Hiding his mouth, Mephisto looked at Setsura’s back. His eyes were tinged with color. Red—red—ruby red.
The white doctor stood up. The mist did not move.
Ah, what are you after, Doctor Mephisto? The doctor’s white shadow silently approached the lovely manhunter, not even stirring the air.
The red light vanished from his eyes.
When Setsura rolled over and looked up through the skylight, the doctor was sitting in the chair, still as a mannequin.
A knock at the door, as if the doll girl had taken note as well. “Come in,” said Setsura. She entered the room and quickly came to his bedside and pulled on a thin cord hanging against the wall.
The skylight opened. Seconds later, its black wings beating back the night mist, the big talking raven flew in.
“Ah, as I expected. Everybody’s been waiting for me.” The raven had to stop and take a breath, having traveled here at top speed.
“Did you see something?” asked the doll girl.
The proudly pedigreed bird nodded. “I was putting in a few turns through the sky before settling down to sleep, and happened by a shopping district off Shokuan Avenue—”
As soon as they got out of the taxi, the steel scent struck their nostrils. The taste of blood in the air. This being no place to hail a cab, the driver offered to stick around. Setsura suggested that he’d better take off and come back in a few minutes.
He looked up. The raven wheeled about the sky over ground zero. Setsura turned to Mephisto behind him. “Hay fever?”
The handsome doctor had covered his nose with the scarf as well. He didn’t answer.
Setsura set off at a run. He noted that Mephisto wasn’t keeping up with him. He really didn’t have the legs for moving quickly across open ground. Glancing over his shoulder and urging him on, he quickened his own pace.
A number of bodies came into view beneath the light of the streetlamp. Vagrants and itinerants.
“What say you?” he asked without turning around.
“They are all dead,” Doctor Mephisto answered in his unflappable voice. “The middle three are completely drained of blood. For two of them, the wounds in their necks point to the primary cause. As for the other seven—”
Mephisto left it at that. Setsura sighed. If anything, the itinerants could be said to have died peacefully. Not so with the scene in the foreground. These were deaths a heartless man would not wish upon his enemies.
Two bodies torn in two, neck separated from torso. A body whose neck had been wrung like a chicken’s before decapitation. The disposition of the other four corpses wasn’t so straightforward.
Collecting them together under the caved-in storefront of one shop seemed an expression of the killer’s whims. The four bodies were staked through with the exposed wooden posts, hovering there in the air like dragonflies pinned to a butterfly collector’s box.
The beams penetrated their bodies through the back and abdomen with the clear intent of prolonging the pain. And, in fact, it hadn’t yet ceased. Their limbs and trunks writhed back and forth, like bugs in their death throes impaled on a thorny branch by a butcher bird.
About thirty minutes had elapsed since the raven witnessed the events until Setsura and Mephisto arrived. These living sacrifices had been in agony all that time.
“Nice of you to show up,” said an old white-haired man, trembling back and forth on the stake shoved through his gut. He coughed. Frothy blood poured from his mouth. “It’s a real bitch hanging up here. Pull that thing out, would you?”
“Wow, those two are hot,” the office lady gasped. “It’s like a dream.”
Despite her labored breaths, echoes of desire were clear in her voice. She should have died a long time ago. Her thighs jutting from her tight skirt wriggled as if of their own accord. If this was a dream, then she was part of the nightmare.
Setsura right hand traced a lazy arc through the air. Even after the heads had fallen to the earth, the torsos continued to squirm like haunted creatures.
Setsura pointed at the sky. “The bird says he went into a rage after they laid hands on a young woman that was lying there. His character certainly does seem to agree with the history and the legends. What do you think he’ll do next?”
“I would expect a rampage,” Mephisto said soberly. “He is a cancer born out of every evil this planet has produced. I do not expect there could ever be a cure. He must be eradicated with all due speed.”
“That’s some big talk there,” came a voice behind them.
All the more remarkable that there existed something in this world that could approach Setsura Aki and Doctor Mephisto from behind undetected—
They calmly turned around. Kazikli Bey struck his chest with his right hand. An old custom. To Setsura he said, “It is an honor to meet you again.” To Mephisto, “It is good to make your acquaintance as well, Doctor Mephisto.”
He spoke in a rough and uncivilized voice that seemed a stranger to grace and refinement.
“In any case, I control myself when and if the necessity arises. Amidst all these sweet scents, I steeled myself, expecting only to taste the blood of that witch who pulls the strings of the big raven. And behold my reward. What began two days ago shall be brought to an end.”
This last statement was of course directed at Setsura.
“All of your techniques I have made my own. The Doctor is welcome to watch.”
“I am afraid I cannot agree to that.”
“Hoh. You wish to take him on?” The general lowered his right hand from his chest to his side. The tone of his voice suggested that a face-off with Mephisto hadn’t been in the cards.
“We have known each other for a long time.”
“Oh, stop it,” said Setsura lightly. “We’re not such bosom buddies that we’re into that whole joining forces and killing people thing. Feel free to take a hike if I get beat.”
“I never know when to take him seriously,” Mephisto said, facing the general. “But if he says so, I shall respect his wishes and retreat to the sidelines.”
“That would be fine,” the general said agreeably. “Pitching in to help would be futile.”
“So I had assumed,” said Mephisto, quietly retreating to the store behind him.
“The air is sweet and the moon is high. I prefer a world ruled by wind and rain. But this is not a bad place to die. If you prevail over me, then I take it all back.”
“Much appreciated.”
Despite having already battled once right up to the point of defeat, Setsura was oddly at ease. With no overt signs of tension or fear, the two men faced off at a distance of a dozen feet or so.
“This really is a wonderful world,” the general said unexpectedly. “More than anything else, it has blood. It has life. And dark nights. Not to mention other pleasant diversions. Disco, for example.”
Setsura gaped at him. But from the look in the man’s eyes, there was no doubting that he was the real deal.
“All that music and movement—like it was all perfectly designed for drill sessions.”
“You’ve got a strange way of looking at things,” Setsura said, calculating the timing and distance between them. “You learn stuff like that aboard the boat? Who was it that sealed you up in there anyway?”
“When I was picked up in Constantinople, the ship was already sailing the world at will. That such a thing exists suggests a god who rules time or life itself.”
“If they were intending to protect you, then they shouldn’t have brought you here.”
“What are you saying?
“This is Demon City. Nobody leaves happier than when they arrived.”
“I do not intend to leave. Didn’t I just tell you how wonderful a world this is? Those getting in the way—”
The general’s voice hardened. Setsura heard a sound like a cracking whip. Blue points of light winked in the air. The devil wires thrown by them both entwined and entangled, throwing off sparks.
“Where did you get
hold of that wire?” Setsura wanted to know. A sensible question.
“That is a weakness of limited creatures like yourselves. Everything in this world is patterned after something from a long time ago. This wire was found in an oil-filled pot in long-forgotten ruins in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Now—you die.”
The wire swept at him in a slashing sideways attack. Setsura’s sliced through it. As soon as the end touched to the ground, it bent and rebounded. As this was his own technique, he dodged it easily. The wire flew above where his head had been a split second before like a spring, cleaving the air.
The sudden action opened up his wounds, throwing Setsura’s movements out of whack.
The ancient wire floated to the ground like frayed hair. A sideways shot of power from the side had disintegrated them into their constituent molecules.
The general and Setsura as well spun around in surprise.
“Hoh,” exclaimed Mephisto, at the appearance of this new opponent. He was still leaning against the shop door.
They all knew who this was.
“General Ryuuki,” said Setsura. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”
“I was in the Takada no Baba neighborhood. The smell of blood and my own two feet brought me here.”
“And what did you come here to do?” asked the other general.
They sailed aboard the same ghost ship, engaged Setsura upon the same orders, and both “generals” stared icy daggers at each other.
“That young man is carrying around a gutful of my penetrator qi. If you’re looking for a fair fight, you might reconsider after he’s rid himself of it.”
A scornful smile etched on his Romanesque features, the general focused his eyes on the graceful face of the man who’d addressed him. “If I didn’t know better, I would think this some demonstration of Oriental chivalry. Why settle for merely deflecting my weapons? Why not play the complete traitor and take his place?”
“Well—”
“Take a hike,” Setsura said quietly to General Ryuuki. He looked at the one-armed man with whom he’d already fought twice to death’s door with what could only be described as gentle eyes. “This is my job.”
“You and I still need to trade our life stories over a drink or two. You’re in no condition to fight this man.”
“You might want to keep such opinions to yourself. Not that I would disagree with your assessment though.”
The general laughed loudly. “I am hungry. I am angry. And the taste of blood is fresh in the air. Let us engage. Either one of you, but the sooner the better. I shall take on both of you at the same time. That is fine with me.”
He had his arms folded across his chest. The fingers of his hands sang out. His invincible limbs incorporated the supernatural skills of his enemies in an instant and responded in kind. He had taken in Setsura’s devil wires. What would he make of Ryuuki’s demon qi?
The one taking a flying leap, like a silhouette falling on a shadow, was Setsura Aki. The demon qi released from Ryuuki’s hands silently soaked into the ground.
“You stay put.”
More than the pain from his wounds, Setsura tasted Ryuuki’s towering dignity in the rebuke. He stayed put. Bands of white rustled around his feet. It wasn’t the fog, but swirling bands of enlivened dust.
“General versus General, is it?” General Bey muttered, his words scattering in the wind. “How interesting.”
Ryuuki advanced toward him. Even the Demon Princess could not predict the outcome of this death match. Or more likely, the probability of their dueling had been beyond her imagination. But the two wizards could have no better stage for their contest, or a better pair of spectators.
The stage was Demon City Shinjuku and the audience was Setsura Aki and Doctor Mephisto.
“I have already learned all there is to know about your techniques,” boasted General Bey.
Ryuuki narrowed his eyes to slits. He didn’t sway or smile, show fear or remorse. The moon shone brightly in the sky. Far away a bird sang. Its song was shattered by the waves of colliding energy.
“I am impressed,” Ryuuki said with honest admiration for General Bey’s skills. He once again raised his left hand.
The general did too. The sleeve of Ryuuki’s right arm flapped against the air. The general’s face twitched with confusion. His second blow vanished with the swing of Ryuuki’s right sleeve. And the qi Ryuuki had flung at the general disappeared in the moment before contact.
All in the blink of an eye.
Sensing something else afoot, the general was about to jump away. A colorless, odorless shockwave of energy erupted from beneath his feet and engulfed his entire body. His limbs twisted weirdly and he was thrown violently on his back to the ground.
“You didn’t get around to learning this one.”
Ryuuki’s demon qi did not simply radiate outwards, but could dissolve into the air and inject itself into the earth, even biding its time to attack from unanticipated directions.
“Better you go to that peaceful kingdom first. Though I have to say I’m a bit envious.”
Ryuuki raised his left hand and began to lower it. An excruciating pain kept him from completing the gesture.
“No, I have already learned it.”
General Kazikli Bey lay on the pavement and smiled. His ghoulish fangs glittered in the dark.
Chapter Three
Ryuuki’s reeling figure reflected in General Bey’s cold eyes. “You should know better than to doubt the power of the old magic,” he said. He didn’t try getting to his feet. He couldn’t.
He had countermeasures of his own, but the hellish torment of Ryuuki’s demon qi was enough to make even immortals long for death. Which of them would be the first to launch a second volley? And so the nighttime death struggle played out beneath the clear light of the moon.
“You will do nothing?” Mephisto whispered in Setsura’s ear.
In the shadowed darkness, Setsura made no note of the soft red glow in his eyes. “Like what?” he asked.
“The torment Ryuuki’s demon qi inflicted on you has now reduced Kazikli Bey to the suffering state of a mere mortal. I do not imagine he would put up much of a fight were a wire to wrap itself around his neck.”
Setsura sensed the presence of the white-clad doctor on the back of his neck. “You want me to kill him, Mephisto?” A question no one else but Setsura Aki would even dare ask. Does the Demon Physician desire another’s death?
“As long as General Ryuuki is General Ryuuki, he would not want such a thing, however much I do.”
Setsura’s words seemed to hang there glittering in the moonlight. But that was the wind-blown dust, trailing away from Setsura’s feet like a comet’s tail. Ryuuki fell to his knees. As if absorbing the energy from the impact, a long shadow rose up like wavering smoke.
“The night is the natural ally of those who live the life of the undead,” General Bey said as Ryuuki knelt there in agony, “I, Kazikli Bey, will now grant you your heart’s desire. Say your prayers to whatever god you worship.”
He raised his trembling right hand. The fingers spread like a spider’s web. Supremely confident, he filled his palm with the deadly energy.
“Stop!” called out Ryuuki, but not to General Bey.
The colorless, odorless energy mercilessly enveloped him.
“What!” Equally shocked voices sprang from two mouths, that of Setsura and General Bey.
There were dual reasons for Setsura’s surprise. He detected the fatal blow surging forth and was about to cast out a strand of devil wire. But Ryuuki, in all his towering pride, knew what he was doing and would not permit it.
The fresh blast of evil power ricocheted around them.
The demon qi had failed.
Ryuuki stood on his feet shrouded by a white mist—dust sparkling in the moonlight. Who could have imagined that such a thing could deflect a technique polished over two thousand years to perfection? Setsura and General Bey and Doctor Mephisto stood there gazing upon t
he stunning, incomprehensible sight.
A rusty, grating voice reached their ears. “Shuuran—is that you—?” General Ryuuki addressed the ghostly, swirling dust.
Grasping the truth and meaning of his words, Setsura’s face was flooded with a mixture of horror and profound emotion. Call it the love sonnet of the dead. Shuuran was in the dust. Shuuran was the dust, the same Shuuran who had tried to kill Setsura and had perished in the attempt.
Dust to dust she had become, and come to protect Ryuuki.
Demon City did not sing requiems to its dead. They would scorn Shuuran’s devotions as a ghost’s obsession. But at that moment, standing there like a comely shadow, the most befitting—and perhaps less than appropriate—eulogy to that perished life passed through the young man’s mind.
As if pressed from behind by the moonlight, he interposed himself between the two generals. “I’ll take things from here.”
“Interesting,” said General Bey, pressing his hand against his chest. “I do not mind. What does a few minutes matter either way? We shall all ascend to heaven hand in hand. But what about him?” He meant Ryuuki.
Setsura said without so much as the twitch of an eyebrow, “I’ll kill him after you.”
“What a fine young man you are. I only wish we could have crossed swords back when I rode as a mounted knight.”
The general laughed, his voice ragged from the effects of Ryuuki’s demon qi. The bloody battlefield was his home. No one found greater joy in slaughter and carnage than those Carpathian soldiers that were his kith and kin. They called out to death, beckoned to it, celebrated it, worshipped it. Their struggles to the death would never end.
But this one ended sooner than expected.
From the end of the street and around the corner marched a bold orchestra of sirens. A formation of patrol cars. Beams of artificial light focused on the moonlit creatures.
“What’s going on here?”
“Nobody move!”
The men shouted orders as they closed in on them. “How annoying,” said General Bey, facing the onrushing police, his eyes glowing with a fierce loathing. “But this is a good enough time to bid you adieu. I am wounded. You are ill. We shall meet again. Nay, we must.”
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