Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Yakou whirled around. He hadn’t seen that coming either.

“What’s going on?” Setsura asked.

“I don’t know. Let’s find out.”

“Not an acquaintance?” Setsura wondered wryly.

“Princess’s sentries are apparently useless at keeping strangers from stomping in uninvited whenever they feel like it. If you don’t want to know, you’re welcome to stay right here.”

Another unearthly scream pounded against their eardrums, that could only be the product of some unimaginably awful fate. With a low groan, Yakou’s wings unfolded from his back, flapping as soon as they achieved their full span.

Rising upwards in a swirl of air, Yakou looked down and said, “So, you decided to come along for the ride.”

“Seems so,” said Setsura, dangling from one of his ankles.

The scream came from the woods not a dozen yards away. The forest around them formed a dense maze of trees and underbrush that would make swift progress on foot difficult. And intruders could be detected from the air far more easily.

Yakou came to a halt. He glanced at the sky and clouds above, and then again down at the ground. “I haven’t seen that before.”

He indicated the island in the sea of dense woodland, an open space that could only be manmade. In the clearing unfolded a barbaric scene.

Several dozen stakes were planted around the perimeter of the clearing. Naked men and women were tied to them. In the center, two rows of wide columns enclosed a separate area that contained a good twenty beds. On each bed, her hands and feet tied to the bed posts, was the writhing body of a naked woman.

Men dressed in medieval outfits, two to a bed, stared down at the swollen bellies with odious eyes. The women were all pregnant.

Strange creatures poured into the clearing from the surrounding forest. A giant woman with multiple eyes and bug-like appendages here, a human-like ghost straight out of an old picture scroll there. Snake heads, lobster claws for hands, the feet and tails of lions—these chimeras might have otherwise engendered more laughter than fear.

Flinging mucus with every step, the grotesque monsters sprang at the men and women tied to the stakes. Their fangs tore into the flesh, their claws split the bellies in two and stuffed the arms and legs into their spider-like mouths. It was simultaneously a scene straight out of hell and a fantasy of the absurd.

And yet none of them beseeched the two in the sky above for help. Yakou doing nothing was understandable, but that Setsura cast down not a single strand of devil wire was certainly strange.

But the bodies lashed to the stakes would be consumed in an instant. And all that time, protected from the monsters by the rings of pillars, a far worse atrocity was going on.

The men in ancient dress took swords shaped like hatchets. One after the other they split open the women’s stomachs and from spasming abdominal cavities extracted the bloody fetuses.

Setsura understood. This was an historical reenactment. The atrocity Daji had beseeched Emperor Zhou to commit—to open the bellies of pregnant women, tear out the babies, and examine them with the naked eye.

He heard faraway laughter, resonating as if the mountains themselves were chortling. Yakou placed his hands over his ears. That broke the rhythm of his flight and like a beautiful pair of Siamese twins they plummeted to earth.

Setsura’s eyes fluttered and opened. Yakou was slumped against his left shoulder. He came around a minute later. “Do me a favor, okay? Don’t ask me if this is a dream too.”

So Yakou had somehow been dreaming the same dream as Setsura.

“Is this a dream too?” Setsura asked anyway.

Even if this world was the reality, without any way of proving otherwise, there was no telling how long it would go on. It was impossible for them to distinguish between the one and the other. Yakou didn’t answer. Setsura didn’t expect him to.

“Why did you dream that dream as well?”

“I don’t know.”

It was hard to imagine a power that could ensnare Setsura and Yakou—shamans of unsurpassed powers—in the same nightmare.

“Must have been that scream.”

“Probably.”

Setsura mused, “That was the voice of the Princess you’re crushing on. You’d better hurry on back. Something must be up.”

“I was told to keep an eye on you. You and she could be exchanging your deathbed farewells and I’m not to leave your side.”

“I don’t get you. Loosen up a bit. You don’t need to be so anal about everything.”

“In the middle of filling a specialty order for a favored customer, would you just pop off to a movie with that shop girl of yours?”

“What are you bringing her up for?” Setsura said a bit testily. “Well, whatever. I’m curious, too. Let’s check it out.”

He strode off toward the manor house. Stepping into the front foyer, the two of them stopped and exchanged glances. A moaning like nothing else in the world reverberated down the hallway, a sound like the loathing and resentment of hungry ghosts writhing in the depths of hell. A sound that would send the heartiest hero fleeing, his hands clapped to his ears, screaming.

Setsura furrowed his brows. Yakou turned his eyes toward the heavens as the sound went on and on without respite. What they’d heard earlier outside—what summoned the nightmare—wrenched the strange living force of this world to the breaking point, responding to the tremors in Princess’s mind and soul.

“Your mistress must be suffering,” Setsura said in a hinting manner, thinking maybe he’d hang out here in the hall for a while. Outsiders probably wouldn’t be welcome.

Yakou was clearly beside himself. His hesitancy already had made him a prisoner of impatience. Setsura started off toward the sound of the voice, if only to see for himself what was going on. It was coming from underground, surely from the direction of Mephisto’s laboratory.

Except that he finally found Mephisto in a room a good distance removed from the one where they’d last met. It wasn’t locked. The screams grew louder and louder.

“Hello, everybody,” Setsura called out in a tired voice and pushed open the door. He didn’t knock.

His eyes were dazzled by a rainbow splash of vibrant colors. Another example of the strange wonders the manor house held. A flower garden. The gorgeous flowers—not one of which Setsura recognized—covered the ground and reached out to infinity.

Pretty flowers. Flowers with large and poisonous petals. Brilliant sunlight poured in from an unseen skylight. Although each of them must be emitting its own unique scent, a single bittersweet aroma—and a quite likable one—enshrouded them.

But Setsura hadn’t sensed that yet. His defensive instincts on high alert, he’d held his breath since opening the door.

“It’s Mephisto,” said Yakou.

Apparently the odor had no effect on vampires. Or it wasn’t poisonous in the first place.

“Princess won’t forgive anybody acting up in front of her, be you the devil himself.”

Setsura didn’t say so, but this sounded a whole lot worse than a little “acting up.” He said, “Over there.”

Dimly visible in the direction he was pointing was a mound shaped like a person. “What room is this?” Setsura asked in a muffled voice as they hurried along.

“I’m not sure, but it seems to contain a collection of medicinal plants. They’re said to be poisonous.”

The startled Setsura replied, “You know a lot for not really knowing anything.”

They stopped at the sight of the crouching form of Princess’s body. Yakou placed his hand over his mouth and nose. This child of the night had sensed something amiss, a shift in the fragrance, to a strange and awful smell.

Setsura saw the cause at his feet. Every flower within a sixty-foot radius around the Demon Princess had rotted, wilted and drooped. The petals and stems altered their colors, covered themselves in a weird viscous fluid, and transformed into a different kind of corrupted strangeness.

All because of Princess’s agonies.

“Princess!” Yakou called out. “What has happened to you?”

She didn’t answer.

Yakou ran up to her, the soles of his shoes scattering the corruption of this inner sanctuary.

The cries of pain changed to a sound no one could have believed this sorceress could make—the sound of a woman weeping. But listening impassively, Setsura’s eyes flashed with a terrible light. She wasn’t crying—no, the Demon Princess was laughing. She slowly got to her feet, her white figure as pretty as it was dreadful. Her laughter grew louder.

“Princess—”

“Look at me!” she declared, a proclamation suffused with joy and evil. “I am back!”

She turned her face toward them. The other half was not covered with a sheen of black hair. Without prompting, Setsura’s mind returned to that summer night, that clear summer night when she sailed on a black ship down flooded streets into this city.

From that cool crisp night to the bloody, tragic night before, she was the utterly unbecoming and perfectly appropriate creature. There was not a line, a stain, a smudge left on her face.

“Just what I would expect from the Demon Physician.” Princess’s voice flowed on the beams of light. “I am back, at last. Look, one and all. Setsura Aki, this is my true face.”

“Good for you,” Setsura said, not even cracking a smile. “Though not the kind of face you’d want to face the world with.”

A brief moment of disquiet flickered across her bright countenance. Something sliced through the gloom and with a bright ping! ricocheted away. The shuriken embedded itself in the ground at Yakou’s feet.

“Princess shall not be disrespected!” Yakou growled, baring his fangs.

“Enough already. There’ll be no killing him.” Princess smiled pleasantly. “I have not attended to his punishment and an assortment of other minor tasks because of my concern for my face. But that grief is behind me already. Setsura, I who toy with the nations of the earth and leave them in the dust will consign you to the hell of my lusts.”

Setsura closed his eyes. “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” he said, though a faint line of tension did run through his words. “Though I wouldn’t let my guard down if I were you.”

“Why would that be?”

“That doctor in the white cape healed you, did he not? If you harbored no doubts that he was truly your colleague, then you could be assured that his treatment would be similarly perfect. But you do harbor those doubts. And for that matter, I would not be so certain about him either.”

There was no other man in the world who would address the Demon Princess so frankly or cast aspersions on Doctor Mephisto so casually.

The expected retort was quick in coming. “Don’t be so glib.” The white figure glided up behind him.

“How perfect was your treatment?” Setsura asked, without a glance over his shoulder. “There is no way even Doctor Mephisto could treat the infamous Daji in two or three hours and not leave a scar on her fair skin.”

“I wouldn’t deny it,” Mephisto said. “But the patient desired speed more than perfection.”

“So the customer is always right, eh?”

Mephisto ignored the jibe.

“I have heard there is a particular side effect,” said Princess, touching her face. “But whatever will be, will be. I shall make use of the Demon Physician’s services again. Hoh, adding you to our little gang came with quite the package of benefits.”

Then she looked long and hard at Setsura.

“The time has come, Setsura,” she declared. “I will torment your body and spirit, down to your heart and soul. After tonight, you will never sleep again.”