanging around here. I specialize in children who’ve been taken—I find the hidden. You know,” she said to the Hunter, “I can’t very well stand out here talking about it. Let me come back in for a second. C’mon, stand up,” she told the Tae as she forced her to her feet, went back into the room, and closed the door. What’s more, she then pulled out a chair, told Tae, “Have a seat,” and settled herself in another chair, in a display that took presumptuousness to laudable heights. And yet, the reason she didn’t complain about D’s rudeness as he continued to just lie there was because his ghastly aura still permeated her flesh. “This girl—” she began to explain before she was interrupted.

  The darkness was split by the voice of its master. “You mentioned the Nobility, didn’t you?”

  “Why, yes, I do believe I did,” the old woman said, fighting back her delight. “She’s a genuine, bona fide victim of hiding by the Nobility. I nearly killed myself getting her out of Castle Gradinia.”

  .

  For all the supernatural phenomena that occurred out on the Frontier, the notion of the hidden had an especially chilling connotation. Unlike profit-motivated kidnappings, these could suddenly happen right out in public or under conditions where it should’ve been impossible to just vanish. The victims could be young or old, male or female, but in the case of young ladies it was almost certain to conjure images of a dreaded fate that would make anyone quake with terror . . . even as it robbed them of their tears. There were several possible causes for these disappearances, and they were sometimes attributed to unknown creatures or to the dimen-sional rips that appeared at irregular intervals. But in cases where members of the Nobility were suggested as the culprits, the terror sprang not from the disappearance itself, but from the anticipated result. What kind of fate might befall a young lady in such a situation? If they were merely prey to satisfy their captor’s taste for blood, they might be saved. Luckier still were those who were given positions as maidservants on the whim of the Nobility, though this was less common. A fair number of girls were rescued under those circum-stances, but there could be more to it than that . . .

  .

  “A hell of a time I had there,” Granny said, twisting her lips. “I was thinking I’d taken out all their defensive systems, but there was still one left. Damned thing put me to sleep until night. Well, I’d already made up my mind about what I was gonna do, so I drove a stake through the bastard’s heart just as he was getting out of his coffin. Still, he was thrashing around like nobody’s business, and I had to keep that accursed stake stuck in him for a good three hours before he simmered down. After that, I searched the place, and happened to find this girl. Not to worry, though, I’ve checked her out, and as far as I can tell, there’s nothing wrong with her. I had her hypnotized so deeply it would’ve driven her mad to go any further. And, naturally, she can walk around in daylight.”

  “How did you find her?” D asked, his query free of inflection.

  Tae shivered with fear.

  The crone shrugged her shoulders and said, “There really wasn’t much to it. Once I went down into the basement, I found a prison where they kept humans. She was locked in there. I asked her a few things, and by the sound of it, they had her slaving away as a maid of sorts. You can guess the rest. She was still right in the head, so she remembered which village she hails from. The sheriff in Gradinia even had a request from her parents to look for her. And that’s how I ended up transporting her. That’s what I do, you know.” Granny nodded in a way that made it clear she was quite proud of what she did, too.

  “And the Noble—what was his name?”

  The old woman didn’t answer that question. Although the Hunter’s tone and the direction he faced hadn’t changed, the crone understood that this query was directed at Tae.

  Tae’s body trembled, but her face remained aimed at the floor. She didn’t say a word. It was almost as if she was erecting shields of incredible density all around herself.

  The old woman, however, grew agitated and barked, “What are you doing? Hurry up and answer the man! This could mean the difference between us getting to the town of Barnabas safely or not!”

  Tae said nothing.

  “Oh, you stupid little twit!” Granny shouted, raising her right hand violently while keeping her back as straight as an arrow. Apparently, her hunching had been part of an act to get his sympathy, but there was no need for her to follow through with the blow.

  “Leave,” D said, making it clear that their visit had concluded.

  “Wait just one second. I’m not done speaking my piece yet,” the crone cried out in a pitiful tone. There wasn’t an iota of the bluster she’d shown the Bullow Brothers left in her voice. The sudden and complete reversal was a nice change, though. “Like I just explained, we’re in a situation where we’ve gotta get across the desert . . . and we’ve got a time limit, too. If we don’t make it in four days, counting tomorrow, we’re out of luck. See, the girl’s family is in the town of Barnabas, but on the morning of the fifth day, they’ll be moving on to somewhere else. Given the size of the desert, it’s gonna be a close call. If we were to go around it, it’d take us more than a week, which is why we definitely need us some heavy-duty backup. Now, I don’t know just what brings you to town, but if you haven’t taken care of whatever it is, I’d like you to put it off for a while and come along with us. I don’t care whether you wanna do it or not; I’ve already settled on you. Hell, even the girl said she likes you. Didn’t you, sweetie?” the crone said, seeking some corroboration, but the girl remained as stiff as a board. “See what I mean? She likes you so much that she’s at a loss for words. Of course, that’s only natural, you being so handsome and all.” Chuckling, she added, “This may sound strange, but if I was a tad younger myself, I don’t think I could keep away from you, stud.”

  Of course, D didn’t move a muscle.

  Seeing that this was having no effect, Granny changed tactics. Her tone suddenly became tearful. Sobs echoed through the darkness. “Have you no pity for this poor child?” she asked, her entreaty coming in a nasal tone. “She was only ten when she was taken, and she spent eight years locked up in a Noble’s castle. Even I don’t know what happened to her during all that time—and I’m not about to ask. Can you blame me? Somehow, though, the girl survived. That’s right—she kept herself alive for eight long years, a girl all alone in a world we can scarcely imagine. Doesn’t she have the right to live the rest of her life in happiness now? When I found out her family was still alive and well, it brought tears to my eyes, I tell you. Her life’s just about to begin. Now, wouldn’t you wanna do everything in your power to help her out?” Winded from her speech, Granny caught her breath. Tears glistened in her eyes. It was all terribly impressive.

  D’s answer was brief: “Leave.” The word had a forceful ring to it.

  The crone was about to say something, but decided against it. “Okay, I get the message,” she spat back in a rancorous tone that would’ve raised the eyebrows of all who heard it. “I’m gonna call it a night, but there’s no way we’re giving up on this. We need you. I don’t care what I’ve gotta stoop to; I’m gonna get you to come along with us. C’mon, Tae.�
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  As she indignantly turned to the door, the old woman cursed in a low voice. Her back suddenly hunched over again. Taking the girl with downcast eyes by the hand, Granny dragged her out into the hall and disappeared.

  The door closed with a force that shook the room. The reverberations were absorbed then by the air and building materials, and mere seconds later, when silence once again ruled the darkness, the chirping began. It was the small and distant sound of the bugs pecking at the dark of night, scratching at the hearts of all who listened. It was the sort of sound that made those who heard it want to lie down deep in the earth. To those who were leaving town, the songs seemed to bid them adieu. Who knows how many listeners likened the melody the bugs continued to play to a funeral dirge. The sound continued just a little while longer, and soon, outside the room’s tiny window, the light pink petals began to rain down. Yet even then, the figure lying on the bed did nothing, as if melodies of parting and funeral laments held no relevance for him.

  .

  III

  .

  The next day, the world belonged to the winds. Every time they whistled forlornly, a thin coat of what looked like gold dust was thrown onto the streets.

  It was still early morning when the angry voices surrounded the hotel. The number of people around the building and packed into its lobby looked like it encompassed the entire population of the small town. They demanded that the hotel manager chase off the Vampire Hunter that was staying there immediately, and although he was reluctant at first, he consented after hearing all the circumstances. And while he understood the reasons, his heart must’ve been heavy at the thought of dealing with the greatest Hunter on earth, because his steps were sluggish as he headed to the stairs from the front desk.

  All of the townspeople behind the manager were armed. Although there was usually comfort in numbers, the reason their faces were as pale as paper was because they, like all residents of the Frontier, were well-informed about the general capabilities of Hunters. The fingers wrapped around their stake-firing guns and long spears were stiff, cold, and clammy.