Demon Deathchase (24 page)

“Probably won’t be able to stand for the rest of the day,” the young physician said,
looking around at the chalk-white faces of the people as if nothing had happened.
“Just goes to show it doesn’t pay to go around whipping up mobs. All of you move along
now. Back to your homes.”

“Yeah, but, Doc,” a man with a long, gourd-shaped face said as he pointed to Conroy,
“who’s gonna see to his wounds?”

“I’ll have a look at him,” Dr. Tsurugi said with resignation. “Bring him by the hospital
some time. Just don’t do it for about three days or so. Looks like it’ll take him
that long to cool down. But from here on out, there’s a damn good chance I’ll refuse
to treat anyone who raises a hand to the Hunter here, so keep that in mind. Okay,
move along now.” After he’d seen to it that the people dispersed and Conroy had been
carried away, Dr. Tsurugi turned to face D.

“That’s a remarkable skill you have,” the Hunter said. “I recall seeing it in the
East a long time ago. What is it?”

“It’s called karate. My grandfather taught it to me. But I’m surprised you’d put up
with so much provocation.”

“I didn’t have to. You put an end to it. Maybe you did it to keep me from having to
hurt any of the locals . . . Whatever the reason, you helped me out.”

“No, I didn’t.” There was mysterious light in the physician’s eyes as he shook his
head. While you couldn’t really call it amity, it wasn’t hostility or enmity, either.
You might call it a kind of tenacity.

And then D asked him, “Have we met somewhere before?”

“No, never,” the physician said, shaking his head. “As I told you, I’m a circuit doctor.
In my rounds out on the Frontier, I’ve heard quite a few stories about you.”

The physician looked like he had more to say, but D interrupted him, asking, “Who
used to live in that abandoned house?”

The physician’s eyes went wide. “You mean to tell me you didn’t know before you went
in? The house belongs to Lori Knight—the girl you rescued.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in Chiba, Japan in 1949. He attended the prestigious Aoyama
University and wrote his first novel
Demon City Shinjuku
in 1982. Over the past two decades, Kikuchi has authored numerous horror novels,
and is one of Japan’s leading horror masters, writing novels in the tradition of occidental
horror authors like Fritz Leiber, Robert Bloch, H. P. Lovecraft, and Stephen King.
As of 2004, there were seventeen novels in his hugely popular ongoing Vampire Hunter
D series. Many live action and anime movies of the 1980s and 1990s have been based
on Kikuchi’s novels.

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ABOUT THE IllUSTRATOR

Yoshitaka Amano was born in Shizuoka, Japan. He is well known as a manga and anime
artist and is the famed designer for the Final Fantasy game series. Amano took part
in designing characters for many of Tatsunoko Productions’ greatest cartoons, including
Gatchaman
(released in the U.S. as
G-Force
and
Battle of the Planets
). Amano became a freelancer at the age of thirty and has collaborated with numerous
writers, creating nearly twenty illustrated books that have sold millions of copies.
Since the late 1990s Amano has worked with several American comics publishers, including
DC Comics on the illustrated Sandman novel
Sandman: The Dream Hunters
with Neil Gaiman and
Elektra and Wolverine: The Redeemer
with best-selling author Greg Rucka.