“It was five nights ago. I was chasing a lesser dragon that’d slipped onto the farm while we were fixing the electromagnetic barrier and killed one of our cows, and when I finally thought I’d finished it off, it was already pitch-black out. To make matters worse, it was near his castle. I was all set to hightail it home when what should happen but the dying beast suddenly spits fire and burns the back half of my horse to a cinder. I’m thirty miles from home, and the only weapons I’ve got to speak of are the spear I use to kill lesser dragons and a dagger. I ran as fast as I could. I must’ve run for a good thirty minutes when I noticed something, like there was someone running along right behind me!”

Doris suddenly fell silent, not only because the memory of that terror had become fresh again, but also because a fiendish howl had just pierced the darkness from somewhere very close. The breath was knocked out of her as she turned her beautiful face in that direction, but soon enough she realized it was only the sound of some wild animal. Her expression became one of relief. Though rather dated, an electromagnetic barrier that had cost them a pretty penny sealed the perimeter of the farm, and within it they had a variety of missile weapons set up.

She resumed the account of her horrid experience. “At first I thought it was a werewolf or a poison moth man. But there was no sound of footsteps or wings flapping, and I couldn’t even hear it breathing. Yet I just knew there was someone right behind me no more than a foot away, and moving at exactly the same speed I was. I finally couldn’t take it any more and I whipped around—and there was nothing there! Well, there was for a fraction of a second, but then it circled around behind me again.”

Memory was sowing terror across the girl’s face. She gnawed her lip and tried to force her trembling voice out. D said nothing, but remained listening.

“That’s when I started shouting. I told whoever it was to stop hiding behind me and come out that instant. And when I’d said that, out he came, dressed in a black cape just like I’d always heard. When I saw the pair of fangs poking over his mean, red lips, I knew what he had to be. After that, it’s the same old story. I got my spear ready, but then my eyes met his and all the strength just drained right out of me. Not that it mattered much, because when that pasty face of his got closer and I felt breath as cold as moonlight on the base of my neck, my mind just went blank. The next thing I knew it was daybreak and I was lying out on the prairie with a pair of fang marks on my throat. That’s why I’ve been down at the base of that hill each and every day, morning till night, looking for someone like you.” Her emotional tale over at last, Doris slumped back onto the sofa exhausted.

“And he hasn’t fed on you again since?”

“That’s right. Though I do wait up for him every night with a spear ready.”

D’s eyes narrowed at her attempt at levity. “If we were merely dealing with a blood-starved Noble, he’d be coming every night. But, you see, the greater the interest they take in their victim, the longer the interval between attacks so they can prolong the pleasure of feeding. But the fact that it’s been five days is incredible. It seems he’s extremely taken with you.”

“Spare me the damn compliments!” Doris cried. No trace of the spitfire who had challenged D to battle at twilight remained now. She sat there, a lovely seventeen-year-old girl trembling in fear.

As D surveyed her coolly, he added words that only made the hair on her neck stand higher. “The average interval between attacks is three to four days. More than five is extremely rare. He’ll come tonight without a doubt. From what I can tell from your wounds, he’s quite powerful, as Frontier Nobility go. You said something about ‘his castle.’ His identity is clear to you, is it?”

Doris gave a little nod. “He’s been lord over this region since long before there was any village of Ransylva. His name is Count Lee. I’ve heard some say he’s a hundred years old, while others say he’s ten thousand.”

“Ten thousand years old, eh? The powers of a Noble grow with the passing years. He could prove a troubling adversary,” D said, though his tone didn’t sound particularly troubled.

“The powers of a Noble? You mean things like the power to whip up a gale with a wave of the arm, or being able to turn into a fire dragon?”

Ignoring Doris’ query, D said, “There’s one last thing I need to ask you. How does your village handle those who’ve been bitten by vampires?”

The girl’s face paled in an instant.

In many cases those who’d felt the baleful fangs of a vampire were isolated in their respective village or town while arrangements were made to destroy the culprit, but if they were simply unable to defeat the vampire, the victim would be driven from town or, in the worst cases, disposed of. This was the custom because a night fiend, crazed with rage at not being able to feed on the one it wanted, would attack anyone it could get its hands on. More towns and villages than anyone could count had been wiped out for just that reason. Ransylva had similar policies in effect. That was the reason Doris hadn’t asked anyone else for help, but had privately sought a Vampire Hunter. Her failure to confide in her brother was for fear that his conduct might tip off the villagers if they happened to go into town. Had she no younger brother to consider, she’d surely have gone after the vampire on her own, or done away with herself.

Vampires dealt with their victims in one of two ways. Either they drained all the blood from their prey in one feeding and left them a mere corpse or, through repeated feedings, they turned the individual into a companion. The key point in the latter was not the number of times the vampire fed but rather something D had touched on earlier: whether or not the vampire took a liking to its victim. Sometimes a person joined their ranks after a single bite, while other times they might share the kiss of blood for months only to die in the end. And it went without saying that those transformed into vampires had to bear their destiny as detestable demons, wandering each night in search of warm human blood, living in darkness eternal. For Doris, and for every other person in this world, that was the true terror.

“Everywhere it’s the same, isn’t it,” D muttered. “Accursed demons, ghouls from the darkness, blood-crazed devils. Bitten once and you’re one of them. Well, let them say what they will. Stand up, please,” he said to Doris, who was caught off-guard by the one remark meant for her. “It looks like the guest we were expecting has come. Let me see the remote control for your electromagnetic barrier.”

“What, he’s here already? You just said he’d be here after midnight.”

“I’m surprised, too.”

But he didn’t look it in the least.

Doris came back from her bedroom with the remote control and handed it to D.

In order to keep all kinds of strange visitors from sneaking onto the farm while both Lang children were away, they had to have some way to erect the force field from the outside. Acquired secondhand off a black market in the Capital shortly after their father’s death four years ago, the barrier was their greatest treasure except, of course, for the rare occasions when it broke down. Their losses to the wraiths and rabid beasts that wandered the night were far less than those of other homes on the periphery; to be more exact, their losses were practically nonexistent. But the purchase came with a price. After they bought it, they were left with less than a third of their father’s life savings.

“How are you gonna fight him?” Doris inquired. It was a question that sprung from the Hunter blood flowing in her veins. The fighting techniques of Vampire Hunters, who were rare even out on the Frontier, were rumored to be gruesome and magnificent, but almost no one had ever witnessed them firsthand. Doris herself had only heard of them in tales. And the youth before her now was completely different from the rustic Hunter image conjured up by those stories.

“You should see for yourself, and I wish I could let you, but I need you to go to sleep.”

“What—?”

The youth’s right hand touched Doris’ right shoulder, which was taut with swells of muscle while still retaining some delicacy. Whatever the technique or power he now employed, as soon as Doris noticed the frightening cold charge coursing through her body from her shoulder she lost consciousness. But just before she did, she glimpsed something eerie in the palm of D’s left hand, or at least she believed she did. She thought she saw something small, of a color and shape she couldn’t discern, but whatever it was it clearly had eyes and a nose and a mouth, like some sort of grotesque face.