Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane Read online

  “Looks like he came back once he found out the butterflies were harmless,” Clay muttered scornfully.

  “I just came to tell you something,” D said dispassionately from the back of his horse.

  “Oh? And what would that be?”

  “A tornado has sprung up nearly a mile ahead of us. Not a very large one, but enough to pick all of us up. It’ll be here in about five minutes.”

  Of course, Granny and Clay must’ve wanted to know how the young Hunter had eluded the swarm of butterflies, and whether or not he’d watched their dizzying display until the end, but the threat of natural disaster took precedence over all else. As she stowed the flamethrower again, Granny asked the young man apprehensively, “You’ll be going with us, won’t you?”

  Needless to say, his reply was the same as always: “You’re free to follow me if you like.”

  .

  II

  .

  While a pale ash colored the east, light began to rain down at the same rate the darkness dissipated. It was dawn.

  The group had moved about three miles west from their first encampment and was sheltered behind a sand dune. When the wagon door opened quietly, a pale and reserved-looking face peered out. Roaring snores crept from the vehicle’s interior—the whole group had gone to bed about three hours earlier. Tae looked around sleepily at her surroundings, but they weren’t particularly terrifying. Behind a dune to her right lay a lumpy blanket where the toes of a pair of boots jutted from the end. Apparently, that was Clay. There was no sign of his older brother, and his horse wasn’t with Clay’s, either. There was no telling where a man like that could’ve gone. Sweeping another seventy degrees, Tae’s eyes then halted. A figure in black was reflected in her widened pupils.

  D was on the crest of a dune, staring off to the west. His form was reminiscent of the most exquisite sculpture, and as he focused solely on the direction they were headed, he had an air of intensity about him that suited the situation perfectly.

  Tae climbed down from the wagon and headed for the dune. For a girl who seemed to have lost her own will and who was manipulated like a doll by the old woman, this was an unbelievably purposeful course of action. Climbing the dune, she was a few yards from the Hunter when she came to a halt. It was the words that came over the back of his black coat that stopped her.

  “What brings you out here?” he asked.

  Tae didn’t answer.

  “There’s no telling what’ll come at us next out in this desert. Go back to the wagon.” His voice was soft, but it allowed no debate.

  Tae closed her eyes. Her head still hung low, and her thin, bloodless lips trembled with fright. “I . . . I thought I might . . . answer your question . . .”

  Back at the cheap hotel, D had asked the girl the name of the Noble who’d abducted her. Now it was a different question he put to her. “Do you want to tell me?” he asked.

  Tae looked up at D with an expression that betrayed her surprise.

  “Why have you decided to talk about it? If you don’t want to, don’t force yourself to do it.”

  The girl didn’t know what to say.

  “Did Granny put you up to this?”

  Tae looked down again. It took a few seconds before she could speak again. “If you didn’t feel like helping . . . she said none of us would make it across the desert alive . . . that’s why . . .”

  “Your parents are in Barnabas, aren’t they?”

  Several more seconds of silence followed.

  “It seems both of them are dead,” the girl replied. “But my big brother got married and took over the house.”

  “In that case, you needn’t burden yourself unduly for the rest of the trip. I can’t take you there, but you’re free to follow me.”

  Tae looked at D strangely. The black expanse of his back spoke volumes on loneliness and complete isolation. Somehow, she got the impression that the young man had nothing more to say to her. Tae backed away a few steps; she was too afraid to just turn around. Right as she was about to go, the girl hesitantly said, “I don’t remember anything at all. Just . . .”

  Just what?

  “In the darkness, there were always these two red eyes, blazing like rubies . . . watching me . . .”

  The Hunter hadn’t turned toward her, and the girl then turned her back to him, too.

  Not long after the sloping dune had hidden the tracks she left in the sand, another voice—a hoarse one—could be heard where D seemed to be alone. “Well, it looks like he got a taste of her after all,” it said with a chuckle. “In which case she’ll never know happiness no matter how she might try, eh? So, what do you suppose he did to her?”

  There was no reply. D just kept his eyes trained straight ahead at the cold world of sand that seemed shrouded in gray light.

  The voice laughed with amusement. “She may be behaving herself right now, but he isn’t crazy enough to snatch a human girl just so she can be his maidservant. Sooner or later, that girl’s bound to show her true colors. Our foes aren’t on the outside, but rather—”

  “There are some girls that nothing happens to,” D finally replied.

  “Sure, but that’s maybe one in ten thousand,” the voice shot back ruthlessly. “And just think about the miserable end this world has in store for all the rest of those girls—and I don’t just mean the ones he took.”

  If that comment had been directed at anyone but D, they would’ve grown pale as they tried desperately to strike the answer from their brain, or perhaps they would’ve frozen on the spot from the overwhelming horror of it.

  For the hidden, the tragedy really began when they were found and brought back to the world of humanity. There were girls who might suddenly sprout fangs and tear into someone’s throat the very day they were reunited with their parents. There were boys who might live uneventfully for months, or even years, before going mad without any warning whatsoever. There were actually records of a case a dozen years or so earlier where such children abandoned their parents again to live someplace in the mountains, but even there the madness in their blood set them to killing each other, until in the end they were all dead. You could say both the beginning and the end of the hidden’s tragic tale was penned when the children disappeared.

  “You know how it is,” D’s left hand continued. “In the end, nothing good can come of that girl going back to her family. At first, her parents will weep for joy. They’ll probably want her to live with them, even if it means hiding her from the neighbors or moving to another region. But after a while, they’ll get to wondering if maybe her eyes don’t have a strange glint to them. Not that you can blame them. To eyes that have peered into the darkness of the other side, this world is a hollow reflection. And could anything shy of the sights of hell ever move those kids again? No, not till the end of time. And there’s the first act of the tragedy. The very parents who would’ve died to have their kid back now can’t even look at them. They lock the kid in their room. And then one day the two of them pack up a wagon and take off out of the blue, leaving just their kid in the house.”

  The voice broke off there; D was squeezing his left hand into a fist. He did so with such force it wouldn’t have been surprising to hear the bones cracking.

  But from his fist, a tortured voice said, “I suppose you could say the kids that get left behind are the lucky ones, though. Some parents are more . . . thorough. The same parents who spent their last dalas searching for their kids one day start whittling down a piece of wood and putting a point on the end of it . . .”

  Something red had slowly begun to seep from between D’s fingers.

  “Oof . . . No one can really say . . . who it’s harder for . . . the parents or the kids . . . But I can tell you this . . . If that girl there never goes home . . . no one . . . gets . . . hurt . . .”

  At that moment, D quietly turned around. Seemingly following Tae’s tracks, he went down the dune. After mounting his cyborg horse, he wheeled around in the direction of Clay and the
wagon.

  “There’s a tornado approaching,” the Hunter declared. “We’re moving out.”

  After just enough time to contemplate his words, the blanket rose and the door to the wagon opened. Both the old woman and the warrior had been awake for some time. They certainly weren’t average travelers.

  “What, again?” Clay complained.

  “Seriously?” Granny Viper asked, just to be sure. “I mean, it’s not like that sort of thing springs up all the time. So, I take it this is a different one from last night, right?”

  “No, it’s the same one,” D said flatly.

  “Meaning all of what, exactly?” Clay asked, his lascivious expression twisting into a sneer. “Are you trying to tell us ol’ Mr. Twister’s out looking for us or something?”

  Ignoring him, D started riding to the east.

  “Son of a bitch,” Clay growled, hatred in his eyes, as he hustled after the Hunter and toward his own horse.

  Granny made haste, too.

  No sooner had the wagon taken off than Clay did something rather strange. Looking all around, he cupped one hand by his mouth and shouted as loudly as he could, “Bro, I’m going on ahead. You catch up with me later, okay?”

  Though Bingo didn’t seem to be anywhere within range of Clay’s cries, it seemed like his younger brother might have been able to see him. Saying nothing more and not seeming at all anxious, the warrior lashed his horse into action. As he galloped toward the wagon that was already twenty or thirty yards ahead of him, he looked over his shoulder.

  “God, that’s unbelievable,” Clay said, the words spilling from him like a trickle of disbelief.

  Distance-wise, it must’ve still been a couple of miles away—a line that looked like a twisted metal wire tied the heavens to the earth. It was bizarre the way that either end was blurred, seemingly dissolving into the sky at one extreme and the ground at the other. As far as Clay could see, it just kept growing thicker and thicker.

  Riding full-tilt, the younger Bullow pulled even with the wagon. Granny Viper also wore a look of desperation as she gripped the reins. She recognized the tornado for what it was now.

  The door opened, and Tae’s face appeared.

  “Don’t come out here,” Clay barked, but it was the old woman’s expression, instead, that stiffened at the remark. Tae remained as devoid of emotion as ever.

  Clay rode up on D’s right-hand side. For a split second the desire to take a shot at the Hunter from behind surfaced in his brain, but it quickly faded again. “What the hell’s the story with this tornado?!” he shouted. “It’s following us! A while back, I joked it was looking for us, but this is just—”

  “It’s a strange desert, isn’t it?” D said in a rare response.

  “Damned if I ever heard of a tornado chasing travelers all night long. But we managed to give it the slip once already. We’ll just do it again, right?”

  Giving no reply, D flicked his gaze to the rear.

  Imitating him, Clay looked back as well…and groaned despite himself.

  The tornado looked like it was three feet thick now instead of a thin wire. The distance was dwindling; it wasn’t a mile away now, or even five hundred yards.

  Shouting something, Clay kicked his horse’s flanks. As he shot away from D, he heard the Hunter behind him say, “The wagon’s going to be sucked in.” His voice was cold, like a machine’s. Clay quivered, as if an electrical current had just shot through his powerful back.

  “Do something, D!” Granny cried, her voice trailing after the Hunter.

  Grains of sand buffeted all of their faces.

  “This seriously ain’t good,” Clay muttered as he pulled back on the reins. Letting D pass him, he pulled up next to the wagon. “Granny, send the girl over here,” he shouted. His eyes were glittering.

  “Don’t make me laugh! Why, I’d no sooner trust a goddamn rapist like you than—”

  “I’m a lot faster than your wagon. We might just be able to get away.”

  “Give it a rest. Before I’d ever give her to you, I’d let the whirlwind have her.”

  “If that’s the way you want it.”

  Clay flew into the air. His huge form seemed to become feather-light, and he landed right next to the old woman. He then bulled his way to the door.

  “Stop it. If you don’t, I’ll—”

  Powerful winds tore away the rest of Granny’s cry. Not only did it tug at her words, but her body as well—the instant the edge of the fiercely writhing, sand-lifting pillar of black touched the wagon, both the vehicle and its three passengers were thrown high into the sky.

  .

  III

  .

  As Tae’s consciousness pulled away from the darkness, the conviction that she had returned to reality hit her. She was lying down. Beneath her, it was soft. Sand, no doubt. And it was hot. The sand was scorching. Slowly, Tae moved her limbs. She wasn’t in great pain. The dull throbbing she felt here and there was from being tossed around inside the wagon when it was picked up by the tornado. Propping herself up with both arms, she looked all around. A sense of incongruity dug into her spine.

  The endless expanse of sand was gone; right before her towered a fairly high mound of stone. It looked about a hundred and fifty feet high. Come to mention it, she was surrounded on all sides by rocks large and small. As it occurred to her that it wouldn’t be that strange to find such a rock formation in the desert, Tae picked herself up off the ground. Sweat spread across the back of her neck. She had no idea what time it was.

  “Well, little lady, looks like you made it okay,” someone called from the rock behind her, prompting her to turn in a daze. When she did, her eyes caught the massive form of a man in a brimless blue cap. Feeling the malicious lust in his eyes as he watched her, Tae backed away a few steps.

  “Don’t go being so cold with me, now,” Clay said, a broad smile creeping across his face as he approached her. The beads of sweat covering his face glistened. “I just came to a minute ago myself. This is a hell of a place to find ourselves. Could be me and you are the only two who survived, you know. In which case, it’d be better for both of us if we could play nice, now wouldn’t it?”

  “Keep away from me.”

  “Well, now. You got a lot more to say than I thought, don’t you? I didn’t really get to hear what you were jawing about with the Vampire Hunter. But I’d sure like to hear me some of that sexy voice of yours.”

  Before Clay had finished speaking, he pulled the girl’s tiny body close to his own massive form. Given almost no time to resist, Tae was pushed back against the sand.

  “Stop it!” Tae screamed as fingers hard as rock sank into her breasts through her blouse. When she tried to push the warrior off, her hands were caught by the wrist and twisted up over “her head. Clay’s lips came closer. The girl desperately turned her face away. His lips touched her cheek. Suddenly all the strength drained from the girl, and Clay knit his brow. Re-gardless, he sought her lips again. She was as unresponsive as a wax effigy.

  “What the hell?! You giving in already? That’s no fun at all. C’mon. Scream or cry or something!”

  Though the younger Bullow believed his words had carried sufficient threat, Tae’s expression hadn’t changed at all. This wasn’t just some trick to rob him of his carnal urges.

  Unable to stand it any longer, Clay shouted, “Hey!” and shook the girl by the shoulders. Taking her chin in hand, he turned her face back. The instant their eyes met, a moan slipped from him. What occupied Tae’s eyes was something humans were never meant to see. Sadness and hatred, suffering and fear—all of those emotions commingled in her eyes, but more than anything they were shrouded with a distant coldness beyond imagining.

  “You felt that all those years . . .” Clay muttered absentmindedly.

  “I remember . . . a little . . .” the eighteen-year-old girl said in a tone that could freeze even a hardened fighting man. “A little of what happened to me there . . . You’re exactly the same . . . Al
l of you . . . Humans and them . . .”

  “You mean you were . . .” Clay muttered, and then a harsh sound rang out. With a cry like a wild animal he pulled back, and then sprang forward. A howl through the wind followed after him: a mighty lash from a leathery whip.

  “Prepare to take your medicine. I’ll flay the hide off your hands and face!” Granny shouted from beside a massive boulder five or ten feet to the right of where Clay had first appeared. The whip whistled; it hardly seemed possible that an old woman was manip-ulating the whip as it dealt Clay a blow that stung to the bone.

  Eyes still shielded by both hands, he hurled a single insult: “You fucking hag!” Once again, Clay leapt back, and a beautiful sound rang through the air. A split second later, half of the whip that was snaking after the man’s massive form disappeared like a puff of smoke. At a loss for words, Granny stiffened with tension.

  “I’m gonna punch your ticket, you old bag!” Clay shouted, his right hand creeping across his harp. A prismatic cloud suddenly spread before his eyes.

  It was sand. The very instant that she saw Clay was drawing on his own skill, Granny quickly discarded her whip and pulled the sand from the jar at her waist. However, the strange color of the sand and the way she used it made it clear that this was no simple trick to blind her opponent.

  The sand that fell between the crone’s feet and the tips of Clay’s boots began to take human form—an image of Clay himself appeared on the ground.

  Something gleamed in the old woman’s right hand. The moment the short knife she kept hidden on her stabbed into the sand painting on the ground, Clay clutched his right ear with one hand. Redness seeped out between the palm of his hand and his cheek, but he didn’t make a sound.

  “What do you want carved up next? An eye, or maybe your nose?”

  Buffeted with the kind of threats that made grown men and fire dragons alike freeze in their tracks, Clay smirked as if the situation was so amusing that he just couldn’t help himself. “Granny Viper, People Finder—I guess the name ain’t just for show after all,” he said. “Now things are starting to get good. This is just the way I like it!”