When Doris turned to D with a gasp, her face was twisted by the same terror that had contorted it the night before when she tried to escape his approach. She remembered what the gorgeous Hunter really was. And yet she reclaimed her smile soon enough; not only was she stouthearted, but she also had a naturally fair disposition. “Sorry about that. I’ll fix you up a room later. At any rate, get some rest.” As soon as she’d said that she went ahead and grabbed a corner of the shade anyway, but the moment she lifted it and took a look outside, her endearing face quickly became a mass of pure hatred. Returning to her bedroom for her prized whip, she stepped outside indignantly.

Astride a bay in front of the porch was a hulking man of twenty-four or twenty-five. The explosive-firing, ten-banger pistol he was so proud of hung from the leather gun-belt that girt his waist. Below a mop of red hair, his sly eyes crept across every inch of Doris’ frame.

“What’s your business, Greco? I thought I told you not to come around here no more.” Her tone just as commanding as it had been in her search for the Hunter, Doris glared at the man.

For a brief instant, anger and confusion surfaced in his cloudy eyes, but a lewd smile soon spread across the man’s face and he said, “Aw, don’t say that. I come out here all worried about you and this is the thanks I get? Seems you been looking for a Hunter now, haven’t you? Couldn’t be you’ve gone and got attacked by our old lord, could it?”

In a heartbeat, vermilion spread across Doris’ face, the result of the anger and embarrassment she felt at Greco hitting it right on the mark. “Grow up! If you and your trashy friends in town go around spreading wild stories about me just because I won’t have nothing to do with you, I’ll teach you a thing or two!”

“Come on, don’t get so worked up,” Greco said, shrugging his shoulders. Then his gaze became probing as he said, “It’s just, the night before last there was this drifter in the saloon blubbering on about how he got himself challenged to a test of skill out at the hill on the edge of town by a right powerful girl, then got his ass handed to him before he could even draw his sword. So I buy him a drink to hear all the details and it turns out looks-wise and build-wise, the girl sounds like the spitting image of you. The frosting on the cake was he said she’s damn handy with a weird kind of whip, and there ain’t no one in these parts that could be besides you, missy.” Greco’s eyes were trained on the whip Doris had in her right hand.

“Sure, I was out looking for someone. Someone good. You should know as well as anyone how much damage mutants have been causing around town lately. Well, things are no different out here. It’s more than I can take care of all by my lonesome.”

On hearing Doris’ reply, Greco smiled faintly. “In that case, all you’d have had to do was go ask Pops Cushing in town, seeing how he’s in charge of scouting new talent. You know, five days back, one of the hands at our place seen you chasing a lesser dragon toward the lord’s castle right around dusk. Now, on top of that, you’ve got this need for hired help you don’t want anyone in town to know about.” Greco’s tone of voice changed entirely. He threateningly suggested, “Let’s see you take that scarf off your neck.”

Doris didn’t move.

“Can’t do it, can you,” he laughed. “I figured as much. I think I’ll go into town and have a few words with... well, I don’t think I have to tell you the rest. So, what do you say? Just be sensible and give me your okay for what I’ve been asking you to do all along. If we got hitched, you’d be the mayor’s daughter-in-law. Then no one in town could lay a stinkin’ finger on you or—”

Before his vile words were done, a snap rang through the air and the bay reared up with a whinny of pain. Doris’ whip had stung the horse’s flank with lightning speed. In a heartbeat, Greco’s massive frame was thrown out of the saddle and crashed to the ground. Hand pressed to his tail, he groaned in pain. The bay’s hoofbeats echoed loudly as it fled the farm, heartlessly leaving its master behind.

“Serves you right! That’s for all the filthy things you’ve gotten away with by hiding behind your father’s power,” Doris laughed. “I never cared too much for your father or anyone in cahoots with him. And if you got a problem with that, you bring your daddy and your buddies out here any time. I won’t run or hide. Of course, the next time you show that ugly, pockmarked mug of yours around here, you’d better be ready to have me flay the skin right off it!”

Color rose in the big man’s face as words so rough you had to wonder where a beautiful young lady kept them shot at him like flames.

“Bitch, you fucked up real good...” As he spoke, his right hand went for his ten-banger. Once again, a surge of black split the sunlight-soaked air, and the pistol he’d tried to draw was thrown into the bushes behind him. And he could draw in less than half a second.

“Next time I’ll send your nose or one of your ears flying.”

The man knew there was more to her words than empty threats. With no parting quip, Greco scurried off the farm, rubbing his backside and right wrist by turns.

“That scumbag’s nothing without his daddy behind him.” After she spat the words, Doris turned and froze on the spot.

Dan stood in the doorway, still dressed in his pajamas and armed with a laser rifle. His big, round eyes were brimming with tears.

“Dan, you... you heard everything then?”

The boy nodded mechanically. Greco had been facing toward the house and he hadn’t said anything about Dan, so the boy must’ve stayed behind the door. “Sis... were you really bit by a Noble?” The boy lived in the wilds of the Frontier. He was well aware of the fate of those with the devil’s kiss on their throat.

The young beauty who had just sent a brute twice her size packing with a crack of her whip was now rooted to the spot, unable to speak.

“No, it can’t be!” The boy suddenly ran over and threw his arms around her. The sorrow and concern he’d been wrestling with surged out in a tidal wave, soaking Doris’ slacks with a flood of hot tears. “You can’t be, you just can’t! I’d be all alone then... You can’t be!” Though he didn’t want it to be true, he had no idea what he could do about it, and his sorrow sprung from his helplessness.

“It’s okay,” Doris said, patting her brother’s tiny shoulder as she fought back tears of her own. “No lousy Noble’s put the bite on me. These are bug bites I’ve got on my neck. I only hid them because I didn’t want you getting all worried.”

A ray of light streamed into his tear-streaked face. “Really? Really truly?”

“Yep.”

Surely the boy had a heart that could shift from low gear to high on the fly if that was all it took to calm him down. “But what’ll we do if the folks in town believe all Greco’s fibbing and come busting in here?”

“You know how good I am in a fight. Plus, I’ve got you here—”

“And we’ve got D, too!”

At the boy’s exuberant words, the girl’s face clouded. That was the difference between someone who knew the way Hunters worked and someone who didn’t. In fact, the boy hadn’t been told D was a Hunter.

“I’m gonna go ask him!”

“Dan—”

Before she could stop him, the boy disappeared into the living room. She hurried after him, but was too late.

In a completely trusting tone, Dan addressed the youth on the sofa. “A guy just came out here trying to get my sister to marry him, and he says he gonna spread the worst kind of lies about her. He’ll be back with a bunch of folks from town, I just know it. And then they’ll take my sister away. Please save her, D.”

Imagining his answer, Doris unconsciously closed her eyes. The problem wasn’t the reply itself, but the effect it would have. A cold, adamant rejection would leave a wound on the boy’s fragile heart that might never heal.

But this is how the Vampire Hunter replied: “Leave it to me. I won’t let anyone lay a finger on your sister.”

“Okay!”

The boy’s face shone like a sunny morning.

From behind him, Doris said, “Well, breakfast will be ready soon. Before we eat, go have a look at the thermo-regulators out in the orchards.”

The boy galloped off like the spirit of life itself. Doris turned to the still prone D and said, “Thank you. I know it’s the iron law of Hunters that they won’t lift a finger for anything but dealing with their prey. I’d be in no position to complain no matter how you turned him down. You did it without hurting him... and he loves you like a big brother.”

“But I do refuse.”

“I know. Aside from your job itself, I won’t ask any more of you—what you said to him just now will do fine. I’ll handle my own problems. And the sooner you get your work finished the better.”

“Fine.”

Not surprisingly, D’s voice was emotionless and bitterly cold.