Chapter One

Chapter One

The darkness was nowhere and everywhere. If he extended his grasp, reached down deeper and deeper, it grew so thick he imagined closing his fist and tearing pieces of it away.

The darkness came in many varieties. Those who lived in it developed by necessity the ability to discern among them. Its voices, scents, thoughts. And more than anything else, its passions.

This was the same darkness that had surrounded the Tower of London and cloaked the condemned trudging to the gallows steeped in grudges and profound regrets. Their jailers wisely kept their distance. They’d learned by experience what it meant to be so possessed.

The darkness watched over the dance of life—the summer festivals, the campfires, the choruses of friends and lovers—and breathed life into the souls of its new visitors.

The passions, joys, angers, sorrows and fears of humans, plants and animals alike—the darkness absorbed them, digested them, seasoned them over time, and thus determined the essence of its own nature.

For eons the darkness had continually consumed blood and wickedness and all their unquenchable thirsts, growing as constricted in its senses and emotions as it was vast and unlimited.

Somewhere in the darkness a voice asked, “Is that you, Ryuuki?”

The dusty, archaic Chinese would demand a skilled linguist to calculate which ancient era it came from.

“Yes.” The shadow that had visited Mephisto Hospital.

The owners of both voices sank down in the eternal black.

“You failed?”

“I failed.” In that same tone of voice.

“How about that.” This hoarse voice echoed surprise. “You and Silent Night encountered a substantial obstacle?”

“Including the loss of my fingers.”

“And what trick accomplished that?”

“I do not know. The woman I summoned lost her head. I instinctively reached out and the same thing happened to my fingers. Thinking about it now, I believe that something like a mist blade was strung through the air.”

“This sounds like the kind of wizardry wielded by Yang Dan during the Wei Dynasty. Though, in that case, it should have been visible to your eyes.”

“Kikiou-sama, it was—” The hesitation in the young voice stirred the darkness.

“What?”

“I believe the wielder of that weapon was the same man in black we saw when we arrived.”

“Well—” A long silence followed, that would have left any person in a profound state of unease. “Him? I could believe it if it was him. After two thousand years, visiting this city most suited to our needs, we make the first person we encounter into an enemy and a most formidable enemy at that. Is this also part of the cycle of rebirth?”

The younger voice remained silent this time. He was either unable to ascertain the intent of the older man’s questions, or understanding them, did not know how to respond.

“But we will win,” the older one continued. “Hasn’t it always been so? We have come this far by knowing more about our enemies than they know about us. Our knowledge is informed by our superior intelligence. More than any place we have been before, this is a city we can wear like a second skin. We will stir and boil the blood and evil just as Emperor Jin did in his human cauldrons. It might have been a mistake to allow you to sate your hunger so soon after we arrived. But knowing the strength of this new enemy will prove useful. The sooner we dispose of those two, the better.”

“Understood.” A firm statement, unburdened by resentment or hatred. An affirmative answer, even.

“Oh, yes.”

The older man spoke a bit overdramatically. “Even that man Shuuran took as her lover that first night was struck down.”

The astonishment rippled through the darkness. “That means that in a single night, both of our thralls were—”

“That’s exactly what it means. Shuuran, though, did not lose any digits in the process. That is because, not being a slave to the old ways, she made him her own right from the start.”

“I understand what you are saying, but—” There was a stubborn resolve in the younger man’s voice. “It is a long-established custom of our kind that we repeatedly visit our thralls.”

“Visit them a hundred times and the results will be the same.” Resolve filled the old man’s voice. “How many times have you died and reincarnated? Do not lightly set aside the suffering and fires of hell that make us long for extinction. It would be one thing if we were still living during the Hsia or Shang Dynasties. But to those familiar with our ways, a second visit is only an opportunity to lay a trap.”

The loathing in the old man’s voice was as sharp and penetrating as a needle. To die and reincarnate. What strange words they were when taken at face value.

If this repeated visiting of the victim had the power of inviolable law, then those strictly adhering to it should rise to supremacy. In which case, no matter what creature of the night, none would succumb, even when caught unawares.

Assuming the old man was right, that meant that the young man had died and been reborn any number of times; that meant there were no special measures a vampire could take to avoid death if the proper blow was delivered. And it meant that once reincarnated, the mortal body did not put on immortality.

“That may be correct,” the young man said. “However—”

He was about to launch into a heated dispute when a third voice disturbed the gloom.

“A fine piece of work there, Ryuuki.”

The speaker was a woman. The enchanting reverberations of her youthful, vibrant voice electrified the night and made their eyes stare uselessly into the black.

“It has been a long time. I want a good look at you. Come along.”

“Princess—” The equivocations in the hoarse voice were apparent. “I was going to report to you later. Ryuuki has committed a grave error.”

“I know. I’ve been listening. And I’m certain that you knew as well.”

There was laughter in her voice. The elegance of its entrancing echoes seemed to spring from her innate disposition.

“Please forgive me.”

“Ha. How about that, Kikiou? An old man like you despising the rites of the brood while a youngster like Ryuuki adheres to them. Well, it’s all the same to me. Don’t keep me waiting, Ryuuki. I’ll hold Kikiou responsible if you’re late.”

“I understand,” the ancient voice said hastily. His tension raised his pitch a notch.

From somewhere there came the sense of people standing. At length, the sound of a hinge turning. Blue light contended with the ink-dark world.

The being that belonged to the voice called Ryuuki entered the room and quietly shut the door. Turning around, he sank to one knee and bowed deeply. The door was made of thick wood, driven through with iron-black nails. Marble tiles covered the floor.

He was in a blue world. The blue of the deepest ocean depths streamed through the windows, the blue before the rushing, pounding waves swept everything away.

It was a large and magnificent room, at least twenty feet wide by thirty feet long, accented with rugs and decorative tables and chairs. Lining the wall were a six-legged Chinese-style chest and incense burners. The priceless value of these treasures was clear from the first glance. They were so realistically carved with pictures of phoenixes, dragons, sea serpents and lions that an admirer of art could believe that touching one of their fangs would draw blood.

Standing among them, the young man’s shadow stretched out across the floor.

A strange smell filled the room. It came from the bronze incense burners on the tables and standing next to the walls. The sour edge to the thick odor suggested they were not the sole source of the smell.

“Is that you, Ryuuki?” asked the woman from before, her voice touched with inebriation.

“Yes.”

“Come over here.”

“Yes.”

The young man got to his feet. Standing in his way were two objects. A large Buddha statue glittered golden in the blue light. Beyond that was an elliptical pavilion.

The statue lay on the floor. It was six feet long. Its surface twinkled like stars. Considering its owner, that it was dressed in gold was no surprise. It was covered from head to toe in leaves of gold foil. Hundreds, if not thousands of these leaves clothed the adult-sized statue like magical golden scales.

A jade burial robe had been discovered in the mausoleum of a Han Dynasty noble in Hebei Province, Mancheng County. The elliptical gemstones were stitched together with gold and silver threads. The jewels were said to come from the enchanted lands of the Kunlun Mountains and could bestow the power of immortality.

Those who wore it sought life after life, so that being dead they would not die.

Replacing the jewels in the robe with gold made the statue near where Ryuuki was standing all the more opulent and beautiful. It was an article of rare beauty shrouded by the scent of raw avarice.

The silk pavilion wavered in the uncertain shadows. The blue light warped its shape like a palace submerged beneath the sea. Before Ryuuki’s eyes, the seamless fabric parted to the right and left. The rich fragrance weighed down the air. This was the source of that mysterious smell.

The sound of falling water rang out.

Ryuuki knelt and bowed reverentially to the beings enshrined at the back of the pavilion.

Shining eyes bright with evil, fangs like small mountain peaks projecting from a mouth like the slit of a mountain gorge, abdomen and limbs covered with lizard’s scales—possessing both a remorseless ferocity and a divine bearing unlike that of any mortal animal. A creature from out of the legends. A dragon.

And not just one. Forefeet pawing the earth, heads raised and glaring contemptuously at the world, the four magical creatures faced outward in the directions of the compass, each standing over twelve feet in height.

Ryuuki didn’t move.

The eyes of the giant dragons were crimson rubies, the fangs and claws white bronze. This was a sculpture. The torsos of the dragons overlapped each other, together forming a golden bathtub. The necks and heads soared up from the rim.

At that moment arose the face of the most beautiful woman in the world. The woman who had sailed on Fifth Street toward Shinjuku singing that haunting song. Every princess who deserved the name was her.

“It’s been a long time since the two of us have spoken like this.”

She smiled, baring her white teeth. So white they almost made Ryuuki wince. Teeth as savage as they were sublime. Anyone looking upon her could not help but imagine those teeth sinking into his own neck. In a trance, he would undo his collar and expose his throat for it.

Ryuuki bowed his head and did not move, the posture taken by the loyal servant before his master.

“Raise your head and look at me,” she said in brooding tones.

He did as he was told.

Two blue serpents lazily coiled down the side of the bathtub. From her arms. The dark red rivulets tore apart, divided again and then again, the flow thickening as it ran along.

“I expected you to make a mistake like that.”

“There’s nothing I can say,” Ryuuki said somberly.

“Kikiou’s anger is understandable. It’s them. We intended to draw this city into our domain before they grew wise to our presence. Whatever wisdom two thousand years have imparted to him, whom am I to disagree?”

Ryuuki again had nothing to say in reply.

“Ryuuki,” she asked in a serious voice, “what do you think of this city?”

“What do I think?”

“Kikiou says it is a city most appropriate to our needs.”

“Then so would I.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Then neither am I.”

There was not a particle of difference between the two answers. He meant both from the bottom of his heart.

“It is very quiet.” She closed her eyes. The words almost became a song. “But Kikiou finds the quiet disquieting. So do I. To be free—to act as we wish to our heart’s content—to feed the hunger of body and soul—will somebody dare stand in our way?”

The red water fell from her fingers like a thread. It fell onto the head of a dragon, trickled across the uneven surface, and ran into the dragon’s eyes. There the colors blended together. A slippery red mass rose up. Her limbs. The red film split apart exposing the white skin beneath as it washed off in splotches. The undeniable smell filled the blue air.

The smell of blood. Fresh blood covered her like a second skin. She was soaking in a golden bathtub filled with blood, a sight as horrific as it was befitting her.

At the end of the sixteenth century, in the northwestern part of Hungary known as the Little Carpathians, Countess Elizabeth Bathory was rumored to have preserved her beauty and youth with fresh blood. Through the beginning of the seventh century, she slaughtered upwards of fifty girls from the surrounding villages for that purpose.

According to court records from the period, the girls were stripped, tortured in ways too grotesque to describe, and then cut apart. The overflowing blood was collected in buckets by the servants, and used to fill the bath where “Countess Dracula” washed herself in order to preserve her eternal beauty. Because she believed that blood was life.

This enchanting woman from the Orient was using blood for the same purpose. After Elizabeth Bathory’s evil games came to light, “Countess Dracula” was sealed inside her blood-smeared bedroom and eventually died there.

However, the means of stealing away the life of this woman remained undiscovered. Coming into contact with the woman known as “Princess,” these vast pools of blood were invigorated by her demonic qualities and reinvigorated her in turn.

She bent over, dipped her hands into the blood and raised them up. And brought her mouth up to the blood trickling from her cupped hands, purring as she drank. A lewd and lascivious slurping sound.

The crimson coated her white throat, quivering breasts, and sleek stomach, and stained the dense black bush between her thighs.

“Ahh—” she moaned, rubbing her body with blood. “Look at me, Ryuuki. Don’t avert your eyes. Look at me with those eyes, eyes filled forever with cold desire, and watch what I do. You whose body had already let go of life and every ounce of its heart and soul in the palace of Emperor Zheng. All the more reason it sets me on fire.”

Blood frothed and foamed at her mouth. She squeezed her breasts, breasts she had grown as if only for his delight. She pressed her fingers into the skin for him to see, kneading the flesh as she stroked her nipples. The smell of blood arose from her hands and chest.

Her moist eyes gazed playfully at Ryuuki as her fingers trailed down her belly. Slipping them deep inside herself, she raised a hoarse cry.

“Listen—”

The wet, sucking noise mingled with her voice. The sound of her blood-soaked fingers caressing the folds of her blood-drenched privates.

“Ahh—” she groaned, soaring towards the heights of ecstasy.

The sound was calculated to capture the attention of any man. A man with a will of iron turned to putty in her hands. A single utterance reduced him to an animal driven by its basest instincts, wanting nothing in the world except to mount her.

Her free hand circled her back where her bottom awaited. She didn’t hesitate, plunging in her finger, all the way in, and commenced vigorously pumping it in and out.

“It really is better with a man,” she gasped, her back arching. Her fingers filled both of her clefts. “A man’s is better. Emperor Jie had a fine one indeed. So did Emperor Zhou. I wouldn’t even mind Emperor You’s. But now, only those dark eyes of yours can see what I have to offer. How I hate that. That is why I came here. To this wicked city—” She chuckled. “Overflowing with so much debauchery.”

She stepped out of the tub, continuing to grope herself. The steaming blood pattered onto the dragon’s head and neck. Red splotches flowered on the floor as she made her way to where Ryuuki still crouched like an immovable rock. His eyes looked straight at her crotch, eyes filled with cold desire.

“Eat me,” she ordered him. She stood with her feet planted a shoulder’s width apart.

No matter how faithful a servant, no man could obey such a command except in the depths of humiliation. But her faithful retainers could do nothing but attend to her words.

“Hurry. Do it hard.”

She thrust her hips forward. A translucent, viscous liquid—other than the blood—ran down her thighs. Her countenance and bearing—bristling with noble elegance—would alone stand every hair on the average man on end.

Ryuuki nodded, and pressed his face into the valley between her widely-spread legs. She seized hold of the young man’s head, flung back her own and let out a small scream. The sound of lips against flesh sang out like a musical instrument.

“You loathsome, damnable man!” she cried out, tossing her hair. She laughed. Her smile could throw a shadow across the sun. “You’ve died for me so many times, and still I cannot call you mine. That is why I’ll never let you go. I’ll never let you sleep. No matter how many times you go down on me, I’ll never make you fuck me. I know why you slunk back here after losing your fingers. Ahh—Stick it in my ass.”

His right hand circled her ripe derriere. She had a most charming backside, slippery and glistening. At a touch, her skin popped with the fresh elasticity of a virgin, the oils and natural lubricants poured from her. There wasn’t a man alive who couldn’t eat her the whole night long and never tire of the feast.

Her ass was as tight as a drum, hardly ready to admit a darning needle let alone a finger.

Ryuuki thrust in his finger. He had a strong hand and his thumb was there to assist. The remaining digits rose no higher than his fist. They showed their smooth, delicate stumps and then vanished from view. She pursed her lips and bowed her back in the face of a strength that brooked no resistance in her tender flesh.

Her cruel mouth parted, revealing her two fangs. Her eyes glowed with red fire. The face of pure devilry. Her fangs were crimson as well. But not because they were coated in blood. They were red in their essence.

She moaned. Lowering her head, she cupped her breasts, lifted them up, and pierced them with her fangs. The blood erupted as if from a punctured hose. She lapped at the fresh blood oozing over the dried gore, as Ryuuki’s arousing caresses continued.

She gave him her sex and her ass. And still unsatisfied, sank her own tusks into her own breasts. Less a woman than a living beast.

“Kill him!” she screamed. “The man who took your fingers. Kill him so that I may reign over this city! He has aroused in me a most terrible enemy!”