Noble Front Read online

  “Is that all there is to it?” the left hand said, its fingers closing on the edge of the purple hood.

  “What do you think you’re doing?!” the youth replied, ready to knock the severed limb free.

  “Make another move and I’ll tear this thing off!” the left hand threatened.

  The youth froze.

  “I have a pretty good idea what’s under this thing. And it’s on account of that that you’re down here hating the big man up in his castle.”

  “What are you talking about?” the purple hood replied, trying to force a laugh.

  “Have it your way,” the left hand continued. “This is your castle. Far be it from me, the lowly retainer, to complain about what the lord of the manor chooses to do. But let me make one thing clear: He owes that woman back there his life just as much as he does you.”

  “I see,” the youth in the purple hood replied, looking over at the nurse— Françoise. “How’s the condition of that gorgeous individual?” he asked.

  “Poor,” the beauty answered. “It wouldn’t be surprising if he were to expire at any moment. To the contrary, it’s amazing he made it here in this condition—where on earth was he and what did he do to wind up in a state like this?”

  “He passed through an unbreakable wall, then shot across a hundred million light years in zero seconds flat.”

  The purple hood was at a loss for words. He could tell the left hand spoke the truth. “Dhampir or not, D or not, I simply cannot believe that,” he finally said.

  “There are a mountain of things in this world that are true but you’d never believe. But enough about that. Do something for him.”

  “Leave it to me.”

  The youth in the purple hood took a metal bar the general size and shape of a pencil from the breast pocket of his shirt, pressed a tiny switch, and held one end of the device up by his mouth, saying, “It’s me, Cornet. Are you up, Elsa?”

  After a little while, a female voice that’d shaken off sleep replied, “Elsa here. I’m up—actually, I wasn’t, but I’m up now.”

  “Sorry. I’d like some blood from you.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your blood. There’s someone in need of it.”

  At that point the youth cocked his head and looked at the severed left hand.

  “Long time no see, little missy,” said the hoarse voice.

  “Is that you, D? No, it’s not. I know it’s not.”

  The purple hood—Cornet—hurriedly switched off the stick, saying, “Don’t go scaring her off. I’ll do the talking.”

  “Hmph!”

  “Sorry about this, Elsa. A certain handsome man of your acquaintance suffers from a life-threatening lack of blood. Help us out. I suppose ten cc’s will suffice.”

  “Fine. But where do I have to go?”

  “I’ll send someone for it. A woman named Françoise. She’ll take care of it. All you have to do is wait in your room.”

  “Roger that. Hurry.”

  “Thank you. See you later.”

  “Er, yeah.”

  “What? Was there something else?”

  “The handsome man in question—is he gonna be okay?”

  “That all depends on you.”

  “I see. You can have a couple hundred gallons if you need it, then!”

  “Thank you,” Cornet told her, putting the communication device away. “Françoise, see to that, will you?”

  “Anything for you,” the metallic beauty said with a smile, and putting a protective cover over D’s body, she then left the room. Her smile was angelic.

  “For somebody so young, you’ve sure got your irons in a lot of fires,” the left hand remarked, its tone of amazement speaking volumes. “But it looks to me like you’re cold to the ladies.”

  †

  The eastern sky was still dark. Elsa’s house stood in the center of the village, a modest “shield farm.” The shields, which could control the growing environment so that any and all vegetables could be grown year-round, were said to be a product of the Nobility. They were treasured across the Frontier sectors, but it was unknown how in five scant years these shields had fallen into human hands, their operation had been mastered, and their use had been promulgated.

  By the time Françoise got there wrapped in a coat, Elsa was standing out by the gate to her house.

  “This is for you.”

  The bottle she held tight to her chest had over a hundred cc’s of blood in it.

  “Thank you.”

  When Françoise took the bottle, Elsa’s hand closed around her wrist. Françoise stiffened at the strange coldness of it.

  “You’re welcome,” the girl said with a grin, her crimson lips revealing a pair of pearly fangs. “I’ll be going with you,” Elsa informed her with delight.

  “I think not.”

  Françoise tried to pull her hand back, but it wouldn’t move an inch. A vampire had the strength of fifty humans.

  “It’s no use,” Elsa told her, an even more disturbing smile spreading across her face as she put more strength into her fingers. She intended to shatter the other woman’s bones. But her fingers sank into the nurse’s wrist, as if she’d dipped them into water.

  Still clutching the bottle, Françoise spun right around.

  “What in the—?!”

  The nurse stopped in her tracks.

  A young man was standing there. A foreign-looking face gazed at Françoise from beneath a mop of black hair. Oddly enough, there was no sense of hostility from him.

  “Do you know me, Françoise?” the man asked. He had a calm way of speaking.

  “How do you know my name?”

  The man shut his eyes, then immediately opened them again.

  “So, you don’t know my name?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “Good,” said the man, hostility radiating from every inch of him as if her response had been the signal to switch into combat mode. “My name is Vyken, and I’m the head of the grand duke’s guards. Remember that, you who look so much like one I know!”

  “She’s not human,” Elsa cried out.

  “Interesting,” Vyken remarked, stepping forward.

  The coat-clad figure sailed over his head, easily landing on her feet on a road some five yards away. And the instant Françoise landed, she went into a sprint.

  Vyken landed right in front of her without making a sound. Both of them had bounded to the very same location.

  “The blood in that bottle is hers from before she became that way. I’ll deliver it for you. Where’s D?” he asked in a triumphant tone, but it became a grunt of surprise.

  Françoise had suddenly charged right at him. The arms he instinctively spread to catch the nurse passed right through her, and she went on to run right through him. Looking over his shoulder, Vyken saw the woman more than thirty feet away, still running like the wind.

  “Liquid metal? Who knew we had a woman like that in the village?”

  As he said that, he shut his eyes. They quickly opened again.

  “You really aren’t human, are you? My power doesn’t work on those who don’t dream.”

  And then, with a great yawn, he turned back in the direction of Elsa’s house. Elsa was standing at the gate.

  “I suppose it’s no use, but let’s see if it works on you.”

  And saying that, he closed his eyes again. The result was the same.

  “Not very pleasant dreams you have, are they?” he spat. “When humans become vampires, are their dreams always such a bloody morass of savagery? Why would God make such a hopeless species?”

  When Françoise came back and gave her report to Cornet, he got a bitter look in his eye.

  “How did they know you were going to her house? Could it be they’ve been watching our exits?”

  “If that were true, they’d have busted in on you long before now,” the left hand replied. “No, they haven’t found this place of yours yet.”

  “But they were lying in wait—”<
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  “They must’ve been keeping an eye on Elsa’s house for a long time. Young they might be, but she and her two buddies have drawn a lot of attention. If I were the grand duke, I’d have somebody watching ’em all day every day.”

  “Then you don’t think my cover’s blown yet?”

  “Probably not.”

  “Good. There’s a mountain of things down here purloined from the grand duke’s castle. Were he to discover that, I’d be drawn and quartered for sure.”

  “Well, wonders never cease. Once you have him drink what’s in that bottle, I’d like you to show me some of stolen merchandise.”

  “That’s fine by me. But as I simply took whatever was close at hand, I haven’t the faintest idea what they’re actually used for. I offer no guarantees that I won’t make some error operating them and blow us all to kingdom come.”

  “We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

  The left hand’s devil-may-care reply drew applause from the youth in the purple hood. The two of them seemed to get be getting along surprisingly well.

  Turncoats

  Chapter 5

  I

  Before the morning sun had risen, the farmers were at work. Headed down the village lanes toward their respective fields with plow and hoe, they shouted greetings to each other as their wagons passed. Elsa’s house was silent once more, the front door shut tight and curtains drawn across the windows. A number of those who passed her place figured she must be taking the day off, and though they noticed that no smoke from cooking breakfast rose from the chimney, it didn’t particularly stand out in their minds—in other words, this was like the better, peaceful times of antiquity.

  The first of her farming neighbors to notice something was wrong galloped off for the sheriff’s office on a cyborg horse, asking a friend he met along the way to go inform the town hall as well. When the sheriff arrived there at top speed at 5:43 AM Eastern Frontier Time, other farmers had already broken down the Garrys’ door, exposing the tragedy of the night before to the light of day.

  The gorgeous visitor halted his cyborg steed in front of the farmhouse strung with “Restricted Area” ropes just as the shimmering sun was reaching its highest point in the heavens. Having called in people from the town hall to assist, the sheriff had finished investigating the scene and was walking around questioning people, and onlookers, now convinced that the situation was in hand, drifted away, finally leaving only a few children there. They looked on dumbfoundedly as D ducked under the ropes and slipped onto the property, walking right into the farmhouse.

  He came out again about ten minutes later. And someone was waiting for him.

  “It’s me—Habaki,” said the young man, smiling stiffly. He added that he’d already looked around inside, too. “Did you find Elsa or her family?” he asked.

  “They weren’t inside,” D replied.

  “Figured as much,” the resistance leader said, his shoulders falling.

  “I owe her a debt,” the Hunter told him. “That’s what brought me here. I’m going to tell you something that’s only for your ears and Leiden’s. Elsa was turned into a vampire.”

  The young man was at a loss for words.

  “The two of you are free to do as you like, but I’m going to put her at rest and dispose of the one who corrupted her.”

  Cold sweat soaked Habaki from head to toe. “I’d like to help you if I can.”

  “You’d just be in the way,” D said, his tone low but his words as sharp as the wind’s edge.

  Leaving Habaki there frozen in his tracks, D went back to the road. As soon as he wheeled his cyborg horse around toward the castle, the hoarse voice said, “Would it have killed you to explain the situation even a little to that kid? Leave him like that, and there’s no telling what screwed-up thing he’ll get it in his head to try! Probably ain’t got the faintest idea what you’re talking about when you say you owe Elsa.”

  “All he has to do is ask Cornet.”

  “Well, from the look of things, Cornet doesn’t exactly seem to expect much out of ’em. Seems more like they just went and decided he was one of them.”

  “Doesn’t matter either way, so long as this gets taken care of.”

  The cyborg horse broke into a gallop.

  If he could break into the Nobles’ crypt at this hour, it would be an absolute massacre. And D would doubtless be just as merciless in dealing with opponents who couldn’t raise a hand to defend themselves.

  When the dignified form of the castle came into view down the road, there was the sound of a bustling engine approaching from the Hunter’s rear. It was accompanied by three sets of hoofbeats.

  “The top banana finally shows himself—and the other three are the hired muscle we ran into out in front of the castle.”

  Before the hoarse voice had even finished saying that, a startling vehicle pulled alongside D on the right. It had a body that looked like a number of oil drums welded end to end, with ten pistons relentlessly pumping up and down on top of it and sputtering engine sounds scattering all across the area. It had six rubber tires. All of them were worn to the point the tread was now imperceptible.

  D didn’t so much as glance over at it.

  Professor Chaney’s head projected from the rearmost oil drum, wearing goggles and a steel helmet. “Such a handsome man,” he remarked, peering through his deep green goggles and barely keeping his vehicle under control. “You’re D, I take it? I’m Professor Chaney. No need to get into trivial details, but I’d like to speak with you a while.”

  “I’m working.”

  “A moment, if you will. This shan’t take long. I know the location of the grand duke’s hidden grave,” the Professor added in a tone that said he was quite sure D would want to hear him out. However, not only did the Hunter not slow down in the slightest, he didn’t even look at the man, which prompted him to say, “I also have something to tell you about the Sacred Ancestor. I’ve decoded the message he left for a certain someone.” His expression swiftly becoming one of astonishment, Chaney asked, “How can that have no effect on you? Who are you?”

  The Professor’s surprise was inviting an accident, and the lengthy vehicle and its aged driver both screamed in unison. His desperate turn of the wheel had come when D’s cyborg horse suddenly pulled away.

  “Ha, what a load of tripe,” the hoarse voice chortled. “Serves you right for running your mouth. Ran yourself right into the forest, you dolt!”

  “Careful,” D told his left hand. Did he sense something?

  Smoke and flames rose from the right-hand side of the road. A miniature missile.

  D galloped straight ahead. Whipping the right sleeve of his coat up for all he was worth, he used it to deflect the flames. When the Hunter returned to the darkened road, whitish smoke was rising from his traveler’s hat and the hem of his coat. Reaching backward with his left hand, he spread his fingers.

  “Something weird’s sticking out of the front of that car,” the hoarse voice said. “I think it’s—Get down!”

  A harsh wind ripped right over D’s head. There was a sound like a fine blade hewing flesh and bone.

  D raised his left hand, blocking the blood and oil being thrown his way. There was nothing wrong with the gait of his steed. Nevertheless, the horse’s neck had been nearly cut through. A spinning blade had been launched at them. But such skill D had, making his steed press on without the reins ever going slack!

  “Hell of a guy,” the left hand groaned in a mix of resignation and admiration.

  Another man said almost the exact same thing, forgetting to floor his car’s accelerator or line up his next attack as he slumped back in his seat and sighed in despair, “You’re a hell of a man, D.”

  Seen in broad daylight, the castle looked terribly worn. Much of the rock used in building the fortresses of the Nobility had been transported from quarries around the world. When the stone they desired couldn’t be found there, there were cases where they’d leveled entire mountai
n ranges. All of this was done in service to the Nobles’ sense of “nostalgia.” Though there were those who’d synthesized stone, it was said they became the objects of derision, either replacing the offending material with the genuine article or else taking their own lives with wooden stakes. What’s more, there were also Nobles who used elemental conversion technology to age freshly quarried stone so it looked weathered.

  Massive stone fortifications had such an imposing presence on their surroundings it made them difficult to approach, but that may have been due less to the stones themselves and more to the tenacious architectural ambition they represented. And this castle was no different.

  However, what D felt was an awfully different atmosphere. The coarseness of the walls exposed to the light of the sun, the shadows cast on the ground by stone pillars, the light itself stark yet languid. That’s right. As the enormous castle loomed there in the light of midday, it was encircled not so much by an air of corruption as by one of absolute ruin.

  “I was just thinking how funny this is. A castle of this scale should have defenses out the ass to deal with daytime intruders. Are you trying to tell me either they don’t have any, period, or they do but haven’t even bothered to turn ’em on?” the Hunter’s left hand murmured as soon as the drawbridge had been lowered, just as it had the night before, and D had ridden into the square within the castle walls.

  Needless to say, the Nobility’s castles were their last redoubt. As a result, they focused more on defending against daylight threats than other attacks. These defenses included dimensional labyrinths where no amount of travel would bring you closer to the castle, old-fashioned force fields that could weather direct hits by nuclear warheads, amnesia generators that could wipe out any memory of the castle, swarms of monsters and supernatural creatures living around the stronghold, and so on, and so forth.

  This castle made use of none of those things. It seemed not merely unguarded, but that the inhabitants had no intention of defending it.