Free Vampire Hunter D by Hideyuki Kikuchi Page B

you so indignant, yet your indignation held a feverish sentiment that was equally new. Could it be you’re smitten with the scoundrel?”
    Unanticipated though her father’s words were, Larmica donned a smile that positively defied description. Not only that, she licked her lips as well.
    “Do you believe I could let a man I loved drop
down there
? Father, as its architect you know far better than anyone what a living hell that subterranean region is. Dhampir or not, no one could come out of that benighted pit alive. But …”
    “But what?”
    Here Larmica once again made a ghastly smile that even caused Count Lee, her own father, to flinch.
    “If he can escape from there with naught but a sword and the power of his own limbs, I shall devote myself to him body and soul. By the eternal life and ten thousand bloody years of the history of the Nobility, I swear I love him—I love the Vampire Hunter D.”
    Now it was the Count’s turn to smile bitterly. “It is hell for those you despise, and a worse hell for those you desire. Though I don’t believe there is anything in this world that can face
the three sisters
and live to tell the tale.”
    “Of course not, Father.”
    “However,” the Count continued, “should he survive and you meet him again, what will you do should he spurn your affections?”
    Larmica responded in a heartbeat. Flames of joy rose from her body. Her eyes glittered wildly but were moist with hot tears, her crimson lips parted slightly, and her slick tongue licked along her lips as if it possessed a will of its own. “In that case, I will deal the deathblow to him without fail. I shall rip out his heart and lop off his head. And then he shall truly be mine. And I shall be his. I will taste the sweet blood as it seeps from his wounds, and after I have kissed his pale and withered lips, I shall tear open my own breast and let the hot blood of the Nobility course down his gaping throat.”
    When Larmica had taken her leave, following her incredibly gruesome yet fervent declaration of love, the Count’s expression was a mixture of anger and apprehension, and he turned his gaze to the pit. He pressed one hand against the left side of his chest through his cape. The fabric was soaking wet. With blood. Though he seemed to have masterfully caught D’s blade, more than an inch at the tip had sunken into his immortal flesh. Some trick with the sword may have been involved, for, unlike any wound he’d heretofore taken in battle, the gash still hadn’t closed, and the warm blood that was the fount of his life was flowing out.
Now there is a man to be feared. He might even have ...
    The Count erased from his mind all thoughts of what might happen should he face the youth again in a battle to the death. Considering the
things
that awaited the whelp in the subterranean world, D didn’t have one chance in a million of returning to the surface.
    Turning his back to the hall, the Count was about to walk back to his dark demesne when the words the youth had whispered flitted through his brain. Words the Count had heard from
that august personage
. A phrase that could render the faces of every Noble, extinct or still living on, melancholy every time it was recalled. How could that stripling know those words?
    .
    Transient guests are we.

THE DEMONS’ WEAKNESS

CHAPTER 4
    .
    “Sis, you sure we don’t need more fertilizer than this?” Dan’s apprehensive tone as he took the last plastic case and set it down in the bed of their wagon stabbed into Doris’ breast.
    This was right about the time D was passing through the gates of the vampires’ castle.
    The pair had gone into Ransylva to do their shopping for the month. However, the results were something pitiful. Old Man Whatley, proprietor of a local store, had always been kind enough to bring things out from the storeroom that he didn’t have displayed, but today he coldly refused as he’d never done before. As Doris named off necessities, he replied