The Legend III

Dream Walker

Vampire Hunter D Fan Fiction

# Surprise, surprise! The queen of procrastination does it again! The ending of the third arc of D and Vianne's story, it arriveth! In the form of a mega 3200-word chapter, quite a bit longer than my normal episodes. It's a little abrupt, but hell, I'm not one for draggy ends. I'm sorry to those who like long, epic final boss battles, but this is not an action fic, and Siera is more of a psychological villain than a physical one, so there isn't really a point in dragging the fight out. The ending is brisk and relatively uneventful, and the main purpose is to reveal everything about Siera and her motivations. That aside, I've noticed a rather disturbing trend in my three VHD fics so far. Once Bitten was 11 chapters long sans author's note, Tainted Angel was 9, and now Dream Walker will end with the 7th. It seems like my fics are becoming 2 chapters shorter every round. Not to worry! That's just because this particular story is just a small piece of side plot, a window to some of the things that Vianne has to endure in her role. It's also mostly Vianne-centric, with D mostly taking a passive back seat. We can't have the smexy dhampir running around cutting down enemies for seven whole stories, can we? Enough desperate explaining, I'll leave you to read the end of this arc, and judge for yourselves whether it sucks ass or not. At this point, I'd like to thank all of you for following this tedious little series so far. I'll start work on the fourth instalment, which will be titled Siren Song, as soon as my next wave of inspiration comes. Hey, quality over speed. Please sit back and enjoy the rest of what Dream Walker has to offer, and look out for the next part in the series!

## As a side note, for those among you, dear readers, who like the manga series Inuyasha, while waiting for Siren Song to spawn on the pages of please support my new Inuyasha fic, Blood Memory! I had this epic brainwave for that particular fic, and I got six chapters up in the space of two days. What? Why don't I ever do stuff like that for the VHD fics? Uh. Blame the brain. Okay, no more advertising. On to Daybreak!

Chapter 7: Daybreak

Siera smiled with satisfaction as she accompanied D down the street. The moment they had arrived in town two days ago, while D had been seeing to the needs of his horse, she had gone to seek out the mayor. She had promised the dirty old man continued sexual favours as long as he made excuses to delay D's payment. She needed more time; D's defences were so close from weakening. As it was, D was still in town for her to cling to at her leisure.

The dusky veil of evening had just descended upon the sky; there was still a little daylight, but the moon was already up. The sky was quite beautiful like that, alight with a mysterious dim crimson glow, with the rising moon and the setting sun facing off on opposite horizons.

They stopped outside the local inn where Siera had put herself up after lying that her family had refused to take her in. In truth, the silly, easily-awed humans would only get in her way.

D left her outside the door and turned to walk away—he had his lodgings somewhere else. "D, wait!" she called out. Her next words were carefully calculated. "Won't you come in and share a meal with me? It'll be my treat, for making you accompany me around like this. I feel so bad … but I still don't feel quite safe."

After a suitable pause, she let out a small gasp and brought her hands up to her mouth. "Oh, I'm so sorry … I forgot … you don't eat … like the rest of us …"

"It's fine," D said impassively. "Go inside." Without further comment, he left.

Siera wore a faintly satisfied smile on her face as she entered the inn. When she caught sight of the person coming down the stairs in the lobby, however, the smirk vanished and her blood ran cold.

This inn was rather special. The lobby had a skylight, and the moon was clearly visible through the glass. The soft fading light of dusk dyed the entire room crimson, including a face that Siera had never expected to see again. Vianne's face.

What truly sent chills down Siera's spine was the fact that Vianne was walking confidently down the stairs without groping at the handrails. She had a curious gaze fixed on the queue of travellers at the counter, almost as if she could see them. Then her gaze shifted, and she made eye contact with Siera. It was then that the redhead knew. Vianne could see.

Vianne stopped on the fifth step of the stairway, forcing Siera, who was a short distance away, to look up at her. "Finding you seems to have turned out a lot easier than I'd expected," she remarked. "Where's D? I hesitate to think that you'd go to such lengths just to get rid of me only to let him leave you in a place like this."

Siera smiled sweetly. "It's nice to see that your eyes have miraculously regained their sight. However, I have no idea what you're talking about."

Vianne's eyes narrowed. "Don't bother faking it, Siera. Now that I can see your face, I know for sure. You were the one tormenting me in my dreams. You have a great deal of explaining to do."

An ugly smile split Siera's beautiful face. "Oh? I'd like to see you make me."

With that, she turned and hightailed it out of the door. Muttering some choice profanities, Vianne jumped the full five steps to the ground floor and dashed out after her enemy.

Vianne swore as she turned the corner that she thought she had seen Siera disappear around, but it was nothing but an empty dead end. Siera had been leading her on a wild goose chase through the town's back alleys for almost two hours. Having lived in this town for all her life, Siera had an obvious advantage in such games.

Utterly spent, Vianne took a moment to catch her breath; she was not overly worried about losing Siera's trail—the redhead was clearly toying with her, shaking her off in the maze of alleys before appearing to her again a while later. As such, she thought herself well able to afford the luxury of a few seconds' rest.

That was her fatal mistake. Without warning, what felt like the butt end of a dagger slammed, hard, into the back of Vianne's neck. Instantly knocked out by the sudden blow, she crumpled into a heap on the cold gravel.

She was back. She was here, in this very town, for reasons D could not yet fathom. He had been able to sense Vianne's approach for the past three days. She had gone further away when they had first parted, but she had soon changed direction.

Why was Vianne here? Why, after she had declared her unwillingness to be near him so clearly? For a rare moment, D struggled with indecision. It was only a moment, and it passed quickly. What she did was no longer any of his business, and the best course of action would be to ignore her presence.

D would have done just that, if his awareness of her had not told him that she was extremely close. There was nothing in this part of town but industrial buildings and dodgy back alleys. What was she doing in a place like this? And then, besides her, there was someone else nearby too.

Casually, without any appearance of haste, D exited the disused warehouse that he had taken up temporary residence in.

Vianne came to, in the very same alleyway in which she had been jumped, with a horrendous ache in her neck. She sat up, rubbing the base of her skull where she had been hit, and the first thing she noticed was that her bracelet was missing.

"Missing something, my dear?" Siera asked in a cloying voice.

Vianne whirled around, and found the only exit from the alley blocked by Siera. In her right hand the redhead held a wickedly sharp knife. Around the index finger of her left hand dangled the Moon Bracelet.

"Curse your skinny wrists!" Siera said with mock indignation, pouting prettily. "I can't get this little trinket to fit me. Since when do they make bracelets so small? And what's that look for? Are you surprised I could get it off you? Like you said, I was in your head. Why wouldn't I know how to do what you know how to do?"

"My wrists aren't skinny," Vianne shot back, not passing up on the chance to insult the woman she had come to hate. "Yours are fat."

"Trust you to still want to hurl abuse at me at this juncture," Siera said disapprovingly, waggling a finger at the younger woman. "Your life is very much in peril."

Vianne backed slowly away from Siera, keeping her eyes on the knife in the other woman's hand. She knew that she was done for unless someone found them in this quiet part of the town in the middle of the night. There was nothing in the alley behind her except a dead end. Just for a split second, she glanced up at the brightening sky. The third night was coming to an end. In just minutes, she would be blind again as the moon gave way to the sun.

Siera giggled as she advanced on Vianne, twirling the Moon Bracelet around her finger. "So, how does it feel to be bereft of your precious bracelet again?" she taunted. "This is just like in your dreams, don't you think? So fragile, so helpless, so easy to hurt ... that was what drew me to do all those things to you, you know. That man in your dreams ... he was a man, all right, but his mind was mine. What can I say? Your inability to protect yourself was ... decidedly arousing. I wanted to hurt you, to extract every drop of exquisite pain and suffering possible from your mind; the very thought of it excited my blood."

Vianne felt her skin crawl as she moved steadily back. She knew that her back was going to hit solid wall soon. But she kept retreating, determined to keep herself away from this frightening woman for as long as possible.

"Why are you doing this?" she asked when she felt rough brick wall against her back. Tears of panic formed in her eyes. "What do you want?"

Siera laughed huskily as she closed the gap between Vianne and herself. Vianne desperately pressed back against the wall, but nonetheless found herself inches away from her enemy.

"What do you mean?" Siera said almost mischievously as she touched the cold blade of her knife to Vianne's cheek. "If you mean yourself, I merely wished to exploit your pitiable weakness for my own amusement and pleasure, at your expense of course. Actually, at first I was going to get to him through you. But I took a peek in his mind, and realised that I didn't need the time that I could buy from using you after all. So I had to drive you away from him. And why was that? Because I know how you feel for him, Vianne. Better than you yourself know it. You'd just get in the way of what I hope to achieve with him. And those feelings ... they made me oh, so jealous, see."

Holding the knife steadily against Vianne's throat, Siera leaned in and forcefully mashed her lips against the younger woman's. Vianne writhed in disgust, trying to free herself from Siera's bruising kiss. She felt the knife cut into her skin and blood trickle down her neck, but she did not care. Her revulsion at Siera's perverse attraction to her was too great to bear.

There was a cry of shock, and Siera reared back. Blood oozed from a wound on her lip. Vianne turned her head and spat out the blood in her mouth. "Fuck off, you faggot," she hissed, "and go find a nice long tree branch if you're so desperate."

Instead of anger at being insulted, Siera displayed only mirth as she threw her head back and laughed heartily. "Grew some backbone, did you?" she giggled. "What a turn-off. And I was just getting warm, too."

"I didn't have to know that," Vianne retorted, letting her disgust show plainly. "What do you want with D?"

"Ooh, forever looking out for others first, you selfless angel," Siera crooned. "Obviously I'm going to take over his mind through his dreams. His mind is strong, yes, but so full of carefully suppressed pain and darkness that I can use! As for after I gain control over him ... well, first of all I'd get him in bed with me, before I actually take over his body. I mean, he makes me damp down there just by standing there and looking like he does. I imagine it would be quite an experience ..."

"You need to get yourself a boyfriend, you desperate whore," Vianne snapped. "Going to all this trouble just to get laid? Why don't you just get a job in a brothel? Or go search for a stick, like I said?"

This time, Siera backhanded her across the face, snarling, "I've had enough of your lip, you little bitch. If you really must know, I want his body. That man can cut a laser beam in two. You won't believe how thrilled I was when he was the one who rescued me from the vampire. Whom I was actually targeting initially. But then I had the legendary hunter D in my grasp!"

Vianne felt her blood run cold. "What do you mean, you want his body?" she asked, not sure if she even wanted to know.

Siera threw her head back and laughed, her copper curls bouncing as if sharing her mirth. "Haven't you figured it out by now, you silly girl? I'm not human, and this isn't the body I was born with. I'm a parasite morph. Or rather, the consciousness of one inside a human shell. Have you heard of my kind?"

A parasite morph. Vianne had only heard the horror stories, but those alone were more than enough. Creatures by that name were born as vaguely humanoid lumps of an unknown substance. Once fully grown, the substance that made up their bodies would begin to decay, and they would have to find a host body, or die. They were gifted with the ability to enter and manipulate dreams -- an ability known commonly as dream-walking. Depending on the strength of the particular morph, its influence could extend up to a few miles from the physical body. Using this ability, a parasite morph could weaken any sentient being's mind until it could transfer its consciousness into the human's body and take over completely.

People who were prey to parasite morphs would often succumb to insanity, and then appear to recover completely all of a sudden, when in fact it was because they were no longer themselves. The body would continue to age normally, and if it died, so would the morph. For convenience, most parasite morphs use their hosts' memories to pretend to be their hosts, and then take over a younger member of the family when their host bodies grew too old or sickly. As such, parasite morphs often existed as almost undetectable inherited afflictions, and could thus live exceedingly long lives. They had been discovered when one of them had slipped up and behaved like a previous host instead of the current one.

Realising that she had almost been victim to such a creature, and then D through her, sent chills down Vianne's spine. She had never been more thankful for the Moon Bracelet. Which, she realised with a pang, was dangling off Siera's finger.

"I'm sick of transferring myself from mortal body to mortal body, having no purpose other than to survive," Siera told Vianne. "I want something more out of this endless, sickening existence. I want to bend the world to my will! Wouldn't that be thrilling? To do that I need a body with exceptional power. So I decided to try for one of the vampire Nobles. But now I have something so much better within reach! The body of the one who can kill Nobles! I won't give it up, wench. I will have it for mine, and you can do nothing to stop me! Too bad, darling. Your loss."

With that, she, or rather it, raised the knife above its head, the razor-sharp blade poised to stab down into Vianne's chest. Vianne's eyes followed the blade as it was brought high into the air. As the weapon rose, so did the sun. The first rays of the sun shone from above the nearby buildings. The third night was over. The last thing Vianne saw was the knife framed in a halo of morning sunlight, its blade glinting with lethal promise. And then everything was just plain black again. Perhaps it was just as well that she did not have to watch her own execution.

She had lost.

Suddenly, a familiar voice broke through the darkness. The sound of it nearly stopped her heart. She had thought she would never hear it again.

It said, in the very same calm, quiet tone as always, "Put the knife down."

Vianne heard a gasp. There was a scuffling sound from below as the parasite morph whipped around, its shoes scraping against the rough gravel. "D ..." it stammered, its voice already shaking. "This isn't what it looks like ... I can explain ... she came back, and she --"

Perhaps Siera realised that nothing she said or did would change anything now, because Vianne could feel the raw fear emanating from her. That same fear could be heard clearly in her voice as she murmured, "How much did you hear? How much did you hear ...?"

Emboldened by D's presence, Vianne whispered, echoing Siera's words, "Too bad, darling. Your loss."

"You slut! How dare you!" Siera screeched, wheeling back around. "I'll kill you!"

There was the sickening sound of flesh being rent by a blade, and Vianne felt warm blood splatter her face. She slid to the ground, convinced that it was her own blood. But then she heard the thud of another body hitting the ground right in front of her, along with two chinks. One of the unused knife falling to the floor, and the other of her bracelet landing on the gravel. And then there was the soft, drawn-out rasp of a sword being sheathed.

She felt her loosely curled fist being eased open, and then the cool touch of her bracelet as it was placed into her palm. Without speaking, she put the accessory back on and stood. Her legs were still shaky from the fright she had gotten.

"Why did you come back?" D asked, surprising her. She had thought he would just walk away and leave her to find her own way out.

"I wanted to get back at her. It. Whatever," she answered in a flat voice. "You don't know what it did to me when it controlled my dreams, and I'm not about to tell you, so take my word for it that it was bad."

"Is that all?" he pressed on. Vianne frowned. It was almost as if he needed to know.

"I wanted to prove to you that I'm not a raving lunatic," she said. That made almost the whole truth, now. "I have a problem with people thinking of me as a madwoman when I'm not."

D seemed satisfied with that answer, because the next thing he said was, "I'll walk you to the coach stand."

Vianne shook her head, although she was not sure if he was even looking at her. "I'm not leaving again," she said. It was so hard to find the right words to express her intentions explicitly, so she waited for his response.

There was a long moment of silence. Then D said, "You've forgiven me, then?"

Vianne felt something catch in her throat. "Everything was just part of her ploy to drive me off and get at you, wasn't it? It's stupid to continue falling for it when the monster is already dead. So yeah, I forgive you. Maybe there was never anything to forgive."

And so she left with him. As they walked back towards the more populated part of town, D suddenly said, "Thank you."

It was as if he knew the whole truth, even the last little reason that Vianne had withheld from him. It was as if he understood that she had returned not only to take revenge and to clear her own name, but to save him from Siera's mysterious powers as well. Yet how would he know? She had betrayed nothing, not even in her conversation with Siera in that alley.

I guess there's no way to know, Vianne thought. So all she said was, "You're welcome."