The Rose Princess Read online

  Elena swore she could hear all the blood draining from her body like a tide. She was looking at things that wore faces all too familiar to her.

  She got them, the girl thought with horror. But something’s wrong. It’s so . . . indiscriminate. Up until now, she’s only preyed on young people.

  “Stand back,” someone bellowed, but Elena found it difficult to believe it was the Black Knight. Weren’t the creatures before her eyes the very same thing as the princess? Elena backed away three steps, while the Black Knight rode forward three.

  Instinctively curious about the man’s weapon, Elena looked at his back and saw an iron sheath roughly two feet long. Or rather, there were two scabbards for two broadswords there, and it looked like one was laid on top of the other. Rough in size and shape, the weapons didn’t seem at all suitable for this giant.

  It came as little surprise that the trio of villagers were taken aback when they came out through the gates, but they must’ve viewed the knight as an ally, as they quickly spread their arms and started walking toward Elena.

  A horizontal flash of light mowed through the napes of their necks.

  Elena was reminded of champagne corks shooting off from the internal pressure. But instead of fermented fruit juice and gas, the three necks were sending geysers of blackish blood into the air. Beyond brutal, beyond gruesome, the scene could’ve even been termed striking by some, but it left Elena so totally unnerved that even when she heard the blades being sheathed, she didn’t turn toward the swordsman.

  Undoubtedly the Black Knight had utilized the weapons from his back. But how? He’d sat on his horse without lifting a finger, and even if he’d extended his arm, his weapon never would’ve reached the closest villager, let alone all three of them.

  Apparently the stroke had been so masterful the trio didn’t even realize they’d been cut, and they took two or three more sure-footed steps before collapsing limply.

  The sight of the falling bodies finally brought Elena back to her senses.

  “What the hell are you doing?!” the biker shouted, glaring at the Black Knight.

  “They were going after you,” he replied. There was laughter in his voice, but the flustered Elena didn’t notice it.

  “You didn’t have to kill them. I—I mean, there’s gotta be some way to save them.”

  “Once they’re like that, there’s but one way to ‘save them,’ as you put it.”

  Elena’s chest grew tight at the Black Knight’s reply. It was exactly as he said. The only “salvation” for a human who’d been made a servant of the Nobility was the kind the Black Knight had dispensed.

  “But why? They were your mistress’s . . .”

  “Never.”

  “What?” Elena said, her eyes going wide.

  “The princess would never do such a thing. The very thought of her elevating you humans to the same state as herself, even as her servants—there must be some mistake.”

  “Oh, it’s no mistake, mark my—”

  The rest of Elena’s words were crushed by the black figure’s advance. Feeling the same pressure as if a mountain was moving by, Elena stepped to one side.

  “I must rectify this error,” the Black Knight said before he passed through the gates.

  “Wait!” Elena cried, bounding out in front of his horse.

  “Out of my way. You’re in the village now. It’s no longer my responsibility whether you live or die.”

  “Are you planning on killing everyone here? I can’t let you do that.”

  “And you intend to stop me?” the Black Knight asked, his voice dropping lower.

  “I sure do,” Elena replied from a spot ten feet away.

  The wind snarled. The skill the girl displayed in pulling her chain free and swinging it around as she leapt out of the way was truly impressive, but how much good her weapon would do against the heavily armored Black Knight was the real question. And her motorcycle wasn’t nearby.

  There was a sharp rap as sparks flew from the Black Knight’s helm. The weight on the chain had scored a direct hit, and more hits came in rapid succession. This rustic lass had taken that single length of chain and made it seem more like a dozen weapons, simply with the skilled manipulations of one hand. And when the knight’s upper body swayed, Elena brought her left hand into play, too. As the second chain swept the front legs out from under it, the horse toppled forward.

  The knight’s massive form rose. The laws of physics should’ve launched his body forward, or perhaps it would’ve been even more appropriate for him to touch down feet-first, as light as a feather, behind Elena. But the skill of the woman warrior had seen to it that chains were wound about both his wrists. Moreover, when Elena raised her hands, the weights at the other end of the chains angled up into the air, wrapping around the heavy branches of the colossal trees that towered to either side of the knight and robbing him of his freedom.

  “Just stay there and behave yourself,” Elena said as she dashed toward her bike.

  From behind her, a low voice called out, “What will you do now?”

  Ignoring the query, she hopped onto her bike and started the engine. The only thing that kept her level-headed was the fact that the Black Knight’s voice hinted at mocking laughter when he’d called out to her. Although she wasn’t sure whether the laser generator set inside her headlight would prove effective or not, Elena didn’t have any other options.

  “Watch this, missy!” the Black Knight exclaimed.

  Elena saw him tug on his fully extended arms. The branches snapped, and the crimson beam split the darkness as it blazed at the Black Knight. Tree branches rained down from either side to block the laser.

  A wind and a rumbling of the earth sent Elena and her bike flying, but it wasn’t from branches. Rather, she was sent into the air by the thud from the trunks of the gargantuan trees that’d fallen over. The Black Knight had torn them up, roots and all, with consummate ease. The trees rested against the rows of houses to either side, their trunks forming double fences while a composed voice called from behind them, “Well then, here I go. Off to correct all the mistakes. You should be thankful these trees have saved your life.”

  “Wait!” Elena shouted as she was about to start her bike, but then she received a shock.

  The two tree trunks seemed to have been purposely placed in an arrangement calculated to keep her bike from ever getting between them.

  “Damn it all!” Elena snarled, slamming her fist into the palm of her other hand. But she quickly decided on her course of action.

  Freeing the chain from a branch of the nearer tree, she then wrapped it firmly around the trunk, pulled it taut, and looped it around an iron stake driven deep into the ground. The stake was one she’d had in the storage compartment on her bike.

  Having backed up as far as the gates, Elena hunkered down over the handlebars wearing an expression that brimmed with impatience and self-confidence. The exhaust pipes spat flames. Steered with miraculous skill, the bike barreled up the thin line she’d strung from the tree to the ground, flying high into the air to effortlessly clear the two trunks and land on the darkened street beyond.

  Taking a hard bounce as they came back to earth, Elena and her bike knifed through the wind now that the last obstacle had been cleared, and a few seconds later they sped into the square.

  An unexpected sight greeted the warrior woman. A well was situated at the center of the square, and by it stood the Black Knight with a tiny, frail figure.

  “Mama Kipsch!” Elena cried, her voice carrying an added weight. While she realized the village was in great peril, the name she’d said was the only reason even a hint of reassurance lingered in her heart.

  “Welcome back,” the silver-maned crone replied without ever looking at Elena. An earthen pot was cradled under her left arm. Her right hand was sunk into its wide mouth up to the elbow.

  Turning her eyes in the same direction both of the others faced, Elena had her breath taken away. In the moonlight, it looke
d like the villagers lay on the ground, piled one on top of the other. None of them were moving at all. Worse yet, the sight of a number of others crawling into the open holes that riddled the ground gave Elena goose bumps. Was this what Miksin had been talking about?

  Looking up at the Black Knight, Mama Kipsch said, “So, how about it?”

  “Very well. As promised, I shall wait three days. And during that time—you know what you’re to do, don’t you?”

  “Not a problem. I’ll keep my end of the deal, too.”

  Elena suddenly felt like her own deadly battle with the knight was something that’d happened a whole world away.

  Silently climbing onto his jet black mount, the Black Knight then said, “Well, I’m off—but the humans truly don’t deserve such a great witch doctor.” With those words, he wheeled his horse around.

  As the knight and his mount passed right by the end of her nose, Elena could only stand and watch like a demented soul.

  The horse halted. Up on its back, the Black Knight merely turned his head a bit to gaze at Elena. White moonlight gleamed off his helm and pauldrons, making him look like a sculpture from another dimension.

  “We shall meet again—soldier!” he told her.

  And then his horse’s hooves tore into the dirt as he galloped off down the street.

  When a hand came to rest on Elena’s shoulder, the biker returned to her senses. Mama Kipsch’s mournful countenance greeted her. Before Elena could say a word, the elderly witch doctor who’d just sent a killer packing said, “You threw down with him, did you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Must’ve been a good fight.”

  “How do you know that?” asked the girl.

  “You heard what he said, ‘soldier.’ It would seem he’s taken a shine to you.”

  “Spare me, Mama Kipsch. Anyway, what the hell was all this . . . ,” Elena began to say, but when she’d surveyed the whole square, she then let out a little whoop of joy. People had appeared from some of the neighboring houses.

  “There are some folks the flowers didn’t get, though that’s less than a tenth of the populace, I warrant.”

  “And all the rest have joined the Nobility?”

  Mama Kipsch nodded, and for a moment Elena’s head began to swim. The only thing that kept her from fainting was the old woman’s next remark.

  “But that’s not to say they’ve gone over completely. After all, they haven’t been bitten. We should be able to do something for them.”

  At the crone’s doleful expression, Elena was forced to swallow the next thing she wanted to say.

  In just three days?

  —

  D was in a fog.

  An hour had already elapsed since he’d first started after the princess. Elena hadn’t come with him, but he didn’t appear at all concerned by that.

  D didn’t actually know where he was, as surprising as that might seem. Though the gorgeous Hunter was part vampire, his sense of direction had become horribly confused. But what was truly scary about the young man was how he didn’t seem to rely on it at all. The fact was, he wasn’t wading through a cloud of complete darkness. The fog carried a fragrance—that of a rose. Without a doubt, it had to belong to the lovely princess. The scents of other roses swirled through the fog as well. And yet, there was no uncertainty in D’s gait.

  “You happen to know where we are?” the Hunter’s left hand asked. It sounded anxious.

  But what could leave the hand so frightened?

  D didn’t reply, and perhaps that added to the left hand’s anxiety, because it continued, “Now I’m sure you don’t have a clue, but—”

  “We’re six hundred feet underground,” said D.

  “Sheesh!” the hand spat in reply. “You mean to tell me you don’t know where we’re going, but you still know how far down we are? You’re an odd one. Well, what have we here?”

  D had already noticed, too—the fog was clearing. The white mass was drifting away, becoming a thin band that unraveled, coiled, and vanished like the threads of a spider’s web. And from beyond the fog appeared a bottomless darkness.

  “It stinks like hell down here,” the left hand stated.

  Having lost the scent of roses, the air and darkness were now choked with the nauseating stench of corruption.

  “It’s not a room—it’s more like a root cellar, I’d say. As far as the dimensions go, it stretches about six miles across and goes about a hundred fifty feet high. Wild animals probably live here. Still, it’s awfully quiet. I don’t sense a single—”

  Before the hand could say, “thing,” the sound of creaking gears traveled down through the darkness that loomed over them like the heavens.

  As D looked up, his eyes must’ve caught something, because just as his cool black pupils came to rest on a certain spot on the floor, there was a juicy plop!

  Something had dropped from the ceiling. And the room above the ceiling was apparently shrouded in darkness.

  D started off through the pitch blackness without any sign of agitation. But not toward where the thing had fallen. He was following the scent of flowers that lingered despite the putrid stench. The lovely princess was to be destroyed— nothing else interested D. But was it mere coincidence that the thin thread of fragrance led him right to where the massive sack lay on the floor?

  “There’s raw meat inside,” the left hand said. “A whole ton, roughly.”

  A rank odor spilled from the mouth of the bag.

  “I’m sure you already know, but I smell something else, too. And it’s—,” the voice began to say, the words flowing off to the right.

  As D was in motion, two bits of darkness came from either side of him and overlapped before his nose. From the spot where they’d landed, shrill cries arose. Although it was unclear if this was the sound of a man or a beast, D’s eyes confirmed the presence of tiny creatures armed with equally diminutive blades about ten feet from him on either side. Their little fishhook claws and tiny bat-like wings were more cute than menacing, but the creatures’ ability was made manifest by strands of black hair that continued to fall from D’s brow.

  Crimson points of light began to glow. They were the eyes of homunculi, spiteful blood-light spilling from faces covered with lumps.

  Thin glimmers flew at D from all sides. Short spears aimed at him, though they were so tiny as to hardly even qualify as spears. The hem of the Hunter’s coat whirled out to fend off the missiles, but a second later the garment was rent in an “x” shape. A tiny assassin who’d flown at him with the fusillade of spears had deftly laid into it with his blade.

  Preparing to launch a new assault, the second wave of creatures was coiled to pounce when their crimson eyes bulged in their sockets. Just as the two homunculi from the vanguard had landed, they’d split in half lengthwise. Screeching cries of astonishment intertwined, fading off into the distance like ripples on a pond. But then they stopped dead.

  With his naked blade in one hand, D slowly turned his whole body to face the way he’d come. Something enveloped his entire frame, and his left hand gasped in surprise.

  An eerie miasma likely to leave all who felt it dead or disabled was billowing from the depths of the darkness. There was an intensity to it that was completely unlike that of the three knights he’d met in the world above—and yet there was also a strange similarity. This was the fourth—the last of what people called the “Four Knights of the Diane Rose.”

  The source of the eerie emanations had moved. It was headed of the depths of the vast darkness. Several seconds later, the presence he’d detected became the sounds of hooves. Perhaps it was the weird atmosphere of the place that made the echoes of kicked-up soil warp into torpid, drawn-out sounds.

  D didn’t move. With his blade in his right hand, he waited somberly for his foe.

  The sound stopped. Fifteen feet lay between it and D.

  “What have we here?” a strangely lisping voice called down from high on a mount. “I came looking for my meal a
nd opponents. But the princess has played a cruel trick on me . . . Who knew there were still men of such beauty in the world?”

  D was now gazing at the knight in white armor who sat before him on a white steed. Or perhaps it would’ve been better to say the Hunter’s eyes were facing straight ahead, and it just happened that the horse and rider filled his field of vision. Though even his left hand was enveloped in the eerie aura, the figure of beauty showed not a glimmer of tension.

  “I’m so pleased,” said the knight. The longsword on his left hip shook ever so slightly. “It’s been a long time . . . since my heart raced so. There’s a fire in my chest . . . I hear a beating that was supposedly silenced more than five centuries ago . . . Oh, yes . . . Yes . . .”

  His sword sang out once more. The White Knight’s upper body trembled with delight. The words spilled from his lips as if he couldn’t push them out fast enough.

  “Do you want to cut him down, ‘Slayer’? Do you want to slice into this gorgeous man? I know . . . But just wait . . . We’ll save that pleasure for later . . . First, we must do our daily cleaning . . .”

  The White Knight extended his left arm and began to beckon to the homunculi with his hand. Languidly. Gently. Like a pale resident of the afterworld beckoning the living.

  “Come,” he said. “Come . . . foes that the princess has granted me . . . Oh, it seems today . . . we have a lively bunch . . .”

  A streak of light pierced the white body, and with the hurled spear, the tiny murderers pounced on him from all sides. They were consumed, deadly weapons and all, by a wave of white. The movement of the wave resembled the hand that’d called them forward. When it opened once more, the short spears had all been knocked to the ground and the four homunculi had been sliced in half at the waist horizontally, as if in answer to D’s vertical cuts earlier.

  “Come,” he said as he beckoned to his next opponents—the only ones who remained.

  Three tiny figures zipped at the figure on horseback. Although they were moving at different speeds and flying at varied altitudes, a flash of white light mowed through their torsos, leveling all three of them at once.

  “My cape . . . wasn’t cut . . . ,” the White Knight muttered.