Apparently confident in the efficacy of his actions, D didn’t even bother to check if Doris was actually unconscious before leaving the room with his sword over his shoulder. The reason he’d put her to sleep was to prevent her from interfering in the battle that was about to begin. No matter how firm their resolve, anyone who’d felt the vampire’s kiss once could not help but heed the demon’s commands. Many were the Hunters who had been shot from behind or had their hearts pierced by the very women they sought to save from cursed fangs. To guard against that, veterans would give the victims a sedative or confine them in portable iron cages. But the extraordinary skill D had just displayed with his left hand would have been viewed by even the most veteran of Hunters as impossible in all but dreams cast by the Fair Folk.

Once out in the hall, D opened the door to Dan’s room. The boy snored away peacefully, oblivious to the deadly duel about to ensue. Quietly shutting the door, D slipped through the front hall and down the porch steps onto the pitch-black earth. No trace of the midday heat remained now. The green grass swayed in a chilled and pleasant night breeze.

It was around September. It was to the great credit of the Revolutionary Army that they hadn’t destroyed the dozen weather controllers buried beneath the seven continents. If not by day then at least by night the most comfortable levels of heat and humidity for both the Nobility and humans were maintained all year round. There were, however, still the occasional violent thunderstorms or blizzards, written into the controller’s programs by some uniformity-hating Nobles to recreate the unpredictable seasons of yore.

With a graceful stride that was a dance with the breeze, D passed through a gate in the fence and went another ten feet before coming to a stop. Before long there came from the depths of the darkness, from the far reaches of the plain, the sound of horse hooves and wagon wheels approaching. Could it be that D had heard them even as he talked with the young lady in that distant room?

A team of four horses and a carriage so black it seemed lacquered with midnight appeared in the moonlight and halted about fifteen feet ahead of D. The beautifully groomed black beasts drawing it were most likely cyborg horses.

A man in a black inverness cape was seated in the coachman’s perch, scrutinizing D with glittering eyes. The black lacquered whip in his right hand reflected the moonlight. By the light of the moon alone D could make out a touch of beast in his face and the terribly bushy backs of his hands.

The man quickly alighted from the driver’s seat. His whole body was like a coiled spring; he even moved like a beast. Before he could reach for the passenger door, the silver handle turned and the door opened from the inside. A deep chill and the stench of blood suddenly shrouded the refreshing breeze. As D caught a glimpse of the figure stepping down from the carriage the slightest hue of emotion stirred in his eyes. “A woman?”

Her dazzling golden hair looked like it would creep along the ground behind her. If Doris was the embodiment of a sunflower, then this woman could only be likened to a moonflower. Her snow-white dress of medieval styling was bound tight at her waist, spreading in bountiful curves reaching to the ground. The dress was certainly lovely, but it was the pale beauty unique to the Nobility that made the young lady seem an unearthly illusion, sparkling as she did like a dream in a shower of moonlight. But the illusion reeked of blood. The flames of a nightmare crackled in her lapis-lazuli eyes, and her beckoning lips were red as blood as they glistened damply in D’s night-sight, calling to mind a hunger that would not be sated in all eternity. The hunger of a vampire.

Gazing at D, the young lady laughed like a silver bell. “Be you some manner of bodyguard? Hiring a knave like you for protection is just the sort of thing a lowly human wretch would do. Having heard from Father that the girl who lives here is not only of a beauty unrivaled by the humans in these parts, but that her blood is equally delectable, I came to see her for myself. But as I expected all along, there is no great difference between these foolish, annoying little pests.”

Ghastliness rushed into the girl’s face. The pearly fangs that appeared without warning at the corners of her lips didn’t escape D’s notice.

“First I shall make a bloody spatter of you, and then I’ll drain the humble blood from her till not a drop remains. As you may well know, Father is inclined to make her part of our family, but will not stand by while the blood of the Lee line is imparted to a good-for-nothing that would stoop to a trick of this sort. I shall strike her from the face of the earth into the waiting arms of the black gods of hell. And you shall accompany her.”

As she spoke, the young lady made a sweep of her slender hand. Her driver stepped forward. Murderous intent and malevolence radiated from every inch of him like flames licking at D’s face.

You lowly worms have forgotten your station, his mien seemed to say. Turncoat scum you are, forgetting the debt you owe your former masters, rebelling against them with your devious little minds and weapons. Here’s where you learn the error of your ways.

The transformation had begun. The molecular arrangement of his cells changed, and his nervous system became that of a wild beast born to race across the ground at great speeds. The four limbs clutching at the earth began to assume a shape more befitting a lower animal. A prognathous jaw formed, and revealed rows of razor-sharp teeth jutting from a crescent-moon mouth that split his face from ear to ear. Jet-black fur sprouted over every inch of him.

The driver was a werewolf, one of the monsters of the night resurrected from the dark depths of medieval legend along with the vampires. D could tell just by watching the transformation, which some might even term graceful, that the driver was not one of the genetically engineered and cybernetically enhanced fakes the vampires had spread across the world.

A throaty howl blazing with the glee of slaughter split the wordless void. With both eyes glittering wildly, the inverness-wearing wolf lurched up onto his hind feet. This was exactly what made the werewolf a lycanthrope among lycanthropes, for despite its four-footed form, a werewolf’s speed and destructive power were greater when it stood erect.

Perhaps taking the fact that the youth had stood stock still and not moved a muscle since their arrival to mean he was paralyzed with fright, the black beast crouched ever so slightly. Trusting its entire weight to the powerful springs of its lower body, it leapt over fifteen feet in a single bound.

Two flashes more brilliant than the moonlight split the darkness.

D didn’t move. The werewolf, dropping down on D from above with every intention of sinking its iron-shredding claws into his skull, changed course in midair. It sailed over D’s head as if poised to make another jump, and landed in the bushes a few yards behind the Hunter.

Staged completely in midair, a jump like that was a miraculous maneuver only possible by coordinating the power of the lungs, the spine, and extremely tenacious musculature for a split second, and it was something werewolves alone could do. Even groups of seasoned Werewolf Hunters occasionally fell victim to attacks like this because the attack was far more terrible than any rumors the Hunters might have heard, and they weren’t prepared to counter the real thing. These demonic creatures could strike at their prey from angles and directions that were patently impossible as far as three-dimensional dynamics were concerned and the attack was entirely silent.

However, moans of pain spilled from the beast’s throat as it huddled low in the brush. Bright blood welled from between the fingers pressed against its right flank, soaking the grass. Its eyes, bloodshot with malice and agony, caught the blade glittering with reflected moonlight in D’s right hand as the Hunter stood facing it silently. Just as the werewolf was ready to drive its claws home, D had drawn the sword over his shoulder with ungodly speed and driven it into his opponent’s flank.

“Impressive,” one of them said. Strangely, that someone was D, who’d been under the impression that he had cleanly bisected the werewolf’s torso. “Until now, I’d never seen what a true werewolf was capable of.”

His low voice sowed the seeds of a new variety of fear in the heart of the demonic beast where it lay in the bushes. The beast’s legs could generate bursts of speed of three hundred and seventy miles per hour—almost half the speed of sound. There had been less than a fiftieth of a second between the time it jumped and its attack on D, which meant the youth had been able to swing his sword and split its belly open even more quickly. Worse yet, the werewolf’s wound wouldn’t close! That wouldn’t be so unusual when it was human, but once it assumed the beastly form, the cells of a werewolf’s flesh were like single-cell organisms, giving it the regenerative power of a hydra. Cells created more cells, closing wounds instantly. But the blade the werewolf had just tasted made regeneration impossible, though it was probably not due to the blade but rather the skill of the youth who wielded it. Skin and muscle tissue that could reject bullets weren’t showing any signs of regenerating!

“What’s wrong with you, Garou?” the young lady shouted. “In wolf form, you should be unstoppable! Do not make a game of this. I demand you tear this human apart immediately!”

Though he heard his mistress scolding him, the werewolf Garou didn’t move, partly because of the wound but also because of the youth’s divine skill with a sword. What really tapped the wellspring of horror was the lurid will to kill that gushed from every pore of the youth just before the werewolf could unleash its deadly attack. That hadn’t come from anything human!