A split second before they could hit him, JJ made his landing. A visor covered his face, and he used his left hand to shield his chest and his right to cover his abdomen. He wasn’t in a position where he could dodge. All he could do now was trust in the merchant who’d sold him this armor.

  Blistering heat scalded his arm. Making a great leap backward, JJ desperately tore off the gauntlets. Throwing them to the ground with flames still spouting from them, he poised himself for action. His will to fight wasn’t shaken, but his thoughts settled on escape. He wasn’t at all confident he could elude the spheres, however.

  As if he’d just read the Hunter’s mind, the enemy’s lips twisted into a smile. The spheres raced forward. But they halted midway between JJ and his foe.

  His opponent turned to the right.

  In a stand of trees that’d been reduced to shadows, there stood a figure in a black coat. More than the eldritch aura that billowed from him, it might’ve been his evident beauty despite all the shadows that’d frozen the Nobleman.

  “D,” JJ murmured.

  The shadowy figure stepped forward. The spheres glided into action.

  D swung his right arm. Undoubtedly it was the hem of his coat that’d whipped up the wind. JJ bent backward from it, and his foe reeled as well.

  A flash of light bleached the Noble’s form white. Spheres blown into confusion by the wind had collided. The ring of light spread everywhere. And from its center leapt the figure in black. Trailing smoke, D landed right in front of the Nobleman, and then carved him from the top of his head all the way to his crotch with a single stroke.

  Having picked himself up again, JJ opened his eyes just in time to see D pull his blade out of his opponent’s chest and return it to its scabbard. Though he turned in JJ’s direction, it was unclear whether or not his eyes even registered the man.

  The figure of unearthly beauty returned in silence to the spot where he’d first appeared, and there he mounted the waiting cyborg horse. Darkness began to cover the forest. While horse and rider melted into that darkness as if returning to their lair, JJ said nothing but merely watched them go.

  There goes a whole other form of life, he thought. Something was leaving that had the same shape as him, but was something else entirely. A sense of loss he’d never once felt on encountering any enemy, no matter how great, now filled the man from head to toe. Shaking his head, he crouched down and retrieved the gauntlets for his arms.

  “You look to be in pain,” a clearly mocking voice said, rising from the ground. The location was that of his foe—who was only dust. Before JJ’s astonished eyes, his foe slowly got up. He was back in his original state.

  “Nothing is so painful as learning that confidence and pride as tough as iron are but castles built on sand. How will you live now? No matter how you spend your days, you shall carry the feeling of defeat now branded on your heart until the day you die!”

  “Who . . . who are you?”

  “I am the master of this world. This is a dream that comes to me,” said his foe, not a single wound or speck of blood on him.

  “A dream?”

  “I see. This is a blow severe enough to make you want to quit being a Hunter.”

  “Shut up,” JJ said, his right hand tightening its grip on his sword.

  “I believe I just told you this is my dream—if you don’t believe me, try throwing that here.” His foe tapped the left side of his chest with one hand.

  An intense hatred rose in the man’s throat. JJ’s blade flew with peerless accuracy, piercing his foe’s heart. Grabbing the hilt that protruded from his chest, the enemy threw the weapon back at JJ. His body wouldn’t move. A blistering-hot pain passed through his chest and out his back.

  “Does it hurt?”

  The question left JJ astonished. Looking down, he saw that the hilt had stopped against his chest. The tip of the blade was jutting from his back. And yet, there was no pain.

  When his foe waved his right hand, the blade vanished.

  “In dreams, we can disregard all the laws of the world. Like so.”

  The enemy walked toward him. With his first stride, his form became that of D.

  “Emotions, however—hatred and anger—they are no different than normal. Set yourself free. You have a sword in your hand!”

  Even before being told that, JJ had felt the weapon in his right hand.

  “How about it? This man has taken everything from you. Are you going to say some empty compliment, like ‘I’m no match for you,’ and run off with your tail between your legs? Then again, that might suit a loser just fine.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Why don’t you try to make me? Do it yourself.”

  “Shut up!”

  He was already within striking distance. JJ’s blade slashed D from the base of the neck down through the right lung, and the rival Hunter toppled, gushing bright blood.

  “How was that? How does it feel to have a dream within a dream?”

  The source of the voice had returned to dust, and JJ stood alone in the resting place without a sign of another living creature. Only the voice could be heard. In JJ’s ears, it wasn’t the voice of a dream; it was one of reality.

  “In dreams, it’s easy for one to open the heavy doors to their heart. You have what it takes to live here. What do you say? Will you try slaying D here?”

  Before the voice urged him, JJ had found his heart whirling in a terrible conflict.

  Slay D? How could I do such a thing? I should be ashamed.

  However, the conflict was short lived. It only went on until the moment JJ realized, This is a dream. I’m just dreaming, after all. No matter what I do, or what happens, it has no bearing on reality. I have a right to dream. Or to live in a dream.

  “I’ll slay D,” JJ murmured.

  Laughter could be heard somewhere.

  “I’ll be coming to your world again. Lead me back here, dream master!”

  And then he woke up in the stagecoach.

  II

  It came as no surprise at all that JJ was subjected to a barrage of questions.

  “What sort of dream did you have?” Louise asked, leading the assault.

  “I don’t remember.”

  “Is that always the case?”

  “Generally, yeah.”

  “What do you think, D?”

  “Hey, don’t you trust me?”

  “Sorry, but from what D’s said, I don’t think Sinistre’s about to leave us be.”

  Eyes carrying malice reflected D, but the former Hunter quickly averted his gaze.

  “If he says he doesn’t remember, we have no choice but to believe him.”

  D’s answer was exactly right.

  “In that case, untie me.”

  Before JJ woke up, his hands and feet had been bound with a thin cord.

  “We can’t do that, for the reason I explained. All that aside, is there any problem with staying here for the night?”

  “Not really, if it’s on this road,” Al replied. “But the Frontier is still the Frontier. There are bound to be some strange things prowling around. A long time ago, I drove a wagon right through the night, and I saw a bunch of little fires moving along the horizon.”

  “There is one problem.”

  Everyone looked at D’s handsome visage, turning that way even as they tried not to look directly at him.

  “What’s that?” Claire asked, taking a belt from her liquor bottle.

  “Subterranean creatures called underworms. A little over a month ago, they wreaked havoc in the eastern Frontier. Given their migration patterns, it’ll be the western Frontier next.”

  “It fits the timing, too,” Louise conceded with a nod.

  “Could we maybe not have everything working together to drive us crazy?!” Harman shouted, looking like he was about to burst into tears.

  At that point, JJ, who was sitting in the rearmost row of seats, looked out the windows to either side, then suddenly pointed toward the front window and said, “They’re gone.”

  Everyone but Dorleac focused their attention in that direction.

  “What’s gone?” Claire asked, furrowing her brow. “The cyborg horses?!” she then exclaimed.

  The corpses of the six animals were nowhere to be seen.

  Harman looked around on either side, finally pointing to the left window and saying, “Nope, there’s two of them over yonder!”

  All eyes focused on them.

  “What the hell—they’re moving?!” Claire exclaimed, the finger she’d aimed so forcefully bending back against the glass.

  Though the darkness was like a hardened coat of black lacquer, by the light from the windows the passengers could manage to see some fifteen to twenty feet. At the very periphery of that area, the bodies of the white horses were indeed jolting out into the dark’s domain.

  “What’s dragging ’em?” Al asked, completely riveted.

  “An underworm,” Harman replied, his grip on the stake launcher tightening.

  Someone let out a gasp.

  The pair of corpses had been swallowed up by the ground in less than a blink of an eye. It seemed the work of nothing shy of a sudden cave-in.

  “The underworm—that’s its supper,” Harman said, sweat rolling down his forehead.

  “A half dozen horses—but then, each of them is half mechanical innards. I doubt they’ll fill it up very much,” Louise remarked. Turning to D, she continued, “Underworms are tremendous food hoarders. One can take ten tons of meat one day, eat it over the next week and a half, and then go to sleep for six months. I hope it’s got today’s ten tons now.”

  Only stillness hung beyond the windows. A minute passed. No doubt that seemed like an eternity to those in the stagecoach.

  Suddenly there was a terrific crash, and a crack shot across the windowpane. It was the half-dissolved remains of a cyborg horse. It seemed to have been partially digested, as the polymer-alloy skeleton and artificial organs gave off wisps of white smoke, while there wasn’t a trace of any sinew left. Though the remains dropped to the ground soon enough, they must’ve left some digestive acid as a parting gift, and the windowpane had begun to dissolve.

  “What are we gonna do, D?”

  It wasn’t the sheriff’s help Al sought. When the shit hits the fan, people choose the ones they can really count on over the chain of command.

  “Do we just stay here like this and wait to get dragged under? Wouldn’t we be better off making a run for it?”

  “Running would just get us the same,” Claire said in a low voice. “Underworms are said to be more than a mile long. They can move through the ground at speeds of sixty miles per hour. You’d be caught before you got five paces.”

  “What’ll we do, then?” Al shoved his fist into his mouth. His chattering teeth broke the skin. Blood began to trickle out. “I’ve got a wife and kids. I only signed on for guard duty because I wanted the money to buy ’em one of those cleaning machines. I heard that even if I died they’d still get paid, so I was at peace with that. But now I’m real scared. Say, Sheriff, if I get killed by something that’s got nothing to do with Duke Sinistre, do they still pay out?”

  “There’s no stipulation as such, but I’ll see to it they do. If I make it back alive, that is.”

  Al groaned and dropped weakly to his knees on the floor. It was a reasonable reaction to impending death.

  “D, you know how to slay an underworm?” JJ inquired.

  “I’ve heard of a way. Though the body can be thousands of feet underground, apparently it keeps part of itself exposed on the surface as an observation sensor. If I can take care of that, the worm will die deep in the earth. However, its skill at camouflaging the sensor is said to border on the miraculous.”

  “That’s right. The sensor might only be a foot to a foot and a quarter high, but supposedly they can even make it look like a mountain chain. But if you don’t find it, all of us will wind up crapped out by an underworm!”

  D started walking—or so it appeared for the briefest of moments to eyes viewing the world through a haze—and then he reached for the lever to open the vehicle’s rear door.

  “I’m going, too,” said JJ.

  “I don’t trust you.”

  Leaving those words like a powerful shove against the other man’s chest, the vision of beauty in black climbed down from the stagecoach. The light from the windows made the rain glisten like silvery needles.

  “This is crazy. It’ll spot him with the first step!” Harman murmured.

  “That’s why he’s gone out there. To get its attention on himself,” Claire said, hugging her bottle close.

  D immediately crouched down and pressed his left hand to the ground.

  “Hmm, can’t find it,” the hoarse voice said, its words mixing with the sound of the rain. “The bastard’s dug down more than fifteen hundred feet. Still, it can move around free as you please. Must use acid or something to bore its tunnels.”

  “What about cave-ins?”

  “Looks like it also secretes a hardening agent. It might even be mixed in with the acid. So the cloud has a silver lining, as they say.”

  “Where’s the sensor?”

  “That I don’t know. Probably got itself disguised real good. We’ll have to trick it into revealing itself!”

  D advanced about twenty yards in silence. Somewhere on the surface, the sensor would be watching him and relaying that information to its body underground. But out on the barren plain, how was he supposed to defend himself from a fiend that could drag him down from the surface, and how was he to slay it?

  D stuck his right hand into his coat. Rain bounced off him from head to foot. What he pulled out he then launched straight into the air. What sort of trick was this? Dozens of rough wooden needles flew straight up, forgetting entirely about coming back down again.

  Once again D crouched down and pressed his left hand against the muddy ground. The enemy was coming. Coming to sate its hunger to devour everything that walked the earth. Rain lashed every inch of the Hunter.

  “Here it comes!”

  Even before the hoarse voice spoke, the ground beneath the Hunter’s feet gave way.

  “I don’t see him. I wonder—” Claire murmured, her face pressed against the glass. From the neighboring row of seats Louise heard her. “What happened to D?”

  Louise hastily pulled her face away from the windowpane. She was just about to rub her eyes, but on realizing that, she halted.

  Just for a moment, she thought. That’s all.

  Nearly an hour had passed since she’d entered the rocky region. Louise felt her body had reached its limits. The moment she’d first stepped among the boulders she’d been shot in the side, and now the wound was hot as fire, and she’d long since finished the water in her cooler box. Every step her cyborg horse took was like a thumb in her wound.

  There was no way she could turn back. Her opponent was a killer who’d slaughtered four entire peace-loving families, seventeen people all told. She was going to bring him in if it killed her—or shoot him dead.

  The gait of her cyborg steed became uncertain. Apparently it was unable to deal with all the sudden ups and downs of this mountainous path. As Louise slouched forward with a low groan, something buzzed right over her head. It was after that she heard the gunshot. Louise practically rolled out of the saddle and to the ground. And she let out another cry.

  Pulling her rifle from its case, she drove away her horse, then dashed behind a boulder to her rear. Twice puffs of dust erupted down at her feet, but that didn’t concern her. Atop a pile of rocks to her right, she could see the head and shoulders of a man armed with a pneumatic gun. He looked surprisingly close, and surprisingly large.

  Louise braced her rifle against her shoulder. She peered through its high-powered scope. Her opponent had no way of knowing about her secret weapon.

  It was easy enough to get the man’s head centered in the crosshairs. Due to the pain in her side, she couldn’t aim for anyplace else. The weapon’s kick traveled all the way down to her wound. Confirming that the man’s head had snapped backward, Louise then curled up where she was.

  Her rest was over in a few seconds. Somehow making it back to her feet, she looked up at the pile of rocks. There was no sign of the man. He must’ve fallen down the other side.

  Louise started walking. Only when a figure appeared from behind the rocks did her pain leave her. Before the man could raise his weapon, Louise quickly fired from the hip. She put three rounds into him before he dropped, then after checking that he wasn’t moving, she moved closer with her rifle over her shoulder. She couldn’t let her guard down yet.

  Crouching beside the supine body to grab him by the hair and raise his head, she forgot her pain again in that instant.

  It was somebody else.

  Going around the rocks, Louise found his horse there. Just beyond it was another—the killer’s steed. His corpse lay beside it with a bullet hole right between the eyes.

  A traveler who just happened to be passing by had heard the gunshot and dismounted just as the corpse dropped there. The traveler had gotten off his horse—when he really should’ve fled—because he wanted to find out who’d shot that man dead. And he’d been slain by the sheriff’s gunfire, since her pain had left her without enough time or presence of mind to check his face or build.

  Louise remembered well the actions she’d taken next. Removing all the baggage and tack from the traveler’s horse, she’d buried them along with the man’s corpse—which had been a painful endeavor that made hell pale by comparison—set the horse free, and pretended none of it had ever happened. Fortunately, she could tell at a glance that the traveler was a drifter, and in his medical kit there’d been a painkiller so powerful it bordered on recreational.

  When her work was finished and she’d patted the ground flat, the ground asked her, “Are you sure this is for the best, Sheriff?” The voice she heard was coming from the depths of the earth.

  She watched as six feet of freshly dug dirt slowly rose. First a hand poked out, then a shoulder, the head, and finally the traveler crawled out with three bloodstains spread across his shirt. Louise stared until the very end.

 

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