Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 1

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “Still—” Setsura cocked his head to the side. Still, he wasn’t entirely ready to go along for the ride. This was the same look he got when a batch of senbei didn’t come out right. The fate of Shinjuku might be riding on this, and the young man valued Demon City as much as he did his senbei.

  “You and I have investigated this thing the best we know how and came up with nothing. The prospects don’t look good. What about the Toyama folks?”

  “None of them has a clue. Though I haven’t met with the Elder.”

  “You haven’t?”

  “He’s been hibernating the last six months. Nobody knows when he’s going to wake up.”

  “He must be dreaming one hell of a dream, you think?”

  “Depends on the dream.”

  “I hear he turns one thousand this year. You at least have to hope that old age brings sweet dreams.”

  Mephisto said invitingly, “If we can’t tie up the loose ends tonight, what do you say we pay him a visit?”

  Setsura gave the Demon Physician a curious look. Did he really believe that an opponent bothering to pay the two of them a visit here would just walk away, scot-free?

  “You getting scared?”

  “Now and then. You getting brave?”

  “You’re the one who said we’re of one mind when it comes to these things.”

  “It’s always like this right before I zero in on the cause of the disease.”

  Mephisto picked up the box sitting on the table and lifted the lid for Setsura to see. The purpose of the items wrapped in lustrous purple velvet were obvious. Two pairs of contact lenses and—

  “What’s this?” Setsura picked up a black tube that measured approximately a third by two-thirds of an inch.

  “New earplugs my researchers came up with this morning. We both heard the sound of a koto. That got me a bit concerned. The contact lenses are there for the usual reasons.”

  To block the vampire “cat eye” effect.

  “They seem to be able to arouse abnormalities in the visual and auditory senses. This equipment is in case our visitors show up.”

  “Yeah, and who’s going to pay for the rehab?” Setsura intoned in a deadpan voice. “Pick a fight with senses impaired like that, and a heavyweight champ could be taken out by a blind masseuse.”

  “You think I’ve invited that kind of champion into my office?”

  “I’m blushing.” Setsura casually inserted the contact lenses.

  Though the conversation was filled with ominous overtones, the mood in the examination room was calm and relaxed. That air of calmness filled any room these two occupied—who together symbolized all the beauty and horror that Demon City contained.

  Without breaking the ambience, Setsura said, “Whip a couple of scalpels at me from back there.” As if asking him to toss him a pen. Just a couple.

  “Got it.” Mephisto answered with equal calm.

  Shifting like a silhouette, he moved to the back of the examination room, alongside the bed. “How do they feel?” he asked, referring to the contact lenses and earplugs.

  Setsura had the earplugs inserted, so the question might have struck the casual observer as a silly question for the doctor to ask.

  “Everything looks blue.” He added cheekily, “What was that again? I can’t hear you.”

  “That crimson in the eyes is the source of the vampire’s hypnotic abilities. The blue filter blocks it. As for the earplugs, it’s up to you. You’ll have to determine their effectiveness for yourself.”

  “And if your gizmos screw up my ears? Then what, you quack?”

  “Then my fascinating collection of medical records will gain another entry,” Mephisto coolly shot back.

  Mephisto tossed his cape over his right shoulder. He coiled his right hand into a fist. A needle-like metal strand poked out from the center of his fist like the tip of a thin icepick. While adjusting the length of the needle for his intended purposes, he left a series of small marks on the surface of the metal with his thumbnail.

  Simple scratches, but the depths of the grooves slightly differed. Setsura could see none of this. Just the Demon Physician doing what the Demon Physician always did.

  “Well, then—”

  “Don’t wait for me. Any time.”

  Setsura sat back in the chair, and crossed his legs. Resting his chin against his hand and closing his eyes, he looked like a young poet waiting for the light to descend from heaven and the muse to strike.

  Taking aim at the suffering young poet, Mephisto’s right arm traced an arc. At the apex of the arc, a thin, silver-white line shot across the room.

  Setsura extended the forefinger of the hand cupping his chin. An invisible, sub-micron titanium strand of “devil wire” shot out a yard or so in front of him, intersecting Mephisto’s needle, entwining and severing it in a flash.

  In the same split-second, the needle broke in two. The portion entangled in the devil wire fell away. The lower half continued on its trajectory toward Setsura. But the senbei shop owner somehow detected this and reacted. The tip of the devil wire turned back on itself like the head of a cobra and lunged in pursuit.

  The unseen edge of the pursuing devil wire touched the remaining half of the marauding needle. The half-needle then seemed to disappear. Actually it spun to the left as the filament surged past it, bending in two and sailing on like a tiny boomerang.

  What once again sent it flying past Setsura’s devil wire were the small grooves left by Mephisto.

  The invisible workings of Setsura’s filament—the microscopic pressures and molecular ripples arising along the line, the angle of flight taken by the boomeranging needle—Mephisto predicted them ahead of time and with his elegant fingernail had encoded the instructions into the metal.

  But the devil wire was hot in pursuit, and the boomerang could not compete with the air resistance. They made contact a third time. Instantly the boomerang began to spin end over end like a tiny buzzsaw, tearing into Setsura’s filaments that normally would cut through any physical object.

  This was the handiwork of the notches Mephisto had made. And they weren’t done yet. The tips of the spinning needle flattened into scalpels that in another second would bite into Setsura’s neck. And sever the carotid artery. A second had passed since they’d left Mephisto’s hand.

  Setsura’s left hand stirred. It was over. The needle stopped in mid-air. Pinned between his thumb and forefinger.

  Viewed by any bystander, it would be a rather anticlimactic conclusion. Only the two of them knew that when they played, they always played for keeps.

  “You were a little slow there,” Mephisto said lightly. “Must be because of the heat.” Truth was, he’d intended the needle more as simple target practice.

  “You ain’t kidding. That was a sorry performance, if I say so myself.” Setsura shrugged. “It’s always darkest before it goes completely black. We’ll pin our hopes on Doctor Mephisto’s supernatural skills.”

  “The sun sets at six-thirty,” Mephisto said, not looking at the clock. “Still, a wire wrangler off his game is better than none. We should decamp to the basement.”

  Setsura smirked. “Well said.”

  There was just one thing different now about the empty examination room the two of them were standing in. A crescent-shaped strand of needle-like metal was sitting on the desk. The light of the setting sun pouring through the windows stained it red.

  Several seconds after Setsura and Mephisto left, a fresh cut appeared in the needle, and it split down the middle into two pieces.

  The special containment ward. Two o’clock in the morning.

  Mephisto leaned against the wall and glanced at the door. Sitting on the sofa, Setsura was as still as a statue. Only his eyes were peeled.

  “They’re coming,” he said.

  There wasn’t an outside monitor in the hospital room. The alloy-steel, nuclear blast-hardened walls were airtight as well. And yet somehow he knew.

  “In the vicinity of the e
levator. Getting closer. A man, and not a bad-looking man at that.”

  “He took the elevator? What are the security details doing?”

  “Probably wondering what all that big budget high tech is good for.”

  Setsura turned to the side, as did Mephisto, looking at Hisako Tokoyoda who was beginning to stand up on the bed. Not gracefully. She braced her legs and drew herself to her full height. Her eyes alone were downcast. Her hair dangled in stringy strands from her head.

  Even from where Setsura and Mephisto were standing, they couldn’t read the expression on her face.

  Her shoulders shook. It was only a long moment later that they realized she was laughing silently. She extended her arm from the sleeve of her hospital gown. Dark blue veins ran down the singer’s cadaverous arms.

  The slumped head spoke. “They’re beyond the door. They’re calling to me. They’re calling to me. I must go.”

  Hisako got down from the bed. A heavy noise resounded. Neither of her observers moved.

  Hisako approached the door. She reached out toward the white surface and pushed. It didn’t budge. She shoved. Nothing moved. She continued to press against it. Something out there was beckoning her. Locked inside this small fortress, she somehow comprehended that.

  Kiiii—kiiii—kiiii—

  A sound like fingernails on a blackboard as Hisako clawed at the steel alloy door. And didn’t leave a trace. No—she left behind a thin trail of vermillion. She’d torn away a nail.

  She continued to scratch at the door with a perverse persistence. The mark of the vampire’s victim. Even knowing the dark fate that awaited them, they could not put off the doomed reunion. And if the visitor could not come, then the victim would surely go.

  “Open the door.” Setsura gestured with his eyes. “As things stand now, the guy out there isn’t getting in either.”

  “You mean, the fellow who made it this far.” Mephisto calmly replied, his cool gaze not straying away from Hisako.

  “If you don’t let her out, you won’t have anything new for your case files.”

  No matter how tragic the circumstances, this doctor valued nothing as much as his case files. At the end of the day, proving his diagnosis and providing a cure pretty much exhausted the Demon Physician’s ethical reservoirs.

  “You know—”

  Setsura had turned to Mephisto when Hisako stopped struggling against the door. The door and her gown were dark with blood. Her hands fell limply to her sides. She stared at the door. Then she slowly turned to them.

  Neither Mephisto nor Setsura could read the look on her face. It was difficult to imagine any human being wearing such an expression. Burning red eyes below raised eyebrows. Two fangs protruding from turned-up lips. She was already no longer human. This alone was enough to create a lifetime of nightmares.

  But the real horror was in the way she gazed at them, eyes roiling with poisonous hate. “Let me out. Let me out of here. So he can drink my blood.”

  Hisako raised her arms in front of her. Her fingers bent like hooks, covered with blood. Her red eyes shifted from their faces to her own fingertips.

  Her countenance dissolved into indescribable lust. She raised her hands to her mouth. Her maroon tongue parted her lips and licked at her fingers. Vulgar greed was an entirely human trait. The monstrous avarice on Hisako’s face was many times worse than that. If this woman’s mother were present, she would demand her daughter’s death and search for a weapon herself.

  Her lips now dyed darker than her fingers, Hisako closed her eyes in bliss.

  She opened her eyes and stared at the two men. “Did you enjoy that?” Doctor Mephisto asked, in the manner of a professor querying a student. Whether he’d ever been one was anybody’s guess.

  “Delicious,” she answered at once.

  “Do you imagine your own blood can satisfy you?” Mephisto continued in the same indifferent voice. His was a cold and clinical examination, as if made by some stainless steel mechanism smelted from cursed ore at midnight.

  “Well—” Her voice trailed off. She smiled sweetly. A cherubic smile that her eyes alone didn’t share. “The blood of others should taste so much better.”

  “Do you hear that?” Mephisto turned to Setsura. “The first bit of new information this incident has produced. Not yet a vampire—very close to becoming one—and yet she has an opinion about the taste of her own blood. I’ve never seen that before.”

  “If you say so,” Setsura said sourly. He shot back a look that said, Quit yanking my chain. With the earplugs in, he couldn’t hear a thing Mephisto’s patient said.

  Hisako came closer. She walked with a strangely relaxed gait, as if meeting a long-lost lover she hadn’t seen in a lifetime. Befitting her appearance all the more, she held her hands out in front of her like a singer. “Your blood would be even better. Such pretty, beautiful people—”

  “Well, then—” Mephisto started to say.

  It was enough to make Hisako freeze. The devilish hunger was overtaken by pure terror.

  “You are still my patient. The cause of your illness is outside. How about a brief get-together before we cure you?”

  Speaking in almost disinterested tones, without a touch of arrogance, and not sparing Hisako a second glance, Mephisto turned toward the door. A faint melody drifted through the walls. A tune played on a koto. Both Mephisto and Setsura reeled from the shock. The sweet reverberations somehow leaked into this airtight vault.

  That by itself wouldn’t have been so amazing—were it not for the earplugs. The koto’s melody thrummed directly against their eardrums and at the same time clouded their thoughts.

  Nobody in Shinjuku would have believed it, but Setsura Aki and Doctor Mephisto were forced to their knees.

  “This is—” Mephisto half-closed his eyes. It was a miracle his voice was not similarly muddied. “If I fall asleep before you, try to give me an accurate report of how much longer you last—”

  Even collapsed on the floor, the body clothed in white looked elegant and beautiful.

  “Dumb quack.” On his knees, supporting himself with his left hand, Setsura looked toward the door and cursed him.

  “I’ve taken steps in case of an emergency—but just in case—I’ll waive the hospital bills—” Mephisto’s eyelids closed.

  The door slid to the right. Hisako smiled broadly. A silhouette standing in the hallway was the last thing impressed onto his consciousness as Setsura slumped to the floor.

  The delicate notes of the koto echoed eerily inside the small room. What was this weapon that so easily felled Demon City’s two princes of darkness, the two that nobody else dared lay a finger on? And what being wielded it?

  The shadow in the corridor didn’t move. A throaty voice issued forth in Chinese. “Formidable opponents. With them here, I could not open the door by myself. Men who truly belong to this city. However—” He stopped speaking and turned to Hisako. “The ghost koto Silent Night conquers all. When it is heard, men must sleep. Come.”

  That word was her command. Like a marionette dangling from his strings, Hisako stepped waveringly into the hallway. She stood beside the silhouette, reached up with her stained hands and tore apart her gown, exposing her emaciated breasts. Her ribs showed through her pale skin.

  “Pitiful.” There was sorrow in his voice. “But your beauty shall soon be restored. The beauty of our world is greater than you can imagine.”

  Under the cold fluorescent lights, the black shadow enveloped the white figure.

  Seconds passed.

  The fused silhouettes splintered into a kaleidoscope of colors. The man’s voice said, “The men in the hospital room—make them your lovers.”

  “Yes,” Hisako answered in Japanese. She spoke with a reanimated vigor. Her countenance possessed a captivating beauty.

  Except that it would be different if this strength truly arose from within. Something was off about the bright, carefree voice. Some deeply-rooted part of her had turned bad and ugly. The only
thing enlivening her now was the cold, dark night.

  The cheek facing the hospital room door was as rounded as a peach. The flesh and muscles of her throat were firm and supple, her exposed breasts ripe and full. Hisako passed through the doorway.

  No scars marred her lovely neck. According to folklore, the teeth marks borne by the victim vanished at that moment—the moment at which the prey became the predator.

  She looked down at Setsura and Mephisto, this lovely flower of the nightclubs now brimming with shadows. She smiled a smile a hundred times more grotesque than when she’d been wasting away. Her fangs were longer and sharper too.

  The dreadful countenance of the former singer shone as she licked her lips in anticipation. Her supple limbs trembled in anticipation of the waiting feast.

  She took another step forward.

  Chapter Three

  Mephisto Hospital never closed. Mechanical versions of the five senses watched over the facilities every minute of the day.

  The access routes boasted geometrically-aligned sensor arrays customized to cover a large hospital. Labyrinthine hallways penetrated the facilities. The examination rooms were furnished with state-of-the-art equipment. And then there were the mysterious places nobody but the hospital director knew the reason for—

  Everywhere, countless eyes and ears extended the range of every defensive perimeter.

  The electronic sensors that made up these “five senses” could detect subtle shifts in light like the eyes of an artist. Could sense with the ears of a master musician the sound a pin makes falling on plush carpet. Could sniff out chemical changes in the air equal to the nose of a perfumer—

  And so on and so forth.

  When that young man walked through the front lobby and the first-floor waiting room, the sensors did not record a single abnormality. Because it didn’t detect any.

  Not because he was the same as any other person. And not because he wasn’t. It was meaningless to talk about “distinctions.” When he walked in, the receptionist noted his presence. The patients sitting in the vestibule saw him coming as well. Nothing about him looked “off.”

  In this city, in this hospital, he was utterly “normal.”