Vampire Hunter D Book One - Analysis

The story opens the only way it could – with a blood red sunset over a ‘sea of grass’ and a lonely rode, on which is a lone horse and rider. The thin trail takes our rider to Ransylva, a farming town in the Frontier, and on the outskirts he meets a woman with an “untamed aura”. She is beautiful, curvaceous, young and powerful, yet this stranger riding into town is unfazed, even when she flings off her robe revealing she’s naked underneath. It’s played as a surprise tactic but in our day and age comes across as clownish – a dated trope as poorly used as the pizza man in a porno.

It’s a short bit of goofiness however before we turn to the true focus of our story, a figure who is far more breathtaking even than a naked whip wielding woman. He’s beautiful, tall, dark and handsome, he’s pale and melancholy, he’s all things to everyone – by the time the book, nay the series, is over, there will be no words left to describe the physical perfection of our protagonist, D. He carries a sword and a blue pendant on his chest – both very important – and he is a vampire hunter.

Having passed the girl’s test, D is hired to protect the young woman, named Doris Lang. She runs a farm nearby, having taking over after her father’s death, and she’s having vampire problems. The local vampire lord has taken a fancy to her, and won’t take no for an answer. It’s up to D to keep the girl from becoming his “accursed bride”.

A lot has happened in a handful of pages. We’ve had combat across a bleak wilderness, we’ve heard there are vampires and monsters of all kinds, and a new civilization that blends science and superstition has taken over the planet. The world has been rewritten, and this new reality’s rules are very different from our own.

As the victim of a vampire’s bite, Doris should be a brain dead strumpet, craving only more pleasure from her master. She’s not because she has incredibly strong willpower, a sense of self worth and assurance, that is fighting against the biological poison she’s been infected with. This concept, and the idea of the ‘will’, becomes a major theme throughout the books.

Another major element is the heavy sense of scientific realism baked into the world. This is a story of magic and myth but it is run through with plausible explanations, with meditations on possible explanations for how monsters function. Nightmarish creatures are explained in rational ways, akin to animals with biological imperatives. The science, however, leaves plenty of room for mystery – none of these characters discuss the world with the certainty of truth. Their worldly knowledge is often full of holes and contradictions.

Continuing the story – D agrees to take on the hunt, just in time for a visitor to arrive from the world of night. It is a beautiful vampiric woman, riding in an old fashioned carriage with a werewolf named Garou (French for wolf) as her guard. Her name is Larmica – a play on the name Carmilla – she speaks haughtily and looks down on the hunter only to be taken by surprise by his prowess. She flees, D watches her go, and chapter one comes to an end.

An incredible amount of information has been almost dumped upon the reader’s lap in this single chapter; but dumped is the wrong word, because what’s presented to us is a neat, well organized package, in a poetic style that mimics the world is it trying to present – melancholic, sharp and slick, lonely and mysterious as a lone rider on the moor. The author does not walk us into this world with an explanation of anything – that comes in Chapter 2 – instead, he starts us in the action, in the midst of the deadly Frontier, and paints the world in heavier detail as he goes along.

We learn there’s been a war, and there’s now a Revolutionary Government; that there are machines around the world which control the weather of the entire planet; that supernatural creatures are natural to this world but there are also extreme variants bred by the vampires of old; and despite how the world has changed, there are still time zones and black markets. These details make the world more real, they ground it in detail and history, giving the setting a powerful character of its own.

This information isn’t typically given to us by characters, either. Instead, the author tends to go on tangents about locations, weapons, monsters, and historic events which may distantly relate to events on the page, but often have little to do with it. This speaker knows things that D and the other characters don’t, even commenting so at times. This speaker is not omniscient, however, as it often asks questions about what D is thinking and feeling – implying that the speaker doesn’t know, and neither do we. It makes for an interesting narration – it stands out as important when there’s something it doesn’t know. This narrator is as much a character as D is, because of its manner of speaking to us from the page, from how it speaks of D as a person separate to itself.

Chapter 2 steps outside the narrative, as our narrator explains the world we are in now and the horrors which brought it to be. The world ended in 1999 – a common Japanese media trope, blame Nostradamus – nuclear war finally erupted and destroyed all life as we know it on the planet. Humans barely survived; and in the aftermath vampires arose from the darkness to become the planet’s new overlords, enslaving humankind.

That’s not how this chapter starts, though; the explanation comes on the next page. Instead, humanity is in a “dark age”, it says, one “propped up by science”, highlighting the Capital city and its technical marvels, the great achievements in space travel and global highways. These achievements however, are dust covered; the society that made them is gone, that world is crumbling, presenting us with a hyper futuristic planet in a deep depression, a society that has achieved greatness it can no longer emulate.

The first mention of vampires here comes in the form of a mob hunting them down; humans, swarming the Capital city, hunting down the Nobility. The language, the clothing, the images the author presents us with all pull on the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, when western society plummeted into madness and superstition.

The more you pull apart this setting the more incredible it seems. The idea of a vampire dystopia is hardly unique today – vampire novels in general have exploded in the last ten years and scifi and fantasy variations are common. But in 1983, the vampire was just beginning to enter into the world of science fiction. Most depictions of the creature of the time were still heavily gothic, leaning into horror and action, and/or romance. Anne Rice would start writing the Vampire Chronicles in the 70s, movies had dozens of saucy and spicy vampires as well as more horrifying, monstrous ones, there were comics and comedies – but when it comes to science fiction dystopias, particularly of this level of detail and development, I really don’t know if anything comes close.

Just the idea of a world ruled by vampires, a society built upon human subjugation, a scientific utopia which is a social dystopia, would be a fascinating setting to work with – but VHD goes further by asking what happens after the false utopia falls? Already we have intriguing questions about a world of science which allows for the existence of fantasy creatures; a future society in which humans are the oppressed beneath mythic monsters; added to that are all the themes of collapsing societies and fallen worlds; how to rebuild? What to value? What is moral or immoral in a world such as this? The more you read, the more threads that Kikuchi weaves into his world, the more incredible it seems. Thousands of years of history, war, monsters and myth, all developing into a gothic horror epic unlike any other.

In the morning, Doris awakens to see she has a visitor. His name’s Greco, the mayor’s son, and he’s been demanding her hand in marriage relentlessly. The mayor is a garbage bag, much like his son, and the two of them reflect a major theme of the series – the dangers of corruption and power. Vampires are not uniquely evil, in this world; humans with power often abuse it, too, especially male humans. Men attempting to force women into relationships using their political and social power runs throughout VHD.

Greco is one of the more useless examples of this character type. His father is Mayor Rohman – making this man’s name Greco Rohman. During their confrontation, the man with a regrettable name figures out that Doris has been bit, and tries to blackmail her. She’s not putting up with it – she is presented as physically stronger than him as well as being mentally and morally better than him. He may be a villain, but for the moment, he’s a rather pathetic one, showing the audience how Doris’s situation as a young woman in the Frontier is under threat from many directions.

Doris’s eight year old brother, Dan, happens to overhear her conversation with Greco. Terrified she’s in danger, he begs D to protect the girl from the humans in town as well as the monsters. To Doris’ shock, D agrees; when the boy leaves, Doris speaks to D, and the conversation implies that D was lying. A hunter only hunts monsters, and ignores anything unrelated to his mission. It’s meant to give us a cold glimpse at the harsh reality of the Frontier, the hunter’s life. Doris might be in danger from Greco and the village, but that’s not D’s problem. However, this little conversation sets up a twist later on, when we see D keeping his promise to the boy, despite his own denial.

It’s not long before Greco is back with his daddy and a posse, a typical Western scene. The sheriff and the town doctor are all present, there to demand Doris reveal if she is bitten. Villages have procedures for this sort of thing; victims are locked up in asylums, or they’re exiled from the village, or killed. Doris refuses to go along with it, and Greco riles the crowd, determined to do anything to put her down. That’s when D appears, cowing the crowd with his power and beauty.

The sheriff gives us some interesting info: he says there’s rumors going round the Frontier about an incredible hunter named D. This is somewhat contradictory, since another line in the book implies that the name ‘D’ is new for the hunter; I think we can assume that the author means to imply that D already has a legend rising up around him; and that the name ‘D’ is fictitious. This journey is relatively new, and his name a recent adoption.

Chapter Three introduces us to Count Lee’s castle. It’s a stroke of genius, the theme of near toxic nostalgia that weaves its way through vampire culture. They love the past and can’t let it go, so all their modern technology mirrors ancient architecture, traditions, and styles. They live in castles with modern cameras and missile technology, with “electronic eyes” and satellites overhead.

These barriers to entry are nothing to D, who touches the blue pendant on his neck, and watches the drawbridge open for him. This is a pattern we’ll see throughout the books – the power of this pendant to negate and to alter the vampiric technology in his way.

The castle is empty, void of life, yet meticulously kept by machines. Gardens are growing, statues are dustless, and life is long gone – a beautiful and haunting depiction of the foolishness of power and mechanisms, how a mindless machine can continue to serve a lordless castle. Of course, this castle has a lord, but the implications – that there’s so little life left in this place, and what remains lacks any purpose – is clear. Vampire society has faded away, and its remnants seem surreal and unnecessary in the aftermath.

Count Lee is awake when D enters his sanctum, having used a device called Time Bewitching Incense – a concoction that “hypnotizes” the very concept of time, switching day to night. The vampire lord mocks and condescends to his visitor, using the language of power and class. D’s parents are of “low class”, obviously, he has “forgot his place”, and the vampire just goes on and on like your typical self important, high falutin’ jerk who thinks his own BS doesn’t stink.

Larmica is also there, though a bit more subdued. She was impressed by D’s performance the night before, and is trying to convince the hunter to give up the humans and join the undead. D springs from “the same noble blood” after all – why in the world should he care about the “human wretches”? The narrator goes on a long spiel about the fate of Dhampir – born of two worlds, at home in neither – yet D doesn’t seem convinced by her argument.

Larmica replies in anger: calling humans “menials” who destroyed the world, and “insurgents” who overthrew their rightful masters. If the comparison wasn’t clear before, we’re being hit over the head with a hammer by it now. The vampires are the high class, the moneyed class, the aristocrats feeding on the lifeblood of the poor, the hungry, the destitute humans.

The conflict ends abruptly; Count Lee opens a trap door and drops D into an abyss below, ending the confrontation. He is mostly unbothered by the man, though one thing the hunter said seems to linger in his ears, a phrase he once heard long ago… but surely this hunter could not have said it. Surely this hunter is not related to that vampire lord…

A few things stand out in this confrontation. The class comparisons, obviously, but also the power dynamics, not only between the hunter and his prey but between the Count and his daughter. Larmica is also a vampire preying on others, but she too is part of a harmful heirarchy. The Count has control of her, dictacting her life; the Count thinks lowly of her. The trap that defeated D was installed by Larmica; but the Count thinks to himself that “this girl” could not have possibly foreseen its use – downplaying her role in protecting their lives. And he compliments her solely as “my daughter”, implying her best traits are solely due to their shared blood. Here we see traces of the way the vampire hierarchy’s roles are harmful not just to humans, but also to vampires, specifically those who are under the power of others higher up the ladder.

Just as D is having his confrontation with the Count, Doris is having one of her own, a scene which portrays just how vulnerable Doris and her brother really are. Entering town the girl finds no one will sell her supplies or even speak to her; Greco has clearly been busy. She is now persona non grata, and none too happy about it, rushing off to find the culprit by herself.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t go well, exemplifying the complex way money and power transforms relationships. Doris is the daughter of a hunter, she’s physically powerful – yet Greco has the social power to access technology and the money to buy it, putting him at an advantage. He purchased a suit of armor that gives him strength beyond human ability. Suddenly, Doris is at his mercy, and Greco let’s her know it – “it’s my daddy that runs the show in town”. The woman, who had trusted in her own strength and will to stay safe, has come face to face with the reality – when power is corrupt, nothing can protect you from it.

Greco tries one more time to convince the girl to marry him, promising all the benefits of his power – the best food, the best clothes, an easy life. Doris refuses, again; even as Greco thinks he’s got her, because she’s “only a woman after all” said woman spits on him. Greco decides enough is enough – she will be his no matter what she wants, and he declares the bar closed so he can take advantage of it. The bartender goes along with him – a man, willing to bow to power to avoid repercussion.

The implied threat is stopped however, by a new arrival. At first Doris thinks the handsome man must be D, but she quickly realizes its someone else. He introduces himself as Rei Ginsei, leader of a group of hunters, who demand Greco release Doris solely because she is beautiful. Though Doris is saved, the reason for the rescue is heinous, and gives us the readers a hint that this is no hero. Though he has been compared to D, he is not the gold hearted hunter, and though he has stood up to Greco, he may not be much better than that human snot.

Doris is saved, and Rei Ginsei compliments her. There’s nothing “more profane” than the ugly assaulting the beautiful. Doris is not comforted; would he have saved any girl, or only the pretty ones? The answer is typically selfish, and Doris leaves disgusted with men all over again. Riding back to the farm with Dan, she is tense and upset, having been faced with her own helplessness before powerful men twice over. She can’t protect herself or Dan; her only hope is that D returns, safe and sound, having completed his mission.

D is in a little trouble at the moment, however. The trapdoor he fell through led into an subterranean aqueduct, something ancient and abandoned like so much else in this world. He’s unharmed, and has to find his way back to the surface. Wandering through a strangely thick mist, and “eldritch stones” standing out of the water in strange rows. The water is “stagnant” and black, despite the fact its supposed to be close to a natural mineral springs. Bones and dead remains float through the water, human and animal. Something is lingering in the dark.

The creature we find first appears as a set of floating female heads – a trio, evil and “enticing”, called the Midwich Medusas. This creature is a fascinating example of how Kikuchi takes gothic and mythic tradition and adapts it to his unique world, as the three sisters are a strange blend of ancient myth and modern storytelling.

The creature is a set of heads on long snake like necks connecting to a single body. Their long hair acts as a set of tentacles, which wrap up D and slide under his clothes, trapping him in an intimate embrace. The sisters, as they’re called, bring to mind a few sets of monstrous women. For one, the three brides of Dracula, women who attempted to feast upon the vampire’s guest sexually and physically. These sisters do the same, trying to both feed off of D’s lust and eat him. They’re also named for the Gorgon sisters, a trio of monster women from ancient myth. The most famous is Medusa, the woman with snakes for hair who petrified anyone who saw her.

But the design of the creature pulls on other mythic monsters, specifically, the Hydra, a creature from Herculean myth, a multi-headed snake like beast. For every head you cut off, another grows in its place, making it nearly impossible to stop. Most variations in the Hydra story involve Hercules using extreme heat to cauterize the necks, and – spoiler alert – these Medusas will be killed by a super heated laser.

The first part of their name might also be a reference to horror history – The Midwich Cuckoos, by John Wyndham, the story of a town whose children are replaced by alien creatures.

Pulling all these threads together, Kikuchi creatures a uniquely disturbing creature, a thing that mimics the feminine to entice its victims, who feeds on the sexually unwilling and eats their corpses, a snake beast and alien thing whose hair tentacles fill the disgusting waters of the underground aqueduct. It makes for a fantastic gothic set piece, especially as D easily turns the tables on the creature, seducing it with his beauty, and then hypnotizing it with his vampiric bite.

This is the first, and one of the few times, we see D feed on something, and it is a monster rather than a human. He has no qualms taking over the free will of this beast, though he solely uses it to lead him to the exit. He does not feed on it, doesn’t kill it, and lets it return to the underground in the afermath – it is Count Lee who kills the beast for failing him. Here, for the first time, we see the vampire version of D – using his power to control and defeat others – but the context reveals a world of difference between him and others like him.

D isn’t able to make it back to Doris that night. The woman returns to the farm and prepares for a night alone, only to receive a surprise guest – Dr. Ferringo, a friend of her father’s, who stood up to the Mayor and Greco in Doris’s defense. He spends a few hours chatting with her, whiling away the time, until the sun sets, at which point Doris pointedly asks if he’s going to risk traveling home at night. His plan becomes clear – he intends to stay, to face the Count with her.

Having spent multiple chapters experiencing only the worst of human and vampire kind, we receive a pleasant surprise in the good nature and kindness of Dr. Ferringo. He’s also a man, and a figure of power, as the only doctor in town, and he is choosing to use that power to stand beside Doris, and help her. As a friend of her father’s and a former hunter, he has some know how about vampires, and a plan to defend Doris. This leads into a discussion of the vampire’s weaknessses – which are unknown to all of humankind.

How could this be? Certainly after centuries of fighting back and rising up, the humans must have found a weakness of some kind. The opposite, however, is true, and the doctor has some theories why. Vampires bred and altered humanity over thousands of years, and he believes they forcibly erased humanity’s memories of their weaknesses; and they have continued to somehow repress that memory even when humans rediscover said weaknesses.

He has a theory he wants to test – garlic powder. The problem is, if they use it against the Count and it works, the repression effect will immediately erase it from their minds. But it is their only hope, so the girl and the doctor await the monster’s arrival.

The suppression of weaknesses is a fantastic piece of worldbuilding. It’s a complex idea, adapting real world ways in which the powerful control the weak into a super scifi world of mind control and psychic abilities. It also creates a kind of void around the most popular and common tropes of vampire fiction – the garlic and the cross. So many stories center on the use of these devices that it is almost farcical, a deus ex machina where the sudden presence of a cross on a necklace or a clove of garlic saves the day. In VHD, no human knows what these things do, and so their usage is negligible, becoming far more power for how rarely it happens. And D’s sole knowledge of these things gives them greater power – he does not name them, and humans don’t recognize them, but the reader will put together the pieces and see the shape they make.

Count Lee arrives, and Doris unleashes all the tech at her disposal trying to stop him. Missiles, barriers, electrified nets, none of them stop the monster – and in the end her own will is overwritten to pull her to him. His hypnotic pull has her walking towards him, but the doctor knocks her out and stands in front of her, defensively. The garlic does work – Count Lee confirms it – but it’s not enough to stop him. The monster enters, moves to possess his victim, only to be pushed away and forced to flee by a mark that D left on Doris’ neck – the other weakness, which is not named but which we all recognize.

The night passes, morning arrives, and Doris heads out to find where D has gone. A few conflicts arise – elsewhere we see Rei Ginsei and his men doing some murdering with an eldritch horror beyond imagining – and Doris finds the woman summoning this horror and interrupts, killing her dead. That summons Rei Ginsei. He decides to kill Doris, after he’s had his fun with her, believing he is own “compensation” for saving her. A day has passed and the man has gone from being our defender to our enemy. The alignment of power is fickle and unfair. The only reason she survives, is D’s timely arrival – his power, negating the power of the others. All this is solely down to luck, not merit or fairness, as survival in the Frontier has always been.

A brief scene in the vampire’s castle reveals Count Lee murdering the Medusas, followed by a conversation with Larmica. She’s still against bringing Doris into the fold – a human woman as her stepmother is no dream of hers. Count Lee doesn’t care what she thinks, however; he defends himself by making a comparison to the Sacred Ancestor, the ancient primordial vampire who once ruled all vampire and human kind. He too, had a human lover – Larmica replies by saying that woman led to Ancestor being turned to dust. (Clearly he recovered). The obvious clues give us near concrete confirmation of who this ancestor is – it’s Dracula, and the woman he loved was called “Mina the Fair” – the female love interest in the original book – and she’s from the “Land of Angels”, which was in Japanese the Land of Engels – meant to be a corruption of England.

D and Doris return to the farm. The girl is exhausted – she’s had a rough few days – so she lays down to rest, while D takes over the farm. It’s not exactly in his milieu, yet he willingly, without being asks, helps the family take care of their responsibilities. It’s something not even the doctor has offered to do, assisting in their survival by caring for their household. Every action D takes aligns him with the protection and the survival of people who are vulnerable to the powers that be.

More machinations begin to occur – Rei Ginsei aligns with the Count, and Greco overhears their plotting and begins to plot himself. The next morning finds Dan, Doris’ brother, has been kidnapped by Ginsei, in order to separate D from Doris. They reenter town – surrounded by unfriendly eyes and burning hatred – heading to Dr. Ferringo’s house, where Doris will remain while D seeks out Dan, taking on Rei Ginsei and his allies. Ginsei plans to use D to kill his former teammates, so that only he will remain, to be transformed into a vampire by the Count. The Count, of course, likely plans to abandon Ginsei once he’s served his purpose – both of them using each other, lying to their associates, incapable of sincere or authentic comradeship.

The Doctor and Doris head out on wagon together, out into the wilderness. Doc has a theory about a nearby location that could protect Doris from the vampire – but they never make it there. Larmica appears out of the darkness, stopping the cart, revealing that the doctor isn’t as human as he seems. Unfortunately, he’s been turned, and Doris’ only human ally has become an enemy. That’s twice now that someone who formerly protected her has become a threat to her life – power transforming friend into enemy.

The doctor speaks of Doris in a horrific fashion – mentioning that once he felt she was like a daughter, now he hungers for her body and blood. Larmica, however, desires only her death – she refuses to allow the noble blood of her lineage to be sullied by a human woman, regardless of what her father thinks. What stops her is Greco, using the Time Bewitching Incense to render Larmica and the doctor helpless.

Is this a change of heart? Of course not; it was all part of a ploy to bind Doris to him, to force her into marriage – violence in the guise of help. He doesn’t shed his mask immediately, however, and Doris is grateful to be saved; but she turns on him when Greco starts to consider using Larmica as a hostage. Though the woman despises vampires, Larmica has not done anything to her personally, and she is loathe to hurt a defenseless woman. Doris defends Larmica from Greco, Larmica returns the favor by trying to attack her, and Doris is forced to try and flee when the Count himself arrives.

Elsewhere, D has defeated Rei Ginsei and his allies; Ginsei, however, survives, by betraying his new boss and revealing to D that Doris is in danger. When the hunter finds out that the doctor is now a threat, he’s so overcome by feeling that remorse shows on his face – he had personally escorted her Dr Ferringo’s house. He turns to leave only for Ginsei to speak again – asking if D will join him, help him to take down the Count and take over his role, ruling the land as lords.

What gives the vampires their power, Ginsei asks? It’s the castle, and the culture of fear which has spread over thousands of years. He makes some good points – vampires are far weaker than they used to be, and there are so few of them, that it wouldn’t take much for humans to overcome them all. Fear and oppression are what keep them in line – and rather than undo that culture, Ginsei wants to unseat the vamp and take it over for himself, to be the monster tormenting everyone else.

D wants nothing of it – cutting off Ginsei’s left arm and leaving him behind. He arrives just in time to save Doris from the Count and Larmica. The Count still tries to go for Doris, but she stands her ground – determined to kill herself this very moment rather than become a vampire. The vampire is stunned, and holds off his attack; in denying the man her life, Doris reclaims the last piece of power she has, power over her own body, through the threat of violence. D and Doris leave, with Greco and Larmica in tow.

Larmica makes a similar statement to Doris – she asks them to kill her then and there, rather than pollute her with the presence of humans. That infuriates Doris, but Larmica will not be swayed. She goes off on a tangent that perfectly encompasses the vampire’s position. They are the “Nobility – the ruling class”. That entitles them to certain things, namely, complete control over the lives and livelihoods of those in their power. She says humans should feel lucky they were “allowed” to continue living, and condemns selfish humans like Greco, using him as an example of how classless humans really are.

Doris claps back however. “If you’re such great rulers than what do you want with me?” She describes Count Lee as a Dog in Heat sniffing around her, that vamps must be hard up for women if they have to go looking in the gutter of humankind – the verbal smack hits hard; its the first time humans have been allowed to speak back on the matter of their subjugation and it frames the situation beautifully – if the vamprie is so powerful why is he so helpless in the face of his desire for a woman he claims is lesser than him?

D chimes in too, saying that the Sacred Ancestor didn’t feel the way Larmica did about human kind. He mentions the “cosmic principle”. Larmica calls him a lowly creature who couldn’t possibly know the Sacred Ancestor, but the way D speaks has shaken her certainty. Once again we’re given a hint that D and this ancestor have a lot in common.

Another lull in the action leads to more of D working on the farm. It makes Doris wonder what kind of family the hunter was from – what had his life been like? It makes her yearn for this life to continue forever, the two of them working the farm, caring for Dan. She knows its not to be, and it hurts to think of how short this time with D will be. The impermanence, the fleeting nature of D’s relationships with others begins to rear its head.

D and Doris have a romantic moment beneath the sunset. It comes close to physical – D resists the desire to drink her blood – and the unfulfilled tension of the moment only highlights the tragic ephermeal nature of it. They cannot consummate what will not last.

That night, a mob from town files into the farm land, heralding a dark turn in the narrative. The doctor is gone; the sherriff is the sole support Doris has, and he has a responsibilty to the whole village. Unfortunately, the vampiric curse has spread; others, including children, have been bit, and the Count threatens to harm more of the people if they don’t turn over Doris. Leading the mob are Greco and Rei Ginsei – driven by a desire for vengeance against D and to claim Doris – describing the woman as literal “property” to be owned. All that stands between the girl and the mob is D, who Ginsei challenges to a duel.

They’re hardly playing fair, however; the powerful never do. Ginsei defeats D, stabbing him in the heart and seemingly killing him, then cutting off the hunter’s left hand as vengeance for his own injury. The hunter’s body is left behind, and the village takes Doris and Dan into town, imprisoning them in the asylum.

Here the narrative takes a unique turn, revealing a secret it’s been hinting at all this time. D hears strange voices, and seems to have an invisible partner always around. Until now we had no idea who it really was; but after D’s “death”, the hunter’s left hand starts to move on its own.

Named Left Hand by the fanbase, this creature is a strange parastiic being, a “countinanced carbuncle” that lives in D’s hand. This seems to be a voluntary relationship – D asks if the creature is tired of hanging around and wants off, and it refuses – and the symbiotic nature of it is revealed here in D’s seeming final moments. What would have been deadly to any other dhampir is a mere flesh wound for D, because the left hand is able to heal his deadly wound. It uses the energy of other life forms – of fire, water, air, and earth, the elements of western alchemy – transforming that energy into power for D.

This secret, which D never reveals to others, is the crux of his power and the crux of his role as a hero in the narrative. Other characters are slimy, back stabbing and selfish – they stand only for themselves, so they life and die alone, often failing in their goals specifically because they betray, they lie, and they use and abuse others. Doris is safe because she teams up with the doctor and with D, and working together they protect each other. D is not a solo act – and here we see the narrative presenting us with the sole opposition to power – unity. D lives because he is not alone, and Doris will live because D is not going to abandon her.

While D is recovering, Doris and Dan are in the asylum, vulnerable to the whims of the mayor and his ilk. Of course Greco intends to take advantage of the situation, paying a guard to let him in and have his way with Doris. She’s saved by another woman – by Larmica, of all people – who tells her to take the chance to run, while she can. A shocking turn of events – the novel is full of twists and turns in the loyalty of its characters, with the same people harming and hurting Doris over and over again – but this change is a significant one. Before, characters who were allies became enemies and remained so, acting only in their self interest. Here, an enemy becomes an ally, not because they have reconciled their differences, but in order to return a kindness. Doris defended Larmica when she was helpless, and so Larmica returns the favor, regardless of her feelings for Doris or humanity.

Unfortunately her escape is short lived; the Count arrives, taking Doris and his daughter, who is severely punished back at the castle. The denoument is coming, as the Count prepares for his wedding in the basement of his castle, surrounded by coffins which appear to house vampires hiding from the outside world. On the wall, a giant portrait of the Sacred Ancestor, seeming to stand in for a priest; and Doris, dressed in white, hypnotized to keep her will subdued, awaits her fate.

D heads to the castle to save her – after a final short battle with Rei Ginsei, who is killed lamenting his humanity – and D and the Count have a final staredown followed by a showdown that is short and sweet.

The Count insists that this is what the vampires are due – immortal life, the freedom to do what they wish, to trample on people’s lives. D’s response: Transient guests are we. It’s the same line he said earlier, a line first spoken by the Sacred Ancestor. It shocks and appalls the Count. Could this stripling really be related to the ancestor?

The crux of their disagreement is this very line, four words that reflect the greatest vampire’s view on the vampiric world. No, they are not immortal and everlasting; the vampires are fading, are destined to eventually end, and to prolong that artificially is a kind of evil. The world will belong to humans soon enough, and D works to ensure that its sooner rather than later. He defeats the Count; the castle begins to fall apart; Larmica appears, revealing she has set the place to blow, and plans to go down with it. She asks him one thing before D goes: is he related to the ancestor? His answer is lost in the chaos.

Outside, D rides off into the wilderness; Doris and Dan, safe on the other side of the destroyed castle, can only watch him go, and mourn the short time they had with him.