“Jealousy and envy are at the root of your being.”
“Aw, shut it. Ah, the wind.”
The hair of both of them wafted backwards.
“A gentle breeze. A wonderful breeze. These are the currents of the universe.”
“The draft circling the repository of the transcript. How many others have felt its touch, I wonder?”
“What in the world?” The doll girl stared at Tonbeau.
“What are you looking at?”
“You have returned to your younger self. You were quite pretty.”
The ruddy cheeks of a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl reflected in her blue eyes. Her braided hair hung down to her waist. She was wearing a one-piece dress, pink flowers on white fabric.
“You’re turning into your raw materials too. Ah, don’t look down.”
The doll glanced down at her right hand. Seeing the bright red fluid circulating through glass tubes twined around brass bones, she gasped softly and closed her eyes.
“It seems that our bodies themselves are reading through the records of the past. Any number of wizards, warlocks and my big sister have done the same. The problem is the future.”
“The lid has never been removed in the past, then?”
“Only a very powerful sorcerer could have erected such powerful defenses.”
“With four thousand years of Chinese history at his disposal, Kikiou must have known of the Akashic Records and when they were made.”
“No.” The five-year-old child shook her head. “He wouldn’t have. Neither would have we.”
“When you talk like that, you remind me of my mistress.”
“Thank you,” she said with an unusual gravity. Tonbeau’s voice didn’t come from human vocal cords. It wasn’t even a “voice.” The body projecting it had lost its human form and turned into a lump of protoplasm. The doll girl herself had reverted to an unformed nothingness.
Despite having lost their forms and all their senses, together with this underground room, their individual existences still clearly remained. They had gone back to the beginning.
“I understand everything. Everything and all at once.” There was fear and trembling in the doll girl’s “voice.”
“You’ll forget it all soon enough,” Tonbeau answered her. “No one can bear the full knowledge of all there is. And so we make as much of life as we can. Now that we have arrived, expand your consciousness wider. See the future when that box is opened.”
“Yes.”
What had happened to these two? This was the result of injecting the Akashic Records. The energy spanning all dimensions in the universe stabilized its very structures, and thereby served as a record book upon which the entire history of creation was inscribed.
The entire history. The past and the future. Every and all possible futures. The lid of the box—that had not been opened in eons in this universe—had been opened in an infinite number of others.
Tonbeau Nuvenberg and the doll girl only had to pick one among those infinite others and apply it to the box in this one.
“I have found it.” The doll girl’s voice echoed from within the distant chaos. “I will now superimpose that reality.”
“Take care. Not even my big sister touched these mysteries. A most serious undertaking. Edgar Cayce read but a smattering, and only enough to heal the sick, and even those skills retrograded to the material levels of this world. Nevertheless, and because of that, he was able to completely fulfill his divine calling.”
“We can only pray that the same may be said of us.”
“Yeah. Pray on. No, let’s get it done!” Tonbeau’s “voice” filled with her customary arrogance.
“Here it comes!”
“Go for it!”
Within the shapeless nothingness, something was “chosen.”
And in that moment—
The song of a bird wafted through the window. The doctor in white looked down at Takako sleeping on the bed.
They were in a room in the Crystal Pavilion. He was lost in thought. Whatever would he do with this girl? Kikiou had told him to do nothing more in this world. That was all. Had he taken note of the changes occurring inside his own creation?
The pretend Mephisto had camped out at the Crystal Pavilion and there laid a trap for Setsura, which may have been why he returned to his old haunt. But what aroused his attention was that something within Doctor Mephisto, the intense desire to cure Takako.
With Takako there before him, Mephisto thought. His memories concerning her were implanted by Kikiou with precision.
As “Doctor Mephisto,” he was equipped with his thoughts and his medical knowledge. When poisoning Setsura, after all, there was the off chance that questions of medicine would occur, questions he should not be hard pressed to answer. His level of knowledge, in fact, equaled that of Kikiou.
“No,” the pretend Mephisto said, shaking his head. “The only treatment for these symptoms is to restore her other self. Doing that would be practically the same as making her a vampire again. But then again—”
As he quietly gazed down at her, a strange expression stole across his face, possessing a demonic air even.
“Setsura Aki exerted all his efforts to save this girl and died as a result. But did he really? Three hundred thousand degrees did not scald him. Perhaps administering an antidote might bring him back to life. That is something I can do.”
Aside from the excessive chattering to himself, this was exactly the line of thought that Doctor Mephisto’s mind would take.
“If Setsura were revived, he would escape with this girl. And all my efforts would be for naught.”
He laced his fingers together in front of his chest in obvious aggravation. Not the kind of thing the Demon Physician would ever do. Had Kikiou wanted the real Mephisto, he would have instilled in the copy those peculiarities of thought that identified the individual as a unique and moral agent.
As is, this Mephisto was limited in the extreme, showing those convincing characteristics only to Setsura. He felt the desire to monopolize Setsura. Anybody else who held similar thoughts must be expunged. That meant dealing with anybody attempting to establish any kind of relationship with Setsura.
The beautiful man glided up to Takako’s bedside, the gentleness gone from his features. The shadows from his five fingers fell onto her neck, across which crawled the pairs of teeth marks.
In a flash, the shadows grew darker and thicker, until they were overlaid by the fingers themselves.
“Wait,” came a sharp command.
The pretend Mephisto hesitated. The location of the speaker was difficult to identify at first. Then he looked directly above him.
There appeared the face of a young man. Then his shoulders, his chest, his long legs. He was wearing a dark gray three-piece suit. His leather shoes seemed attached to the ceiling. He hung there upside-down like a bat.
“You—are Yakou.”
The upside-down young man answered with two, three flaps of the wings folded across his back. “And you are a make-believe Mephisto.” The rush of wind wafted the white cape back. “Based on appearances only, the way you walk and talk, you could be his twin. But no. The real doctor would have spied my presence here from the start. Who made you?”
“Sir Kikiou,” pretend Mephisto answered at once. He assumed that Kikiou’s name would make Yakou think twice and retreat. He was wrong.
Yakou warmly smiled. “He makes you and you kill Kanan-san—two birds with one stone.”
“What?”
“Princess keeps that girl around to dangle under Setsura’s nose. And so you won’t be touching her, not while I’m around.”
“Bastard. Weren’t you thrown out of here?”
“I was certainly thrown for a loop. From a corner of that forest clear over those distant mountains. Sprained a wing, I think. But I made it back eventually. It’s just been one thing after another ever since I came here.”
The smile didn’t leave his face as a kill
er vibe welled up from below and pierced Yakou’s entire body.
“And here’s one more. Die in peace.”
He raised his right hand. A light flashed from the tips of his fingers and shot through Yakou’s throat. Yakou glanced down at the steel shaft of the scalpel.
“I was once known as the Elder’s grandson,” he said in a raspy voice. “If you were aware of that, you would have not even thought of killing me in such a fashion. Ah, it’s sad in a way. Make believe has its place, but not here. This is the way you throw a shuriken!”
The black streak parted the air. A white veil danced up in front of it. With a single sweep of his cape knocking the shuriken from its murderous trajectory, the pretend Mephisto leapt through the doorway and into the next room. Another jump and through that room and out the exit, landing a good ten feet from the door. A splendid physical feat, to say the least.
But he had a hand pressed against the left side of his neck. He staggered. A scarlet liquid welled up between his fingers and fell in bloody beads onto his cape.
“Once my shuriken strikes the target, it burrows in until it reaches the other side.”
The pretend Mephisto threw back his head. The shadow was perched on the roof of the Crystal Pavilion like the grim reaper.
“Doctor Mephisto would have done something about it already. But you obviously lack the means. Pray that at least after you die, you share the next world with the real Demon Physician.”
Yakou pushed out his hands in front of him. Before he could discern that this was not a shuriken-throwing motion, a streak of light reached out from Mephisto’s left hand. Halfway along the line tying the two together, it transformed into a bird of prey and launched itself at Yakou’s chest.
A strange sound from below brought that motion to a halt, the sound of a hole a foot in diameter opening in Mephisto’s white torso. Yakou batted aside the wire eagle and gazed down at the fallen Mephisto. He flapped the wings on his back and alit at his feet.
He stood there, hands on hips, and glared at him. “Can you hear me?”
The pretend Mephisto weakly opened his eyes. His life force was that remarkably strong.
“What I’d expect from any creation of Kikiou’s. Stubborn bastard. Before I go looking for everybody else, answer me this—where is Princess?”
Mephisto’s lips trembled. “I—do not—know—but—as for Setsura—”
“Hoh. Is he around here someplace?”
“Right—behind you—”
Yakou watched as his head fell back. He whirled around. The picturesquely handsome man stood in the doorway of the Crystal Pavilion. Even eyes accustomed to the sight of Doctor Mephisto’s beautiful mien in this warped world became the clouded crystallization of entranced midnight suns.
Chapter Two
“I’m slowing down in my old age. How long have you been standing there?”
“Right after you flew through the window and up to the roof,” Setsura said in his always carefree manner.
“And how did you get in?”
“The same back window.”
“You were hoping we mutually self-destructed?”
“Works for me.” Setsura nodded like a kid hanging out on a street corner with nothing to do. Yakou’s killer qi wavered just a bit.
“You came here for Kanan-san? I assume you’ve accomplished that much.”
“Sure.”
“What happened to Princess?”
“She was playing Marco Polo in a pool when she up and vanished. The outside world, I imagine.”
“Kikiou and Mephisto too?”
“Kikiou threw me in the incinerator and took off. He must be doing repairs. I don’t know where Mephisto is.”
Yakou threw a swaggering laugh back at the languid face. “That means we can finally get down to business without any outside interference.”
“I guess so.”
Yakou slowly rose to his full height. His wings ruffled, unleashing a gust of wind bearing the intensity of his malice.
The two young men faced each other ten feet apart. The one overflowing with murderous intent, the other as calm as a summer morning. However, the battle would not be resolved by either with such an air.
“Princess says you are not to be killed. But as long as you are around, Princess will surely suffer. You are the one who will.”
Setsura said with a sigh, “Give it a break already.”
“What?”
“First it’s Princess. Then it’s Mephisto. Ryuuki or Kikiou tomorrow? You don’t listen to anybody! A little self-control wouldn’t hurt, you know.”
“Shut up.”
“Naw, I don’t think so.”
“One more word and—”
“—you’ll tell Princess—”
A split second before the wall behind him collapsed, Setsura jumped into the air.
—on me?”
High in the sky, the black slicker abruptly shifted directions and dropped down behind Yakou, who’d unleashed the same qi cannon that perforated pretend Mephisto, and was pivoting just as Setsura buried his heel in the back of his head.
He stumbled forward. Breaking his fall with a one-handed push-up, he shot off another burst of qi without turning around—a feat only the Elder’s grandson could pull off.
He fired purely on instinct. Still in midair, Setsura’s stomach disappeared with an audible pop. The forest behind him became momentarily visible.
Yakou blinked. No sooner had he shot his qi cannon but Setsura’s body seemed to waver and grow indistinct. The beautiful black silhouette stood there as if lost in thought. A puzzled expression rose to his face. He slowly fell over like a toppled tree.
“Shit. That hurt.” Rubbing the back of his head, Yakou sprang to his feet. He could definitely feel a lump. “You sure don’t pull your punches,” he complained, though the triumphalism was clear in his voice. He walked over to Setsura with uncertain steps. “Bit of an anticlimax, that. I almost don’t want to put an end to it.”
“Then don’t.”
Yakou thrust out his arms in response to the unexpected reply. His arms jerked back as Setsura’s left hand plunged into his mouth.
Yakou gagged and coughed. What started out as a hand turned into a fluid inside his mouth and poured into his windpipe and lungs.
“Son of a bitch!” he tried to shout, but he swallowed Setsura’s whole hand into his lungs. Yakou’s consciousness rapidly dimmed. In the middle of a sun-drenched field, the vampire prince in the dark suit was drowning.
Nevertheless, no doubt thanks to the true power of that pedigree, he mustered his strength and pushed his arms against Setsura’s stomach.
Setsura’s torso tore in two, blowing backwards, taking clothing and flesh and torn threads with it. Then it erupted, like drops of water returning to the puddle they’d splashed from.
“I’m half water right now,” the wavering face said in an utterly blasé manner.
Considering what had just happened, it was a hell of a thing to say. The pretend Mephisto’s “treatments,” diluted, caused no lasting harm. It was easier to allow himself to get laid out flat and return to rescue Takako than stand his ground and duke it out.
He’d heard Kikiou’s instruction to leave her there. That he chose to remain silent, offering no resistance while being tossed into the incinerator was a lot harder to comprehend. The reason being that he was curious to see what happened would startle not only Kikiou, but Princess as well.
“Vampires can definitely drown in water. That won’t kill them, but it will knock them out. When you come to, be a good boy and forget all about that bad-tempered lady.”
Yakou heard none of this as the energy drained out of him. Unable to support himself with his free hand, Setsura planted his right hand against Yakou’s stomach. Normal solidity immediately returned to his face and body.
Despite returning to a “normal” state, he couldn’t, in a flash, avoid the situation that followed perhaps because he was still half water.
A
grimace crossed his face. He whirled around. Yakou collapsed. Enormous claws dug into his back, the claws of a giant eagle made out of wire.
Setsura staggered. In front of him appeared a white wax-like face. A hand reached up from the grass. Even without seeing the wires clenched between his fingers, the actions of the pretend Mephisto could be easily deciphered.
“Born into this world—for a mere two hours—” The pale lips breathed in the air of the River Styx. “But—I regret—nothing—if I can die—with you. Let us go Setsura. Together. To that—other world. As a present—that man too—”
The trembling hands formed the wires into a stake.
“Knock it off,” Setsura said, and threw his head backward. The bird on his back thumped its beak at the back of his skull.
Exercising his will alone, Setsura forced his more human attributes to take precedence over his liquid state. A moment later, invisible wires cut the bird into pieces. At the same time, the stake flew from pretend Mephisto’s hand. The white doctor’s head exploded.
Blood and brains scattered in a mist, falling in a red rain on the prone Setsura. He shouldered the pain and tried to turn back into liquid form, but the shock from the bird’s attack upset the control of his facilities, and he remained as he was.
Instead, somebody pressed a hand against the back of his head. “That was one of Kikiou’s inventions,” Yakou said, choking on his indignation as much as the water in his lungs. “Disobey him and die. The kind of thing he would do. Thanks to him, the situation has now reversed itself. In memory of the make-believe Mephisto, I shall now send you to the same place. Goodbye and farewell.”
Brilliant lines ran toward Yakou’s body, but every one of them was repelled by his unbelievable power.
“Can you turn back into water, Setsura?”
“Well—”
A moment later—
“Did it!”
Tonbeau’s “voice” pressed against the chaos and confusion. The desired end had been achieved.
“The lid is open. Something came out!”
“Close it!” said the doll girl.
“Not yet!”
“If the dimensions superimpose themselves any more, the distortions will reach into this time and space. We may truly evaporate into nothingness.”
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