The pale naked body sprang up from the smoke and debris, a good six feet into the air—though shrouded in the dust it was hard to tell—flailing her arms and legs.
“Put me down. If you don’t—” A mist enveloped her. Her limbs were exposed to the sun.
“Sunlight won’t kill you, but it’s got to hurt. You should be cuttable now.”
“You bastard. Put me down!”
Princess grasped the invisible string holding her up. Her five fingers dropped off like pieces of marshmallow.
“So it is effective.”
But then, for a moment, he hesitated, perhaps savoring that moment of victory. A moment of unpardonable neglect for a citizen of Demon City.
From the side came a blast of white-hot heat. The wire he reflexively whipped in response severed the flames in two and slashed at the white tiger bounding over the mound of earth. Setsura’s left sleeve, covering his face, caught fire.
The tiger nimbly ducked the wire and opened its mouth. A second torrent of flame burst out, from a range that must be impossible to avoid.
Setsura suddenly looked up. So did Princess and the tiger.
Something like a curling mist descended. Its skin appeared cool and damp. A mist in a rain. Two dots of light grew closer from deep within the black semicircle. Setsura recalled what Tonbeau had told him—of the two beasts released from the box the mayor had brought her, one was a dragon.
Fire spilled from the tiger’s mouth. Steam billowed up. The rain became a clear drizzle.
As the old saying went: Tiger at the front gate, the wolf at the back door—or in this case, the dragon. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. The cold wind touched the back of his neck. Setsura couldn’t move. The breath of a dragon. The creature breathing it emerged from the tunnel.
It pushed its long snout forward, the long slit of its mouth, from which drooped an almost comical Fu Manchu moustache, though the humor was lost in the fearsome menace of its glittering eyes. Its body was covered with golden scales edged with a green patina.
“You cannot escape, you fool. Choose which one—choose the claws that will tear you apart!” Princess cried out from the air. She was already shrouded in smoke. The sunlight seemed to have robbed her as well of her powers of levitation.
The tiger roared. The dragon opened its mouth. Its teeth appeared quite small in proportion, but the sheer power of its red mouth appeared to outshine even that of its feline companion.
A flood of fire or water would surely gush forth.
Setsura jumped. As he soared vertically upwards, the two magical beasts turned their snouts towards him, but didn’t attack. Princess was directly along their line of fire.
In a not very sporting move, Setsura put an arm around Princess as he climbed higher, using her as a shield. Only those without their lives truly on the line could call it cowardice.
With Princess under his arm, he passed over the heads of the beasts and set down on the stable pile of bricks.
Past the dragon, the hole revealing the sun was surprisingly small, perhaps a dozen feet in diameter on the surface. Considering the amount of light six hundred feet down, dimensional refracting qualities must have arisen in the tunnels, one of the strange blessings of the Devil Quake.
Setsura was about to shoot to the surface when his vision was obscured by an expanding tide of blue. The flood unleashed by the dragon rapidly exceeded what he’d anticipated—as the strand of devil wire slipped out of his hand.
Part Fourteen: The Elder's Grandson
Chapter One
Tonbeau Nuvenberg cried in Czech, “I did it! I did it!” She slapped a boxing-glove sized fist into a mitt-sized palm.
A beaker holding a transparent liquid sat on the wooden desk. In the hour since Setsura left, she’d been holed up in a laboratory in the back creating this concoction.
“Congratulations,” Takako said crisply to Tonbeau’s dumpling face. “How about celebrating your success by letting me go?”
This Takako was Takako’s doppelganger. Since being strapped to Tonbeau with Setsura’s devil wires, she was her constant companion, locked in an embrace sitting up or lying down.
Needless to say, both of them were getting tired of the arrangement.
“I’d love to,” said Tonbeau in fluent Japanese. “But considering what must be going on in that head of yours, let you get a fraction of an inch away from me and it’d be like setting free a ravenous wolf in a flock of sheep. We’re going to have to put up with each other a little while longer.”
“A little while?” Takako said with a teasing smile.
Their lips were a hair’s breadth apart, creating to the eye of someone who didn’t know better a strangely suggestive scene.
“We’re stuck together until I figure out how to extinguish you or return you to your original body.”
“There’s no way. You said so yourself.”
“Of course I did. That’s why we’re getting a hold of the Doctor.” Tonbeau removed the cover of a brass speaking tube attached to the stone wall. “Well!” she shouted. “Was he there?”
A moment later, “No,” the doll girl answered.
“What is this Doctor Mephisto up to? The Demon Physician, of all people. Is he at the hospital?”
“Yes. But he won’t answer no matter what.”
“Didn’t the pretty boy say something about Doctor Mephisto sending around a dummy of the mayor to steal the box?”
“Yes.”
“In that case, we have to consider the possibility he’s become enthralled by it. Dammit, I’ll just have to ring that man’s bell myself.”
“I can think of no one more qualified at ringing a man’s bell.”
“Hmph. A mere doll like you should show a little more deference to her mistress.”
“I beg to disagree, but you are not my mistress. You are my mistress’s younger sister.”
“And you are a lousy block of polished wood!”
Tonbeau slammed down the cover of the speaking tube and folded her arms, or tried to as well as she could with Takako strapped to her. She paced the room in a huff. Takako dangled there in front of her eyes. To be sure, it was a curious sight.
“Well, whatever. The first order of business is collecting more allies. I’m going downstairs!”
She shouted again into the speaking tube, grabbed the beaker, and headed for the door. The narrow stairway creaked as she stomped down the steps. She exited into a fairly wide hallway. Candle stands lined the walls, the flames fluttering as she passed by and pushed open a wooden door.
A low moan arose. “You awake?” she said, closing the door.
Though it was pitch black, to the eyes of the Czech Republic’s second greatest witch, everything was as plain as day.
The room was approximately a dozen feet by a dozen feet. A pungent sweet smell suffused the air. The one-armed man sat up on an iron bed against the far wall.
“I am awake,” he said with a nod, “though this aroma is on the pungent side. Could you reduce the intensity?”
“That is for the lover that hangs about you, hardly to be shook off. That ash somehow excites your blood lust. The word is, my girl here reduced that vampire lady of yours to dust.”
Ryuuki looked down at the ash covering the bed. Though turned to dust, Shuuran still tried to protect him. Perhaps she was sleeping now.
“Brings a whole new meaning to being stuck on someone. Speaking of which, you recognize this?”
Ryuuki gave Tonbeau—and Takako strapped to her—a puzzled look. Then a spark of recognition dawned on his face.
Tonbeau was holding a wilted clump of flowers in her caterpillar-like fingers. Originally cool white with large petals, they were now wrapped with streaks of brown, the glory with which they once bloomed having faded long ago.
“Moon lilies.”
“Exactly.”
“The ones that grew in the garden of Princess’s manor house?”
“The source is uncertain. Two hours ago, they were
used as the currency in a certain exchange.” In place of the wooden box hauled off by the pretend mayor, the flowers had been left behind. “Besides you, I’ve heard tell that other young man—Setsura-chan’s erstwhile ally—is a traitor to the cause. When it comes to these flowers, I can think of only one use—restoring someone to his right mind.”
Tonbeau produced her hand from behind her back. The liquid sloshed back and forth in the beaker.
“You distilled the substance?”
“That I did.”
Ryuuki looked up. “Which?”
Tonbeau went over to the rope and chains hanging from the ceiling. Grabbing one of the rusty chains raised the sound of turning gears. Another figure dropped from the ceiling. His ankles were bound by iron shackles attached to chains that wound around his body.
At first glance, he looked like he’d just been hauled out of a torture chamber. Though this young man was probably otherwise fit as a fiddle. His pair of wings and bat-like appearance identified him as Yakou.
“Hey, wakey wakey,” Tonbeau patted the graceful face on the cheek.
“You’re such a boor,” Takako complained, even as a lewd light filled her eyes.
“Shut up,” Tonbeau glared back at her, though their heads were only three inches apart, so there wasn’t a lot of force behind it. The result was like two kids in a staring contest.
Yakou’s eyes opened. “What are you doing?”
“You are about to find out,” Tonbeau said with a sinister smile, the smile of a witch about to poison the virtual young knight.
She waved the beaker back and forth beneath his nose. “Drink up.”
“What is that?”
“A rejuvenating agent.”
“What are you doing, Sir Ryuuki? Stop this fatso.” Yakou squirmed in frustration. The Ryuuki below him was supposedly his comrade in arms. “They are enemies of Princess. And enemies of you. Will you betray Princess?”
To be precise, he was the archetypal betrayer, but he possessed no such memories now.
Ryuuki said, “I would prefer to stay as far away from all that as possible.”
In the face of the painful echoes in his restrained voice, Yakou’s exasperation melted away. But quickly emerged again. “Traitor,” the Elder’s grandson barked.
“You shut up too.”
Tonbeau Nuvenberg’s mitt-sized hand covered his mouth as she raised the beaker with the other. She pressed the mouth of the beaker against her sausage-like lips, spun around, took away her hand and slapped the beaker against his mouth.
Perpendicular with the floor, the contents of the beaker should have spilled out. But not a drop did. It was attached to his face like a suction cup, fitting the contours of his face from his cheekbones down to his jaw.
The liquid covered his mouth and nose. Yakou had no choice but to choke and gag and swallow.
“That’s a good boy.”
Removing the beaker with a pop, Tonbeau retreated several steps and examined the young man hanging there upside-down.
“You bitch!” raged Yakou.
But his features quickly stilled. The fury melted out of his face. His eyelids closed. And opened a moment later, wavering and filled with an altogether different kind of light. After blinking his eyes several times, they revealed an expression closer to horror.
He hadn’t lost his memories in the process. What he retained resembled the sensation of wandering in a deep and pervading mist, but all of them were still there—he who was manipulated by Princess, he who fought with Setsura—and now they became the personification of the shame and humiliation coursing through his bloodstream.
“What the hell have I done? Release me! Undo these bonds holding me fast!”
“Seems he’s back,” said Tonbeau, taking hold of the chains.
“But is he really all right?” Takako objected.
“What, you don’t trust my concoctions?”
“No, but you are better safe than sorry. That Princess has him wrapped around her little finger.”
“I am the Yakou I was before all this! Believe me!”
“Of course you are!”
With a shove of her palm, Yakou dropped out of his restraints head first. A split second before colliding with the floor, the wings fluttered and hummed and he swooped into the air.
As he landed, he glanced at Ryuuki. “I do not believe you.” His words were filled with enmity. Ryuuki was his sworn enemy. “You should be perfectly aware—that woman killed my grandfather. And I will have my revenge.”
“Whoa, hold your horses. I perfectly understand where you’re coming from, but I owe him one.”
“Nobody owes him anything. Left to his own devices, he would destroy not only this city but the world and everything in it.”
“C’mon, give it a break. He’s raised his hands and hoisted the white flag and thrown in the towel. Are you one to kill prisoners who’ve already surrendered?”
Tonbeau slowly turned around. Ryuuki was standing there. The man who rose languidly from the bed was a completely different person from before. A fierceness suffused his whole body—not a murderous vibe, not loathing, not hostility, not anger.
But the fighting spirit of a warrior. He was General Ryuuki. “The past can never be simply relegated to the past,” he said quietly. “It is true that when your grandfather was killed, I served Princess. If fighting me serves your purposes, then let us fight.”
“Oh, this is interesting!” Takako’s eyes sparkled.
“Knock it off.” Tonbeau jabbed her in the side, making her wheeze. “What good would that do? Yo, Yakou-chan, I’ve got something to say to him.”
“What about?” Takako asked.
This time Tonbeau shut her up with a slap, though it was more a sumo wrestler’s open-handed punch that knocked her head back.
“I appreciate the sentiment, but step aside,” Ryuuki said softly, though his voice clearly communicated his lack of regard for her concerns.
The Czech Republic’s second greatest witch darted away and put her back against the stone wall on her right. It wasn’t so much that she’d given up on persuading them differently, just that she sensed in Ryuuki’s voice the power to do whatever had to be done.
“Is this venue acceptable?” the great general asked.
“Fine with me.”
Whatever these old enemies felt, Yakou’s answer was equally subdued.
Ryuuki made the first move. A simple gesture. He stretched out his left hand parallel with the floor. An invisible wave raced toward the wall. Yakou floated into the air. The air was his natural domain.
Ryuuki threw out a two-fold blast of qi. One aimed directly at Yakou. The other would be absorbed by the wall and rebound at him from an unexpected angle.
Yakou ducked the direct attack and waved his hands. Exercising the intuition of a warrior, Ryuuki jumped back from the silent qi licking the stone floor.
He went down on one knee. “So you use it too?” he said, clearly delighted. He hadn’t numbered this one among Yakou’s talents—a fellow wielder of the same qi—it couldn’t help but make his heart race a little faster. Admiration colored his features.
Yakou’s body spun around. His open wings were caught by the time-delayed qi slanting off the walls. It then struck the ropes and chains dangling from the ceiling.
The rope ruptured. The chains and shackles shattered. Tonbeau screeched and dove for the cover of the bed. The loud report filled the room. The flaying rope slashed open the mattress on the bed. The chains struck, sending fissures through the wall.
The rope bounced off the mattress, the chains ricocheted off the walls in a deadly dance of death, flinging off shrapnel that could take apart an armored vehicle, not to mention a human being.
Ryuuki stood there, eyes half-open, arms hanging at his sides. The deadly projectiles stung at his shoulders and chest and head.
“Ah!”
That shout came from Takako as Tonbeau jumped beneath the bed, a space that would admit one normal pers
on only with difficulty, let alone this mountain of a woman. And yet as Tonbeau crammed herself in, this alter-ego, this other Takako, didn’t take her eyes off the soldiers and their death match.
What prompted her surprised reaction—death rained down upon him, but Ryuuki didn’t die. The flying shards came to a sudden halt a few inches before reaching him, intercepted by an invisible wall.
“That’s the first time I’ve seen such a defensive perimeter formed from qi,” Tonbeau said in blank amazement. The end of a piece of rope grazed the tip of her nose. “Ack!” she exclaimed.
All movement in the room came to a halt. The scene resembled a strange still life.
The astonished Yakou floated down. Ryuuki calmly turned around. The doll girl was lying on the ground in front of the open door.
Chapter Two
After a brief mutual glance, and a silently agreed-to armistice, the two soldiers ran over to the young girl. A piece of the chain was buried in her delicate right shoulder, from which a blue fluid oozed.
“Sorry,” said Yakou, biting his lip.
“I am okay. It doesn’t hurt.”
“We should get you patched up as quickly as possible,” said Ryuuki.
“Move it, move it, move it!”
The third member of this party. Casting the chains aside, Tonbeau bent over to examine the wound. She sniffed. “No big deal. Swapping out of a few bones and reconnecting a couple of blood vessels should do the trick. A quarter-hour at most. The question is how you climbed off your sick bed and made it down here. No matter what kind of doll you are, getting hit by that old man’s qi should have hurt like the fires of hell. All I did at the time was patch you up here and there.”
“Would that old man be Kikiou?” Ryuuki asked.
“The same.”
“A splendid little girl,” said Ryuuki. “You should see to her at once.”
The small white hand rested on his knee. “We can’t go.”
“What are you saying?”
Yakou bent over. His face filled her deep blue eyes. “Are you concerned for my welfare?” In the face of such pluck, Yakou couldn’t help but nod.
“If she and I were to leave, you would start fighting all over again. I don’t wish for either of you to die. I brought myself down here to bring a stop to it.”
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