Read Online Vampire Hunter D Volume 13: Twin-Shadowed Knight Parts 1 and 2 - Free Book Online Page B

before them that made the men stiffen.
    D moved forward. The ranks broke—not because the men told their mounts to do so, but rather because the horses themselves cleared a path out of sheer terror. D walked away, and Mia followed after him.
    Once their shapes had disappeared down the road, the bald man finally muttered, “The damn freak is . . .” But he caught himself, adding, “No, that’s not what he is.”
    â€œYeah,” another replied. “He got us all riled up and knocked us silly to take a load off our shoulders. That ain’t the sort of thing no murderer would do. We were in the wrong.”
    â€œYou know, he’s probably a lot better man than we thought.”
    When the men looked down the road, it was like they were looking at a whole different person, but by that point there was no longer any sign of D and Mia.
    -
    An orderly and shimmering stripe across the black earth—that’s what the Noble Road was, and no sooner had they got on it than D, who didn’t seem to be listening no matter how Mia tried to reason with him, suddenly looked up at the sky and said, “Sure is strong, isn’t it?”
    He was talking about the sunlight.
    â€œYeah.”
    Mia herself had gotten pretty annoyed and hadn’t spoken to him for quite some time, but she was sweating so badly she’d answered him without even thinking.
    From time to time, the scenery ahead of them wavered as heat shimmers rose from the ground.
    â€œWhy don’t we take a little break?” Mia asked. “It seems like the sun is out of whack or something. I can’t take much more of this.”
    â€œHold on for another thousand yards or so. There’s a resting place up ahead.”
    â€œYou mean a dark abode?” Mia said, scanning the glittering road before them.
    Constructed of hexagonal pieces that could’ve been either stone or metal, the road was a good thirty feet wide, and it twisted and turned its way toward the oddly shaped rocks that were visible in the distance. Designed by the Nobility, after thousands of years this road didn’t show even modest signs of wear as it raced off across the earth, to the bottom of the sea, and up into the sky.
    The “dark abode” was the resting house D had mentioned. Even the Nobility had been powerless to stop the cosmic movements of the earth and sun. And with the coming of morning, even the Nobility’s roads would be bathed in sunlight. Of course, by day they would take refuge in coffins safe within their carriages, but considering the potential danger if they were by some chance exposed to the rays of the sun, they had constructed emergency shelters every score or so of miles along the road. These were known as “resting places.” In size they ranged from tiny ones that would accommodate only a pair of Nobles up to huge ones that could shelter a hundred people, but the dark abode Mia had mentioned referred to a structure designed to protect ten to twenty people from the deadly rays. Concomitant with the Nobility’s millennia of decline, many of these had been weathered into ruin, taken out of service, or destroyed at the hands of mankind, but a large number of them still dotted the shimmering road, providing a place where the surviving Nobles or people who’d lost their way might find a brief respite from the travails of their journey. That not only Mia but also D would want to take a break was a natural-enough assumption given the nature of the blood that flowed through him. D was probably suffering far more than Mia at present.
    â€œThis is really strange,” Mia said after about five minutes had passed, looking over at D beside her. Every time her lips moved, beads of sweat went flying. “The sun’s just too hot. There’s no way this is—”
    â€œHurry,” D said as he delivered a kick to his horse’s flanks.
    Heat shimmers rose from the ground to obscure him. Even