Maohden Vol. 2

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  The weight on her right hand increased ever so slightly, like a breeze blowing from above. Azusa’s eyes opened wider. A figure perched on her elbow. It offered no more resistance than a feather, yet displaced the same space as a human being.

  Bent over from the waist up, almost parallel to her arm, the glittering red eyes glared at Azusa a mere four inches away. Any normal person would have frantically shaken it off. Azusa didn’t move her right arm at all.

  She was timing her next move as she ran.

  Without any warning, her left hand flashed into action. Her forefinger and middle finger formed a V and jabbed at his face. She didn’t pull her punches. The blow would gouge his eyeballs out.

  Riding on her right arm, the shadow bent backwards like a limbo dancer. Azusa clucked to herself. She shook her arm. The shadow didn’t move.

  But something else did. The gun. She caught it with her left hand, the Model 29. Not cocking the hammer, she raised the barrel and aimed it at the shadow and pulled the trigger.

  The roar and the flame and that indescribable shock.

  Azusa had gotten muscle enhancing treatments in her teens. Even one-handed, the recoil of a .44 Magnum was nothing more to her than a popgun.

  Behind the lenses of the enhanced-vision sunglasses, her pupils grew wider. The man swung an arc around her arm and now was hanging upside down by his feet.

  The sound of gunfire echoed off into the distance. A cold and murderous light glowed in her eyes. She crouched down, sprang up a good three feet into the air and came straight down, pile-driving his head into the ground.

  His body made another half turn. Azusa again jabbed her fingers into his face.

  Now the shadow flipped off her arm and over her head. Not waiting for him to descend, with a blood-curdling kiai, she threw her right leg straight up, full extension. This time, her explosive kick merged with the black outlines of the silhouette.

  But she felt no impact, sensed no resistance to the vector of her foot. It should have buried itself in his belly. But slipped off as if skidding on a sheen of oil.

  With no time to deliver a second blow, Azusa leapt to the side. A long moment later, the shadow alit on his original position, as pretty as a descending bird.

  “Hoh,” the shadow said. “You knocked me off my perch. You are quite the capable young lady.”

  “Bring it on,” Azusa moaned. “And step on it.”

  She was getting hot and bothered and already plenty wet down there. Her hot pants were getting soaked. It was starting to run down her thighs.

  “Quit dicking around,” she said again. “I kill you, you kill me, it’s all good. That’s the way this game is played. After that you can fuck me silly, or whatever gets you off. For now, cut the pussyfooting around. Hit me with your best shot, else I’m gonna tear you a new one.”

  He did as she requested.

  He bolted straight at her. Azusa countered with a high kick, converting it to a roundhouse sweep of her foot at the last moment.

  Foot met forehead. And slid off before the impact could connect.

  “Shit!”

  Azusa squared her stance. Now she was the one who rushed him, her hands striking at his face as he stood there unmoving. Those slender arms could have taken the fight out of a pro wrestler.

  His festering face rose up, two of them, overlapping and merging into what passed as the visage of a man.

  Her fists rained down, slipping off each time. She was sure she’d crushed the bridge of his nose. Her hand skidded off his cheek. Sure she’d caved his teeth into his mouth. Only brushed his chin. The man’s entire body seemed to be covered with oil.

  “Let’s call it a day, Missy,” he said, not a hint of strain or exhaustion in his voice.

  “Be my guest,” Azusa said with ragged breaths. Her spent body was equally in ecstasy. She could happily go to her grave like this.

  The man thrust out his hands in front of him. Azusa reflexively crossed her arms to parry. An icy cold sensation pierced her wrists and shot through her bloodstream.

  As she crumpled to the ground, Azusa felt her body again propelling her senses to even greater heights.

  Chapter 3

  Everybody called him “Baron.” No one knew his real name. He didn’t know it himself. And yet the mention of that moniker alone would make many a man blanch and drop to his knees.

  There was one who didn’t. That man had his attention now, the giant in the room. His fame equaled his own. Siegfried was the handle he went by. Siegfried was the German name of the legendary Norse god. Legend had it that, drenched in the blood of a dragon, he became immortal.

  No one who saw him doubted the truth of the legend. The steel bench warped beneath his massive weight. He was ten feet tall and weighed over five hundred pounds.

  There was no telling what other skills he exercised with that massive frame, but it was equally likely that he was nothing more than a big, clumsy oaf wielding a ridiculous amount of power. And indeed, there wasn’t a scar to be seen on the hands or even the head jutting from the neck of the blue, short-sleeved T-shirt.

  Using that truck-like body as his chief asset, settling accounts on the field of combat without suffering a few bullet wounds and a laceration or two was hard to imagine.

  The reason was simple: he killed his opponents before they could injure him.

  That alone was not enough to unsettle the Baron, or the other three men in the room. They all believed in their heart of hearts that when the time came, they could consign to oblivion any foe who came at them.

  The white-haired old man, the midget, the man in the suit—they all possessed powers beyond the imaginations of ordinary folk. The Baron knew this better than most.

  But that wasn’t what concerned him about Siegfried.

  There was something off about him, not like the big men he’d met before. Today was the first time they’d met. They hadn’t spent even three hours cooped up in the same room.

  During those three hours, Siegfried had left the room twice. The Baron figured he had to go to the john. The first time about an hour ago. The second time thirty minutes ago. He was gone three minutes the first time, five minutes the second.

  The second time Siegfried returned, something was different about him. The Baron couldn’t say what and he couldn’t understand why.

  The one thing he did know was that the Siegfried who went to the john and the Siegfried who came back were different people. Though nothing about these two “Siegfrieds” appeared the slightest bit different.

  His forehead jutting out from the few strands of hair like a hard-boiled egg. The slits of his eyes. And for such a large man, the thin lips. The ropey sinews and boulder-like muscles covering his immense frame.

  And yet—something was different. Everybody there knew it too. Everybody kept mum. Some soul-stealing monster had taken a seat among them and nobody rang the alarm.

  The Baron got to his feet and stood in front of Siegfried. “The two of us need to talk.”

  He spoke in the voice of the dead, a whiff of air from a rotted sepulcher. And the smell as well.

  Nobody looked at him either.

  Siegfried’s narrow eyes peered down at him. Even sitting down, he was taller than the six-foot Baron. Perhaps he was a remnant of those giants spoken of in the Book of Genesis.

  “This way.”

  The Baron left through the locker room door. Siegfried followed after him, like a gust of wind sweeping through the room. A short ways down the corridor was the door to a workout room.

  The door was locked.

  The Baron slipped his forefinger between the door and the jamb. A similarly long and slender claw was attached to the unusually pale and slender digit. He slid it up the jamb to the lock. The door opened easily. The two went inside.

  The room was a dojo—kenpo karate—approximately thirty feet by thirty feet with a hardwood floor. Punching bags and weight machines in the back.

  The two stopped and faced each other in the middle of th
e room, like an adult encountering a child. Or a big man encountering a dwarf. Facing this great wall of muscle and bone, the Baron didn’t twitch an eyebrow.

  “There’s something way fucked up about you,” he said.

  A slight smile colored Siegfried’s otherwise rugged and expressionless face, as ineffably merry as it was ineffably evil.

  “You figured it out, eh?” a cheerful, youthful voice said. “There’s no pulling the wool over your eyes.”

  “Of course—” The Baron’s eyes flashed red. “Come out, come out, whoever you are.”

  “Just a sec.”

  Siegfried rolled up his shirt to his neck and plunged his hands into his abdomen. Even as his hands sank down to his wrists, the Baron evinced not the slightest reaction.

  Not even when the front of his body unzipped in a line from his belly button to his Adam’s apple—but unaccompanied by the sound of tearing flesh. It had been severed from the start.

  The giant ripped open his own belly with his own hands. And from the wound appeared—

  A man clad in black, stained with blood and fat, casting off a bad odor and bearing Gento Roran’s countenance, his comeliness not dimmed in the least. Far from it. An orchid in all its sublime brilliance had just emerged from a fetid swamp.

  If it was true that the gods made man, then this young man, secreting himself inside the giant and controlling his every move, should be a god.

  “So, how did you see through the facade?” he asked, raking back the bangs clinging to his forehead.

  “Well, if I had to pin it on any one thing, the bench bent a bit more than before. You weigh more than his guts.”

  “I’m impressed. But such insights may cost you your life.”

  Gento flashed an eerie smile. It possessed the kind of demonic air that would have made any other man as tense as a tightly coiled spring. But the Baron only grew more intrigued.

  “When did you take him out?” he asked, as if asking about a curious turn in the weather.

  “In the bathroom. It was simpler than I imagined. Left the viscera in the garbage with a generous seasoning of disinfectant. It should take another two or three days to get ripe enough to notice.”

  “Those are some impressive skills you have,” the Baron said, fixing his gaze on Gento.

  Gento swayed back. “Nice trick you got there, too. You some sort of vampire?”

  “There are those who call me that. I have been wanting to quench my thirst ever since I saw that laceration on your cheek. Come into my arms—”

  The Baron’s cat-like eyes doubled as hypnotic weapons. They shone now all the brighter. When Gento’s entranced pupils glowed with the same crimson light, the Baron glided up to him. His clawed right hand rose to the level of Gento’s neck and slashed sideways.

  A red line rose up on the skin and grew wider. The Baron fastened his red lips to Gento’s throat.

  Gento sank down, a movement so quick and abrupt that the Baron didn’t have time to retreat. His startled face recorded the sharp blow to his abdomen. His unbelieving eyes focused on the object sticking straight through the center of his stomach.

  “I hear vampires don’t do so well with wooden stakes,” Gento said with a complacent smile. “Considering how this might turn out, I happened to have the ideal item on hand. I’ll say a prayer for what’s left of your soul afterwards.”

  Gento yanked out the stake. The Baron crumpled without a sound and fell to the floor. The one-foot stake—Siegfried’s index finger—was dyed red halfway down the shaft.

  He dragged the thin corpse over next to Siegfried and clapped his hands together. “Well, that takes care of that. Except that suspicions are bound to be aroused if he goes missing too.”

  Gento tapped his temples, jarring loose a fresh thought. “It is strange. The man I was before would have been imprisoned by those eyes of his. The schooling of my family is bearing fruit.” A fierce new light blossomed in his own eyes. “Could I pull it off? What only the Aki clan was rumored to be capable of?”

  Posing these questions aloud, he raised his hands.

  Minutes later, the door to the locker room again opened. The thin man and the giant returned. The old man and the small man were gone. The suit didn’t spare them a second glance.

  Chapter 4

  Azusa woke up to a slap on the cheek. The face of the man delivering it was only a foot in front of hers. A filthy, beastly face, partly covered by the long hair falling across his temples and chin. The same man she’d encountered in the ruins.

  In the dim white light, she could see other people behind him. A middle-aged man and woman. A teenager.

  Azusa recognized the woman from the convenience store. The man must be her husband. The kid must be theirs. She scanned her surroundings. They were in a tunnel ten feet high and ten feet wide.

  The pale green concrete retaining walls and the dull luster of the steel pilings caught her eye. She had expected to find a tunnel somewhere around here so she wasn’t that surprised.

  “Since you aren’t asking, you must have some idea of what we are doing here,” the man said in a raspy voice. Hyota. “Which means you are here at Aki-sama’s bidding.”

  “Yeah? Well, if you know what he’s bidding, let me know,” Azusa answered evasively. “What’s with them?” she asked, indicating the family of three.

  “One of Demon City’s infamous evil broods. I’m sure you have heard of them. Total strangers that call themselves a family while sharing no blood in common.”

  “One of them—” Azusa started despite herself.

  Evil broods were a phenomenon rarely found outside Demon City, total strangers who came together to form a “family” unit and then prowled the precincts of Shinjuku in the guise of true blood relatives while committing every kind of heinous crime.

  They took over a location for at least two or three months, sometimes up to two or three years, as they carried out their crimes. Becoming part of the neighborhood and everyday life, nobody suspected them in the least.

  When the authorities started getting suspicious and poking around, they would decry the dangers obviously lurking about, and move to a new “safe” place, where they would again take up residence as a “normal” family for several years.

  In some cases, the old man playing the grandpa would drop dead of old age. There were records of formal funerals being held.

  A group would dissolve fairly quickly after completing a job, with the various members splitting off and organizing new “families” of their own.

  The truly scary thing about these “evil broods” was how the players became their roles in both body and soul. That they should alter their characters and personalities to fit the new family profile was hardly surprising. But there were documented cases of skeletal structure, physiognomy, and even fingerprints changing.

  A man became the boy in the literal sense of the word. It could be attributed to a kind of psychological need to fit in, along with mutual self-hypnosis arising out of a perverted shared consciousness. But in Demon City, the immediate conclusion was that something supernatural was going on.

  At any rate, by means fair and foul, it seemed that Hyota had hired them for the ostensible purposes of digging holes and running a convenience store.

  “If you and Aki-sama have nothing to do with each other,” Hyota said coldly, “then I suppose you would have no objections to being disposed of as an irrelevant bystander.”

  As he spoke, his flashing eyes were drawn to Azusa’s hips and thighs. While carrying and tossing her down here, her top got pulled down, exposing her left breast. Abrasions covered the insides of her thighs. A raw and seductive combination that would fill any man, not just the likes of Hyota, with hair-raising desires.

  “Ha! So you want some of this then?” Azusa said with a sly grin, aware of the power of her body. She sent a tremor through her hips. “I said you could have your way with me if you won. Or you just like talking dirty? Either way I’m good to go.”

  “Eith
er is fine with me too. But they are a no less frustrated lot. Alas, having patterned themselves after an upright and industrious family, incest is right out. This should fit the bill perfectly. One bird and three stones. Perhaps a foursome would quench the thirst.”

  Azusa sighed. “And if that doesn’t exactly float my boat?”

  “I’m sure you could be persuaded to change your mind.”

  “Knock yourself out, then.” Because staying alive was her only priority now. Her neck was numb, she couldn’t move her arms and legs, and so had no way to resist. Hyota must have drugged her. She couldn’t best him in a physical fight anyway.

  The three family members surrounded her. The father yanked off her hot pants and panties. She wore them both tight and it took a bit of a struggle. But he exposed her nether regions soon enough.

  Three pairs of eyes focused on her dark bush and pink flesh.

  “That’s an upright and industrious family for you,” Azusa sneered. “I guess they make exceptions when it comes to little things like rape.”

  “Seems their moral strictures are less confining when the object of their lust is not one of them,” Hyota observed with a thin smile.

  The family shed their pajama bottoms. The father and the son were already stiff as rods and poking skywards. The mother’s flushed skin and moist eyes betrayed her own desires.

  The father parted her thighs. The kid straddled her face and thrust down at her. Azusa turned her face away. He pursued his target, brushed her lips and penetrated her mouth. When she tried to spit him out the smooth friction from the effort made him groan aloud.

  Qualifying to become a member of this evil brood probably meant a murder or two to start with. They couldn’t be expected to be any more chivalrous when it came to the sex of their victims.

  The father started to lick Azusa’s pussy, pretty and pink. Aroused all the more, he slathered the whole length of his tongue against her. As the white beads of saliva coated the ripe flesh, Azusa couldn’t help but react. Her hips shifted of their own accord.