“What an insolent man. The very personification of that bad star. But such naked confidence is a fearful thing. Do you think that woman is your lover?”
Setsura glanced down at Takako on the floor. “I see your point.”
Now that he thought about it, Takako had appeared, a blank slate, clean out of the blue. Kikiou and his alchemy had done a splendid job, implanting exactly the right kind of memories to confuse the real with the manufactured twin.
“Even I would never deign to step back inside Princess’s bedroom without permission. Not even to rouse you from your sleep. I resorted to such desperate measures, well aware of their contrived nature. You must have noticed. You were made to sleep more suddenly than I expected. But the beast I left behind just in case proved useful. You hardly made your way here of your own will.”
“Now that you mention it, it did feel strange—the compelling impulse to come here. Was it telepathic?”
“Precisely. Beyond this room is my home country. A door will soon appear. I shall welcome you there.”
“No waiting for Princess? Going off without so much as a by-your-leave won’t sit well with her. Besides, I can’t imagine that you have my best intentions at heart. And she burns with a murderous fury that far exceeds your own. And you know what happens to people who stick their necks out.”
“Enough with this nonsense,” said Kikiou, and Setsura sensed a strange fullness in his voice. “I cannot say whether she prays for your demise or not—no, there is no doubt about that. I can say she desires it from the bottom of her heart. But such is the torment she inflicts on all her lovers, nursing her bad star, keeping it forever alive as her pet. To be forewarned is to be forearmed.”
Setsura was too surprised to reply at first. Princess and him—but he couldn’t begin to wrap his mind around the possibilities. “Um,” he began, but thought better of it. He wasn’t sure of the right thing to say in a situation like this.
“You would do well, at the very least, to give my kingdom a visit. You are here to destroy this world, are you not?” Kikiou said in the manner that a cat toys with a mouse. “Who knows? You may well discover the key.” When the curiosity rose in Setsura’s face, he added, “Willing to bite, eh? Good. In celebration of your departure, we shall dispose of any obstacles.”
A shining object threaded through the fluttering curtains. A second before striking the floor in front of Takako, it grew into a blinding glare. Setsura dove to the ground to avoid the shower of fire, hugging Takako’s double to his chest.
“What are you doing?” Kikiou chided him. “You are really that sentimental a man?”
Setsura smiled. “When she has the same body and face as a friend, I find it hard to let even a doppelganger die without a second thought.”
“She is your ball and chain then. See to it that you do not make yourself a liar by your own hands. Come.”
At the sound of his command, the endless silk waves ceased and hung there like funerary curtains. A black door appeared in the distance. Kikiou must be waiting behind it.
Setsura flung the Takako look-alike over his shoulder and set off toward the kingdom of the dead.
Part Ten: The Naked and the Deadly
Chapter One
That day, the dangerous night was darker than usual. Anybody strolling down the street must have chosen to be there. They walked bent forward, their eyes fixed on the ground in front of their feet, or falling on the necks of the occasional passer-by.
There was nothing unique about their ashen faces. When they licked their lips—for no apparent reason—the strange gleam of their fangs peeked out.
The main drags were still safe because the large number of “respectable” citizens outnumbered them. They instinctually recognized the necessity of not showing their true colors.
When the darkness stole into the side streets and back alleys, their stoops became all the more pronounced. One crawled along the ground on all fours like a spider. One hid himself inside a discarded oil drum or the burned-out shell of an automobile, waiting for a foolish man or woman to pass by, unaware of the dangers that a summer night could hold.
But nobody was that dumb. The night was fraught with peril.
The smell of blood in the air. The warning whisper of one shadow brushing against another. A chill in the shade that was different than usual.
When the sun went down people went inside their houses, turned on all the lights, locked the doors, closed the shutters and loaded their weapons. Some preferred knives and swords to guns, but they were generally thought to possess clairvoyant abilities.
The especially strong ones had particular tools. At a childcare center near the Ochiai subway station, two girls, ages seven and ten, suddenly broke the wooden legs off a chair, and with a knife from the kitchen sharpened one end of each to a point.
A salaryman living in Okubo Sanchome burst into a flower shop and demanded garlic bulbs. When they didn’t have any, he continued on to a ramen shop three stores down and gobbled down a handful of cloves. And thus was able to sleep peacefully.
More and more people were wearing crosses. But on a night like this, the first rule was of survival: Don’t leave the house.
The sound of taiko drums and whistles could be heard in the distance as a young woman stumbled along a street on the outskirts of Wakamatsu.
Dressed, she would have come across as an “intellectual” beauty. But as she was stark naked, some men passing by happily stared, while others licked their chops like ravenous wolves.
It was Takako.
During the duel between Princess and General Bey, she had passed through the gauntlet and out of their sight. Though escape had not been the conscious objective on her mind.
Her eyes blank and unfocused, the steps unsteady—and more than anything, that she made no attempt whatsoever to cover up her slender, hourglass frame, its generous breasts and curvaceous hips. The breeze brushed the bush between her tight thighs.
The citizens of this city could surmise her “true” nature with a glance at her neck. The right side of her throat sported a small set of “feminine” teeth marks. On the left, ragged gouges from what could easily be mistaken as the bite of a wild animal. From both ran lines of dried blood.
Takako was aware of none of this. Only the faintly pulsing instinct to run away. The channels of her thought were even now governed by the two who had sucked her blood. Both experiences as sweet as they were terrifying.
But what kept anyone from approaching her on the street was the smile on her lips. A faint smile. A vulgar smile. A bloodcurdling smile.
At some point, she found herself in an alleyway. At last, persons not intimidated by her or her circumstances appeared. They walked slumped forward, licking their lips.
A salaryman with a combover—a petty gangster wearing an aloha shirt—a slack-jawed shop owner—a young playboy—a bunch of housewives with shopping bags dangling from their arms—a kid in jeans—a girl with a bob haircut—
They had come together with a single desire in mind, and would not have otherwise in a million years.
They wanted blood. Wanted to suck it, drink it, lick it and swallow it. Their eyes glowed the color of the liquid they sought. Those eyes gazed upon Takako’s neck. And her breasts. Her thighs and hips and ass.
Suck her anywhere and it would issue forth.
The darkness stained her surroundings like a flood of tar. The forbidden desires oozed through the gloom.
And then suddenly scattered. The slumped shadows all focused their attention on what was in front of her.
Someone was coming. More prey, they were about to gloat, but exchanged puzzled glances instead. He carried about himself the same aroma as did they.
The sleeve of one arm, embroidered with golden threads, fluttered in the wind. The stranger approached the circle around Takako. His left hand waved back and forth, as if issuing a command. As if awakening unseen forces, the creatures in human form divided right and left.
The fear a
nd anger condensed into an eerie fog that swirled through the air. Takako alone stared back at the man approaching her with a faraway look in her eyes.
“Do you remember me?” asked General Ryuuki.
Whatever he’d been caught up in since parting with Setsura and Mephisto off the Shokuan Avenue shopping district, his moonlit mien appeared as fearless and unflappable as it ever had.
He looked closer at Takako’s neck. “Princess and—these hideous scars must be the handiwork of General Bey.” The pained manner in which he spoke betrayed his true feelings. “I do not know how you escaped. And you are still not one of us. Where shall I take you then?”
To a hospital. The thought must have registered somewhere in her mind. But in her hesitation he perhaps sensed that to Takako in particular, the hospital would be the least safe place imaginable.
“Setsura’s house? Well. On the other hand, an eccentric friend of mine has a place nearby. Let’s be on our way.”
He had a gentle and sonorous voice. Though it would be clear to anybody who knew the full particulars that there was nothing safe and secure about any place Ryuuki called “home.”
From around the two of them came low growls and the grating of teeth, the discontent of male and female, old and young alike. Was this man going to just walk off with their bounty?
Unperturbed, Ryuuki glanced around the circle and mused, “The night’s ever-increasing outcasts? This is Demon City. What shall it be called after this?”
A reptile-like shadow darted about his feet. Before Ryuuki could fix his eyes on it, it had scurried over to Takako’s ankles. Then rose up and affixed itself like a giant leech against her white back. It was a seventy or eighty-year-old woman, though her spindly arms and legs exactly resembled those of a spider.
A pair of fangs glinted in the moonlight.
Ryuuki reached toward her. Takako spun around, the “spider” on her back. More than a yard of empty space separated them. But as he motioned with his hand, she turned in the direction indicated, as if prodded by an invisible pole.
The old lady—her fangs readying to strike—turned her head and looked back at Ryuuki. Something flew at her face. It swelled and then exploded into a cloud of mist that melted into the darkness.
Ryuuki’s demon qi was in fine working order, a supernatural skill that could be directed at the target of his choosing. And once it found its mark, no living thing on earth had ever survived an attack.
“I have not used it in a while, but it does not seem rusty. Do not make me destroy the rest of you.”
He scraped off the remains of the old woman from Takako’s back. Putting his arm around her waist, they proceeded in the direction she had come. Sensing that the quiet wrath of this destroying angel was something quite apart from the norm even here, the crowd took this advice to heart.
Above their heads, a crow cawed. Ryuuki glanced up, but paid it no mind. He and Takako turned left at the first corner.
They passed by crowded lots of prefab housing and entered a desolate no man’s land. The place had once housed condominiums and rental properties, until the unholy power of the Demon Quake laid them flat. The piles of brick had mostly been carted away. Ghosts and goblins now slept in the cold wasteland.
In one corner of the clearing were the lit windows of a house with an overhanging roof. It looked like an overgrown mushroom.
A rudimentary version of the simply-designed vinyl “bubble house.” The inflatable, water-resistant, nonflammable polymer, reinforced with Kevlar-strength panels, could be stored in a suitcase when not in use. They’d originally been part of the first Shinjuku reconstruction efforts, provided by relief agencies to the refugees. But they’d caught on among the citizenry for long-term housing.
Confirming that they hadn’t been followed, Ryuuki rang the bell next to the vinyl door.
A shadow darkened the peephole. “So you came back!” a bright voice said. The door was flung open. A young woman around twenty smiled. Seeing Takako, her eyes widened. “Who is this? Don’t dawdle. Come inside.”
A flurry of activity followed. After sending the dazed Takako to the shower, and putting her into a nightdress and then into a bed in the next room, she had Ryuuki fill her in on the details.
The woman’s name was Hitomi Takamori. She had worked as a freelance model. Though not so much in Shinjuku anymore. Nowadays she paid the rent writing a gossip column for a local political rag.
The night before, she’d run into a one-armed man carrying a small koto.
She hadn’t been able to sleep that night, so she went outside to enjoy the cool of the evening and saw him standing at the edge of the block. At first she thought he was a thief, but found herself attracted to his resolute and solitary appearance. So she invited him in.
He’d firmly declined. She’d insisted. He gave in, with an odd proviso—that he be allowed to stay in a room that was shielded from the light of day. But not so odd to a resident of this city. He stayed holed up in the room until the following night.
He awoke at sunset, politely thanked her, and said he was going out. Hitomi felt something odd and heartrending about him. But at the time, she translated this reaction into a desire to stay close to this man, to his gallant demeanor and dignified bearing.
When Ryuuki came back with the strange girl, Hitomi wasn’t interested in the circumstances. She had done her best to make him stay, but he insisted that he didn’t wish to burden her. The simple fact that he’d returned filled her with a blazing joy.
She asked him about nothing more than the normal run of events. A naked woman crashing in the spare bedroom simply wasn’t that unusual around here.
“She is an unfortunate girl, cursed by evil blood. I cannot compensate you for putting us up for the night. And all the more shamelessly, there is one more thing I wish to ask of you.”
Hitomi nodded. “I don’t mind. What is it?”
“Tomorrow morning, I would like you to take her someplace. I will give you the address. I will soon bid you farewell and do not intend to return. I will entrust the girl to you.”
“No,” Hitomi blurted out despite herself. “I’ve already agreed to take her in. But this time, I want something in return. You spend tomorrow night with me.”
“That I cannot do.”
“One look at her neck and anybody can tell what’s up with this woman. Or with a man who doesn’t wake during the daytime. But there’s nothing to fear here. The vampires who live in this city are a well-mannered lot.”
“The vampires that belong here, you mean.”
“If not them, then who?”
“Please look after her. This is all I can do for her now.”
Ryuuki bowed his head and turned away. Hitomi reached out to him. Wait, she wanted to say. He stopped. Hitomi’s fingers brushed his elbow.
“What?”
But nothing emerged. She swallowed the words that came to her mouth.
“Can you hear it?” Ryuuki said.
“Hear it?”
“The sound of a raven. A raven cawing at night is a harbinger of bad luck. They say the raven is the master of ceremonies at the Devil’s Banquet.”
Hitomi was again at a loss for words.
“Besides, we have another visitor.”
Another long moment passed before she grasped what he was saying. She looked toward the door. Ryuuki’s form filled her field of view. The door opened. Gray dust swept around him. It must have been brought in by the night wind. Hitomi closed her eyes. But felt not even the flicker of a breeze.
When she curiously opened her eyes again, the darkness had swallowed him up, black into black. Hitomi was about to shut the door when she opened it up again, almost in a daze, knowing it was something she should not do.
The moon was bright that night. The surrounding vacant lots glimmered with snow-like white. The outlines of buildings in the distance appeared like crudely-cut paper silhouettes.
A man stood in the center of this vista. A beautiful man. Hitomi sense
d she could even see the wind fluttering his white cape.
How did he come to be here—Doctor Mephisto?
His cheerful voice said, “How unexpected to run into each other, General Ryuuki.”
Ryuuki smiled. An unusual wry smile for the stalwart general. “And how did I come to your attention?” He craned his head skyward. “A little bird told you, perhaps?”
“Yes. An acquaintance of sorts.”
Mephisto didn’t stir an inch. The cape concealed his hands. Spotting the raven trailing the truck that bore the casket, he must have resolved to track it down.
“Was the raven following you?”
“No. The girl inside the casket. The girl I met at Setsura Aki’s shop.”
“Yakou proved undependable. I shall hear the particulars from Kanan-san herself. You are free to go.”
Nothing disturbed the moonlight pouring down.
“What?” pressed Mephisto.
“The girl is ill. I cannot hand her over to you.”
“I am a doctor.”
“A doctor with those telltale marks in his neck,” Ryuuki said shortly. “And a raven bearing bad luck as your guide, death and deformity in your pale hands. Best you continue your midnight stroll, Doctor.”
“I have been asleep since last night. In the meantime, many strange things have occurred. General Ryuuki, why do you not return to your country?”
“I have no country to return to.”
“And yet another strange thing. We really should part ways here.”
“Princess commanded me. To kill Setsura Aki.”
“And do you have the heart to do so?” The wintry scene froze and cracked with tension. “General, why are you seeking out a place to die?”
“You shall have my answer after I have kept this girl safe until dawn.”
There was no hesitation in his reply. The white dust swirled around him like ice crystals in moonlight.
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