Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 3 Omnibus Edition

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

Not only were these tenacious buggers, capable of withstanding repeated activation, but its characteristics could be manipulated by a specific frequency of electromagnetic waves. As long as an airborne vector existed, no matter how solidly-built the fortifications, nothing could stand in its way. Not even an airtight building was impervious.

  Two years before, the possibilities of also imbuing the life form with toxic properties were openly discussed in an exposé by an enterprising journalist. The product was “officially” eradicated from the stockpiles, though the foreign legion of the SDF was said to still use it with impunity.

  “Kazikli Bey’s casket,” Matthews said in English. He was obviously impressed. He must have been aware of his connection to the great vampire of legends. “I was expecting the usual lineup of punks and wise guys. But I should have known. This is Demon City. No harm in sending this bunch of badasses to hell.”

  The commando next to the door finished fiddling with the silver cylinder. “The device is ready to go.”

  The casual sound of his voice betrayed no concern about its actual capabilities. They clearly had a good idea about the casket’s characteristics, and the fruitless efforts so far to open it.

  An hour after communications from his three subordinates in Chuo Park ceased, Lieutenant Matthews had written them off as dead. He didn’t send in reinforcements. Including himself, six Special Forces Operational Detachment F soldiers had come to Shinjuku. It barely took a snap of the fingers to consign a sizable number of vampires to oblivion, and they had lost half their number in the process just as quickly.

  The miracle was that the losses were as low as they were. They had reserves waiting outside the city. But Matthews wasn’t about to admit he couldn’t handle the situation with the resources he had on hand. That was the difference between an ordinary military organization and the “hired help.”

  Matthews quickly concluded that pulling off this job with three remaining soldiers required piggybacking on the mayor’s movements.

  He’d already arranged his players on the field. First, during his “meeting” with Mayor Kajiwara at the Ward Government Offices, he’d planted a bug in his pocket. The call from Galeen Nuvenberg, the conversation inside the helicopter—all came through loud and clear.

  The mayor and Nuvenberg already knew everything they needed to know, and had nothing more to add to the details about the four vampires forwarded by the telepath. But he did get that they were transporting the casket of the chief instigator this time around, General Bey himself.

  And also that Nuvenberg had been holed up at the Hyatt Hotel and was attacked by a horde of vampires.

  Shinjuku was succumbing to the vampire menace faster than they had expected.

  Matthews and his men had been called in first because of the impossible nature of the mission, and second because with vampires like Kazikli Bey on the loose, those four couldn’t be left to their own devices.

  Snatch Bey’s casket and the enemy’s brain trust would have to show itself. Hiding it away, deep underground in cold storage simply wouldn’t do.

  At the same time, they’d no doubt be riling up Demon City’s department of public safety. Luckily, the only people in the know about this particular casket were the mayor and Nuvenberg. If seizing the casket and obliterating the evidence meant Special Forces Operational Detachment F showing its own hand, at least that would buy them time to complete their mission.

  That’s where the nuclear device came in.

  “Meighan,” ordered Matthews. “Let’s move the casket.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Having armed the warhead, he took from the same carrying case an eight-inch metal tube and vise assembly. It had the shape of an elongated oval about three inches thick.

  Meighan adjusted the electromagnetic frequency on his goggles as he approached the casket. Setsura Aki’s devil wires were invisible to the naked eye, making a scientific assist necessary. Numerous rays of light danced around the casket.

  “Okay. I can make it work.”

  He was convincing himself as much as reporting the facts. He aligned the teeth of the vise with the top center of the casket and tightened them. They slipped off. Meighan touched a lever. A brown liquid flowed out from between the teeth. It looked a lot like grease. It coated the teeth halfway up and then stopped on its own and quickly hardened.

  After three seconds, Meighan jogged the vise. It didn’t move.

  Matthews and Cardinal gave him a thumbs up. Meighan moved the next piece of equipment into position on the opposite side of the casket. Confirming that it too was firmly affixed, he took several steps back and manipulated a rectangular control panel attached to his upper arm.

  The four-inch panel could expand to as many as thirty “leafs,” with each controlling up to ten devices. When it came to anything mechanical, Meighan was a remote control genius.

  The vise and the connecting linkage rose up, accompanied by the ratcheting sound of a revolving turret. The downward-facing pedestal gouged a round, black crater in the floor as blue-white flame erupted into the air. The vertical thrust—far greater than the slight appearance of the device suggested—came from two groups of rocket nozzles.

  Based on the engine’s capacity, the engine must use a particularly high-pressure, high-density fuel.

  Kazikli Bey’s casket was moving, slowly but surely, though without leaving the ground.

  Meighan guided the concise and convenient transport jets without any signs of undue concern.

  “Set the bomb to go off in ten minutes. Once we’re out of here, we’ll escape by air. Thankfully it’s night. We should get away unseen.”

  Cardinal bent over the bomb as the two others headed for the door. The casket followed behind them like one of those prop spaceships in an old science fiction movie from the 1950s.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  The muffled cry made Matthews turn around. Crouched on one knee in front of the bomb, reaching out for the timer, Cardinal wrapped his left hand around his right wrist. A strand of light glimmered between the fingers of his left hand. A strand of golden hair. It took a moment for the facts to register. Then Matthews and Cardinal whirled around to see the golden-haired doll girl standing in the far corner of the room.

  The deep blue of her eyes and the purple of her dress reflected in the eyes of these angels of death. Matthews put two and two together. While monitoring the mayor, references to a “doll girl” had occasionally come up. The voice of what sounded like a young woman seemed to fit the description. He’d thought it a pet name for the mayor’s mistress and thought nothing of it. Until now.

  This flash of insight came and went. Matthews raised his right hand. The ruby light struck the doll girl in the chest with the big-bore laser gun strapped to his forearm. The barrel of a large flashlight was half the normal bore. The power was incredible.

  White smoke burst from the wall behind the doll girl. A yard-wide, yard-deep crater appeared behind her.

  Alarm signals went off somewhere in his head. The target had suddenly disappeared and was now over his head. Five years before, he’d had his nervous system implanted with electronic amplifiers. A kind of electronic “sixth sense” that provided a premonition of danger was a lucky side benefit.

  He didn’t have time to aim as he swung his fists around.

  Even for the doll girl, it was a powerful blow. Switching her posture mid-flight to parry the move, the impact broke both her arms down to the elbows. The purple body flew back violently through the air and struck the concrete wall. A thin fissure ran down her face.

  Small spasms racked the doll girl’s body as Matthews fired up the laser. But the beam went nowhere. An error warning light flashed on his upper body. The digital code indicated that the impact had cracked a focusing lens.

  “Shit!” he growled beneath his breath. He signaled to the other two to get going.

  They passed through the door with the casket, Matthews following up the rear. He felt a small, sharp pain in his hip. It di
dn’t feel lethal, something to leave until later. Nothing so serious the macromolecular compounds in his skin and muscles couldn’t handle it.

  The pain became real, sinking from his hip into his guts. It was like getting stabbed with a red-hot poker. He groaned and stumbled forward. He reached out with his left hand, supporting his weight against the door frame. His right hand searched his side and pulled out the offending weapon.

  The sound of an electric motor traveled from left to right. He blankly stared at the door separating himself and the hall. His left wrist was pressed against the door switch.

  His fingers clawed at the wall. He summoned all his strength to return his hand to the position of the switch. Something like a branding iron penetrated his solar plexus. With a gasp, he slid to the floor.

  A second strand of that hair.

  Matthews bent over. A powerful sense of loathing eclipsed the pain. That doll was there in his sights. She sat up and stretched out her hands. Recalling the physical response that told him he’d shattered her arms, he had to wonder how she did it.

  “I underestimated you, babe.”

  The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile. A friendly smile, even.

  The doll’s arms dropped to the floor. Her head twisted around and her upper body slowly slumped sideways. Her right cheek struck the floor with a hard, sad sound.

  Matthews pulled the Colt M1911 .45 from his belt. Fifty years had passed since it’d been the standard-issue side arm for the U.S. military. A round was already chambered. He snapped off the safety and looked down the sights at the doll girl. There was not a glimmer of hatred in his eyes now.

  The gun roared. The recoil made the muzzle jump. A small hole appeared in the doll girl’s abdomen. The second shot was in the center of her forehead.

  “Sorry about that, Miss.” The Colt still leveled, he tossed her a kiss. And got no response.

  But it was his left hand that came to the rescue. Touching the tube on his left hip, the sensors commenced rescue operations. The tube split lengthwise. A sparking curtain of silver leaf foil enveloped him like a cloud of smoke.

  He quickly assumed the appearance of one of those old Egyptian mummies. Or a refrigeration unit for freezing bodies in suspended animation.

  The electromagnetic propulsion system on the bottom positioned it so that it leaned slightly backwards and hovered a yard above the ground.

  The pencil missile enclosed inside the silver foil armor jutted outwards. The firing mechanism and interlocking control systems calculated a critical safety perimeter at fifteen feet and fired only upon reaching that limit.

  More than the burst of sparks, the shock wave showered the people in the room, striking the ceiling and walls and whirling about like a mini-cyclone. The door had taken the brunt of the blast, and now the silver pod glided quietly through the gash in the door.

  The ultra-thin foil had the armor-bearing properties to withstand an anti-tank round, and enough shielding to protect the person inside from fatal doses of heat, radiation and cold. This air/sea/land mobile “handheld armored personnel carrier” was the latest development from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

  When the lumpy mummy disappeared down the hallway, a black pair of wings rose from the floor and followed it.

  The raven paused at the door and looked back. The remains of the doll girl were lying against the wall, its eyes shut. A peaceful expression on its face. Nobody aside from the raven could have imagined the cherubic girl’s struggle to the death. The bird cawed—perhaps sadly, perhaps angrily, perhaps a call to revenge.

  Then, still in the air, it lowered its head and plucked up the nuclear device in its beak. However impossible it might appear, the raven swallowed it down in a single gulp.

  Then with a wide sweep of its wings, it flew down the hallway.

  Part Nine: Noctumancer

  Chapter One

  Strange things were afoot that night at Mephisto Hospital. Doctor Mephisto appeared for evening rounds. Nothing strange about that. The hospital director was wont to show up in a hospital room at all hours of the day or night without warning, and after inquiring about the patient’s physical and mental condition, leave as stealthily as he had arrived.

  In the majority of cases, he didn’t even bother with an examination or prescribe any drugs. He rarely sat around and chatted. There were plenty of other doctors and nurses who could fill that function. Simply opening the door and glancing at the patient was often enough.

  The unmistakable power of that compelling countenance was well known. The faith that came from simply being in his presence—the faith that he was the Doctor Mephisto—out of this profound sense of relief was born miracles.

  Four years before, the chief of the United Nations Medical Service, Professor Herman Bachuras, had examined a Hollywood actress admitted the same day. He confirmed that she was being consumed by end-stage cancerous tumors in the shapes of human faces. It was all Professor Bachuras could do to keep his wits about him.

  Not only was this famous actress covered with the tumors from head to toe, but her internal organs displayed the same characteristics. The carbuncles showed the faces of men and women alike, one crying, another laughing, others deriding the professor and the other doctors.

  Afterwards, he wrote the following in the case notes:

  The chorus of these strange tumors—weeping, smiling, deriding, lecturing, and thousands more mixed in with them—was enough to drown out a volcanic eruption and shake the earth with its bootless cries. This woman, praised as one of the most beautiful women on earth, had the unsightly population of a psychiatric hospital arrayed across her flesh.

  That alone would be enough to drive the sanest man mad, but their voices as well resonated from her body. Not to mention that they nested like vermin among this angel’s internal organs.

  What held me back from the edge of madness were her eyes, clinging to me as if to a lifeline. There alone those demons did not dwell. In the face of the pure spirit of this heartrending young star—who could not release her own grasp on sanity but only plead for an impossible cure—I was tempted to flee to the safe embrace of madness. The one thing I could not do.

  If the means eluded me and time became only a constant reminder of my powerlessness and failure, I had no choice but to continue to watch over her. The doctor’s duty is not only to the patient’s body, but also to her soul.

  And then the miracle walked through the door.

  The nurse said that the hospital director was coming, so I told the patient I would be right back and headed to the door. He was standing there. Doctor Mephisto held out his hand. I can’t actually recall if I shook it, only introducing myself.

  The director was exceedingly handsome. I don’t know of better words to describe him, except that whatever those words might be, they surely couldn’t be applied to any other person—or thing.

  Even what happened after this was like a summer squall compared to the hurricane of emotions I felt. No other phenomenon comes close. As I was interested in getting a second opinion on my patient’s condition, I stepped aside and allowed the director to examine her.

  Professor Patricia Mayhew, the doctor who was with me, exclaimed in a startled voice, drawing my attention back to the bed. I witnessed it with my own two eyes. I would wager my social standing and pride as a doctor on what I saw next.

  The tumors were shrinking. Each one—with a rather disgusting, intoxicated expression frozen on its “face”—shrank and finally disappeared, melting into her skin. The last one was gone at 11:38:20 in the morning. Exactly two minutes had passed since Professor Mayhew first drew my attention to it.

  She stood there dumbstruck, as did I. Only the nurses and hospital director retained their composure. The patient was crying tears of joy. God had performed a miracle. That’s what I believed. I had seen a bona fide miracle. But I also knew who had brought it about and how.

  Doctor Mephisto and that breathtaking countenance. This is what real beauty
could do. Nothing and no one else would ever be equally deserving of the word—miraculous.

  Mephisto had rounds that evening as well.

  Like a ship passing in the night, after a glimpse of his unworldly visage, he left them with a smile. The perplexed patients watched him leave. But were their eyes not so much filled with an abiding faith as colored by fear?

  One of them spoke to the nurse who’d accompanied him. He should have been sound asleep. With wide eyes he said, “He’s scary—the doctor tonight—so scary—”

  The nurse nodded. “Yes—he is—I feel it too—”

  It was close to midnight when Mephisto contacted the head nurse at the surgical nurse’s station.

  “This is Mephisto,” said the voice over the intercom. Everybody at the nurse’s station froze in place. “I’ll be leaving for now. We’re running short of raw materials for the pharmaceuticals. Have any visitors call tomorrow.”

  “I understand, sir.” It was hardly unusual for the hospital director to receive visitors at all hours of the day and night. “However—” Her words stuck in her throat. The smiling nurses all paled a little. Questioning the director’s directions was simply not done. “However, the raw materials for the medicinal compounds are kept in the Resurrection Room.”

  “And we are running short of them. Well then, I shall leave the rest in your capable hands.”

  “Yes.”

  He hung up. The head nurse went to switch off the intercom. The switch was hard to the touch and stiff. It didn’t want to move. She pushed on it in a daze, praying that the expression on her face did not betray her state of mind.

  It clicked off. A wave of relief washed through the nurse’s station, followed by light laughter.

  Nobody talked about the director. Not intentionally. Their brain cells simply let the subject go.

  The head nurse had the sudden impulse to offer up her prayers at the chapel that was surely in the hospital somewhere.