Sanji pushed her away and threw his head backwards and clapped his hands to his mouth. Jabbing his fingers down his throat and hacking violently, he coughed up a plume of white smoke and flame. A moment later, the culprit sailed out like a comet.
A peach, the skin still intact.
There was as yet no name for a conjuring trick like that. Tonbeau Nuvenberg had stuffed her cheeks and jammed the demon-crushing fruit into the mouth of this vampire with a kiss.
“All right. Answer me. Where’s the package?”
Tonbeau stood there, hands on her hips.
Yuriko jumped at her. A swat with a hamhock-like fist sent her flying. She fell to the floor next to Sanji. She jumped up at once, waving a bloody paring knife.
“Ow! Ow! Ow! Dammit!”
It was Tonbeau who collapsed, her arms and legs kicking. The room swayed like a sinking ship in a hurricane.
“Run, San-chan!” Yuriko helped her suffering boyfriend to his feet. “I killed that man with this too. And I’ll protect you!”
“No, but how about this?”
“What?”
No sooner had she turned to face him but a white-hot sensation sprang from his writhing body and pierced her neck. Crazed by the thirst for blood or having intended to from the start, Sanji shook his head and bit through her throat down to her spine.
A blood-red mist enveloped them.
Tonbeau was still thrashing about on the floor. Sanji clambered to his feet and started towards her, but another look at that fat corpulent mass and he spun around and raced to the door.
He ran through the corridors and down the stairs to the car park. He was about to head up to the street. His feet seemed to sink into the pavement. Standing at the exit gates was a small shadow. The moonlight glinted off her golden hair. The doll girl.
Above her head fluttered a shadow. Sanji didn’t take the time to realize it was a raven. He charged at them. The doll girl’s hand reached heavenward. A column of white momentarily connected the raven’s mouth and her hand.
The satin dress flashed past the onrushing man and came to a halt. Sanji didn’t.
A white stake pierced his chest and jutted from his back. Sanji made it twenty more steps before collapsing on the sidewalk, the impact driving the stake deeper in and the bloody tip further out.
When the doll girl and the raven entered the apartment, they found the whimpering Tonbeau slathering some sort of salve over her right side.
“Dammit, that hurt!” she whined and sniffled.
The bird and the girl exchanged glances. “Are you all right?” the doll girl asked.
“My life has been spared for the moment. Except for the pain! I never should have come to this town in the first place!”
“Is the wound deep?” wondered the raven.
“It doesn’t look that way.”
“What are you two talking about? It’s a serious wound! Serious!” Tonbeau fumed. “I could have died!”
She struggled to her feet. In the face of her hulking presence, the raven beat a quick retreat to the door.
“What’s with the vampire?”
“He’s dead,” the doll girl said calmly. “What about the package?”
“Eh?” Tonbeau hiked up her brows.
“Eh?” responded the doll girl. “Um, Tonbeau-sama, you said that if he ran, we were to finish him off.”
“What are you talking about? If he ran, you should have figured out that I was the one in trouble. Stupid piece of wood.”
“Yeah, and who’s the fatso around here pushing people around telling everybody else to put a sock in it?”
Tonbeau glared at the big raven. A moment later she fell backwards onto the tatami mats in a swoon of pain and chagrin, all their efforts up to this point for naught.
The blade of the paring knife never made it past the first layer of fat.
Setsura opened his eyes. His internal clock said it was night. He was giving his exhausted body a breather. Takako was asleep on the bed next to him. She would soon awake. In this world, a vampire could sleep whenever she felt like it.
Meaning there was plenty of time to plot and scheme and put those plans into motion.
He hadn’t detected any demonic miasmas approaching. These weren’t the types to bare their teeth and come charging in. Knowing that much, he stifled a small yawn.
“Everything’s ready,” he said to the door.
Somebody was waiting beyond it. Whether long or short, a battle to the death, with life and soul in the balance, was about to commence.
Part Eight: A Conspiracy of Conjurers
Chapter One
The hinges creaked, crying out a gloomy scream. A sound perfectly attuned to the scene, Setsura couldn’t help thinking. A white shadow stood beyond the open door.
“Europeans know something of propriety,” he said, getting up from the chair. “As long as the master of the house doesn’t ask you to enter, strangers can’t come barging in. It’d be nice to think that a few thousand years in China could have instilled the same.”
“Alas, no.” The white-caped figure passed easily through the doorway.
“That makes you what?” Setsura said, returning to the chair. “No coffee. Tea’s over there. Suit yourself.”
“You needn’t have gone to so much trouble,” Mephisto said indifferently.
He went over to the hotplate where a delicately engraved teacup and teapot were arranged, with settings for two. He put tea leaves into the teapot and set it on the heat. Safe to say that no one in Shinjuku had ever beheld such a sight.
“How about you?”
“No, thanks.”
“Don’t be unsociable. This is good tea.”
“Everything in this world is a sham. What did you come here for?”
“I came to fetch my patient,” said Mephisto, raising the steaming teacup to his lips. Not only the cup but the tea itself seemed abashed at the intimacy of the gesture.
“That’s okay. Princess ordered her to remain here. You know, she’s the one whose ass you spend so much time kissing. The one who likes to boast how no one dares defy her.”
“No one dictates the disposition of my patients except me.” Mephisto’s eyes fell on Takako. Whenever that gaze rested upon them, viruses and bacteria all said the same thing: We would happily perish in your presence.
“Then take her with you,” Setsura said, directing his attention to the door. “But you make the mess, you clean up after it.”
“And what will you do?”
“Do about what?”
“Princess will soon arrive. Do you plan to remain here alone together?”
“What else can I do? It’s high noon for me.”
“You are never going to win with an attitude like that.”
“I’ll just have to give it my best shot,” Setsura said in a singsong voice. He looked at Mephisto. “Listen, if you’re just gonna bust my chops, take a hike.”
“You are in a very delicate position.” Still holding the teacup, Mephisto walked over to Takako. She was sleeping, dreaming crimson dreams. “They’re all after you, including Princess. And yet she is the one watching your back. You intend to dispose of her, but that is no doubt proving very difficult. So all you can do is wait. You can’t run—what else can you do? I cannot think of a worse predicament.”
“I appreciate your splendid analysis of the situation. Now get lost,” Setsura said with an unusual degree of menace. Princess’s impending arrival was wearing on him.
Mephisto instead sat down in the chair.
“You plan on sticking around then?”
“This is something I very much would like to see.”
“You mean the two of us coming to blows? When did you turn into a middle-aged pro wrestling fan?”
“You are not the only one in the ring.”
Setsura closed his mouth. A shadow flitted across his calm countenance. “This some sort of tag-team thing? When are you jumping in?”
Mephisto didn’t answer. He
turned his face toward the door. “She’s coming.”
“Whoa.”
Setsura rose out of his chair. Behind him came a hard thump. The bed shook. Takako had awakened.
“She’s coming,” Takako said. “Release me! Someone’s coming. Release me!”
Someone was definitely coming. Setsura’s ears picked up the graceful, rhythmic steps coming straight from the foyer and down the hall. Someone stained with the blood of countless emperors and tyrants. Everyone who heard it felt a shiver and a tingle down the spine, picturing her transcendent features, like finely-worked glass.
What would Takako do now that she was awake? She unleashed a strangled little scream. Or more like the howl of a dog.
Red stained the bed, the result of her violent resistance, the restraining devil wires biting into her skin. The other two were not attending to the mist of blood covering the bed. They were waiting, waiting for the person whose footsteps stopped outside the door, waiting for that third transfixing portrait to join them.
The door violently flung open and rang loudly against the jamb. Setsura didn’t hear it. Another sound shook the firmament. A hurricane-strength gale blew through the room, laying flat Setsura’s hair and spreading Mephisto’s cape out behind him like a bat out of hell.
And then ceased all at once. Like a bad practical joke. There was nobody outside the door or inside.
Setsura turned around. Princess was standing next to the bed.
With a bright ping! a thin line of light sliced through her neck. Princess smiled, showing her white teeth. “I have come as promised to drink my nightly fill. Mephisto, what are you doing here?”
“I am checking on my patient’s condition.”
“You are supposed to be in the Crystal Pavilion. Get back there.”
“Later. I haven’t completed the examination. You may wish to assist.”
“What?”
“How goes your recuperation, Kanan-san?” Mephisto asked Takako.
Had Yakou been there, he would be diving for cover. The same question had pulled the trigger on her explosive insanity several hours before.
With a spattering of blood, with the sound of severing bone, Takako sprang to her feet. She did not break the devil wires. The devil wires gouged round slices into her skin, the red rings girdling her from her throat down to her ankles. Her garments tore off and fell away in tubes of fabric that piled atop each other.
“Wait—”
Faster than Setsura could stop her, Takako flew at the Demon Princess—at this supreme dictator, this queen of all vampires. A moment before Takako’s hand closed around her throat, her body spun like a top. Setsura had reached out and pulled her back with his invisible threads.
“Well, that was unfortunate,” he said.
Takako’s defiance seemed in actual anticipation of Princess’s arrival, the initiation of her announced nightly taking of blood. Setsura’s manner suggested he had seen this coming.
Princess didn’t move. Since she’d mounted the stage, who in four thousand years had beheld such an expression on her face? She was stunned. She was taken aback. The woman once known as “Daji” gasped.
“She defied me. My servant—me—Mephisto, what did you do?”
“I treated her.”
“Obviously,” Setsura said, impressed.
The room fell into silence. Something else filled that space, like a tidal wave from a distant shore.
“Very good.” The roar accompanying the raging waves was unusually soft. “Very good, Takako. Mephisto. You have made a fool of me. And it will cost you dearly.”
Setsura looked at the white doctor with an expression that said: Hey, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
“Takako,” said the Demon Princess, softly and sweetly. Those legendary emperors had surely heard that same voice. “Kill Setsura.”
Takako squirmed in Setsura arms, her arms reaching for his neck. Princess’s command of her will had not been entirely extinguished.
“Kanan-san,” called out Doctor Mephisto. “Demonstrate for me how far you have progressed.”
The arms reaching toward Setsura fell back to her sides. Confused, Takako looked down at her own limbs. She grabbed at her hair with a wordless cry.
Mephisto said he could point to no example of a vampire returning to human form. Proof of that impossibility was those who had gone mad in the attempt.
“Stand back,” Mephisto said to Setsura.
Takako slumped to the floor.
“Kill,” Princess ordered.
As if she had pushed a button, an abrupt change came over Takako. She placed her hands on her temples and pushed up, as if to lift her head clean off her shoulders. A sliding sound followed.
“Huh?” said Setsura.
Takako’s head didn’t come off. Rather, her head rose, as if she was standing up. And yet she was still squatting in the same position. She had pulled another “Takako” out of the first.
There was such a thing as the physical separation of the body and the soul. Such a thing as a doppelganger. In one case, the soul temporarily fled the body. In the other, a separate you existed independently.
What had grown out of Takako’s body seemed a combination of the two. Her now standing form faintly glimmered like a lightning bug. Every strand of her hair was distinct, while the bed and the window were visible through her.
“Hoh. What else should I have expected from Doctor Mephisto? What an interesting course of treatment you have adopted.” Princess furrowed her beautiful brows with deep intrigue. “This is no mere alter ego. How much power does she possess? You, come here.”
Before the command left her mouth, the shining woman turned to her, then turned away with a disinterested expression. Now she faced Setsura. Pure desire spilled from her eyes, gleaming like knives. Light sparked off her tongue as she licked her lips.
“Hey, Mephisto,” Setsura called out, a bit unnerved. “Is this Kanan-san too?”
“So it seems. The essence of her self. The Kanan-san you know is on the bed.”
“What kind of treatment did you give her?”
“The very best.”
“Really?”
Glimmering blue arms around Setsura’s neck. They felt like cotton, a kind of ectoplasm. Even so, they seemed infused with spirit. Lust and naked desire distilled in the fangs jutting from her lips.
Devil wires wrapped around her wrists. She quickly slipped out of them. Darker ribbons of light played across her shining skin and disappeared. She’d brought her face to the right side of his neck when it twisted with pain.
An arm grew out of her left breast, the pale hand shaped into a spear, vivid and alive. Princess’s arm pierced the semi-transparent body and raised up slowly. Her limbs spasmed and shook madly. She could feel pain in this state, else Princess could touch parts of her that no one else could.
“What do you think you’re doing to this man?” asked the Demon Princess calmly. “I do not care if you kill him. But lay your lips on him? I will obliterate you on the spot, you fucking mannequin!”
With a flick of her slender hand, Princess threw her against the wall fifteen feet behind her. Without the slightest sound of an actual impact.
“Take a good look, Setsura,” she said, holding her hand up to his languid face. Between her fingers something throbbed with light. “Her heart. I will crush the life out of it. Remember well the fate of all those who defy me.”
She curled her fingers into a fist. The girl on the floor pressed her hands against her chest. Rays of light poured out from Princess’s clenched hand, the same light that had painted luminescent watercolors across the woman’s body.
Princess opened her hand. Something that looked like a heart fell to the floor and rolled over to where she lay. Setsura watched as she picked it up with glowing fingers and thrust it into her chest.
She stood up as if nothing had happened and smiled at Setsura.
“Stay right there!” Princess cried out.
In a whirlwind of l
ight, the woman rushed out the door.
Chapter Two
Mephisto reacted first, before Princess. The white cape fluttered as if caught in a dust devil and disappeared, taking the beauty of the display with him.
He returned several seconds later. “Well?” said the Demon Princess.
“She has fled.”
“That isn’t possible,” Princess objected. “My soldiers of darkness surround the Demon Pavilion.”
“You mean these?”
Mephisto opened his hand, revealing three wooden dolls dressed in old-style military uniforms, only two or so inches tall. The head of each was no longer attached to the body. He said dispassionately, “Another twelve are left out there. Kanan-san is stronger than I would have expected.”
“How much stronger than expected?” Setsura asked.
“All I can say is this: left alone, her paranormal powers will only grow.”
“You don’t say,” Setsura said, flashing an intrigued look at Princess. “You mean, more powerful than her?”
“Idiot!” Princess spat out. She normally would have merely smiled at the mention of such an outrageous thought.
“Having no real grasp of Princess’s powers, I cannot say. However, on her present trajectory, she could well become this world’s greatest menace.”
“This world?”
“She was imbued by Princess with a character that is the very incarnation of the vampire. In light of her current form, her next course of action should be clear. Namely, to rip out the throats of all living things and consume their blood. The world shall become the realm of the dead to satisfy her base desires.”
“Don’t worry. I shall find her presently and annihilate her.”
“She has powers equal to those of Princess. She won’t be found. And if she is, whoever finds her won’t come back alive.”
A long moment passed. Princess looked down at Takako slumped on the floor. “And if severed from her foundation?”
“A perfect partition having been achieved, it would be pointless. They should be treated as two distinct life forms, even should the one be a facsimile of the other.”
Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 5 Omnibus Edition Page 16