“The security guards are well-versed in staking techniques. Though they’d be a lot happier doing it to a ghoul.”
The Elder snapped his fingers three times. Despite being in a completely airtight concrete structure, the front door opened a second later. Two guards—different ones from before—stepped in.
“We shall dispose of him according to our methods,” the Elder stated in a businesslike manner. He motioned for Setsura and Mephisto to sit down. He nodded his head. “I’m sorry for creating such an unsightly mess. This is my fault.”
“Nonsense,” said Setsura, waving his hand. “Who knew he’d try to off himself? His sire has proved as bothersome as any opponent I’ve faced before.”
“And they are likely to feel the same way when they meet you.”
“What’s that?”
“I had heard the rumors, but this is the first time I have seen Setsura Aki’s famous threads in action.”
Setsura answered the Elder’s praise with an embarrassed chuckle.
“Until he was yanked backwards, I was not aware that they had entwined around him. My grandson is not a man easily taken aback, but even he appears impressed.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Providing it was you, I’d happily leave the whole matter in your hands, and entrust as well the fate of those of us who have found here a place where we can live in peace.”
“How’s that?”
“I consulted with Doctor Mephisto before you came here. The four who arrived in such a strange manner on Fifth Street are at the root of the evil on display. More is to come. As an eyewitness, you alone will know them when you see them.”
“Well, one hopes so,” Setsura answered vaguely. He was beginning to guess where the conversation was headed.
“Pardon my forwardness, but I would appreciate it if you would accept this.”
The Elder placed a golden card on the coffee table. It was a multipurpose debit card, good for cash, shopping, telephone services, and buying and selling information, as well as for personal identification.
“Last night, soon after waking, I had my bank issue it. It draws on my account. Use it as you see fit. If you will search for those four Chinese.”
“You mean you’re hiring me?”
“That was the first thing that occurred to me when I woke up.”
“Unfortunately,” Setsura explained, “I’m here with my client.”
The Elder turned to the Doctor. “So I’ve been beaten to the punch. But the doctor and I share the same objective. We’ll simply split it down the middle. No, I’m not trying to dictate the course you should follow or the methods you should take. Think of that card as a means of guaranteeing your ability to act in whatever manner you see fit.”
“A man can’t serve two masters. My policy remains first come, first served. Any information concerning those four will go through Doctor Mephisto.”
The Elder sighed. “I should have expected as much. Understood. I shall rely instead on the good offices of the doctor and withdraw. But with respect to Yakou, there is one thing I would like to get a consensus on.”
Three pairs of eyes focused on the young man standing next to the Elder.
“Some sort of shared connection must have led him to the police officer as well. Yakou should take part in the search. I do not see a downside to the two of you acting together on this. Shinjuku’s best manhunter having an extra pair of hands certainly wouldn’t impose too heavy a burden?”
“But—”
The taciturn Yakou said, “Though I am new at this, I don’t see myself getting in your way.”
Setsura shook his head. “Without any experience—”
“I worked as a private investigator in London.”
“As an assistant to Sherlock Holmes?” joked Mephisto. “No, sorry. Whether Setsura takes you on as an assistant is up to him. I’m sure he could use the help. I should probably establish a line of credit for him as well.”
“Whatever.” Setsura added, coolly spurning the offer. “I’m not looking for an assistant right now.”
The Elder turned his eyes imploringly toward the heavens. “That is too bad. If you change your mind, though, let us know. Regardless of the time or place, Yakou will be there.”
“I appreciate the offer,” Setsura replied graciously. He crossed his legs and laced his hands together on his knee. “What else can you tell us about that gang of four I saw?”
Something glittered in the darkness at the back of his mind, the koto’s haunting melody flitting about that beautiful countenance. He could even remember the words.
Crossing the waters we’ve crossed before
Seeing the flowers we’ve seen once more
Spring breezes along the riverbank roads
Before we know it, we’ve made our way home
Changing tack right now might not be a bad idea.
Chapter Two
For the three itinerant workers, the ruins next to Shinanomachi Station on the old Japan Railways line was an ideal location to make a little money. Less than twenty yards from the station, the heaps of bricks and debris left over from the remains of the huge buildings reached out like a mountain range.
Decades had passed since the Devil Quake. Yet everyone who passed close by caught a whiff of the heavy odors whenever the tepid breezes stirred the fetid air. The smell of formaldehyde and many other chemicals of unknown origins persisted as proof of the vast and listless dead entombed in the wreckage beneath the white rays of the sun.
This had once been the grounds of Keio University Hospital and Keio Medical College. When the blueprints for the restoration of Shinjuku were first laid out, the hospital topped the list of structures scheduled for rebuilding. But the tons of rock and concrete remained a graveyard for the numerous bodies buried beneath the rubble.
It was said that the reoccurring paranormal phenomena convinced the planning commission to cease reconstruction.
Structural collapses occurred on a daily basis. Cranes, front loaders and backhoes got away from their operators. The explosives used to break up the larger boulders went off spontaneously. Cave-ins and landslides followed one after the other. When the sun went down, the sounds of countless souls moaning and weeping filled the air.
The reconstruction plans for the hospital were sent back to the drawing boards. Even now, with the noonday sun beating down and not a single sign of life to be seen, the unearthly sensations drifted like foxfire across the hushed wastelands.
The three continued on from the front gate to what had once been the reception area. The “No Trespassing” signs and chain-link fencing had long since been torn down, and crumbled with barely a whimper beneath their heavy work boots.
Despite the devastation, the reconstruction efforts of the Self-Defense Forces had borne some fruit. A passageway the size of a light pickup snaked between the concrete blocks piled on top of one another like abstract sculptures.
Eyewitnesses had reported that after seven at night, a spot of light glowed in the now non-existent waiting room, and a woman in a Japanese kimono could be seen silently pacing the corridors.
But this was a summer morning. Despite the invisible, poisonous currents rising into the air, the sky above was clear and blue, dotted only by the occasional fluffy cloud. From off in the distance came the faint sounds of cars and bus engines.
There were people out there. Living people. A small part of those who otherwise belonged there were here as well. That alone provided the moral support these three required.
“What do you think?” The man on the right posed the question to the one in front.
He didn’t get an immediate answer. Their “uniform” was a stained T-shirt and torn jeans. Their leader apparently went out of his way to preserve the sweat and grease stains on his, until the cloth had the consistency of leather. From the collar down to the shirttails, not an inch was spared of filth, as if the mutual grime cemented some feeling of solidarity among them.
Rather oddly, the red-shirted leader had his arms extended forward and slanted downward, his eyes half-closed. He flexed his fingers open and closed.
“Well?” he asked the thin man, the one wearing thick, round, wire-rim glasses.
“Well—” How their leader answered depended on who asked the question. His moods changed like the weather. “Faint, but there’s a bunch of responses. And something big here too.”
“The kind that’ll bring in the big bucks?”
“Hard to tell.”
“At least something to match those mouse-sized ones from last time. That’d buy us enough booze to last the week.”
The man who’d spoken first had long hair that hung down almost to his butt. “This big this time around.” He held his hands a shoulders’ width apart. “There’s gotta be a shitload in this hospital. We’re guaranteed to clean up.”
Several seconds passed after the long-haired man stopped talking. The leader came to a halt. He reached out his hands toward a small mountain of rubble on his right.
“There. Behind that.”
“Yeah!” the two others responded in hushed voices. They both reached behind their backs to retrieve objects tucked into their belts. The objects snapped into shape as they brought them forward.
Blue-white sparks lit up a yard-wide radius around the long-haired man. He was holding a metal ring a foot in diameter with a one-inch gap in the outer rim. An electric arc jumped the gap. He adjusted the gap to create a crescent-shaped plasma talon that stained the bright daylight red.
The control wires and power cables beneath the talon folded into the collapsible handle of the supercharged cattle prod. Only a foot long, it could be tucked into the belt. The batteries were inside the grip, which was wound with many layers of worn duct tape.
The man wearing the wire-rim glasses was preparing a round tube that looked like a bicycle pump. It had a 30-caliber hole in one end. It wasn’t a gun, but the shape suggested a weapon of some sort.
Mouths closed, moving practically on tiptoe, taking in everything around them, the three navigated in formation around the mountain of rubble with practiced steps.
A sound like the peep of a squashed chickadee rang out. Not just one or two. Dozens of chirping mouths called out. Wire Rim swallowed hard. His Adam’s apple bounced up and down. His brain was telling him loud and clear that his stomach was way too empty to be attempting this crap.
Leader pressed his back against the uneven surface of the rock pile and craned his head around for a better look. He nodded. That sign of assurance strengthened the resolve of the two behind him.
Leader backed off a step and changed places with Long Hair. Then came Wire Rim’s turn. A quick look, and he glanced back at his mates, the elation showing on his shadowed countenance. They’d seen it with their own eyes.
Around the back of the rock pile was a rubble-strewn open area enclosed by three small stony mountains. The jumble of odd-sized boulders strewn across the ground testified to the raw ferocity of Mother Nature’s temper. But putting even that to shame was the amazing shape of the open void they formed there.
Jammed into that void were pink lumps mewling at each other with their little mouths. A child would probably call them “rats,” and the description wouldn’t be far wrong.
Eyes like tiny gems, teeth like gear sprockets protruding from mouths under long snouts. A rat with the face of a ground squirrel.
One was descending to the ground. Six legs moved in mincing steps, heading for the open area. The body was at least a foot and a half long. Armor-like scales covered its head and back, suggesting a prehistoric missing link transported through time to the present.
The gene research once conducted at Keio Medical College had never been in the same league as the Ichigaya Genomic Research Center. But despite the destruction, the experimental facilities and biological samples still remained on the premises. Deep down where backhoes and fiber optic cameras couldn’t reach, strange new life forms continued to evolve.
It’d long been a public secret that genetic engineering banned in the outside world had continued inside Shinjuku. Since the Devil Quake, corporate entities with the know-how and the operational scale had disappeared from the scene. For the right price, though, illicit labs and medical institutions elsewhere in the world were happy to take custody of these weird and wonderful creatures.
And in the devastated grounds of Keio University Hospital and Keio Medical College, these three were happy to hunt down the supply that would meet that demand.
“There’s twenty of ’em,” Long Hair hissed in an elated voice. “That’ll keep us in beer and biscuits for the next three months minimum.”
Wire Rim’s eyes glittered. “Let’s go.”
Leader grabbed his elbow.
“What?”
“Make it quick,” said the one with the radar-like powers in his hands. “I sense something strange closing in. It’s gonna get dicey.”
“Got it,” said Wire Rim. He shouldered the round tube.
The two stepped out together. Despite having survived on bread and water for the last week, they moved with impressive speed. Before the big rats could turn around, Wire Rim’s tube was belching puffs of compressed carbon dioxide.
The glass capsules flew out at three hundred yards per second, struck the rocky mounds and shattered. The liquid inside the capsules vaporized instantly. With a quickness that belied their armored appearance, the rats made for their holes. But the gas caught up with them, like they’d waded into thick mud.
“Hurry!”
Wire Rim grabbed a plastic bag from his pocket. They didn’t have the budget for gas masks, so the anesthetics they bought off of black-market doctors dissipated quickly.
Overtaking the struggling rats, Long Hair reached out with his cattle prod. The animals convulsed and toppled over, looking like stuffed animals in a shooting gallery. Biological armor laced with collagen fibers was no better than paper in the face of a two-thousand volt charge.
Long Hair skillfully plucked up the unconscious rats with the metal ring and deposited them in the plastic bag Wire Rim was holding.
“Big catch!” Wire Rim yelled excitedly. “Got more than ten!”
“Yeah!” Long Hair replied, turning around. He froze, his eyes focused above Wire Rim’s head.
“What—” The words died coming out of Wire Rim’s mouth.
Even while the impulse to turn in the direction that his partners were looking traveled through his brain, he understood the fate awaiting him and froze.
It came crawling down the rock pile behind him on dozens of tentacles. Each tentacle was no bigger than the lash of a whip. But when the off-white suckers lining the coral red skin attached themselves to Wire Rim’s body, their sucking power overwhelmed him and hoisted him into the air.
He screamed and tried to tear himself free. The tentacles pinned his hands against his body.
Dodging the death whips fluttering like a forest of out-of-control flattened garden hoses, Long Hair ran back the way he came. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught sight of the trove of rats being drawn into its clutches.
The vagrants weren’t the only ones who depended on them to eke out a living.
This was the cause of all their caution.
“Help! Help me!”
The tentacles spilled out over the rock pile. Soon all that remained of Wire Rim was his voice and dangling legs.
Long Hair ran as fast as he could. He saw Leader standing in the passageway ahead of him. He looked closer. Two tentacles were wrapped around Leader’s neck. Leader grabbed at his throat with his hands. His feet didn’t touch the ground.
Long Hair screeched like a throttled cat. He bolted in the opposite direction. The tentacles followed him on the stirred-up currents of air. Off in the distance, he heard Wire Rim’s screams and the sound of crunching bones. Now the tentacles were streaming toward him as well.
He gave up and stopped and fell back against the mountain of rocks. By the tim
e he realized that he was leaning back against nothing, he had already toppled over into a black hole.
He didn’t think about what was waiting for him there. He got groggily to his feet and sprinted away from the danger, deeper into the darkness. He didn’t know how wide or how deep it was. He felt the chill of those cold tendrils on the back of his neck. The whipping death tentacles would grab him if he paused for a second. He cried like a baby as he pushed his legs forward.
He was abruptly bathed in light. Sunlight. But there was something different about it. It was a cool, artificial light. He knew he’d barged into a completely different environment. There was greenery all around him. Normal-looking trees and shrubs reached toward the sky.
A long moment passed. He came to his senses and peered behind him. The tentacles had vanished. As had the dark corridor. Trees filled his vision.
Relief battled with a profound sense of unease. Even in Demon City, paranormal phenomena like this didn’t happen to everybody on an everyday basis. If forced to come up with an explanation, he’d say he’d been caught up in a shifting dimensional vortex or had come into contact with a teleportation field that carried him here.
But Long Hair had no idea why.
There was an aroma in the air. The smell of ozone and perfume. He sensed that he was not alone. His ripples of uncertainty grew into waves.
A pleasantly cool breeze wafted through the trees. The sun glittered high up in the heavens. At last he figured out what was wrong. He was surrounded by trees but didn’t hear the song of a single bird. Or insect. Not a trace of a living thing.
“What—what the hell is going on?” he wailed.
He looked down at his hands. His right hand still gripped the handle of the cattle prod. He grasped the control and twisted it to the right. The blue electric arc jumped out.
The smooth black bark of the tree trunk next to him belched flame. Purple smoke drifted away on the breeze. He set the current at five thousand volts, more than enough to dispatch any garden-variety animal.
Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 1 Page 10