Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 3 Omnibus Edition

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  Setsura accepted the small instrument from the timid, outstretched hand. “Thank you. Friends like you are equal to an army.”

  “Take care.”

  “I will.”

  A tone of rugged determination entered the doll girl’s voice. “Do not worry about the girl in the casket. The bird and I will save her.”

  Setsura crouched down and looked the doll girl in the eyes. “Thank you.”

  “Oh, my—” The doll girl put a hand to her chest. She would have blushed if she could.

  “The first thing I do once we’ve settled this whole business, I’ll bring you all a fresh batch of senbei.”

  “We’d be honored.” The doll girl smiled.

  Setsura got to his feet and turned around. She watched him until he disappeared among the trees and said, “What is the right thing to say at times like this?”

  The raven answered, “Hell if I know.”

  Setsura arrived at the place Nuvenberg had told him about. He found a large gray tree whose limbs seemed to pierce the sky itself. It’d take ten big men with arms outstretched to ring its trunk. It wasn’t a single tree, but rather a solid mass of countless ivy-like vines entwined together.

  He spotted the cave at once. The roots of the “tree” were wider in diameter than the trunk itself. Where they bored into the ground was a twisting crevice large enough to admit one person at a time.

  Close as it was to the library, it was quite possible that a passageway connected them. As long as that was where General Bey kept his crypt, it stood to reason that a path back to Princess’s world would be found nearby.

  Setsura didn’t hesitate. He threaded his way along the snake-like roots to the mouth of the cave. He played the flute as he walked, though he had no audience.

  What was up with General Bey’s casket? What would become of Takako? Would the doll girl and the raven remain safe? What would Special Forces Operational Detachment F do next? And how would Galeen Nuvenberg and Doctor Mephisto respond?

  The weight of all he was leaving behind should have bowed his shoulders like a great boulder. But as the last light of dusk lit upon his bright countenance, the young senbei shop owner ducked into the cave as if out for an evening stroll.

  Darkness wrapped around him. The odor of the earth still retained the heat of the day. He’d walked for several yards when a twisting sensation crawled across his skin.

  As soon as it disappeared, the world filled with light. Setsura noticed that he was standing at the edge of a body of water.

  A pond, perhaps those wise men of ancient China called it? Here were the waterways Mephisto had described—far shores shrouded in haze—green mountains in the distance—the landscape tastefully dotted here and there with arbors and gazebos—the sound of the wind made music, as if colored by the stands of trees—thin silver strands that must be waterfalls flowed down the mountains.

  This was more a lake to be crossed in a ship than by boat.

  Taking in these vistas, Setsura could hardly believe that these lovers of blood would exhibit such refined tastes. He murmured to himself, “No paths on the water and no ships to ply them. So how does one proceed?”

  “How indeed?”

  To say this reply was unexpected was the mother of all understatements. Setsura turned around, surprised but not startled. The woman’s long dress fluttered in the breeze like the petals of a white flower.

  “How nice of you to come.”

  The relaxed and yet solemn tone suggested that she had anticipated Setsura’s arrival. The side of the face—that eclipsed even Setsura’s—smiled a strange smile. The other side of her face was hidden by a wave of her silky black hair.

  The Demon Princess. Who else could have come to stand behind him undetected?

  “Not—since that night,” Setsura said cryptically. On one such summer night, he alone had faced the four visitors.

  “You are correct.” Princess parried in return. “After that night, we were so close once that not an inch separated us. Do you remember what occurred in the hospital?”

  “No. But you do not strike me as a stranger.”

  Where did such a comment come from? Far from either indifference or deference, there was cheek in the quip. Princess’s eyes sparked with fire. But only a spark. She smiled.

  “Of course. This is the man who eluded my kiss without moving a muscle. So far from the norm. Things will only get so much more fun after this.”

  “There’s no after this,” Setsura said casually. His striking features aside, nothing about this young man was threatening in the least.

  “Hoh.” And an eerie laugh. The whistle of wind around the base of her neck. “Those same threads strung around your hospital room.” A fresh red welt ringed her throat. “I fought one wielding a similar weapon some three thousand years ago. Ah, what goes around, comes around. What have you been up to the past three millennia?”

  She slowly ran her finger along the circumference of the thin ring. When she took away her finger, the death pallor had disappeared. “No matter where or how you cut me, the results are the same.” She added lightly, “You are several orders of magnitude more skilled than he ever was. But it makes no difference.”

  “Did you come here to boast?” Setsura asked, as his eyes took in the magnificent building rising up behind her. “Four thousand years hasn’t done anything for your personality. It is time to take some remedial steps.”

  “Kikiou met with your friend the Doctor. I have never before deigned to meet an intruder on my front steps.”

  “Well, I suppose that at least deserves a thank you.”

  She had shown his most clinching blow to be futile, and yet this remarkable man was still making note of the oddest details.

  The air hummed again. Light shattered into a rainbow around them. The wire Setsura had flung divided the woman in two from the crown of her head down to her waist. And in the return stroke, sliced her torso horizontally as well.

  “I told you there was no point,” the Demon Princess said calmly. She blinked.

  Without so much as a twitch, Setsura deflected her attack. And she neutralized his without lifting a finger. Had Setsura’s defenses failed again, the failure would surely have spoken to the difference four thousand years can make.

  Setsura shrugged. “Not yet.”

  “No, let us leave it at that,” Princess said with a toss of her chin. A haughty gesture, though not a disagreeable one. “If you wish to see me dead so badly, you might as well come with me. You may yet take your efforts to the next level.”

  “Where to?”

  “My house.” Her white hands—whiter than her robes—pointed out her majestic residence. When Setsura didn’t move, she asked, “A weight on your mind? What good comes from dwelling on what was left behind? There is no way back. The girl you sought is dead. You may have come here to save her, but it is time to let go. In its place, something else awaits you.”

  “Hmm,” said Setsura, shaking his head.

  “What?”

  “I was thinking we might consider making advances of another kind.”

  Princess drew her brows together. It was a proposal she hadn’t expected. “Is that what you wish?” Infuriated by this display of thick-headed obstinacy, her eyes blazed.

  “I came here to collect your head. Which isn’t to say that I can’t kill two birds with one stone. But I wouldn’t want to accept any initiations under dishonorable pretexts.”

  “What a gentleman you are,” Princess sneered. Follow such feelings to their logical conclusion and she would rip out the throat of her victim and lap up his blood. That was the most natural of her instincts. “Perhaps you should die now.”

  She raised her right hand. Setsura was not quite six feet from her. A white conduit streamed out like a column of water. The sleeve of her long dress.

  It had almost brushed his cheek when Setsura leapt backwards, landing at the water’s edge. The white fabric danced toward him, as if toward its lover. In the next instance
, it separated from the dress and fell to the earth.

  “Splendid.”

  “Aw shucks, it was nothing.”

  “You are the fourth to rend my garment. The fourth in four thousand years. Many have tried. Most have failed. Have you rethought my invitation?”

  “Well—”

  “I shall certainly make it worth your time. Looking at hell can be such fun. Not necessarily frightening at all.”

  She turned around and Setsura sensed the disturbance in the air from her movements. “A question, if you don’t mind?”

  She said peevishly, “What?”

  “Are you wearing perfume?”

  “And what if I am?”

  “No biggie. Just curious.”

  He wasn’t sure why he wanted to know either. She may have been born in the sulfurous springs of Hades, but notions such as grooming and appearance were hardly foreign to such a beauty.

  She’d already started walking, and he set off after her. Observing the building, he asked, “You know a guy called Yakou?” Half of the building was shattered and scorched.

  She didn’t answer. Facing away from him, Setsura didn’t see how she smiled to herself.

  “You wouldn’t know how to open General Bey’s casket, perhaps?”

  Again, no answer.

  “What’s that?”

  Approaching the building’s entranceway, a strange and disconcerting sight jumped out at him. A horde of people were setting a huge, jar-like cauldron—big enough to contain twenty large men—alongside the front foyer. This one must be the last, as this was the third in the row—each the same size and color—and nobody was coming along behind them.

  “You’re intrigued?”

  For the first time, Princess displayed actual interest in answering the question. “That is fodder.”

  “As in food or for cannons?”

  “Kikiou keeps them stashed away somewhere in this world. He brought them along for the defense of the mansion.”

  Yakou’s attack seemed to have delivered a shock to their magical senses after all.

  “So he is a scholar of the Hsia Dynasty,” Setsura observed, as they mounted the stone staircase to the front hall. “I’ve heard that wooden mannequins were imbued with life, and seawater and earth stirred together to make the fodder to feed them.”

  “I don’t know about that. But he does do some strange shit.” Princess spoke in a tone of voice not entirely appropriate for commenting about a colleague. “The mischief of those living a facsimile of immortality. How do you know about him?”

  “From the Toyama Elder.”

  “He’s dead. Did you ask about me?”

  Setsura nodded but didn’t elaborate. “How should I address you, anyway?”

  “However you please.”

  “Then no need to start using honorifics or anything.”

  She didn’t reply.

  They came to the top of the stone staircase and passed through the foyer. Princess stopped as Setsura exclaimed in surprise. The head of a huge beast appeared in the doorway.

  A tiger.

  Except that the uniquely identifying black stripes covered its head only. The rest of its body was pure white.

  With a whooshing sound like a burst of steam from a coal-fired locomotive it reared up in front of Princess. The lush green body of a snake dotted with reddish-brown spots was attached to the tiger’s hindquarters. The bizarre tail whipped through the air with a mind of its own, flicking its red tongue and breathing its toxic breath on the white lady.

  Fast as lightning, graceful as a willow, her hand closed around its neck. The snake’s eyes goggled. A look of fear never seen by mortal men.

  The white tiger roared and reared up in a violent rage. Talons that could rip through an elephant’s hide swiped at Princess. Just as they touched her cheek, the creature went spinning backwards through the air.

  Who could have believed that the mere flick of her dainty wrist could repel such an attack?

  The earth shook. The animal howled. The heavens trembled. The writhing beast poised once more to attack. Princess held up her right hand.

  “Hold on!” Kikiou came running down the hallway to the foyer.

  Chapter Two

  “My pardon. My pardon. Take your eyes away for a second and away they go.”

  The otherworldly tiger fixed its ferocious eyes on Princess. Kikiou crept up behind it and seized it by the back of the neck. The murderous aura enveloping the beast’s huge frame vanished.

  Princess asked in tones that could make a strong man shiver on a blistering hot day, “And who is this animal’s owner, Kikiou?”

  “As this animal’s master, I bear full responsibility for such acts of insolence. Please let your will be known regarding it.” The old man bowed his head low.

  “If you are this animal’s master, then who is your master?”

  “That would be none other than Princess.”

  “Which would make me the animal’s mistress.”

  “Y-yes.”

  He could not have been unaware of Setsura’s presence, but Kikiou lowered his head even further. That was how terrifying Princess could be, even to a colleague. “And as its mistress, I cannot countenance having one of your made-up, hand-fed creatures baring its fangs at me.”

  Those words had barely left her mouth when a strange sound burst from the end of the tiger’s spine. She ripped the snake’s tail out by its roots, followed by a spray of blood—if that’s what the green substance was.

  “Stop!”

  Ignoring Kikiou’s command, the big beast whirled on Princess. Its blood-red gaping mouth swallowed Princess’s arm up to her shoulder. Tragedy awaited one or the other.

  Princess yanked out her supposedly eaten arm. The sharp, white tusks banged onto the floor next to Setsura’s feet. The beast howled and slumped to the ground, green blood spewing from its mouth.

  Princess gazed down at it. Soon the only evidence of life was its quivering pelt. She said coldly, “Foolish thing,” and shook her hand.

  The pink tongue, more than a yard long, joined the tusks with a splat. This wasn’t the result of a desperate struggle to the death, but Princess’s intent all along. And why she had let the tiger have her hand in the first place. She wiped her left hand across her right arm. Not a spot of blood or gore remained.

  “Leave.”

  “Yes.”

  Not a flicker of anger showed on Kikiou’s face. He bowed. He glanced at the nearby jar-bearers. For the first time, Setsura observed a brief flash of ghastly light in those eyes. Gone a second later.

  With a flutter of her white sleeves, the Demon Princess passed through the foyer with Setsura as Kikiou stood there, head bowed, looking for all the world like the Chinese equivalent of a faithful old Jeeves.

  “Goddamned oversized monkey,” the beautiful woman cheerfully intoned as they proceeded to the main hall. “A rare scholar of unusual guile and cunning. But he does play the fool at times. That creature was designed to attack you.”

  “I assumed as much,” Setsura agreed with equal nonchalance. An onlooker might have mistakenly believed him to be taken by the colorful grandeur of the mansion. “Yourself aside, my presence doesn’t seem to be welcome. I wouldn’t want to cause a rift between you.”

  Princess reacted to Setsura’s unusual concerns with a cold smile. “I go and come as I please. I don’t consult with Kikiou.”

  “So it would seem,” Setsura said.

  No matter how many eras the scholar had surmounted, he still was not in the same league as the Demon Princess, who had personally destroyed three dynasties.

  Bathed in blue light, the two of them continued on silently.

  “Big house,” Setsura observed blandly. “Must take two or three days to get from the front door to the bedroom. I haven’t seen a single servant. Seems inconvenient.”

  “They’re unnecessary.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “If I want to live in a large house, that doesn’t mean I
want a lot of riff raff underfoot. I choose to live my life as I see fit, according to my own whims and desires. Fuck a man when the mood strikes, drink a woman’s blood when I feel peckish. If you know me, then you know the kings and kingdoms I have brought low. Do you think me cruel and heartless?”

  “Well—”

  “Emperor Jie of the Hsia Dynasty. Emperor Zhou of the Shang Dynasty. Emperor You of the Chou Dynasty. They perished in my arms. And none of them regretted it in the least. They vowed in their beds to give up their kingdoms and their people in exchange for the pleasures I bestowed upon them. And wouldn’t you know, their wishes came true. Later generations would slander them as despotic fools led astray by a witchy woman. The envy of the ignorant. That is where a man’s true happiness resides. The world for a pretty face, including their own souls. No fame or fortune can equal it. In my bedroom, those who speak ill of them would say the same things to these breasts of mine.”

  Her finger traced the hills and valleys of her décolletage. The flesh trembled at her touch. Neither in dreams nor in ancient memories had any mortal man withstood the restless carnality of her magnificent body. The appetites of this succubus’s blood forever drove its lascivious fangs into the heart of the here and now.

  She was the incarnation of the inexhaustible lusts of the human world.

  “Here.” She stopped.

  Without descending any slope or staircase, they had gone underground at some point. Setsura could sense with his entire body the great mass of the earth looming above his head.

  The Demon Princess at last reached out to a door set into the wall. A black iron door. The hinges creaked.

  “Please, go ahead.”

  “You don’t want to escort the guest?”

  “That would spoil the surprise. The mysteries that await you here have no equal elsewhere.”

  “Being preached to by a vampire—sounds like the name of a movie.”

  Setsura passed through the doorway like a tourist at a hot springs resort sauntering into the sauna.