Vampire Hunter D: Dark Road Part Three Read Free Book Online Page A

for repeated firings, because the average person couldn’t carry it around. When he’d accepted it, Juke had been completely despondent, but just now it’d saved him.
    The high-caliber penetrator rounds he slammed into the giant’s temple, shoulder, and side threw the attacker off balance in midair. The leap had been calculated to bring it down on the roof of the fleeing wagon, but the hands it desperately extended barely missed the edge of the vehicle, and the left half of the machine man slammed into a nearby barn. When the giant rose again, three-headed chickens, giant rabbits, and cow-pigs that had been roused from their peaceful slumber were running everywhere.



“You bastards!” the grand duke snarled, the gigantic eyes in his enormous face seeming to shoot fire. “My patience is at an end. Off to the great unknown with you!”
    The machine man’s mouth snapped open, and what should fly out of it but a space eater. It soared right at them.
    The way it flew at precisely the same speed as them seemed a fiendish stroke meant to strike fear in Juke and his compatriot, but rather than cower, Juke raised his left hand. It almost looked as if he was stretching his arm out further than it could possibly go as he leapt up and grabbed the space eater—which had just halted over the racing wagon, formed a ring, and begun to devour itself.
    Although Grand Duke Mehmet had seen it himself, he didn’t really understand what had happened. Even if someone had caught it, the space eater should’ve bored its deadly hole through space.
    When he realized nothing was happening, the grand duke started after them with earth-shaking footfalls. As he ran, he released another bug, for he’d decided that something must’ve been wrong with the first one. This one would perform its duty in front of the wagon. It flew far higher and faster than the last one.
    But damned if Juke didn’t jump up a second time. Fifteen feet he leapt to once again catch the insect in his extended left hand. And in the palm of that hand an unmistakably human mouth opened to swallow the second bug.
    Once again Juke landed as beautifully on the roof as if he’d been pulled right down to it, at which point the left hand lauded him, saying, “Good job.”
    There could be no mistaking that hoarse voice. With an unfazed expression as it followed Juke’s hand into his sleeve, it was none other than D’s left hand.
    On sending the two transporters into the village, where Nobility could be waiting for them anywhere, D had given them his left hand as backup. It was clear why the Duke of Xenon had finally noticed the Hunter’s blindness when he fought without the use of his left hand.
    â€œIs that the last of it?” Sergei shouted.
    â€œNot yet,” Juke replied.
    The great black figure was now within sixty feet of them, and he was rapidly closing the gap.
    Taking a sharp turn and crossing a bridge, they ascended a slope.
    â€œThe front door!” Sergei exclaimed on seeing the gates off in the distance.
    â€”
    Peeling himself from the spot where he’d been slammed into the gates, D held his sword in his teeth while he used his empty right hand to pull out the spears that skewered him. He’d probably calculated that the Duke of Xenon would have to stop attacking long enough for his exoskeleton to perform repairs, allowing D some time. Dizziness assailed him. Though part Noble, he’d lost enough blood that he should’ve long since died, after having been impaled and had every inch of his body burned—and he didn’t have his left hand to supply him with more energy. It was surprising that he could even stand. His sword rose.
    The blue light vanished from between the exoskeleton’s eyes. At the same time, the duke pounced. Making a vertical leap, the exoskeleton hurled a long spear.
    Tracing an elliptical path, D’s blade batted it away. The Hunter’s