Vampire Hunter D Read Online Free Page B

graceful, that the driver was not one of the genetically engineered and cybernetically enhanced fakes the vampires had spread across the world.
    A throaty howl blazing with the glee of slaughter split the wordless void. With both eyes glittering wildly, the inverness-wearing wolf lurched up onto his hind feet. This was exactly what made the werewolf a lycanthrope among lycanthropes, for despite its four-footed form, a werewolf’s speed and destructive power were greater when it stood erect.
    Perhaps taking the fact that the youth had stood stock still and not moved a muscle since their arrival to mean he was paralyzed with fright, the black beast crouched ever so slightly. Trusting its entire weight to the powerful springs of its lower body, it leapt over fifteen feet in a single bound.
    Two flashes more brilliant than the moonlight split the darkness.
    D didn’t move. The werewolf, dropping down on D from above with every intention of sinking its iron-shredding claws into his skull, changed course in midair. It sailed over D’s head as if poised to make another jump, and landed in the bushes a few yards behind the Hunter.
    Staged completely in midair, a jump like that was a miraculous maneuver only possible by coordinating the power of the lungs, the spine, and extremely tenacious musculature for a split second, and it was something werewolves alone could do. Even groups of seasoned Werewolf Hunters occasionally fell victim to attacks like this because the attack was far more terrible than any rumors the Hunters might have heard, and they weren’t prepared to counter the real thing. These demonic creatures could strike at their prey from angles and directions that were patently impossible as far as three-dimensional dynamics were concerned and the attack was entirely silent.
    However, moans of pain spilled from the beast’s throat as it huddled low in the brush. Bright blood welled from between the fingers pressed against its right flank, soaking the grass. Its eyes, bloodshot with malice and agony, caught the blade glittering with reflected moonlight in D’s right hand as the Hunter stood facing it silently. Just as the werewolf was ready to drive its claws home, D had drawn the sword over his shoulder with ungodly speed and driven it into his opponent’s flank.
    “Impressive,” one of them said. Strangely, that someone was D, who’d been under the impression that he had cleanly bisected the werewolf’s torso. “Until now, I’d never seen what a true werewolf was capable of.”
    His low voice sowed the seeds of a new variety of fear in the heart of the demonic beast where it lay in the bushes. The beast’s legs could generate bursts of speed of three hundred and seventy miles per hour—almost half the speed of sound. There had been less than a fiftieth of a second between the time it jumped and its attack on D, which meant the youth had been able to swing his sword and split its belly open even more quickly. Worse yet, the werewolf’s wound wouldn’t close! That wouldn’t be so unusual when it was human, but once it assumed the beastly form, the cells of a werewolf’s flesh were like single-cell organisms, giving it the regenerative power of a hydra. Cells created more cells, closing wounds instantly. But the blade the werewolf had just tasted made regeneration impossible, though it was probably not due to the blade but rather the skill of the youth who wielded it. Skin and muscle tissue that could reject bullets weren’t showing any signs of regenerating!
    “What’s wrong with you, Garou?” the young lady shouted. “In wolf form, you should be unstoppable! Do not make a game of this. I demand you tear this human apart immediately!”
    Though he heard his mistress scolding him, the werewolf Garou didn’t move, partly because of the wound but also because of the youth’s divine skill with a sword. What really tapped the wellspring of horror was the lurid will to kill that gushed from every pore of