Chapter Two

Chapter Two

The Demon Princess and the real Takako were taken to a room in one of the twin spires of the imposing Tokyo Metropolitan Government Complex. It was located in a corner of the skyscraper district only a stone’s throw from Chuo Park and the DMZ. No irony was intended.

The Joint Operational Forces hovering in the air on standby retrieved them from Kio Shrine and flew them at high speed the third of a mile to the roof of city hall. Surrounded on all four sides by magnetically-levitated armored combat hovercrafts, they were escorted inside the bleak government office building.

The reality they found there would have knocked the ordinary citizen for a loop, for the stark, forty-eight story building was teeming with life.

Human life and mechanical life, epitomized by the people striding down the broad hallways—the walls had been knocked down and the hallways widened—and the rooms filled with the radio-luminescent glow and blinking LEDs of electronic equipment. These buildings—that after the Devil Quake had become a squatters town—had been transformed into a great citadel, proof that when a nation set its might and authority into motion it might even raise the dead.

The two were brought to what had once been a reception area on the second floor. A glittering chandelier hung from the ceiling. The furniture and even the wallpaper managed a subtle combination of the baroque and the somber.

The ordinary taxpayer would have sighed in amazement and dismay at the sheer expense and effort required to pull off this demonstration of wretched excess.

But it all fell short, fading like a wilted flower when Princess entered the room in her white cheongsam—a pile of refuse compared to the sublime beauty of this woman, even with half her face burned off. Beauty was life. The inorganic could possess that life as well, but in her presence it felt as dead as a doornail.

Needless to say, the same went for the people waiting in the room. Faces flushed, adrenaline levels surged, heartbeats raced in a frenzy. And yet the officials lined up there in their business suits didn’t feel a thing. Her beauty—like the unveiling of a secret, national treasure—benumbed and transfixed them.

One fearless and intrepid figure stood out from the rest. Stepping forward he said, “Forgive me, but how should we address you?”

“Call me Princess.” The sound of her voice cut through them like a sharp wind. “That is what this world calls me, and that certainly includes you.”

No official proclamation could match such haughtiness in tone or substance, but no critical thought crossed any of their minds. They all knew that none in the world could fairly contradict her.

“We understand.” The man bowed humbly. “Shall we proceed with the introductions?”

“Fine.”

“I am Takeshi Jinnai. I believe we have already met.”

“Yes. The man who threatened me. I will not forget.”

She smiled. Less an insinuation than the impression left by Jinnai himself. Jinnai stiffened. With a flutter of her white sleeves, the Demon Princess proceeded to a sofa at the back of the room. Takako trailed after her, standing to her right as she settled against the cushions.

“I’ll hear what you have to say,” she said in a low voice that reverberated around her like a distant sonic boom. Nobody objected.

Jinnai said stiffly, “But first, we would like to tell you more about us.”

“Fine,” she said, with a frigid glance at the poobahs and bureaucrats arrayed before her. She nodded. Her sense of dignity and presence was different from the typical pol. No, it was her very existence that was different.

Facing Princess and beginning from the right of the line of officials, Jinnai gestured and said, “Hikobe Abe, chairman of the Joint Staff Council. Next to him—”

With each introduction, the man bowed deferentially. And although he described each man’s position, Jinnai had no idea whether Princess attached any importance to it. But he thought it better not to skip any of the customary manners and protocols.

He came to the end of the line and the man on the far left. “Ryohei Kongodai, our prime minister. As I am sure you know, he is the chief executive of our national political system.”

Princess shifted her gaze to the balding politician. “Kikiou would find that fact far more interesting. He’d kiss up to the lowliest politician in order to accomplish his ends.”

Kongodai’s face twitched in annoyance. Not a few others smiled to themselves.

“We have gathered here together to request your cooperation.”

Jinnai kept things ceremonial. He dearly wanted to loosen his tie, but kept his hands at his sides. The tanks hovering in the hallway, their guns aimed at Takako through the walls, was their one ace up the sleeve. The heat-seeking lasers were renowned for their single-shot kills.

“Our request is singular in nature. While under our patronage, we wish to further investigate the particularities of your life force.”

“Where is Bey?” Princess interrupted. “Kikiou is a vulgar man who prides himself in his knowledge and nothing else. I once thought that Bey might rise to the occasion, but he was the mere ruler of a savage land stinking of shit and sweat. Do you think I would permit your soiled hands to touch my skin? Never. You have stated your case and now I will leave.”

She casually came to her feet. Jinnai said to the graceful white figure, “Please wait. We warned you before. Outside this room, the guns are trained on that woman.”

“Go ahead and fire.”

Whether Jinnai caught the seductive gleam in her eyes, what he did clearly see was the mass of people pushing their way toward Takako. He couldn’t believe his eyes. At the head of the flying wedge of politicians was the chairman. Right in front of Takako was the prime minister.

“The head of the government,” Princess sneered. “Emperor Jie of the Hsia Dynasty and Ying Zheng of the Qin Dynasty did the same, using me as a shield against the assassin’s sword. I suppose she suits the princelings of a teeny-tiny country like this. Shall we call each other’s bluffs?”

Jinnai didn’t have the authority to make the order.

“I’ll be going now. If you hold your lives dear, then be good boys and clear the way. I can’t have those awful machines in the corridor flitting through the air and spying on me. Because this is the kind of thing that will happen if you do—”

The Demon Princess seized the chairman by the hair and spun his head like a top. His neck creaked and his skull did a complete three-sixty. The muscles didn’t contort, the flesh didn’t tear. Only large tears fell from his eyes. Colored red. Tears of blood.

“A twist of the neck without killing. Can anything be more painful than that? I’ll wring one neck if one of those vehicles follows me. Two if two do. Every time I see another one, I’ll add another to the mix. No, no, send them all. The more the merrier. It’s so much fun watching you cry in living color.”

She shrieked with laughter and started toward the exit. A large shadow darkened the doorway.

“General Bey.”

The Demon Princess smiled. That alone told Jinnai how she intended to manage the big man. A gentle smile.

“And where are you going, Princess?” said Kazikli Bey. His voice creaked like a drawbridge.

“Back to my kingdom.”

“That is here.”

“I will leave the management of this miserable country to you. Oh, and take care that none of the rats stowing away in your casket start gnawing on your privates.”

“I see.” Now Bey smiled as well. A gentle smile. “But leave the girl.” By which he meant Takako.

“What accounts for such tenaciousness? Your first bride did not strike me as that great of a catch.”

“I have already decided. She shall become my wife. I do fancy her quite a bit. So let her be.”

“I think not. Your maddening unreliability pisses me off. If you like this place so much, it’s all yours. We may have occasionally shared a bunk during the five hundred years of our voyage together. But I’m just not that into you.”

“Unacceptable. What I want right now is that woman. And when it comes to you, the feeling is mutual. You may leave without another word.”

In response to the challenge, Princess’s smile only grew broader.

General Bey said, “Why do you care about her? Why not drain her of her blood? Kill her or make her your slave. Are you losing your memory? Didn’t you once cast her out of the sky?”

“You want to know?”

“Enlighten me.”

“I did it to annoy a certain man. The one man who scorned me. I wish him to prostrate himself at my feet and plead to drink my blood. She is necessary to make it happen.”

“Setsura Aki.” General Bey spoke the name with a true depth of feeling. A flesh and blood expression resembling a thunderstorm. It vanished a moment later. “After fighting atop that tall building, I chanced across him a second time. Why does he still live? He fell from such a height, and with a sword in his heart.”

“I must have missed the mark,” Princess said in a voice that could freeze boiling water. And yet there were hints of a thaw at the edges.

“I thought so too. The kid was my opponent. It seemed a blunder on your part. But perhaps not.”

“Hoh.”

“Then that was no blunder. You missed on purpose.”

“What fascinating things you are saying.”

“Princess—the woman who has lived for four thousand years and toppled countless nations—the woman who has driven tens of thousands wild with lust. Not you—”

“Why choose her to be your wife?” she said, cutting through the stream of his speculations.

“For the same reason as you,” General Bey said heavily. A person with sharp ears and keen mental insight might have detected in his reply the same ambiguities as in Princess’s answer. “Five hundred years ago, when the Janissaries surrounded Poenari Castle, a woman threw herself from the parapets and died. The blood of the Orient flowed through her veins. This woman well resembles her.”

Princess raised a hand to her mouth and smiled. “So Kazikli Bey, the most famous butcher in the history of the world, still pines for his wife. If your subordinates could see you now, they would turn over in their graves at the thought of ever following and dying for such a weakling.”

“I owe nothing to the living or the dead. The woman stirs my blood. That is all. Take your leave, Princess.”

“By brute force? Look around you. All I need to do is this and she is mine, without taking one more drop of her blood.”

General Bey understood what Princess was talking about as soon as she spoke. She placed a finger between her breasts and drew a line down her body. The gown neatly divided in two, revealing her dazzling limbs. A bright red line welled up on her chest.

With a low savage growl, a herd of beasts pushed past General Bey and ran toward her. The august government ministers. The cabinet secretary was among them, as was the director of the National Institutes of Science and Technology, and the director of the Defense Agency SP Division.

With a swipe of a hand, their heads tore away from their bodies like plucked fruit. General Bey roared in despair. Takako buried her face between Princess’s breasts, her throat pulsing as she lapped up rivulets of fresh blood.