“Fuck!”
He bit his lips together and embraced the energy, tensing harder still, as though putting himself in a stranglehold. The spaces between his muscles vented hot air as they contracted, releasing a stifling heat that warped the air as it billowed out from his frame. He felt an irresistible force threatening to boil over, welling up from somewhere deep inside him. Ghostly secretions of pain seared through his left hand.
The Land Cruiser had stopped. The mountain road ended directly before them. The deep roar of the diesel engine died away, causing an unexpected quiet to descend over them. The silence felt oppressive, a constricting force spewed from the guts of the surrounding mountains. Cedar branches rustled in the darkness above.
“This is the place,” Fuminari grunted as he opened the door and hauled his huge frame out of the car. The valley was tightly compressed this deep into it. The area around them formed a small clearing, with barely enough space to turn the Land Cruiser around. It felt like they had reached the mountain’s stomach after it had ingested them. Even now, Fuminari expected the thick undergrowth to spray them with sticky gastric juice. He saw that the stars were out. The remaining three followed him out of the car; Shimizu, Biku, then Hosuke. They were all in the same clothes, black and designed for the mountains.
“How far from here?” Biku called out.
“Two, maybe two and a half hours. If we need to, we could probably make it in an hour and a half. Depends on you guys.” Fuminari threw Biku and Hosuke an evaluating glance. He was tempted to test them, really find out just how good they were. The urge was there, to go as fast as he could, to get them out of breath, to see how long they could keep up. But he realized he had no idea of how it might go. He was confident in his strength and in his knowledge of the mountain. At the same time, he suspected there was a real possibility that he might be the first to break. He was burning to find out. But he wouldn’t try it now. Now was not the time.
“We’ll leave the pacing to you,” Hosuke said flatly. His eyes were tinged with mysterious flashes of energy visible in the darkness. It was as though a feral energy, like a wild animal’s, was permeating through him.
Shimizu opened the vehicle’s trunk and took out some headlamps together with some smallish backpacks. The packs contained the bare minimum of equipment they would need for hiking through the mountains at night. The other three men walked over to him.
“I don’t need a pack,” Fuminari growled, taking a headlamp. “These will do.” He held two large mountain knives in his huge hands. He attached the leather sheaves to the belt around his waist and pulled one of the knives out, bouncing it between his hands a few times. It was clear that he was skilled in their use.
Biku took a leather vest and put it on. Hosuke just stood there, silently observing the others.
“There are some knives left,” Biku said, looking his way.
“Oh, I don’t need anything,” Hosuke replied. His features were only faintly visible under the interior light of the vehicle.
Biku stared at him for a moment. “Of course. You might not indeed,” he said, remembering what he had seen back at Tateyama.
“Hehe.” Hosuke smiled, looking slightly bashful.
“I’ll hold onto them for now then,” Fuminari said, taking the remaining knives in his hand.
Biku had equipped himself with two knives, Fuminari had four. Only Hosuke remained weaponless. No one showed any interest in the rucksacks containing snacks and water. They were not here to gatecrash the Panshigaru ritual or even stop it. Their sole objective was to wait for a chance to abduct someone from those gathered. If the chance failed to materialize they would wait for the ritual to end, then follow the participants until they discovered the location of the Panshigaru headquarters. On top of this, they wanted to find out what they could about the man called Kurogosho.
Shimizu placed four cups on the luggage rack and poured out some hot coffee from a thermos flask. “How about it--we’ve got time enough to drink a little coffee, right?”
Biku took one of the cups. Fuminari and Hosuke followed suit. Shimizu took the last. His role in all this was to hang back and wait for them.
“It’s a quiet night, considering,” Biku said. He took a sip of the coffee and looked up to watch the cedar branches sway in the breeze.
Listening like this, it felt like they could hear the quiet rustling of every branch in the valley, the sound filled the night air like the distant rumbling of an ocean. It was a strange type of silence. Neither Hosuke nor Fuminari said anything. The scent of coffee dissolved into the thin night air. Fuminari was the first to put down his cup.
“Before we do this, there’s something I want to make clear,” he said, voice quiet but firm. He looked at the others in turn. “None of this means we’re on the same side.”
“Of course,” Biku nodded.
“I’m here with a single purpose; to claim that beast Hanko’s head. And I don’t intend to alter these plans if they get in your way.”
“That’s fine.”
“Just as Hanko tore off my fingers, ate them before my eyes...now it’s my turn to tear him to pieces.” Fuminari held his left hand, still in its glove, out for them to see. His voice was heavy, straining with the effort of keeping his excitement in check. He grimaced as a shot of pain ran over his hand.
“I envy you.” Biku’s crimson lips formed a shallow grin.
Fuminari’s face flushed blood red. “What did you just say?” he asked. His voice was almost terrifyingly quiet.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”
“Perhaps you didn’t hear me. I asked you to tell me what you just said.” Fuminari gently widened his legs, readying a fighting stance. The two men glared into each others’ eyes as a tightly-strung silence hung between them. Biku slowly passed his cup to Shimizu, never breaking eye contact with Fuminari.
“I said, I envy you.” The words came out precisely, stress falling on the latter three words.
Fuminari’s eyes narrowed. “I never liked you,” Fuminari spat the words out. “I guess there was something else I wanted to clear up after all.”
“Master...” Shimizu said, tension flooding his voice. He remained rooted to the spot, saying nothing else.
Hosuke was watching on with a childlike grin, he took a few steps back.
One of Fuminari’s legs exploded up from the ground so that the tip of his boot hurtled through the air. The metal spikes underneath the boot flashed vertically upwards, passing close enough to scratch Biku’s nose.
Biku didn’t flinch. He hadn’t even blinked. He simply regarded Fuminari with a cool gaze.
Fuminari’s grin had transformed into violent smile. “This time I’m coming at you for real.” His gigantic body flew into motion with the speed of a tornado. He launched a barrage of attacks directly at Biku, holding nothing back. Biku danced backwards, skillfully avoiding each of them. He found himself backed up against the surrounding trees and exhaled sharply, launching himself into the air. Fuminari’s giant frame matched his trajectory in perfect synchronicity. They moved like great jungle cats. There was a sharp crunch as fists bore into flesh; the two shadows snarled together in mid-air before crashing into the ground as one. Biku was on top on Fuminari. A line of blood trickled from Fuminari’s nose to his mouth. They were both facing upwards, Biku’s back against Fuminari’s immense bulk with his left arm twisted behind him, locked between them.
Fuminari grinned as he licked the blood away. He had Biku’s left arm in a reverse armlock. He jumped to his feet, maintaining the hold. Biku’s arm was still locked behind him. He increased the pressure of his grip against the top of Biku’s hand, twisting harder. Fuminari’s bulk was at least twice that of Biku. He dug his fingers in as he gripped Biku’s hand between his fingers, positioning his thumb directly over a pressure point. He could crush walnuts effortlessly between his thumb and index fingers. He knew that the grip he had Biku in now would cause even the toughest opponent to cry out in agony
.
But Biku had not made even the faintest sound. It was immediately clear to Fuminari that Biku was not feeling the pain. If Biku was fighting it, he would feel the resultant tension spreading through the man’s body. But there was no hint of any tension. His breathing was almost completely regular. It was like fighting a rubber doll; there was no feedback.
“Now you realize why I said I envy you?” Biku asked, his voice so at ease it was hard to believe his arm was twisted as it was.
“Huh?” Fuminari tightened his grip.
“You could break my arm, but nothing would change. I can’t feel pain.”
Fuminari fell silent. He glared at Hosuke, eyes asking him if it was true.
“Apparently so,” Hosuke nodded.
“I have a congenital indifference to pain. I’ve been like this since birth.”
“Motherfucker.” Fuminari tossed Biku away like he was a monster. Biku turned to face him, patting down his left arm.
“Huh. It appears you really did push it to the point of breaking.”
“Great. Fucking monsters here too,” Fuminari spat the words like a mouthful of indigestible grit. He glared at Biku. The man’s face was utterly composed like an innocent young girl. So he had been afforded a glimpse into Biku’s secrets, into the development of his character and of the expression he wore.
“That is exactly the look I was referring to,” Biku said.
Fuminari looked as though he was in agony.
“If I’m fully honest, I’m even jealous of your ability to pull faces like that. I can think of nothing sweeter, or indeed more beautiful, than the expression of pain.”
“Yeah, well I’m increasingly of the mind to smash in that smug-looking face with a rock,” Fuminari said. He was at least half serious. They were opposing forces. Fuminari, who felt the ghosts of pain through fingers that were not even there. Biku, with a physical body unable to feel pain. Fuminari realized that just as he had reason to hate Biku, so too might Biku harbor a similar hatred of him.
“Okay, we should probably get going. Yeah?”
The two men registered Hosuke’s voice, incongruously calm.
3
Hosuke was the first of them to notice the scent.
“There’s something on the wind,” he called out ahead to Fuminari.
Fuminari came to a stop and sniffed at the air. It was faint, but it was there--that scent. It was incredibly slight, too slight for him to have noticed without Hosuke pointing it out first, but it was unmistakably there, woven into the wind. The incense that permeated deep into the flesh, stimulating the dark beasts that resided within. The perfume was inky and remote, it might have been the essence of the night itself.
The moment he inhaled it, Fuminari felt something dark stir deep inside him. They had been walking for close to two hours and had reached a virgin forest of beech trees. A cloak of bamboo grass concealed the ground below them. It rustled in perpetual motion as wind swept up from the valley below.
“We’re almost there,” Fuminari hissed the words, spoken as though they were meant for himself. He began to pace forwards, Hosuke and Biku tailed behind.
They were deep in Ura-tanzawa, an area rarely touched by hikers and mountaineers. They were moving completely off track, over nothing that could be considered a hiking trail. Fuminari was retracing the path he had taken with Kumiko all of two years ago, in reverse, nearly step-for-step. The scent grew in potency. Soon they could hear voices. Groups of people were chanting some religious sutra in chorus together. There was an element to the chanting that was reminiscent of a westernized melody. More than prayer, however, the voices resonated with a darker quality; it was like they were intoning a curse. The sound seemed to emerge from somewhere beneath the mountain’s earth, like ghostly calls of the dead reaching out to passers by. Just as with the incense, something about the voices fanned the flames of sexual desire. Fuminari felt a knot of heat gathering between his legs. It was like being slow-roasted from the inside, the heat communicated through the flickering of a low flame.
It was on the verge of happening all over again, a repetition of his previous night in the Tanzawa mountains. The only difference was that this time Fuminari’s penis was still limp. There was something there, blocking the route of the heat churning through his body, preventing it from entering his cock. Fuminari shuddered, the sensation was maddening. He felt overcome with a simultaneous hatred and fear of Hanko. He could hear the sound of his fingers being crushed in the beast’s mouth playing out in vivid detail. His legs buckled, he felt ready to collapse at any moment. Hanko had done so much more than simply devour his fingers.
The beast had taken something that Fuminari had always taken for granted--the absolute confidence he had in his physical prowess. The beast eating his fingers had been the most blatant symbol of this, leaving Fuminari psychologically scarred. The scar had then manifested itself in his impotence.
“Your legs are shaking man,” Hosuke called out from behind.
Hosuke’s words caused Fuminari to notice that his legs were trembling as he moved them one before the other. He ground his teeth together as the sound of Renobo’s mocking laugh came back sharply--your proud little viper is no good for pounding a woman’s cunt after all. His thoughts turned to the mysterious woman that had helped him escape that same night. Who was she?
The chant-like sounds were growing louder, delivered intermittently by the wind. “Kill the lights,” Fuminari turned, whispering to Biku before flicking off his own headlamp.
Biku complied, plunging the three of them into darkness.
“Aren’t we being a little too careful?” Hosuke queried. His night vision seemed to be the best of the three of them.
Fuminari gave no reply. His eyes adjusted quickly. The forest was bathed in a thin moonlight, the sky itself a fraction brighter than the dark lines of trees. When he looked up, Fuminari could make out the shapes of stars. The light from the almost half-moon shone towards them from the west.
“The chanting is in Sanskrit,” Biku said. He looked up a fraction, frowning slightly.
“Sanskrit?”
“We call it Bongo in Japanese, the language of ancient India.” Biku looked directly at Fuminari. His pale features seemed to float in the darkness.
Om Sunyata Jnana Dik Kam
Om Heruka Vajira Samaya Hrih
Sarva Sattva Dusta Mayamudra Prab Hanjaka
Hum Pht.
“Unless I’m mistaken, this is an extract from the Heruka Sadhana.”
“What does it mean?” Fuminari asked, his voice unsteady.
“‘Aum, I am born empty yet belong to the diamond realm. Aum Heruka, Vajra Samaya, Hrih, all that spurn the wicked seal of the living. Hum, Pht.’ Something along those lines.”
In Sanskrit, the sound ‘Aum’ or ‘Om’ symbolizes truth and is said to be the reflection of an absolute reality, embracing all that exists.
“Huh. It’s all Greek to me.” Fuminari shook his head.
4
The view before them was like a spewed out representation of all the basest human desires.
The center of the clearing had been sectioned into a giant square mandala. On it were gathered a mass of copulating men and women, one pair to each of the twenty-five squares, each in a sexual position unique from the others. Fire burned in piles of rocks gathered in each of the mandala’s corners. The flames had a syrupy, viscous quality to them. Towards the center of the mandala, standing slightly to the west, was an inverted cross, the horizontal bar positioned along the base rather than the top, made for the sole purpose of crucifying a human body upside-down. There was something frighteningly sinister about the form. The light of the flames flickered like waves across its surface; it was still empty. Some people stood in a group off to the left, dressed in black and facing the cross, the source of the chanting. The ritual appeared to be at an earlier stage than when Fuminari had stumbled upon it in the same place, two years ago.
Fuminari, Biku and Hosuke held their p
ositions a few meters back from the square, masked in the undergrowth as they watched on from gaps between the trees. Fuminari was worked up, so much so that every cell of his body felt like it was on fire. The knot of heat that had been trapped in his groin had since spread to cover every inch of his flesh. He could feel the hairs around his anus creeping uneasily, standing on end as though caught in static electricity. He noticed the peristaltic motion of it squeezing closed, relaxing again. He was taken with a sudden appetite to stuff something into the hole, stir it around--a wooden pole, his hand, anything. His throat was parched and dry, yet he was covered in a sheen of cold sweat. He had to work stop himself from moaning.
They were in full earshot of the lecherous cries of pleasure coming from the convulsing crowd. The woman in the segment closest to them was crouched over the man below her, running her mouth over his hard penis. The man’s appendage was swollen to the limit, rough and hard like a tumor. She raised her head to take in some air, releasing the man’s engorged penis; white liquid flushed from the tip, smacking her in the face. She went into a frenzy as she wrapped her lips back around him, forgetting even to breathe as he continued to release. She used her left hand to grab the base of his shaft, using her free hand to rub the man’s ejaculate into her face. Her knees were planted to either side of the man’s face, parted wide with her groin directly above him. She pushed her hips into him so that her sex smeared against his face, wet like a ruptured pomegranate.
“Man,” Hosuke let out a cracked sigh from his position next to Fuminari, “this is unbearable.”
They were the same words Fuminari had muttered two years ago. Except, Hosuke uttered them with something like a sense of playfulness. Fuminari turned to look at him, Hosuke noticed and met his gaze. The man’s face was flushed, his eyes flashing wildly. He had the look of a boy that had chanced on some other kids playing a game he had yet to discover. I want to play too. It was the exact same look; Fuminari wondered for a moment if the man might just stroll over and join in. There was something about Hosuke that made Fuminari suspect it was firmly within the realm of possibility. Fuminari caught himself wondering what kind of expression Biku would be wearing, but Biku was too far behind him to be able to make out his features.
The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters Page 25