Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 2

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  At length, the magnificent lips moved. “If that is your command.”

  “That is my command.”

  “Then I will do as commanded.” His body shuddered again.

  She jerked her mouth away from his neck, leaving a half-moon shaped gouge into the dark skin, exposing the pink meat beneath. An eruption of blood filled the divot, forming a bump above the plane of the dermis. She chewed the flesh ripped from his body and swallowed without a moment’s hesitation.

  “You’re lying. I know you intend to die the next time you fight.”

  “Quite the contrary. I intend to bring Setsura Aki to our side.”

  “You can do that?”

  “Definitely.”

  She circled around in front of him and gazed with her sightless eyes at the remarkable package between his legs. A playful expression touched her haughty face.

  “The detestable thing isn’t coming to attention. Arise.”

  Their strange master/servant relationship was in effect here as well. Ryuuki’s manhood stood up, as if defying the weight of gravity. The stream of blood from his neck trickled down to his thighs. She traced its path with her fingers, smearing it against her palms. And took his towering erection in her hands.

  The object behind her hands filled with a feral passion as she massaged him. She released her grip. Panting, she trailed her lips along the length of his bloody cock. Entirely appropriate to her nature, her lips came away painted red.

  She pulled back her head and then plunged down on his shaft. For the first time, Ryuuki moaned.

  “How often have I enjoyed myself with you thusly? You lose every time, and yet refuse to cast aside your military pride. Can you even imagine prostrating yourself before Setsura?”

  She articulated her words clearly and took him deeply into her throat, hot and huge.

  “I will never allow it. I’ll never permit you an honorable death as a military commander. Nor anything like it. You already died, and will live your accursed life forever. With me.”

  “I know,” Ryuuki said quietly. Befitting the blue room, he didn’t budge an inch.

  “It’s fine if you haven’t got what it takes. Accept your just desserts and leave the rest to others. Ryuuki, you’ve seen what lies in the hold of this ship?”

  With the force of being struck, the brawny face looked down at her. The woman smiled a satisfied smile. Ah, yes. The horror. The horror.

  “So you remember what I told you five hundred years ago?” She moaned, nuzzling him with her pale face. The bloody rouge coated her cheeks and nose. “If necessary, I will loose him upon the world. The thought of how not just Setsura—but how this city—would react makes me go all a-quiver inside. To be honest, though, I don’t wish to play that hand. Once more into the breach, Ryuuki. Once more. Kill Setsura.”

  “Upon my life.”

  “Kikiou is out at the moment. I suspect he’s gone to get rid of Setsura himself. I usually let him have his way. But you are the one who must take his life. It is time for you to be on your way.”

  “What about Doctor Mephisto?”

  “Leave him alone. He might be the only person who can heal this wound. Bring him to me.”

  She sucked him hard, drawing in her cheeks. Ryuuki furrowed his brows.

  “Come,” she commanded him.

  He came. Another command he could not refuse. He filled her mouth. Purring, she drank down the bitter nectar.

  Ryuuki exited into the hallway. The light poured down. He was clothed in dark Chinese robes. The wound in his neck had already healed. The scar vanished. Proof that he was indeed a creature of the night.

  His hair wafted to the left. The wind. A sound as beautiful as any in the world sang out from his hands. The wind strummed at the strings of the small koto beneath his right hand—the ghost koto Silent Night that lured Setsura Aki and Doctor Mephisto into a dream world.

  Ryuuki turned around. The wind toyed with Shuuran’s hair. The green forest and blue-gray mountain peaks hovered in the background. She silently approached him. The lovely girl looked at him with her big, sad eyes.

  “I see you have Silent Night. So you are going to see Setsura Aki?”

  “Yes.”

  “I wish to accompany you.”

  “Your job is to look after Princess. She can get by without me around. But she needs you. She doesn’t even know how to cook.”

  “I have the feeling Sir Kikiou will be cleaning up after you,” Shuuran said nonchalantly.

  “You think so?”

  “I overheard what he and that doctor were talking about. I have listening devices of my own. Your life in exchange for his becoming our ally. Sir Kikiou thought it a fair deal.”

  “I am not surprised.”

  “You’re not disappointed? For over two thousand years, you have suffered all manner of wounds. You have died in the fires of hell in order to defend us. Those other two may not remember but I will not forget.”

  He touched the face of the earnest young woman with a swarthy finger. It felt to her like a stone. The skin of the finger had hardened and cracked, the fissures like a spider’s web. This was the road that had brought Ryuuki this far.

  “If I told you not to be angry, not to grieve, you wouldn’t listen. I envy you.”

  “Why mustn’t I grieve?”

  “Because since joining the crew of this ship, I have died and been reincarnated at least a hundred times. That is my role here. Because the real me died once before and that death continues on. What stands before you and Princess is nothing more than a soulless, living corpse. One should not begrudge one’s death.”

  “I saw you die,” Shuuran said, covering the strong hand stroking her cheek with her own. “There you stood, the cold, dead winds sweeping across the Wu Zhang Plains, surrounded by heaps of fallen soldiers. Dying, your body pierced by fifty arrows. Your mouth fixed in an unwavering line, your eyes taking in every inch of those desolate fields, prepared to fight when the enemy came again. And if they did not come, you were ready to march to the distant horizon. That’s why Princess chose you. From the start, I wasn’t sure that it was a good idea. You still stare off at those distant, desolate horizons like you are still standing on that windswept plain. That is where you belong.”

  “How strange. You know me so well, while I do not know you at all. Where you came from and where you are going. Is Shuuran even your real name? Well, no, the same goes for Princess and Sir Kikiou.”

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  “The dead lack a curious heart,” he said, turning away. “It is all dust in the wind.”

  Shuuran wished to jump onto his broad back and cling to him. “You cannot die, except on the Wu Zhang Plains. You must return. No, I cannot let you die here. No matter what Princess and Sir Kikiou may say.”

  “Enough,” he said curtly, and continued on down the corridor.

  At that moment, the echoes of indescribably coarse laughter arose from the earth. If the legends of a Plutonian underworld that all civilizations shared were true, then this must be what its merciless and brutal guards sounded like as they slithered through its precincts.

  After Ryuuki left, Princess donned a gossamer silk gown and faced the wall to the left of the curtains that hid the pool of blood. An iron door suddenly appeared there. The black nails driven into the rusty red surface lent it an ominous aura.

  The woman pushed her right index finger into a keyhole-like elliptical crack. Along with the sound of a latch releasing, the door shed a thin coating of dust. However unbelievable to a citizen of the modern world, this ancient locking mechanism was calibrated to the fingerprint of the owner.

  Without the slightest show of effort, she pushed the door open and slipped into the dark interior. A glass-paned bronze lamp was hanging on the wall. Two yards in, the floor became a descending flight of stone stairs.

  The blue-white light wavered across her face. “It’s been five hundred years,” she said to herself, praising the lamps that had been burning steadil
y all that time.

  She lifted the lamp off the wall and smoothly started down the stairs. Down she went. And further down. Down into the depths of the darkness. An eternal spiral to the bottom of the black.

  There was no telling how much time passed. It was just as likely that time did not exist here. Another iron door blocked her way. She opened it the same way she had the previous one and went inside.

  Another iron door. She opened it. And another. Every door was more than two inches thick. Solid metal. Whatever thing was confined deep in the bowels of the ship could not be contained by anything less.

  Passing through the final door, she was confronted by the figure of a person occupying a chair ten feet in front of her. They were in a room of sorts. A round table and black shelves sat in a wan, smoky light.

  There was nothing between them and her. But where she stood seemed to be a completely different place. The figure stood up. A man who yielded to Ryuuki nothing in terms of majesty and size.

  “It has been a long time, Princess.”

  He spoke in crisp Chinese, though with a heavy rasp in his voice. His phraseology and accent identified him as a subject of the Song Dynasty.

  “I’m impressed. When it comes to learning the language of another country, and anything else for that matter, I always knew you to be a man without peer.”

  “I’ve had nothing else to do these past five hundred years but read books.”

  He approached her. But stopped after the first three feet. His feet continued to move. He should be getting nearer, but wasn’t taking up any more of her field of view. He reached out with both hands but couldn’t cross the space dividing them.

  He soon gave up and returned to his chair. The springs creaked.

  “What do you want?” Suppressed anger tinged his voice.

  “I came to let you out.”

  “What?”

  The woman smiled charmingly. “There is one provision, something you must do first. It turns out it was worth keeping you sealed up here for five hundred years.”

  “Oh, and what happened to your eyes? And your hand—why is it covering your face? Someone exists who could do that to your fair skin? Killing him must be my job.”

  “Exactly. No need prevaricating with you. So will you do it?”

  “I would kill my own mother to get out of this jail. Well, if I hadn’t killed her already, that is.”

  “Your opponent is very strong.” The sense of danger welled up in her voice. “You know Ryuuki, don’t you? The man who locked you up in here. He attacked twice and was twice repulsed.”

  The figure swayed. Silent laughter, the woman realized. “In any case, how do you wish him killed?”

  “The method is up to you. As long as he ends up dead.”

  “Leave it to me. So will you open the doors?”

  “Later. Right now, Ryuuki is having another stab at it.”

  “A waste of time.” A terrible hostility lurked in the scornful laughter. He put on a placid front. “I see. He’s your baby, after all. Fine. If he falls under the heel of the enemy again, I’ll awaken the fiery passions within. But what reward should I expect as I set forth?”

  Saying nothing, she touched her gown with her right hand, in the center of her sternum. The fabric rent in two, sliding off her porcelain-like body and falling to her feet.

  Taking several steps forward, the invisible wall between them suddenly wasn’t there anymore. She settled her white body onto the man sitting in the chair, the smell of blood wafting up around them.

  “What a nice perfume. You’ve been soaking in your pool of blood?”

  “Like it?” she asked.

  His answer was to grab her breasts. She bowed her back. “Hoh. The best reward of all. Let’s enjoy ourselves, shall we?” As he spoke, something wet and tongue-like flicked against the woman’s throat.

  “Yes, yes,” she moaned, and then shouted. The wild, violent passion of the scene was such that if Ryuuki or Kikiou were watching, they’d be unlikely to tear their eyes away.

  “Leave it to me. What fine breasts. I could suck them forever and never get bored. How about you take that hand away? Hey, what a mess of a face. What are you twisting away for? Just the kind of girl I love to fuck. Let me lick that fucked up face of yours. Look at me. Tastes good. Ashamed? It stings, don’t it? Bitter dregs, huh? Ha ha ha ha—”

  He roared with laughter, a ribald noise that erupted toward heaven. This was the same laughter that Shuuran and Ryuuki had heard in the corridor above.

  In the midst of the dusky light—in the black and white shadows—the carnal heaving and writhing commenced, his words mingling together with her gasping, panting breath—

  “Just you watch. That man is dead.”

  Hot desire reduced his voice to a husky growl. He was so deep and hard inside her, their bodies so tightly welded together, that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

  Chapter Three

  Setsura Aki walked casually along the dusky road.

  This was the kind of summer evening when a man couldn’t take ten steps before his forehead was damp with sweat. The time of day when housewives rushed about making last-minute purchases for dinner. When kids carrying talismans and water pistols filled with holy water played cops-and-robbers with the more harmless species of gremlin. When hard-working businessmen hurried home, briefcases in hand.

  The everyday activities in July here in the “safe area” that brought the streets of Arakimachi to life.

  Setsura showed up like a broomstick shoved between the spokes of those smooth routines. What made passersby mopping their foreheads and necks with handkerchiefs stop and gape wasn’t the sight of a long black duster and black high-collar shirt, all completely out of season.

  Rather, when it came to upsetting the ordinary routine, even wild and woolly creatures from the no-go areas in the DMZ couldn’t compete with what could be called this man’s heartbreaking beauty.

  Usually the unapproachable man-of-mystery, clothed in a vague, indefinable air, would transform into someone friendly and approachable. But that wasn’t the case here.

  The cool eyes, the finely chiseled features—that a sculptor would give anything to carve in stone—and that sense of high risk. The combination impressed pedestrians with a sense of danger, while the young women watched him pass by, their cheeks blushing with undisguised desire.

  Ryuuki’s qi had put Setsura through the wringer. He felt like he had a ton of lead on his back. The fatigue filled his gut, constricted his veins. After ten yards he was out of breath.

  But taking a break was out of the question. This was one time when he couldn’t put off until tomorrow what had to be done right now. If anything, he had to pick up the pace. Based on what he’d understood from Mephisto alone, these were no run-of-the mill villains.

  More than anything else, Mephisto had messed it up with Ryuuki and hadn’t come out of it much better than himself. Add the powers of the other three into the mix—

  Then there was that little incident at the hospital. The vampire lady came for him and took off without finishing the job. Setsura didn’t understand what had gone down either. But seeing how she’d easily broken through all the security fail-safes in Mephisto Hospital—that the devil himself could not escape from—sent a shiver down his spine.

  To make matters worse, Takako had been infected by those poisonous fangs.

  He felt like his head was full of steaming muck. The bright face of that college coed was planted there like an orchid in his mind. Even granting that she’d gotten in way over her head of her own accord, she’d tasted Ryuuki’s terrors at his shop and then voluntarily stuck with him all the way to the hospital, where she’d met a much worse fate.

  There was no way he could just walk away from her now. It was possible that other victims like Takako were multiplying somewhere in this city at this very moment.

  What made vampires so truly terrifying was their ability to reproduce so quickly in such a fa
shion. Once bitten, the victims became vampires as well, and then turned on their friends and family without mercy.

  Demon City Shinjuku was like a cancerous cell in the body of the peaceful world. The bloody flower bloomed in the darkness, and before anybody knew it, was wafting its pollen into the air and gently coaxing open the petals in another garden. There was no way to predict what manner of annihilation awaited them.

  Whenever the thought crossed his mind, the roiling impatience made his eyes glow with an ominous light and brought a thin smile to his lips. The labored stride of this young man—who alone understood the true terrors of the situation—concealed the inner strength and resolve necessary to stand against the darkness.

  Approaching a row of prefab houses, he stopped in his tracks. In a crook in the road, where the main thoroughfare hung a dogleg to the right, an expected pall of silence suddenly fell.

  These prefab houses were vacant. A poisonous miasma hit his nostrils.

  The effects of the Devil Quake were not limited to plants and animals, but worked their way into the air and soil. The miasma that had emptied out the residential district in Arakimachi was one such result.

  These changes occurred at the molecular level. The earth absorbed the phantom winds and coughed out the gasses in an unending stream. To make matters worse, it didn’t happen until a year after the residences were rebuilt, and seemed to target the people living there.

  Miraculously, the gasses contained no components harmful to human life. On the contrary, they proved quite effective at eradicating certain monster species. But the stinging acrid smell couldn’t be filtered or treated or sealed off. In a month, everybody had moved away.

  Only one man remained behind. Setsura found such half-crazed bullheadedness amusing. But he hadn’t fully considered the source of such bullheadedness.

  A possibly fatal blunder for a Demon City P.I.

  The house he was looking for was the same as all the other prefab houses. Except that it had that particular air of being lived in. Setsura still wasn’t aware that about an hour before, an old man with white hair and a white beard appeared in front of that house and slipped like a shadow into the foyer.