Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 3 Omnibus Edition

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  His hands continued to pound on the drum.

  Hitomi looked at the table. At the wine bottle and glasses and hors d’oeuvres—covered with blood. She picked up the bottle and threw it with all her might. Fear multiplied that by a good three times.

  The bottle hit the back of the chair, scattering its contents in all directions.

  The black man vanished. Hitomi started to turn around to see where he went when she felt an additional weight on her shoulders.

  Tan—Tan—

  Tan—Tan—

  Coming from the top of her head. The small man perched on her shoulders like a child and continued his performance.

  Chapter Three

  Hitomi was seized with panic.

  She grabbed his legs and screamed. He proved unusually light. She lifted him up and slammed him down on the table.

  A dull thud and the table shook.

  The black man braced himself with both hands on the tabletop—like doing a pushup—and then pushed down and sprang up with remarkable force. As Hitomi jerked back her hand, he did a full back flip and landed on the floor as gracefully as an Olympic gymnast sticking a vault.

  “Do you want to die here?” he asked with genuine curiosity. “Or go on running your whole life?”

  Clearly it was not the taking of revenge on behalf of his friend that brought him pleasure, but the revenge itself.

  “Then kill me,” Hitomi shouted at him, her body trembling. “Kill me now. I’m tired of these games.”

  “Very well then.”

  His words syncopated with the beat of the drum. The cries echoing through the hall had died out, replaced by low moans.

  “But the one I will kill—is her. You say you want to die. Therefore I will let you live. Watch as I slaughter your friend before your eyes. Suffer until you die. Suffer—”

  Hitomi yelled and sprang at him. He nimbly leapt back several yards and was about to strike from the drum a particular note—

  A pair of willowy arms reached over his shoulder and grasped his wrist.

  Hitomi had never seen her before. Where in the world had she come from? She was draped like a white shadow over the black man’s back. A second later, the shadow had turned into a flesh and blood woman. The same sex as Hitomi, but possessed of a beauty that was an ecstatic shock to the senses.

  Hitomi didn’t know her from Eve. But this carnal princess had sensed Takako’s presence and arrived in the nick of time.

  “It does not matter who you are. When the sun goes down, she will always come back to me.”

  Her voice only deepened Hitomi’s dazed intoxication. The Demon Princess was reproaching the African drummer. What was the source of such emotions?

  “Knowing that she was being pursued by persons unknown and was afraid for her life, I was forced to come to this seedy establishment. Though it does have a lovely aroma about it, doesn’t it? But forcing me to come here for any reason is an unforgivable sin.”

  She seized his wrist and held it, though it was clear that she was exerting no additional force. Nevertheless, he forgot all about his demon drum. His body stiffened, as if she had taken a firm hold on his soul.

  “You tried to kill her. I cannot allow that. If you wish to kill her, you must kill me first.” The Demon Princess released him and walked over to Takako and stood in front of her, paying Hitomi no mind. The little drummer stood there rooted to the spot.

  “Well then,” she said. “Come on.” And she beckoned with her hand.

  As if drawn by her invitation, his hands moved up and down in front of his chest. There was no change in the steady beat. After several seconds, a rending sound—heavy but yet faint—welled up around the Demon Princess’s feet.

  Hitomi furrowed her brows.

  The Demon Princess didn’t appear perturbed in the least. She looked down and said, “Interesting.” A teasing light glowed in her eyes. “Alas, what is this but a frivolous peek into your world? I have confronted enemies armed with the roots of far larger and sturdier trees. During the Ming Dynasty, I took in an entire stone pillar. I have seen such wood before, in that distant dark continent known as Africa. How shall we proceed? You will show me a good time, I hope.”

  Tan—A single beat rang out.

  The Demon Princess seemed to pout. The brown limb of a tree parted her seductive red lips. Hitomi’s eyes grew as wide as saucers. The rumbling sound in the floor, the man’s wooden tools—had shattered the concrete, stabbed her between her legs, pierced her internal organs and thrust out her mouth.

  Hitomi knew the pleasures of being so violated. Kuranishi’s pride was comprehensible in its perverseness. Then why would he deliver unto such a rare beauty such a heartless death?

  She understood quickly enough.

  Princess’s pale hand calmly took hold of the limb accosting her mouth. “I suppose the purpose of this tree is to rape women.”

  The branch filled her mouth, but her voice rang out with the clear tones of the infamous koto Silent Night.

  “But it can do the same to men!”

  The limb flew from her mouth like a rope. The man backed away with his drum. He’d gone five steps when a spasm stopped him in his tracks. The coffee-colored branch ran from Princess’s mouth to the bottom of his shorts.

  This living dildo from hell, the creation of the mad scientist and the witch doctor, penetrated the only asshole his creator had endowed him with.

  He yelped. And then moaned in stark and obvious pleasure. Princess brought her hand to her mouth and smiled bewitchingly. “Hoh! It is that effective! Then you and it should spend the rest of your lives together. Like this—”

  The branch bored in deeper.

  The man’s howls were lost in a flurry of footsteps. The door burst open and men in blue poured into the dance hall. The disco was rigged with cameras and monitors and other crime prevention measures. Somebody in the security room must have called the cops.

  The bouncers guarding the door were flat on their backs. The Demon City cops had their guns out and aimed at the Demon Princess, hiding their obvious confusion as they shouted, “Freeze!”

  Spotting the black man with a tree limb coming out of his ass, the sergeant barked, “All right, lady, you got five seconds to pull it out or we start shooting.”

  The Demon Princess closed her mouth, biting down with no more force than eating cotton candy. The severed end dropped to the floor. “Happy?” she asked the sergeant. He was an unusually handsome cop for Demon City. She said, “Perhaps you would indulge a request of mine, then? I would like your blood.”

  In response to the point-blank demand, the sergeant furrowed his brows and exchanged glances with the officers on either side of him.

  The Demon Princess didn’t wait for an answer. She stepped forward. At this point, it was unlikely that Takako was still foremost on her mind.

  The sergeant’s associates reacted first. “Hold it right there!” They weren’t patient men. The roar of their guns came a second later. The lines of fire pierced Princess’s chest and exited out her back. One round grazed Hitomi’s forehead.

  Before the sergeant could squeeze the trigger on his gun, Princess’s hand reached for his throat. In the moment that her fingers closed, all reason vanished from his head, replaced by unrequited lust.

  His associates’ guns continued to fire. In two seconds, six bullets perforated her body as her mouth closed on his throat.

  “Let him go, bitch!”

  Their Magnums that could fell a grizzly bear had no effect on her. The one on the right didn’t pause to puzzle this out and threw himself at her, pistol-whipping her with all his might, in a murderous rage. A clear case of police brutality.

  There was no reaction from her at all. The sensation of striking her soft flesh and bones. She just stood there.

  “What the—!”

  The other cop shouldered his gun and slammed his nightstick against her stomach. The kind of blow that would have laid a much bigger man out flat, if not permanently disable
him. She didn’t budge. And the handsome young sergeant’s face lost its color.

  The nightstick hummed through the air. The gun barrel was a blur of gray steel. At some point she let go of the sergeant. Faster than they realized this—or noticed he had turned into a wax-like corpse—she spun around as they continued to beat her.

  The hair covering half of her face brushed away. The horrifying sight of the charred side of her face froze the cops in their tracks.

  “I simply cannot abide having my meals interrupted by such clamoring rudeness. That is more than deserving of a death sentence. I could take your blood, but the thought makes me sick. A pig’s death for the pigs.”

  Her white hand flashed. With a sound like a stuck hinge, their heads spun around on their necks. And then the flesh tore apart. Twirling like a pair of tops, they lifted into the air, the tips of the tree branches growing out of the floor embedded in the neck bones like drills. And soon enough came to a halt.

  “Good blood,” she said, referring to the young sergeant. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “But a taste of sweetest wine in Heaven awaits in my castle.” She said to Takako, “Let us be on our way.”

  Takako nodded her pale face. Hitomi watched dumbfounded as Takako followed Princess to the door. She was at a complete loss for words. There was no worthy comparison to be made between the African and that woman. Hitomi would not be the first or the last to call her existence a miracle.

  A burly head lay there. Her feet wouldn’t move. The door closed and the two women disappeared from view.

  “What the hell’s going on there? Answer me, Oda!”

  From the walkie-talkie on the hip of the desiccated sergeant came the rebuke of his superior officer.

  “Aki-san.”

  He didn’t trust his senses sufficiently to believe the voice calling his name was anything but an auditory hallucination. But it sounded familiar.

  He was in a room in the Demon Princess’s manor house. Yakou had brought him there without Kikiou’s knowledge. Try any funny stuff and Takako—Princess would surely have her hands on her by now—would suffer for it. His one-time good friend was nowhere to be found here.

  He could be eagerly filling Kikiou in on all the details at that very moment.

  The room appeared to be a modest servant’s quarters. He’d laid down on the Spartan bed and took a nap. The quiet voice awoke him—three hours later, by his reckoning.

  “Aki-san.”

  The person was on the other side of the wooden door. He sensed her presence.

  “Who is it?” he responded softly.

  “It’s Takako.”

  “Who?”

  “The pretend Takako—that Kikiou told me to come and lure you away.”

  Setsura drew his brows. He’d left her at the bottom of the stairs when he’d gone up to the roof of the manor house. He didn’t know what happened to her after that. He hadn’t been particularly concerned about her fate. Assuming she wasn’t lying about who she was, then Kikiou hadn’t reproached her in a life-threatening manner.

  “How did you know I was here?” he wondered.

  “I just happened to see the two of you come in.”

  “Does Kikiou know?”

  “No. I haven’t set eyes on him since being told by him to get you and leave. He’s probably forgotten all about me. Even what he put in my heart.”

  Setsura stretched, and said, “Come in. It’s not locked.”

  A moment of hesitation. Setsura waved his right hand. The door opened.

  Yakou hadn’t taken his devil wire, so there would have been no sense in locking the door. Its sub-micron dimensions made it as good as invisible, allowing several pounds to be slipped inside the skin through the slightest break in the skin. He must have abandoned the thought of disarming him from the start.

  She closed the door behind her, a firm expression on her face. It was certainly “Takako.” Whether the real or the fake, he couldn’t tell. Knowing Kikiou, there could be thousands of her doubles about.

  He wouldn’t need a reason. He’d do it for the hell of it.

  “You doing okay?” Setsura asked unexpectedly.

  “Yes,” said Takako, lowering her eyes.

  Setsura offered her a chair. “What should I call you?”

  “Whatever you wish. But if you wouldn’t mind—”

  “Yes?”

  “Takako.”

  “Sure.”

  “I don’t know any other name.”

  “I understand,” he said breezily.

  Pretend Takako raised her eyes and gave him a funny look. “You’re awfully agreeable.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  “Oh,” Setsura said with a blank look. “So, what are you here for?”

  “I—um—” She hesitated. “I was going to come here to help you, but seeing that the door is unlocked, I assume you must be here of your own accord.”

  “No way,” Setsura said, though he certainly didn’t appear to be being held against his will, making for a curious oxymoron.

  “Then—under what circumstances—?”

  “No need to bore you with all the details. In any case, are you the same Takako from before?”

  “You don’t think so? That is understandable, though.”

  “No. But you are Kikiou’s creation. And still you came to help me?”

  “I’m not lying,” Takako answered point blank. “He must have abandoned me before because he took note of my true character. I don’t know when it surfaced, but I don’t think it was because I found myself in a safe place. It may sound old-fashioned, but I owe a debt to the person who, knowing my true self, stepped into Kikiou-sama’s trap on purpose.”

  “It was nothing,” Setsura said with a wave of the hand. “No. Think nothing of it.” And then with more intensity, “But would you know anything about a garden the mistress of the house keeps out back?”

  “I do.”

  “Do you know of any obnoxious obstacles on the way there?”

  “I don’t,” she said, sadly shaking her head. “I do not know anything more than the real Takako-san would.”

  “That’s okay. Well, you’d better be on your way.”

  “But if there is anything you need to know from Kikiou-sama, I could ask him. Just tell me what you want to know.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Setsura said. Though he knew in his heart that the wrong response was written all over his face.

  “No, please. I know I can’t be of great use to you, but if it’s not too much of a reach, I should be able to do it. Or don’t you trust me?”

  “There is that,” Setsura readily admitted.

  Whether he was being blunt or insensitive could be debated. Either way, tears welled up in Pretend Takako’s eyes and perhaps aroused in him pangs of human kindness.

  “Simply taking a stroll in this world means risking your life,” he explained.

  “That’s fine with me. There must be some way I can help you.”

  “Not if you’re dead. And no one will notice when you’re gone.”

  “I am only a facsimile. Kikiou-sama couldn’t be bothered to find me. Whether I’m here or not, it makes no difference. In that case, I want to do something for the person who did care that I existed.”

  Setsura sighed. It was clear to him that the feelings of Pretend Takako were real. “Are you familiar with the moon lily?” he asked with unusual gravity.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve heard it blooms in the back garden. If it’s okay with you, I would like a bouquet.”

  “Yes.”

  “But promise me this—if you sense danger about, stop and run away. And don’t come back.”

  Pretend Takako looked straight at Setsura. An indescribable expression colored her face and quickly vanished. “I will return. I promise.”

  Setsura watched as she stood up and slipped softly down the hall. Unseen by anyone, a shadow passed across his fair countenance.

  A look of
remorse even.

  Part Thirteen: Dance of the Demoness

  Chapter One

  The atrocity that occurred that night in a corner of Shinjuku was not by the city’s standards that big of a deal. According to eyewitnesses though, the beauty of the assailant exceeded not only that of a certain senbei shop owner in West Shinjuku, but the director of Mephisto Hospital as well.

  On those qualifications alone, the perpetrator was destined to be forever remembered in the city’s history.

  Three patrol cars were dispatched to the disco near Okubo station. Together with three additional SWAT members, the total came to nine. Three died inside the club. The remaining six were killed in the following melee outside.

  According to the eyewitnesses, the assailant was “a woman whose beauty made the rest of the world pale by comparison.” And it took her barely twenty seconds to dispatch those police officers to the great beyond.

  Several seconds passed between her appearance and the cops ordering her to raise her hands. Her beauty literally blinded them. There was a younger girl with her. The assailant told her to stand there and advanced on the police alone.

  She was ordered to stop twice. And then they opened fire with handguns and shotguns and full automatics. The full, naked fury of the attack against this frail-looking woman was remarked upon by several witnesses.

  “Just looking at her from the back was enough to set your hair on end.”

  And no wonder. Forty-two shotgun blasts, 268 5.56 mm high velocity rounds, three full seconds of laser radiation—none of it had the slightest effect.

  Standing in the withering barrage, the beauty didn’t budge an inch.

  The carnage commenced thereafter. The evidence describing how six strong men met their maker was inconclusive to say the least. The reason—again, according to statements from those on the scene—was the woman moved so fast as to become invisible at times.

  One witness recorded that, “It didn’t take three seconds after she moved her right hand.” Another said that, “It was over two seconds after she moved her left.” A third said that it was, “A couple seconds after she raised both arms.”

  Based on this testimony—killing all in no more than three or four seconds by ripping their heads off—she must possess superhuman power or artificial limbs.