Chapter One
Chapter One
The request startled even Mephisto. “You are a man with a habit of making strange demands.” He eyed Setsura carefully. “Did you think I would agree?”
“Kanan-san must be saved in any case,” Setsura answered with a straight face. “But rescue her now and she would remain half a vampire. Returning her to normal society would be difficult.”
“Then I guess the only other option is to destroy Princess,” Mephisto said breezily.
While ostensibly helping Princess, he had no inhibitions against plotting her downfall. To this doctor, other people—save one—were never the object of sentimental affectation. And right now not even him.
“She’s a hard nut to crack,” Setsura said, almost as if loath to admit it. “Wrapping things up will take time and effort. But it is the fastest way to restore Kanan-san to her former self.”
“Perhaps becoming her servant would hasten things along?” Mephisto emptied the contents of a flask on the table into his left hand. The purple liquid was the color of wine. Spilling from his palm, it turned into a shower of white beads, making a hard pinging sound when they struck the floor.
“It may be the only way to belong to a different world while preserving a knowledge of the real one. You are the one she wants, and her desires cannot be taken lightly.”
“You trust her that far?”
“No,” Mephisto said, coolly withdrawing his previous recommendation.
“So?”
“I will take care of it.”
Setsura nearly fell out of his chair. He’d been prepared to spend a good amount of time convincing Mephisto to take up the challenge.
“You sure you’re okay with this?”
“You are the one who came here with his hand out. Don’t start complaining now.”
Setsura shrugged. “One more thing, if you please, Doctor. When will you start taking care of it?”
“This afternoon.”
“This afternoon? You do know that—”
“Yes, the sun always shines in this world. But I can easily tell the difference between day and night. It is now dusk.”
“Impressive.”
“Princess will soon be awaking. And when she does, she will be aware of everything I do.”
“Turned you into a human GPS monitor, eh? That woman could really get under the skin.” Setsura spoke in a teasing manner. “But thems the breaks, I guess. When the night comes, you can go back to your beloved research. Say, how about inventing an anti-cootie drug that’ll repel the girls and make a name for yourself at Shinjuku’s Playboy Club?”
“Fascinating idea,” Mephisto said, as if honestly intrigued. Though were that face to express an interest, it would take even the most cynical of golddiggers years to get over the crush.
“You’d better get going.”
“Starting tomorrow afternoon, how long is this going to take you?”
“Three days to start with.”
“Make that one.”
“Three days.”
“A day and a half.”
“If you’re going to abandon whole numbers, then two and a half days.”
“One takes what one can get,” Setsura compromised. He started to say, “In exchange—”
“What are you two bargaining about?”
Half of a beautiful face and the owner of that face appeared in the doorway.
“So you’re up,” said Mephisto, touching his chest and nodding his head in an aristocratic bow. “It is good to see you in such fine fettle. However, I wouldn’t think you should want to come here so immediately after arising.”
With a sideways glance at Setsura, the Demon Princess said, “Have you devised a means of saving Takako yet?”
The tip of a razor-sharp icicle traced a line down Setsura’s back. If she’d read their intent already, the inevitable showdown might begin here and now.
However, without another word on the subject, she glided up to Mephisto and said, “There’s something I would like you to heal.”
“Anything,” Mephisto nodded. He looked at Setsura. “Non-essential personnel should feel free to vacate the premises,” he said in icy voice that left no choice for him but to leave.
Setsura turned toward the door without complaint. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t have concerns. Mephisto and Princess were going to talk. Even if he’d okayed Setsura’s proposal, there was no telling if that promise would be kept the moment after that. That’s the kind of man he was.
But at least he’d said yes. Setsura should be happy with that.
Mephisto waited a minute after Setsura left the room. Looking at the door he said, “Do you want to make sure?” Make sure that Setsura wasn’t spying on them, he meant.
“No. He has gone.”
The Demon Princess understood everything that went on in her house. This was her world, after all.
“So what do you want?”
She did not readily answer the surprisingly abrupt question. The laboratory and its surrounding stone walls and arrays of strange instruments couldn’t help but bring to mind the aura bestowed by the ancient alchemists. The eerie blue light from the spinning, sparking dynamo played across their faces. The flame from the bronze lamp arose with the moves of a ribald dancer, the long shadows stretching out across the floor.
If a true picture of beauty could only be painted in dreams, then they were living in a dream. The figures of the pale man and woman facing each other absorbed the light and the darkness, casting their surroundings into drabness. Here was a living Bronze Age engraving of an Adonis and a Venus that deigned even to change the world.
“This is my task for you,” said the Venus.
At the sound of her voice, the world once again found its breath. She raised her hand and brushed back the hair covering half of her face. The scorched half of her face brought to Mephisto’s mind a name already consigned to the dust.
“The wound left by the Elder. This will be—difficult.”
Such a diagnosis by the Demon Physician would make any other patient faint dead away. Difficult. Had he ever uttered such words before? The shadows flickered across her face, casting the healthy half into shade, the burned half into light.
“Difficult things are by their nature difficult. But that also means they are not impossible. The only skill that eludes Doctor Mephisto is bringing the dead back to life.”
“True. Nevertheless, it will take time. And it will be painful. Like nothing you have experienced before in your life.”
“Do you think I came here ignorant of that fact?”
“No. Pain, however, can change even the soul.”
“So I shall become another person? How interesting. The sooner we start the better.”
“I must first attend to other tasks.”
“You may tend to them later.”
“No doctor could push a previous patient to the side and hope to preserve his reputation.”
“No?” the Demon Princess softly asked. Had any single word spilled from the lips of the ancient empresses in such an exquisite and prideful tone?
“I understand. In exchange, I shall need a particular compensation.”
“Gold and jewels, the finest works of art in the world, my own flesh—I could tell you to take whatever you wish and yet I fear the Demon Physician would not spare me a second glance.” She spoke in a whisper and fell silent. A shadow of what might even be called fear touched her features.
Mephisto smiled, turned ghostly by the flickering flame. But what the eye saw and the mind perceived as a smile could not be confidently called such, tinged as it was by something apart from the human. Perhaps he was recalling the smile as the ancient scholar signed in blood the parchment on which the contract was written.
“There is but one thing I wish to ask you,” he said. “Why do you want to be treated?”
“So you wish me to admit that I too am a woman?” The Demon Princess raised her hand to her mouth and smiled, a gesture that would have aroused any other human, male or female, to the breaking point. Such was this destroyer of worlds.
“You are correct,” said Mephisto, betraying not even a smirk. “Though not according to the conventional definition.”
“Hoh. And that would be?”
“I do not suppose that you desire beauty for its own sake?”
“And if I did, would you deride me as an ordinary woman? I won’t allow it. However fearless the emperor, I do not remember one ever once laughing at me.”
“Then perhaps I should not have asked the question,” said Mephisto, though this was no less outrageous a statement. “Precisely. You desire beauty. But for whom?”
The only sound was the melancholic sputter of the flame consuming the oil in the lamp.
“For whom?” Princess echoed several long seconds later. She asked the question in an offhand manner, though hints of a forced naturalness were still there.
“Yes. Women are creatures who know no limits and no shame when it comes to indulging themselves in the pursuit of beauty. But there are those rare occasions when she does it for someone else. Call it a redeeming feature of the fairer sex.”
“Are you saying that I want my face healed for someone else? You still have something to learn when it comes to diagnosing the soul, if not the body. Though even that much would be useful to Kikiou. But tend to me first.”
“There is still the matter of remuneration,” Mephisto said without moving an eyebrow.
A fierce glare poured from Princess’s eyes. “You would defy me in my own house, Mephisto? Not even the Demon Physician may do that.”
“I only wish to hear your answer. A name. Princess, how many of your incarnations have spoken those words? Did Daji? Did Moxi?”
She didn’t answer.
“Princess, when you invaded my hospital, why did not you not destroy him? Was it love?”
The dynamo spat electrical fire, casting a blue tint around the astounding question. Princess’s eyes became blood-red rubies. The flasks and beakers shattered. Strange fluids splashed on the table and floor. The liquids mixed together and burst into a pool of flames. Burning rivulets spilled off the table onto the floor and fluttered around her ankles.
She took no notice even when the white sleeves of her cheongsam began to burn. The fire advanced on Mephisto’s feet as well. His cape glittered. He ignored the beaten-down flames and looked instead at the blazing beauty before him. The flames wrapped around her, making it appear as if the fierce fires of hell were bursting forth from her own body.
“You are correct.”
Now with her hair consigned to the flames, the Demon Princess laughed. Her voice became glowing embers dancing toward the ceiling.
“I love Setsura Aki. As soon as I saw him lying on that bed in your hospital, I was captivated by his countenance. There was a beauty that I would trade the whole world for without regrets. Had he been but a beautiful man, I would not yearn for him so. Setsura Aki is a man I cannot fathom. I entrance neither of them—a fearsome enemy that desires only my death. And yet I was entranced.”
Had such a terrifying love ever been so confessed in this world? Inside the conflagration that seemed to be incinerating her cells one by one, her voice blazed all the brighter and with infinite pathos. The fire eating her flesh was no less intense than the one kindling her emotions.
“I will take his soul, else these last four thousand years have been lived in vain. Sully that soul with otherworldly lusts, immerse it in a bloody lake of humiliation, and he will kneel at my feet. That will take time. It will take ingenuity. First of all, I must be the perfect woman. My beauty must transcend all others, enough to drive a man mad. That is why your medical care is required.”
Her words flowed from a human-shaped fire. The floor burned. The walls burned. The flames licked the ceiling. They left only the doctor in white alone, suggestive of Mephisto’s existence itself.
“I agree.” His voice carried over the growling volcano, as clear as the Arctic waters at the ends of the earth. “I have had my reward. In the name of Doctor Mephisto, your face shall be healed.”