Pilgrimage of the Sacred and the Profane Read online

  “I was about to say the same thing myself,” Granny said, licking her lips. The situation was rapidly escalating to a dangerous boiling point where more blood could be spilt and lives could be lost.

  And then someone said, “Hold it right there.”

  Both of them froze at that pitch-black voice. Two pairs of eyes zipped halfway up the rocky mound, where the hem of a black long coat billowed out in the scant breeze. It wasn’t clear whether it was Granny or Clay who mumbled D’s name.

  “Put your personal differences aside until we figure out what’s going on with the desert. Where’s the girl?” the Hunter asked.

  Clay and Granny finally noticed that Tae was no longer there. An almost pitiful look of distress rose on the old woman’s haughty countenance.

  .

  Tae came around the rocks and wiped her lips. Bewilderment and despair were rising from the pit of her stomach, spreading through her whole body. She didn’t know what she was going to do next, or even what she should do. She started walking. She didn’t want to sit there crying, though she wasn’t really sure why she shouldn’t. She wasn’t sure where she was going; all she knew was that wanted to get away from everyone.

  As countless phantoms flickered in her consciousness, one vivid image came to the fore, and then faded: crimson eyes glowing in the darkness . . . coming closer.

  Where will I go? What will I do?

  Those eyes were peering into her patiently. As she tried to squeeze out a scream, her throat convulsed, barely choking it off. From behind the crimson glow, a pale visage vaguely drifted into view. It was a face that was incredibly beautiful, manly, and above all, sad. An emotion that felt like crystal-clear water filled the girl’s heart.

  Compared to that, she thought, compared to the fate that fashioned those eyes and that face, my pain is nothing.

  The red points of light faded.

  Tae noticed she’d come to a standstill. I should go back, she thought. Though she had no idea what awaited her, she decided to forge ahead anyway. Then suddenly Tae turned right back around as she heard something stir behind her. She looked over her shoulder. A good two seconds passed before she could push a scream past her lips.

  .

  The first one to race over to the girl was Clay. The instant he came around the rocks, he saw Tae running toward him. Steadying the girl who’d just thrown herself at his chest, he then concentrated his gaze on the person before him. It was a man clad in a tattered shirt and trousers. Covered with a bushy overgrowth of hair and beard, his face looked emaciated, although his physique was relatively well-defined. The man stood there dazed for a few seconds and then fell to his knees on the spot.

  “What in blazes do we have here?” Granny said from behind Clay.

  “I don’t know. By the look of him, he seems like a traveler lost in the desert. But how the hell could he get by living in this hole in the rocks? Could be dangerous.”

  Grabbing Tae by the arm and pulling her away, Granny told the warrior, “You’ll have to help me while I bring her away someplace safe. If you’re a real man, you’ll take care of matters here.” And then she beat a hasty retreat.

  “Who the hell are you?” Clay asked, his fingers still poised on his harp. Murderous intent billowed from every inch of his body—it would’ve been enough to make the average person collapse on the spot. He was head-and-shoulders above the warriors and Hunters found everywhere else.

  Scared perhaps by the younger Bullow’s demeanor, the man shook his head repeatedly and raised both hands defenselessly. “How . . . how did all of you get here?” he asked. It almost sounded like his windpipe was clogged with sand.

  Odd as it was, it prompted Clay to reply, “We got scooped up by a mean old tornado and went for a little flight.”

  Clay watched with surprise as the other man’s shoulders slumped part-way through his reply. His hands came down to hide his face. “It got you, too? I just knew it. We’ll all be stuck here for the rest of our lives . . .”

  “What’s that?!” Clay bellowed. “Just what do you mean by that? And who the hell are you, anyway?!”

  When Clay took a step toward the other man, his eyes were drawn to several riders coming around the base of the mountain. Perhaps noticing them too, the man who’d been crouched there suddenly leapt back up, gave a frightened cry, and raced over to Clay. Just as the ragged man was about to collide with him, Clay dodged easily to the right and stuck his foot out. Falling forward with great impetus, the man threw a cloud of dust high into the air. But he quickly got back up again. He might have clutched at Clay’s legs, but the warrior effortlessly backed away to keep the contact from happening.

  “Please, help me,” the man groaned. “I ran away from them. Up until yesterday, I was one of them. There was no use trying to escape . . . no one’s getting out of this damn desert!” the man cried with the most appalling look of hopelessness hammered into his worn face.

  But Clay did him one better as he glared back at the stranger with an almost demonic expression. “Don’t make me laugh, you little coward. Unless you want me to turn you over to them, you’d best promise to answer me straight about everything I wanna know. If you do, I’ll chase ’em off for you. If not, I’ll personally see to it that they butcher you on the spot.”

  “Okay,” the man said, nodding without complaint. Although his face didn’t look like that of a weak-willed person, the man exhibited considerable fear.

  “Just so long as we’re clear on that. Wait behind me, then. Oh, and one more thing: you gotta promise me you’ll keep your mitts off the girl.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Good. Get back there. You can relax now.” As he listened to the man scurrying behind him for cover, Clay stood there waiting for the approaching dust cloud.

  Though the man said that these were his compatriots, there must’ve been a grave mistake. Astride cyborg horses that looked brand new, the group of men wore shirts so neat and starched they looked freshly laundered. There were four of them.

  “Hey there!” Clay called out, raising his left hand in greeting. The gazes that met him were like stone. His smile never fading a bit, the warrior continued, “We went and got ourselves carried off by a tornado. We’re in a spot of trouble, seeing as we don’t know where we’re at now. So, this is great. You guys sure are a sight for sore eyes. Just whereabouts would this happen to be?”

  “We came for the man,” said the middle-aged man who stood at the fore—a powerfully built character, who seemed to be their leader. His voice was impenetrable. It was devoid of every emotion a human—or any creature, for that matter—normally possessed. Actually, the voice would’ve sounded more natural coming from a rock. “You’re coming with us, too.”

  Clay bared his teeth in a pearly smile. “That’s fine by me. I had me a good upbringing, and I ain’t too tough. See, I hate to go anywhere alone. But this other guy says he don’t wanna go back, so I don’t reckon there’s any way to satisfy everybody here.”

  The men didn’t even exchange glances with one another.

  “Is that a fact?” the leader said. “In that case . . .”

  Seeing the middle-aged man’s hand go for the firearm in his belt, Clay swung his right hand up from below. The broadsword he’d hidden up his sleeve became a flash of white that pierced the man’s throat. The man’s hand was on his gun; Clay saw the muzzle of it turn toward his chest. It disgorged flame. The breechblock moved back, and a sleek empty cartridge flew from the weapon.

  Taking a hit from an explosive round that could’ve easily blown a human head apart on impact, Clay just smiled. The inner lining of his shirt came from the bark of the armor oak, which was harder than rock. His right hand flowed across the strings of his harp releasing a tremendous sound.

  The man at the fore of the group became an ash-gray statue, and an instant later the same fate befell his horse. They both fell to the ground in a dusty cloud. There would be no further attacks; the three others behind the leader had turned
to dust, too. Perhaps the only reason one rider and mount at the very back still retained their original shape in this sandy form was because they were at the very end of the audibility range for the sound.

  “Maybe they don’t die, but they seem to turn to dust just fine,” Clay said as he raised his right hand and hacked off one of the motionless horse’s legs. Not bothering to watch the new pile of sand the collapsing figures created, Clay looked up. He had no idea where they’d been hiding, but another horse and rider now galloped away about fifty yards from him. “Son of a bitch!” he moaned, cursing his own carelessness.

  Taking his harp in hand, he turned it toward the rider fleeing over a rise. The device generated ultrasonic waves that destroyed the molecular structure of any material, and as if to compensate for the cruelty of those sound waves, the vibrating strings also created splendid melodies.

  However, Clay didn’t have a chance to unleash another deadly attack with his fingers. The one surviving attacker suddenly saw a figure standing in the road before him. His horse didn’t stop. The moment it looked like the beast’s iron-shod hooves were going to trample him, the shadowy figure leapt up. Even after D landed, with his long coat spread out around him, the horse and rider kept right on running. But when the longsword clicked smoothly back into the sheath on D’s back, the rider’s head finally left his shoulders and rolled across the road.

  “Glad you could pitch in at the end there,” Clay said as sarcastically as possible to D, who walked toward him without even glancing at the results his own skill had wrought. “Where the hell did you run off to after you found out the girl was missing? Weren’t trying to get a preview of my skills, were you? No, you wouldn’t do any petty shit like that. Went to check out the neighborhood, right? You’re a cold customer. Didn’t you give any thought to what’d happen if I found the girl? And you left me to handle all of them, too. If I got killed, the old bag and girl would’ve both been goners, you know.”

  “You didn’t get killed,” was all D said.

  Clay had no reply, and that was the end of it. But three pairs of frightened eyes greeted the approaching beauty in black.

  THE LIVING DESERT

  CHAPTER 3

  .

  I

  .

  The man said his name was Lance and that he was part of a farm group improving crops in the northern Frontier. The group had developed a new strain that would bear fruit even in cold areas without water; they’d selected this desert to stage their experiments some five years earlier. Traveling in a caravan of five trailers bearing a hundred thousand seedlings, the farmers fell victim to a sandstorm and were attacked by a pack of bandits. Regardless of whether they offered any resistance or not, all were slain. Lance himself had been hit, but for some reason the bandits pulled out the gun they’d shoved in his mouth and brought him back to their hideout. The reason Lance went along with all of this was because, in the heat of battle, he’d seen that no matter how many times the bullets and blades of his compatriots had found their mark, the bandits had been utterly unfazed—and he valued his own life. As soon as they arrived back at the bandits’ lair, however, Lance realized he’d been drawn into a world beyond imagining.

  “You see, the first thing they did was tell me their age. The leader said he was going to turn two hundred that year. And the other bandits did the same, saying they were a hundred, or a hundred and fifty, or whatever the hell they felt like. I laughed at them—at least I had enough backbone left for that. It’s what they showed me next that tore the very soul out of me.”

  “And what was that?” Granny asked eagerly.

  “Their stomachs. One by one they took off their shirts. And then . . .”

  Lance pressed both hands over his face. They were in a cave they’d found in a rocky mound. The air was sultry, but it was better than being outside. Luckily, they also found Granny’s wagon intact, so for the time being they were set as far as food and weapons went.

  “What did you see?” Granny asked, growing pale as she did so.

  “They were mummies, you see.” Under the fresh new shirt of every last one of them, the stomach-wrenching remains of desiccated flesh clung to their bones. “Yet they were perfectly normal from the neck up—as you saw earlier. They turned their ordinary faces at me and grinned. I tell you, I thought I was done for then and there.”

  The mandate Lance got from them was strange and cruel; he was to work alongside these living corpses as they carried out their mission of slaughtering any travelers who ventured into the desert. How could Lance refuse them?

  “In the past five years, we’ve attacked four parties,” Lance said. “I killed folks, too. Men, women—people I didn’t know at all. If I didn’t do it, they would have killed me. One of them was a girl about your age, too, Miss. Now, I won’t tell you I was out of my mind when I did it. I puked my guts up every time I did someone in. But that didn’t mean I was happy with the way things were going, either. When I heard you’d been brought here, I decided I’d get away for sure this time no matter what happened to me.”

  “You said we were brought here. What do you mean by that?” Clay asked as his eyes moved to the cave’s entrance.

  D was leaning against the rock wall. At that distance, it was difficult to tell whether or not the Hunter could overhear the group’s conversation. As he’d helped cut down Lance’s pursuers, one would think he’d be quite interested in this discussion, but he didn’t ask a single question or even move from where he stood. Ordinary expectations couldn’t begin to apply to the Hunter.

  “So, who the hell controls the tornado? You’ve been living out here for five years. You gotta at least know that much. And those freaking mummies gotta be working for the same person, right?”

  “No doubt,” Lance replied, nodding feebly. “But I can’t even begin to guess who—or what—might be behind all this. All those years I watched them carefully, hoping to get some clue as to who it was, but I don’t even know if it was someone human or not. Something tells me they don’t work for any mortal.”

  The reason Lance believed this was because of the way he’d been kept alive. His sustenance had consisted of one meal a day of some unknown leaves and berries that were left piled unceremoniously in front of his quarters. Though he tried, he was never able to see who placed the meal there. Lance’s meals usually were brought to him while he slept. If he stayed awake to keep watch, nothing would come. After a few weeks, a strange sensation came over Lance. No matter where he was, he had the feeling he was being watched constantly. Even out in the barren desert without another creature around, the feeling remained with him. Of course, escape was impossible. When they weren’t attacking travelers, the mummies lay in their cave. Any getaway plans Lance might’ve come up with were always foiled by sandstorms—or something even stranger.

  “And what the hell was that?” Clay asked.

  Lance merely shook his head at the question. “I don’t know. Well, I’d heard about it, but I’d never seen it before. It was water that just stretched on forever. I guess it must’ve been that ‘sea’ thing folks talk about.”

  Clay and Granny exchanged glances.

  The Nobility’s transportation system was still operational in the Capital, but the further away from the city one went, the worse traveling conditions got. Aside from a few exceptions, people had only the most primitive means of transportation to rely on almost everywhere on the Frontier. Not only did most people live their entire lives without ever seeing the sea, but many died without ever setting foot outside their own village.

  Lance’s words were sufficient enough to amaze both Clay and Granny.

  “There’s no sea in the desert,” the old woman groaned. “It might’ve been a spell, or something set up by the Nobility, I guess. What do you think?” Her query was aimed at D.

  Lying down in a hollow about ten feet from the rest of the group, Tae turned her eyes toward the Vampire Hunter for the first time.

  “The tornado is under someone’s cont
rol,” D said, his eyes still trained on the vista before him. “Whoever controls it brought all of us here. There can only be one reason for that—to have us do the same thing it made him do, I suppose.”

  “What, you mean plundering?” Clay blurted out without the slightest reserve. “But nobody’s loony enough to try crossing this desert anymore. No one other than this old bag, my brother, and me, that is. Anyway, we haven’t been attacked by the freaking mummies. What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “That the desert has some purpose other than killing us, and so it lets us live,” D replied plainly. “The man said he was being watched. Now, it’s our turn for the same.”

  “Wait just a minute there!” Granny interrupted. “Just now, you said something about what the desert wants. What’s the story? You mean to tell me everything that’s attacked us so far is following orders from the desert?”

  “It shouldn’t come as a surprise. I told you about the moving forest. And I suppose you know about the living mountain in the northwestern sectors of the Frontier.”

  “Sure,” Granny said, shivering at the thought of fifty billion tons of rock moving along the horizon. “But that’s just a simple mineral-based life form that can’t do anything aside from move. Of course, it only occurs maybe once in a decade, but then again, thousands of people get crushed when it does.”

  “It wouldn’t be that unusual for a more complex creature to exist,” D said, though it hardly sounded like a rebuttal. “Because the metabolism of mineral-based life forms is greatly restricted by their weight, they really can’t hope to develop any further. But the same might not be true for the desert.”

  “You keep talking about this desert, but I just don’t get it. You mean to say—”

  “It could be a living creature with a developed nervous system and circuits for thought. But even I can’t say exactly what either of those would be like.”

  “Okay, let me see if I’ve got this right. You’re saying that the tornado was some kind of ‘hand’ that brings what the desert needs here? That it had ‘eyes’ that watched this guy? Just where are the nose and mouth then? Oh, I suppose you’re gonna tell me those were the globes and butterflies we ran into at the start?”