Chapter Three

Chapter Three

The call was from Mephisto. He’d received a message from the Elder of the Toyama vampires. The Elder had woken up long enough to meet with them.

“In the middle of the day?” Setsura practically yelped into the receiver. Ever since those four had arrived, it’d been one weird thing after the other.

He saw Takako off and left the house around ten in the morning. Fortunately, his part-time shop girl arrived as he was pulling on his shoes.

Anyone knowledgeable about the history of public housing in Shinjuku would be familiar with the scale of the buildings in the Toyama housing block and the area they covered. Not only its spaciousness, but the sheer amount of greenery. No matter how blue the skies above, the darkness of the densely wooded areas could easily be mistaken for dusk.

But this was not a neighborhood where couples went for a midday stroll, or children played in the park, or where lines of drying laundry fluttered in the wind. Listen carefully and the growl of distant car engines and the songs of birds grew audible.

A silent place. Tranquility ruled the day. The only humans with a reason to be there were the heavily-armed security guards.

Setsura got out of the taxi. Mephisto and a guard were waiting for him. The man with the moustache wearing a beige uniform was armed with a Winchester self-loading shotgun and a Colt 10 mm Delta Elite with an eight-round magazine. Tear gas and bromide tranquilizer shells were strapped to his belt.

He was one of the guards who watched over this enormous concrete castle during daylight hours. Behind him were high-voltage barricades and armored vehicles bearing the insignia of the security firm.

Setsura quipped, “It all seems way over the top, no matter how many times I see it.”

“Hardly anybody’s up and about during the day. Just taking the necessary precautions.”

With the guard taking point, they passed through the barricade. The gate was operated by another guard inside the perimeter. The quiet descended as they entered the grounds. Setsura hunched his shoulders. Even the temperature dropped.

The guard said, not looking at him, “That’s what happens when you pack a couple hundred of ’em together in one place. Been working here for two years, three days on, two off. Still haven’t gotten used to it. Any longer and you start getting scared of the sunlight. It’s the vibe they put off.”

“What the—!”

Several yards ahead, a black shadow crossed in front of them at a blazing speed. It had barely registered to Setsura and Mephisto’s eyes as a squat, humanoid figure when a cloud of dust enveloped it. A few tenths of a second later, the roar of a large caliber gun shook the air. The smell of gunpowder stung their nostrils.

The smoke cleared away. With a whoosh bright orange flames laced with streaks of soot engulfed the miserable remains. The heat beat against their faces. At its maximum setting, the flame thrower reached six thousand degrees.

“A ghoul,” said the guard behind them. “Lately they’ve been moving around a lot more during the day. With the vamps all dead to the world when the sun’s out, it’s a happy hunting ground for the critters. They’re like cockroaches. No matter how many you step on, they keep coming back.”

“The circle of life,” Mephisto countered. “They’re just doing what living creatures like them do.”

Mephisto’s nonchalance rubbed the guard the wrong way. “Beg to differ, Doctor. Nothing about them qualifies as alive in my book. Who cares what gave birth to them? They crawl out from under the ruins and sewers at night and feed on rats and bugs. At some point, they started going after corpses and sleeping humans. Count your lucky stars they’re not chowing down on normal adults yet. Just babies and the odd senior citizen. They don’t touch anything that can fight back. But just when you think they’re a bunch of weaklings, you find ’em tossing quarter-ton granite gravestones around like baseballs. They’re scaredy-cats, that’s what they are. Sneaking around, eating roadkill, screwing and dying—that’s all they’re good for. What do you think would happen if you took one to your hospital? They’d be having the patients for dessert.”

“Oh, I’d kill them before that happened,” Mephisto answered serenely.

Setsura raised his brows. The two guards paled a bit—as if imagining that Mephisto’s unpredictable sense of judgment might turn on them some day.

“But if they came seeking treatment,” the white-clad Doctor of Death continued, “I would welcome them. If the parent of a victimized child tried to exact revenge there, they would have to die too.”

“Why’s that?” the other guard felt compelled to ask.

“Because that ghoul would be my patient. According to the laws of this city, a cowardly, miserable creature born here has the right to exist here—even if all they do is eat babies. No matter who the patient might be, at my hospital, they will get the care they came for.”

“And once it was cured?”

“It’d be promptly killed by the parents of the aforementioned baby. I cannot resurrect the dead. Once the patient has recovered, I can’t afford to have them outstaying their welcome.”

“You’d save them just to see them killed?”

“That is the law of this city.”

The guard pondered that statement.

“When the powers-that-be tried to evict the residents of this housing block, the citizens of the ward signed onto their protection. Because no matter what the form of life, they all have the right to live in this city according to the rules they live by. The only exception comes when their lifestyle threatens your existence.”

Nobody had anything to add to that. They arrived at the steel doors that led into the offices of the building manager. The two-story building covered almost a hundred square yards of ground, but the giant high-rises surrounding it made it look like a dollhouse in comparison.

The guard said, “The Elder is waiting.”

Setsura glanced at the front of the building. “The shutters aren’t closed, the black drapes aren’t drawn. I take it he slept well. That old fart looks to be in as good a mood as ever.”

“He must have dreamed good dreams,” said Mephisto. He pressed the intercom button next to the door.

“Welcome,” rumbled a deeply furrowed voice that brought to mind the image of an old philosopher bundled up on a winter night, quietly pursuing his theories of everything. “The door is open. Come in.”

Mephisto went first, and Setsura followed. The light-filled living room was a good twenty feet long by twenty feet wide. Two people got up from the modern-looking sofa in the center. The smaller of the two approached them.

An old man in a double-breasted white suit. The sunlight slanting through the windows made the top of his magnificently bald head gleam. The Toyama Elder smiled the way any other old man would smile. Setsura said he was a thousand years old. And Mephisto said he slept half the year away.

He shook hands with them, wrinkled hands that contained a surprising strength and vigor. “Welcome, welcome. This is as welcome a surprise as the night coming on. Basking in the honored presence of Mister Setsura Aki and Doctor Mephisto reminds me that no matter how old they may grow, human beings never grow too old.”

Setsura looked a bit embarrassed. It was a true enough statement if anybody else had said it, but this old man—

“If Doctor Mephisto felt it necessary to reach out to us, there must be fires in this city that need putting out.” The Elder motioned them to the sofa. “If there is anything we can do, we will spare no effort, though I do not think this is a problem that will be disposed of easily. It was enough to wake me from my sleep.”

“Enough to—” Mephisto began. Setsura stared thoughtfully at the ceiling. Mephisto finished his thought. “Enough to wake you up?”

Not answering Mephisto’s question, the Elder pointed to the young man in a pale blue suit standing next to the sofa. “Let me introduce my grandson, Yakou. This is Shinjuku’s best private detective, Setsura Aki, and Shinjuku’s most talented physician, Doctor Mephisto.”

“I’ve heard a great deal about you both,” Yakou said, with an elegant but unpretentious bow. More than simple good manners, his etiquette had been acquired over many lifetimes.

“I didn’t know you had a grandson,” said Mephisto, admiring Yakou’s razor-sharp good looks.

“He’s been educated in London since soon after he was born. He returned home only six months ago. He’s said to resemble myself even more than my own son.”

“How about that,” said Setsura. This P.I. knew more about the residents of Shinjuku than even Mephisto, and perhaps had a clue or two about what it meant for this old man to so resemble his grandson.

The Elder offered them chairs, and sat back down on the sofa. “The two of you can probably imagine why I invited my grandson to this get-together. The same reason Doctor Mephisto visited the other day and why I willingly woke from my rest. Namely, those foreign vampires—apart from our clans—that have come to Shinjuku.”

The old man chattered on like the host of an afternoon tea. In a flash, the room fell into a pensive silence.

“Excuse me, Elder,” said Mephisto. “But what manner of nightmare did you dream?”

“Why do you think it was a nightmare?”

“If all we dreamed were pleasant fantasies, we would never wake up. Eight hours in bed would not be enough.”

“I have lived for over a thousand years,” said the Elder, the emotions rising in his voice. “And yet you easily articulate the truth I have acquired as a result. Exactly how old would you be?”

For a change, it was Setsura casting an intrigued glance at Mephisto. Mephisto didn’t answer the question. “As for today’s agenda—” he began.

The senior citizen good-naturedly bowed deeply. “I only saw a nightmare, but Yakou had a very different kind of encounter with the real thing. I think you should see for yourselves.”

“As you wish,” the young man replied crisply.

He went to a door at the back of the room and snapped his fingers, a small but pleasant sound. The door opened. Two middle-aged men appeared wheeling a gurney between them. On top of the gurney was a long, rectangular box. A casket. It shook slightly.

The two men parked the casket in front of the four of them, and left through the same door. Yakou put his hands on the plain, bare cover and effortlessly lifted it open.

“Holy—” Setsura exclaimed, his eyes widening. The strong stench assailed his nose.

The man laid out in the box had both hands pressing outwards against the air, the fingers bent into claws, as if he was about to pounce on somebody. But Setsura and Mephisto’s eyes were drawn in particular to the man’s police uniform.

“According to our investigation, his name is Michio Hyuuga. He works out of the Waseda station in Shinjuku, and is assigned as a patrol officer to the number two police box in Nakai.”

The Elder glanced at his grandson, then refocused his narrow eyes on the gray chest of the dead-looking man. “Before putting him in this coffin, we tried to cross his arms over his chest. This is done in order to contain within the soul any remaining particles of good until the dead cross over the River Styx. But his hands kept returning to this form, his fingers bending like hooks. An animal hungering for blood. The demon my grandson battled last night is unlike any of us. You called shortly thereafter.”

Two pairs of eyes turned with intense interest to Yakou. He nodded, and spent the next ten minutes going over the details of the previous night’s incident.

“So that’s what happened,” Setsura said. His conversation that morning with his new client—Takako Kanan—came together with Officer Hyuuga’s inexplicable assault on a woman he was supposedly helping. “And then consequently—”

“What of the woman?” Mephisto pressed, not giving Setsura time to finish the thought.

Mephisto’s defeat must still weigh heavily on his mind. Setsura did not want to see those chickens coming home to roost right now either, so he let the conversation head off on the tangent Mephisto preferred.

“I got her address and telephone number.” His tone of voice suggested that the two of them had parted ways without pressing the matter further. She was also a resident of Demon City.

Yakou had hauled the officer back here. Before waking him up to begin the questioning, the Elder rose from his slumber. After learning what had happened, he’d instructed Yakou to call Setsura and Mephisto before proceeding further.

“We have ways of making people talk. But when dealing with a mutant strain of vampire, things can get complicated if the initial efforts fail. We thought it wise to call in a couple of experts like yourselves.” The Elder grinned.

“We sealed him in this casket with a liberal dose of garlic to keep him under control. Before we proceed with the questioning, though, can you think of any other incidents that might be evidence of their handiwork?”

Setsura started to answer, but Mephisto spoke first. “None at all.” Any mention of Hisako Tokoyoda’s name would inevitably end up spilling the beans about the fiasco at the hospital.

The Elder nodded. “Fine, then. Let’s wake him up.”

“Still,” Setsura interjected, “it’s daytime, and present company excepted, vampires don’t go walking around in broad daylight.”

“Indeed they do not. Which is why this man should only wake up at night. As for now—” The Elder snapped his fingers.

As if the sun had taken note of the problem and eclipsed itself, the room fell into darkness. Setsura looked toward the windows, at the bright scenery outside. The clear blue sky and the green foliage and the sunlight brimming with life.

But like a landscape painted on a canvas, the light didn’t seem to penetrate more than a fraction of an inch into the room. At the same time, the pungent odor polluting the air vanished.

“Ahh—”

A few seconds later, the unmistakable sound of a yawn came from the casket. Officer Hyuuga’s eyes flew open. Setsura and Mephisto didn’t doubt that true night had suddenly descended.

Another smell rose to Setsura’s nose and mouth. The corrupting smell of blood.

The officer grew aware of the four pairs of eyes looking down at him. He smiled. The smile of a carnivore when it encounters a flock of sheep unaware of its true nature. His mouth widened, the pair of tusk-like fangs extended. He gripped the edge of the coffin for support as he slowly sat up. The scars on his neck were gone.

“All right. So who invited me to the party?”