Read Online Demon Deathchase by Hideyuki Kikuchi - Free Book Online Page B

the moon hanging
     in the heavens and muttered, “Two more days . . . but daylight will come shortly.
     I wonder if I’ll encounter this new foe before those days have passed?”
    —
    Even a torrent that flowed with enough force to split rocks lost its ferocity when
     it had come so far, and when it hit the shore here it no longer bared its fangs. The
     river widened, and here and there the glimmer of silvery scales from fish leaping
     out to seek the light of the moon rippled along the surface of the water. Occasionally,
     the water ran translucent all the way down to the riverbed, and the way colossal snakelike
     shapes swam upstream on a zigzagging path was rather unsettling.
    On the trail that ran just a little way above the riverbank, a rider muttered, “Well,
     this should put me right in the neighborhood now.” The rider, Nolt Marcus, the oldest
     of the clan, halted his mount. In accordance with Borgoff’s orders, Nolt had set off
     to find and destroy D after D had been swallowed by the muddied current. This is how
     far Nolt had gone.
    The spot was about two miles downstream of the bridge. Along the spine of the eastern
     mountains, a foreshadowing of the thin blue light of dawn had come calling, but the
     darkness swathing the world was still thick and black.
    Scanning his surroundings, Nolt reached for his hexagonal staff with his right hand.
     “I don’t think I’ll find him any farther downstream. So, did the bastard make it out
     without drowning then?” the Marcus brother wondered aloud. “Then again, I don’t see
     how a dhampir could manage a stunt like that . . . ”
    The tinge of displeasure in Nolt’s voice was due to the fact the species known as
     dhampir had many of the characteristics of supernatural creatures. As a blood mix
     between the Nobility—the vampires—and humans, dhampirs inherited some of the physical
     strengths and weaknesses of both. From the Nobility, dhampirs inherited the ability
     to recover from injuries that would be considered lethal to a human being. On the
     other hand, dhampirs lost up to seventy percent of their strength in daylight, they
     felt an unbridled lust for the blood of the living when they were hungry, and, perhaps
     strangest of all, not one of them could stay afloat in water.
    At the beginning of the era of mankind’s Great Rebellion, the vampires’ utter lack
     of buoyancy was prized as one of the few possible ways to dispose of them. However,
     when it became clear that drowning itself had markedly milder results when compared
     to stakes or sunlight, a much dimmer view of immersion’s value as a countermeasure
     was adopted. Drowning caused the heart to stop functioning and the body to cease all
     regeneration, but these effects were easily undone with the coming of night and an
     infusion of fresh blood.
    But so long as a vampire was denied either blood or the onset of night, it would be
     impossible for him to recover from drowning. In other words, after an immersion, it
     was possible to put the comatose Nobility to the torch or to seal him away in the
     earth forever. Because vampires were so vulnerable after drowning, running water still
     served mankind in reasonably good stead.
    That’s what Borgoff was talking about when he told Nolt to “Finish him off.”
    “I’m glad you could make it.”
    The low voice made Nolt’s whole body stiffen. Just for an instant, though. His hexagonal
     staff ripped through the air behind him—in the direction of the voice. It was as if
     his right hand had become a flash of brown. The strange thing was, the arc his weapon
     painted with the speed of light was a full circle. Surely enough, the hexagonal staff
     had grown to nearly twice its former length, stretching toward the spot from which
     the voice had issued.
    However, when Nolt spun around dumbstruck by the lack of contact, the pole in his
     hands was no longer than normal.
    “That’s quite an unusual skill you have, sir,” the youth of