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Meier and Charlotte: A Beginning	By : thecert Category: +S to Z > Vampire Hunter D Views: 2844 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Vampire Hunter D, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 4
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Warning: Some bad language in this one.

Chapter 5
He had stayed until dangerously close to dawn, painstakingly reassuring Charlotte that he would return as soon as he could, but he did not know when that would be. Charlotte thought his time would be spent searching for ways they could reach the stars, and that was in part true; but Meier's more immediate goal was Gallinas, a long flight for even his wings. He spent the next evening tracing landmarks on a map and interrogating Robespierre on the finer points of swamp sucker hunting.
Swamp suckers were known by various names: skull sucker (for their heads resembled human skulls), marsh dad, boocoopus. This last was a pun on "octopus," for whereas octopuses had eight tentacles, swamp suckers had as many as their bodies needed for support. They looked a bit like jellyfish, though rather than long, trailing tentacles for catching food, they had thick, muscular tentacles for locomotion and defense, and specialized borer/sucker tentacles for feeding. Their bodies were hard, with eerily rounded heads that they could retract, turtle-like. A swamp sucker could be anything from the size of a house cat to the size of a house, depending on its age and how well it had fended for itself. They were scavengers, partial to swampy areas, and in general were harmless, solitary creatures, but mating season drove them to congregate. Robespierre speculated that such a circumstance could have led to a swamp sucker hunting expedition. Normally the creatures were rather shy, and no part of their bodies offered any salable harvest; in short, there was no reason to hunt them unless mating season had brought a group together and sent them foraging, as it sometimes did, to the destruction of their human neighbors' crops and, occasionally, homes, outbuildings, fences, and so on.
Meier had no definite plan. He pocketed a couple of maps (just to be safe) and flew to the Gallinas area, knowing he would probably have to improvise a place to rest during the day; he would have preferred the basement of a vampire's castle, even a ruined one, but digging a "grave" for himself much like the one he had dug for Pete was a more likely prospect. Near Gallinas was a great backwater, perfect swamp sucker habitat. Meier circumnavigated it carefully; a marsh was not exactly running water, but any kind of water was more than most vampires cared to encounter.
Swamp sucker hunting was in theory straightforward. The creatures' bodies were heavily armored, but their heads were vulnerable. A decent marksman with a gun or crossbow, or a laser rifle, could simply pick them off by shooting them in the head as they came into range. It was, however, important to keep one's distance, for a swamp sucker that considered itself threatened could move with seemingly impossible speed to strike out and crush a man with a dozen or more tentacles. Complicating matters were swamp suckers' habits of sleeping submerged in water or buried in mud all day and coming out only on dark, moonless nights; in general they avoided light. Some hunters used various types of night vision devices so they could draw a bead on the creatures; others preferred to "do it the old-fashioned way," observing them by sound, then quickly turning on low-level lights (too bright and the creatures would draw their heads in and flee, or charge) and taking advantage of their disorientation.
The mass of swamp suckers currently inhabiting Gallinas marsh tended mostly toward house-sized, and Meier found their trail easily enough, or rather their trails—several veritable highways of flattened reeds led from the marsh. But which was freshest? He overflew several in concentric, expanding half-circles. The creatures' briny-metallic scent was difficult to pick out among the other unfamiliar odors—the water and its plants and the other marsh creatures, and rotting fish from somewhere to the northwest. Meier was wondering what to make of this when flashes of light and cracks of rifles being fired told him where hunters and prey had met.
Meier gratefully left the marsh behind (he truly disliked water) and stretched his body to its thinnest shape to speed his flight. Following the lights and sounds took him northwest, and the stench of rotting fish grew stronger as he flew. He was perhaps a hundred yards shy of the center of operations—a copse of straggly cedars on a little knoll—when shouts of alarm and a volley of shots told him something had gone wrong. A few bullets whined a little too close to him for comfort as they ricocheted off a swamp sucker's steel-hard hide. Meier swooped upward and curved his wings to slow his flight. Apparently someone's aim had been off, and a swamp sucker had retracted its head and charged the offending lights. It was now in the process of indiscriminately uprooting cedars with its left-side tentacles and suffocating a couple of hunters with those on its right. The other members of the hunting party were alternately shooting at the remaining swamp suckers (as best they could aim by the electric lanterns they carried) and at the tentacles of the swamp sucker that had their companions—not the tentacles holding the hunters, of course, but any others, in hopes of hurting the beast enough to distract it.
I don't believe I'm doing this, Meier thought as he swooped nearer. The night was dark and there wasn't nearly enough lantern light to give humans a proper view of the field of battle, but Meier could of course see everything—including the not-quite-closed slit at the front of the angry swamp sucker's shell. It would have taken miraculous marksmanship to shoot into that thin line, but if a bladesman were so foolish as to come close enough and strike deep into that cavern...
No human saw Meier descend in a curve that swept down the front slope of the swamp sucker, nor the flash-fast stroke of one great wing, and only a vampire's ears heard the pulpy sound of a swamp sucker's brain splitting under its impact. Meier's momentum carried him away from the creature as it thrashed in death throes as dangerous as its attacks had been. He alit some thirty or forty feet away, far enough to escape the humans' notice, but close enough to observe.
"What the hell—?"
"You think we got it after all?"
"Sure as shit actin' dead now."
"Think it's faking?"
"Naw, those critters don't have brains enough to play possum. Any more of 'em out there?"
"Looks like we got all the others. Rory?"
"Shut up and let me turn the ear on 'em." "The ear" was an electronic surveillance device that monitored and amplified particular frequencies—in this case the squeak-slither noises of the swamp suckers' tentacles dragging them over the earth.
After nearly half a minute of silence: "The ear's not picking up any more sounds. I think we must've got 'em all." And Meier's own senses confirmed this; he could detect no evidence of swamp sucker movement in the area.
While Rory had operated the ear, two of the men had set aside their guns and were wading and climbing through the mass of tentacles that still imprisoned their fallen comrades. Now one of them spoke: "Lou-Ray! Tom! Can you hear me?"
Tom? Meier's heart nearly did a somersault. The party numbered only six, and the four who were not hors de combat gathered around, one arranging lanterns to shine on the bronze-and-gray mass of cord-like muscle while the others commenced search and rescue. Meier carefully drew closer, but he needn't have worried: the hunters were totally focused on their work, dragging away tentacles and pulling out the men.
"Shit, he's not breathing."
"Tom's got a pulse! He doesn't look good, though."
"Nobody ever died of a couple broken ribs."
"Shit, will you look at that blood? Holy shit, his arm's off at the shoulder!"
"Aw, crap. Think we oughtta give him CPR?"
"To a guy who prob'ly bled to death?"
"Tom! Y'there, man?"
"See that arm anywhere?"
"It's likely somewhere underneath that thing. Unless it threw it somewhere. We can come back and look once it gets light. Shit, what a clusterfuck."
"It's not a clusterfuck if we got 'em all."
"Lou-Ray's killed those things before. Just bad luck. Those things are totally wacko; you never know what they'll do."
"Tom Horton! You got a purty fiancee waitin' for you—get the lead out!"
"Lookit his head, Rory."
"There's too much blood to see anything. Hey, Ed, how's Lou-Ray?"
"He's gone. What about Tom?"
"He musta got hit pretty bad; he just don't want to come around."
"Shit."
This was more or less Meier's sentiment also. Striking out in anger at a violent man was one thing; Meier still sometimes questioned his judgment in letting Charlotte's father live. Tom had done nothing worse than being in the wrong place at the wrong time; Meier really would have preferred delaying his return to seeing him harmed, though he had no idea how he might have achieved the former and not the latter. Now his dilemma was even worse: not only did the man pose him no actual threat, it seemed wantonly cruel to interfere with one so totally at a disadvantage. No human would believe a vampire held such thoughts, and if only for that reason he did not contemplate helping the men bear their sad burdens—one dead, one comatose—to Gallinas. He kept his distance and watched as they rigged stretchers from tarps and then made for the town, the small lantern-lights bobbing at their sides. There were occasional desultory snatches of conversation:
"Could've let them eat the bait, you know. That stuff stinks to high heaven, and it ain't gonna be better tomorrow."
That explained the rotten fish odor, and how the hunters had crossed their prey's path so quickly.
"I'm not tellin' Mrs. Holt that we won't come back for her husband's arm 'cause it smells too bad."
"Rory, I think we oughta head for the south side of town, to Doc Barnard's."
"Can't turn that way till we're past Old Omer's fence. I don't want to tangle with that bull of his."
Meier glanced down at the wing of his cape that had struck the swamp sucker's coup de grace—he hadn't even noticed the coating of ichor and neural tissue, but now he shook it off, and it slid clean as readily as soil would have. Blood scent pervaded the area—well, if a man had a head wound and another had lost an arm at the shoulder, there would be plenty of bleeding. Speaking of which...
Meier was as put off by a disembodied arm as any but the most combat-hardened human would have been. The man who had speculated on its whereabouts had evidently been right in his second guess; the swamp sucker had flung it away with superhuman strength, nearly a hundred yards. It would take humans a great deal of searching to find it in the grass. Meier winced, hesitated several times, and finally scooped it up with a wing and carried it to lie in front of the swamp sucker that had been the death of its owner. The humans would think they had simply overlooked it in the darkness. Meier gave his wing a good scrub in the dirt to rid it of the sensation of contact with that, then—in a very human gesture—actually smacked his forehead with a wing-formed hand. The night was far from over; a little surveillance might give him a much better idea just how wide a window of opportunity Tom's condition would allow. The hunters were still in sight, and he turned to follow them.
It was a long night for all parties concerned: a lengthy trek to the outskirts of Gallinas, followed by an interminable examination and patching-up process in a windowless room at Dr. Barnard's practice. Meier could smell the blood through the wall; Tom's injuries included a head wound that, as Rory had observed, bled profusely. Tom rallied briefly but not very coherently, and Dr. Barnard was of the opinion that he could tolerate the journey home, with the understanding that he be transported slowly—"shouldn't take more'n a couple days by wagon"—and be confined to his bed for several weeks while his insides patched themselves together. It all involved more unknowns than Meier liked, but he didn't want to interfere with an injured man's being brought home where he might be nursed back to health. And the slow transport order gave him a little time. Then the significance dawned on him: If Tom denied having paid a midnight visit to Charlotte's bedroom, it would be laid to his head injury rather than Charlotte's unfaithfulness.
Things were looking up.
There was a hint of light in the air, and Meier concluded that he had probably learned as much as would be useful to him. And as far as burying himself for the day—Old Omer's pasture sounded like a place humans would avoid.
* * *
Meier wakened after a surprisingly restful day under several inches of topsoil and a generous layer of leaves. Under less pressing conditions, the whole experience might have been fun, a concept that seemed almost alien to him after so many years of monotony and isolation. As it was, he felt chilled and a little shaky from hunger. He wondered whether Tom was already on the road but decided his time would be best spent getting back home and ascertaining how he could get Charlotte out of harm's way.
Old Omer's bull half-opened his eyes at the floomp of the cape-wings taking to the air.
* * *
Meier was not alone in his flight. Some time after full dark had fallen, a veritable swarm of dark bats tracked him from even higher, converged on his trail and followed him. Meier was at first concerned—he had of course noticed them early on, heard their fluttering wings and their navigational cries—then puzzled that they tagged along after him like sheep ... or migrating geese.
"If you want to do me a favor, you can precede me and play windbreak," he muttered, not really expecting a response; Meier could influence domestic animals, but commanding wild ones with no prior contact was beyond his powers, and commanding animals controlled by another noble would be a gross breach of etiquette. The bats, however, shot past him to form a tidy mass that did indeed cut the air resistance considerably. Meier was not inclined to look gift bats in the mouth, especially when he was tired from prolonged flight. The bats stayed in their formation until Meier peeled off to land on one of his castle's towers; there they swooped in a disorderly but seemingly delighted swarm about him, almost as if celebrating his return.
"Have you lost your lord?" he asked them, wondering if these had been animal familiars of a now-deceased noble who were searching for a new master. He had no wish to fill that role himself—but as he observed them, he concluded that that was in fact probably not what they sought. Now that his mind was less on making his way home and he could give more attention to the little creatures, he realized they were not simply bats. There was something of the vampire about them. They were not shape-shifted nobles—they were bats—and yet they were not bats only.
"Robespierre," said Meier, "I'm home. And I need my breakfast."
In a matter of minutes Meier was comfortably ensconced in his breakfast room. The bats had followed him there but, to his relief, they showed no interest in the unusually large serving of synthetic blood that he savored. Since he had lived utterly alone for so long, he had switched to a scaled-down system of blood synthesis; it would take some time for Robespierre to undo the mothballing of the heavy-duty system that would be required to feed so many. He of course asked the A.I. for observations; Robespierre said that the strange guests appeared to be genetically modified bats descended from Myotis lucifugus (big brown bat), an insectivore, and they showed uncommonly vampire-like intelligence. Meier remembered that they had readily taken his hint earlier and wondered what else they might be capable of. If they were in fact associated with some noble house—trained or possessed or bred to super-chiropteran capabilities—they might be the link he needed for his next task: finding transportation to the City of Distant Stars.
He downed the last of his blood and, remembering the maps he had pocketed the evening before, he spread them out on a great table, then looked to the bats. "Where are you from?"
A number of the bats took flight, circling and scattering about the chamber, and finally one separated out to land on the table and walk with surprising agility across a map to a point near its top. The dark nose poked a stylized castle amid lines and shadings that represented mountains.
"Chaythe?" Meier murmured, reading the legend. "I had no idea anyone—"
He had heard that Chaythe's mistress had been destroyed by the Vampire King himself. For a variety of reasons, his kind had avoided the place thereafter. But that had all been centuries or perhaps millennia ago; or indeed, he might have been misinformed. Vampires were inordinately fond of gossip—or had been, in the days when there were enough of them to make for gossip among themselves—and false rumors could circulate for years. The death of the Lady Carmila might have been another rumor.
"I want you to take a message to your mistress—or master," he told the bat on the map. "Let me find pen and paper..."
The message was perforce a short one; Meier chose paper that was small and light enough not to encumber its carrier excessively.
     Gentle Noble: I thank you for the companionship and
     aid of your creatures the bats. Now I seek another
     favor; passage to the City of Distant Stars.
     Your assistance will meet with my eternal gratitude.
     —Count Meier Link
Meier was prepared to tie the missive to the bat's leg, somewhat as humans prepared carrier pigeon messages, but the little creature forestalled him; he had rolled the sheet and tied it with a fine ribbon when the bat simply swooped down, caught up the scroll in its claws, and flew from the chamber, the other bats swirling and boiling after it until, in less than half a minute, Meier was alone once more, blinking and half wondering if he had hallucinated the entire experience.
"Robespierre," he finally murmured, "did I actually see all those bats?"
"One hundred twenty-seven specimens have just departed this castle, noble lord."
* * *
Much as he would have liked to see Charlotte again, Meier kept to himself that night. His knowledge of Tom's condition—such as it was—was certainly not a matter he could confide to her: he really didn't care to reveal what he had been doing near the marshes of Gallinas. And while he could scarcely explain how he knew of Tom's fate, he could scarcely conceal it from her when so much hinged on it. So he rummaged through the castle's library for maps that would enable him to take measure of the area, to see what noble houses still remained where he might seek help. He was finding and laying out small-scale maps when the sky started growing light and forced him to his rest.
End Chapter 5
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Meier and Charlotte: A Beginning