Demon Deathchase Page 7

  Contrary to what one might expect, this picture of defenselessness sowed seeds of tension and anxiety in the hearts of the pair. Kyle adjusted his grip on the javelin.

  Ten feet to the carriage. White smoke robbed the pair of their vision, then cleared.

  Without a sound, the pair leapt to either side. Between them and the carriage there suddenly stood a black silhouette. The elongated figure garbed in a black hooded robe seemed to be an illusion, something conjured up by the poisonous vapors.

  “Who the hell are you?” Kyle asked in a low voice. The filters on their masks doubled as voice amplifiers.

  Giving no answer, the shadow raised its right hand. Flying with a dull growl, a steel arrow pierced it through the wrist. The shadow shook.

  There hadn’t been just one arrow. Thanks to Borgoff’s masterful skill, arrows also stuck in the shadow’s head and the left side of its chest. While it was true they were dealing with an unknown element here, three arrows may have been overdoing it a bit. But then, that was the Marcus way of doing things.

  The shadow turned its face up. The brothers’ eyes opened wide. The hood was empty.

  When the plain robe fell flatly to the ground with three arrows still stuck in it, Borgoff forgot to launch a second attack. Something had occurred to him, and, with no warning, he turned and loosed an arrow at the carriage. As he watched it punch nicely through the polished iron plating to the rear, the vehicle’s window lost its contours, the wheels twisted limply, and the entire carriage became a single sheet of black cloth trailing along the ground.

  A silver flash raced off burning through the white smoke. It etched a graceful arc and ran through the horses’ necks. It was the flash of a crescent blade. Their heads drooped, thick necks hacked nearly in half.

  No blood came out. There was no flesh or cross section of vertebrae to be seen in the fresh wounds. The inside was hollow. The pair watched in a daze as every last one of the half-dozen horses became black cloth and settled softly on the ground.

  Eerie laughter rose like smoke around them. High and low, the weird but beautiful voice that seemed to escape from the bowels of the earth was that of a woman.

  About thirty feet ahead of the pair, a slender feminine figure came into focus. Laughing haughtily, she said, “Followed a Noble all this way, have we? I came out here to see the extent of your abilities, but, as I expected, they really don’t amount to much. As such, naught awaits you on this road but the boiling fires of hell. You’d do well to scamper off now with your tails between your legs.”

  Sensing an inordinate evil in the chiming golden bell that was her voice, Kyle shouted, “You the one who pulled that hocus-pocus just now?!” The javelin was in his left hand, and his right held one of his deadly crescent blades at the ready.

  “Unfortunately, no,” the woman said. “Although, you’re actually quite fortunate it wasn’t me. Otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten off with a mere prank. If you value your boring little lives, you’d best turn back posthaste.”

  “Where’s the Noble?” inquired Borgoff. The strange thing was, he had both eyes shut tight.

  “In our village,” the woman replied. “He came to retain the finest guards as insurance against maggots like you following him.” Laughing snidely, she added, “Perhaps you boys should hire a few of us, too, to serve as Hunters and go after him?”

  Beneath his gasmask, Kyle’s face grew black with rage. His left hand went into action. When the javelin flew through the air and passed vainly through the figure of the woman only to be embedded in the wall of rock behind her, indistinct shapes appeared all around them, hovering in the air. All of the shapes looked like the woman.

  “Bitch,” Kyle spat after the flash of crescent blade he swept around passed through the specters without meeting any resistance. He looked to his older brother. “So that’s what you were up to, Borgoff?”

  Eyes still shut, the giant nodded, and the sneering yet mellifluous laughter stole into their ears again.

  “You still don’t understand, do you, little fools? May you wander this poison smoke for all eternity.” A split second later, her words became a scream.

  One of the shimmering figures behind them had been pierced by Borgoff’s arrow. When and how the giant fired was a mystery. Kyle hadn’t seen his brother’s hands move. What’s more, his bow and the arrow cocked in it had been pointed straight ahead from the start.

  Blood’s own aroma mixed with the stench of poisonous smoke.

  “You . . . you bastard!” she screeched, the shadowy figures fading as quickly as her cry.

  “Bro, you did it!”

  “Yep.” Borgoff gave a nod, and perhaps it was the knowledge that the woman was gone for good that made his tiger-like eyes shine so strangely. Immediately, the brothers headed back toward the bus.

  The door closed, and, once the poisonous gas had been evacuated through the exhaust vents, they entered the main cabin. There, for the first time, Borgoff struck the wall of the vehicle with his boulder of a fist. The ceiling rattled.

  “What do you wanna do now, bro?”

  “This is a huge fucking mess now. That bastard Noble’s gone and holed up in the village of the Barbarois.”

  Kyle wasn’t the only one who grew tense at his brother’s words. Leila, who’d been waiting for them, reacted the same way. For the first time, something resembling paling fear flowed through the faces of the siblings. But even that was transient.

  “Sounds like fun,” Leila muttered, and it even seemed a vermilion flush of excitement was rising in her pale face. “The village of the Barbarois—monsters and freaks have been interbreeding there for five thousand years, honing their sorceries and skills in the darkness. I always hoped to try my hand against them someday.”

  “Damn straight.” Kyle bared his teeth. “If he’s holed up in their village, there’s a pretty damned good chance he’ll—well, actually, the woman already told us what he was gonna do. Said he’d come to hire her and others. There ain’t no two ways about it, he’s definitely got himself some freaky guards now.” Kyle snickered. “I’m just itching for a piece of them. We’ve all heard rumors about the supernatural powers of the Barbarois. The question is, whose skills would come out on top, ours or theirs? I mean, wouldn’t it be great to throw down with them just once?”

  “Of course it would,” the oldest Marcus replied. “I don’t care if it’s the Barbarois or the Nobility’s Sacred Ancestor himself, we’d dye our hands in their blood. Just one thing, though. Our first order of business is that bastard Noble and the ten million dalas. I don’t wanna do any fighting unless we’re getting paid for it. For the time being, we’ll keep a watch on this nest of freaks and wait for Nolt to get back. Me and Kyle will go. Leila, you send up a flare as soon as you’re clear of this corner of hell and then wait there for Nolt.”

  The brutal siblings looked at each other and let out a lurid, blood-curdling laugh. What then was this village of the Barbarois that even they found so difficult to dismiss? Who resided there? And what were their darkness-spawned powers?

  —

  II

  —

  Down the road three miles from the spot where the Marcus brothers encountered the strange woman, a particularly high and rocky mountain loomed off the left-hand side of the road.

  To the eye of the uninformed traveler, the heap of countless rocks, large and small, was merely a product of nature. But, upon closer inspection, the pieces of stone that at a glance had seemed to be stacked haphazardly were, in fact, arranged systematically by someone or something with an understanding of dynamics. And, as the arrangement of the rocks became clear, so too did the eerie aura surrounding them. A chill was carried down like a ghost from the icy heights of the mountain, rising up the backs of the most courageous and the most fearful travelers alike.

  Though the mountain looked like it might be easily scaled, no matter how tough the human that challenged it was, partway up its scaly surface the rocks were laid out in such an intricate wa
y that they’d cave in a second. Even if by some slim chance a climber got through that part, there were places on the route where every rock was rigged to bury the climber in an avalanche of stone.

  Still, if fortune smiled on them and, by some miracle, the climber made it into the bowels of the mountain, their eyes would be greeted by a single cavern. While passing through it they’d be blasted by damp winds that seemed to blow from the very netherhells, and then they’d soon come to a fortress constructed from cyclopean stones and colossal trees. Despite the fact that the very human sounds of laughter, shouting, and crying could be heard constantly, and the smoke from cook fires never ceased, there was something in the atmosphere that separated this place from the world of humanity, an eldritch aura which hung in the air. This was the nest of demons that made the Marcus clan shudder—the village of the Barbarois.

  It was a mystery just how on earth the carriage and the six-horse team drawing it had got into the village, but enter they did as the light of dawn was finally beginning to swell with the vitality of day.

  There were houses in the village, and plenty of men and women. Stopping where they worked or poking their heads out of doorways, they formed a ring around the carriage the instant it came to a halt. Perhaps they were already cognizant of the true nature of their strange visitor, for not one of them tried to open the door.

  Pushing his way through the ring which was now several bodies deep, an old man with a hoary mane came into view. His white beard was long enough to sweep the ground, and his back was so stooped that his chest was parallel to the earth. Untold centuries old, his face was obscured by countless wrinkles, and yet every inch of him brimmed with an ineffable vigor.

  He approached the door on the left-hand side of the carriage and rapped lightly on the steel surface with his cane. Following that, he nodded to himself, and, after turning around to give a wink to the masses behind him, he put his withered, clay-like ear to the door.

  The wind died out immediately.

  The deathly silence persisted for what seemed like hours, but in due time the old man started to nod with the kindly countenance of a codger doting on his grandchildren.

  “I see, I see. I’m glad you came. It’s guards you desire then, to protect your lady love? Very well, very well. So, how many do you need? Three? Hmm, did you have anyone particular in mind?”

  The eyelids he had shut like a thin line flew open. A fearsome light spilled from them, but, after a moment, he closed his eyes once more.

  “Bengé, Caroline, Mashira . . . Oh, those are the very best, the cream of our village. Fine. When your flare informed us that you were being followed, Caroline headed out to toy with those wandering mongrels, but they’ll be back presently. They are entirely at your disposal.”

  Could one of the Nobility, who should be comatose by day, be holding a conversation with this old man? Not one of those assembled seemed to find this the least bit suspect as the old man’s eyes suddenly opened again.

  “Oh, so you say you have one more favor to ask,” the old man muttered. “What’s that? There’s another who follows you solo, you say? Hmm . . . a dhampir.”

  The air stirred violently. None of the villagers moved an inch, as if a ghastly white aura had enveloped them. Moans of shock came from the villagers’ lips as the following words slipped from the old man: “His name is—D.”

  In a while, when silence once again ruled the scene, the mutterings of the old man were adorned with a tremble of unbridled delight. “Ah, the greatest Vampire Hunter on the Frontier—I believe we’re up to the challenge. If we lure him into our stronghold and attack, slowly wearing him down, that is. That service, however, shall cost you quite dearly.”

  —

  An hour after his brothers had gone, Groveck’s condition took a strange turn. His breathing became rapid and shallow, and sweat gushed from his lean face. His state was more serious than usual, which panicked Leila. His pulse was racing, too.

  “A seizure,” she mumbled to herself. “But not like any we’ve ever seen before. What in the name of hell is this . . . ”

  She put as much ibuprofen as she could into the bottle on his IV, and she was headed toward the kitchen to cool down the cloth for mopping the sweat from his brow when the bus rocked violently.

  Metal eating-utensils fell one after another to the floor, and though the sound-dampening carpet tried to preserve the silence, the vehicle was filled by a cacophony. Every wound in the girl’s body pulsed sheer agony.

  Hastily securing the IV bottle with electrical tape, Leila raced around the vehicle looking out all of the windows, checking in every direction. There was no one out there. They were parked in the middle of a circular clearing about a hundred yards in diameter that wasn’t far off the road. With a click of her tongue, Leila dove into the garage to the vehicle’s rear.

  Ignoring the five cyborg horses stored there with their limbs retracted, she leapt into the driver’s seat of her battle car. As Leila turned the key in the ignition, a comforting vibration swept through her. Without looking at the digital gauges beside the steering yoke, Leila grasped the condition of the car like it was something she could hold in her two hands.

  “Atomic fuel at ninety-eight percent of capacity . . . Engine, check . . . Stabilizers, check . . . Puncture damage, negligible. Propulsion voltage good to go up to ninety-seven percent. Weapon controls, okay . . . Here we go!”

  The rear doors of the bus opened, and, without waiting for the ramp to slide into place, the battle car flew out. She gave it full throttle just as it touched down and took it for a loop around the bus.

  The bus was the only thing shaking, and there really was no one out there after all.

  Leila parked the battle car broadside to seal off the entrance to the clearing, then stood up in her seat like a vengeful god. “Who’s there? C’mon out. I’m Leila Marcus, of the Marcus clan. You won’t catch me running and hiding,” she declared, trying to keep the pain that knifed through her body from showing on her face. Then, as suddenly as it began, the shaking of the bus stopped.

  A cheerful voice came in response. “My, missy, aren’t you the high-spirited one.”

  Leila spun around in amazement. The perplexed expression she’d donned just before turning her head was because she didn’t know where the distinct voice was issuing from.

  There was no one behind her. Nor to her left, nor to right.

  “Where are you?” she asked. “Where the hell are you?! C’mon out, you lousy coward!”

  “There’s nowhere to come out from,” the voice jeered. “I’m right beside you. If you can’t see me, the fault is with your eyes.”

  Her blood nearly curdled. Once again, she scanned her surroundings. She realized the voice spoke the truth. Whoever it was, they had to be somewhere. Right under her very nose, no less.

  Leila harnessed every fiber of her being to search in all directions. Like her brothers, she’d honed her five senses to a razor-sharp level. Now her hearing and her sense of touch told her there wasn’t another living creature in the clearing. Yet, despite that, she could hear the voice.

  Leila was seized by a fear unlike any she’d felt before. It sprang from a loss of self-confidence and wounds that hadn’t fully healed.

  With the sliver gun from her side now in hand, Leila jumped out of the car. Her bloodshot eyes darted around her. She hadn’t given up the fight yet.

  A stabbing pain shot up her back.

  Catching a hail of fire from the sliver gun she unleashed as soon as she whipped around, one of the chunks of rock hemming the clearing was reduced to dust. Fired by highly pressured oxygen, the half million, one-micron-long, .001-micron-wide needles in the gun could leave the walls of a Noble’s castle as friable as unglazed pottery. But that didn’t count for much against an unseen opponent.

  Leila reached one hand around to her back. The stickiness she felt was blood. Clearly she’d been cut by some sort of blade, but she was powerless to do anything about it. Agony assailed her fo
r a second time, and Leila fell to her knees. Her strength was dwindling rapidly.

  The voice returned. “What’s wrong, missy? Compared to the wound my colleague suffered, this is nothing. Nothing at all. It’ll take a lot more than that to drive you mad, won’t it?”

  “Who the hell are you? Where are you?!”

  “I already told you, didn’t I? I’m right beside you. If you look hard enough, you should see me. You don’t see me because you think you can’t. Here, maybe this will help you understand?”

  The Marcus girl gave an agonized cry. Fresh blood spilling from the back of her shredded shirt, Leila crouched down on the ground.

  What kind of cold-blooded torture was this, slashing the flesh of a defenseless girl with deep cuts and shallow? Perhaps in some sick way her attacker was aroused by the sight of Leila in agony, because the voice had a ring akin to lust when it asked, “Well, how do you like that? Taste more pain, more suffering. Your brothers will be getting a taste of very same treatment from me before too long. Ha ha ha ha!”

  The sneering laughter ended sharply. Leila could feel someone shaking intensely right beside her. An unearthly aura was gusting their way, coming from the entrance to the clearing.

  Must be Nolt, she thought. No, it’s not. Another disappointment lodging in her breast, Leila twisted her face around in desperation.

  It was unclear how he’d gotten by the battle car, but a black-garbed youth stood casually in the center of the clearing, not making a sound. Forgetting her pain at the beauty of the one who now gazed at her, Leila swooned in glorious intoxication. The unsettling presence vanished in an instant.

  Waiting for a while on horseback while he seemed to size up the situation, D quietly guided his horse to Leila’s side. “Your opponent’s not here any more,” he said. “Can you stand?”

  Torpidly, Leila pulled herself up. “No problem at all, as you can see. What in blazes brings you here?” Her bluster carried no animosity. Borgoff had told her that someone had taken care of her when she was hurt, and no one but this gorgeous young man could’ve fit that bill.