Chapter One

Chapter One

That day in Shinjuku, many more of its citizens than usual cursed the coming night.

Thanks to a nonstop and effective social engineering PR campaign—on the streets and in the shops, a sharply dressed man or woman might casually observe that violent vampires had been seen roaming the streets after sundown, sucking blood without regard to age or class or decorum—the countermeasures were already moving into high gear.

Over two thousand incidents were phoned into the ward’s crime prevention unit. At the grocery stores and supermarkets, the price of peaches and locks rose a hundredfold and still sold out.

Families went shopping together for lumber to make stakes or raided abandoned lots for spare scraps of wood. The resourceful block leaders of Kikuicho and Bentencho created a distribution system, equipping lumber dealers and home centers with lathes to turn out stakes. Everybody in their blocks—from the oldest centenarian to the hour-old baby—was presented with three each.

At the same time, the neighborhood watch committees set up barricades at the block perimeters, got electrical generators from community centers and charged the cyclone fencing. When the sun went down, they started up the patrols, armed with flame throwers and incendiary grenades.

The residents of blocks lacking that kind of strong-armed leadership built their houses into single-walled estates and waited behind multiple layers of locks and bolts for the dawn to break.

Fortunately, when panic did break out in parts of Naitomachi and Haramachi, it didn’t burn out of control.

The citizens of the city took it in stride. When it came to the threat of the “other,” they had a different way of thinking than outsiders. The greatest fear of the vampires—and on this point there was wide agreement among the general public—was not being drained of blood to the point of death.

But to die and yet live to seek the lifeblood of others.

Whether all that disagreeable or not, it was a fact that a person had to “die” before becoming a vampire. They would come back to life, fearing the light and with a lust for human blood. This could be called a new life.

Instead of the vampire’s fangs, what about a carbon steel knife stabbed into the jugular? Or a .45 round from a gangbanger’s gun in the gut?

And then there were the “regular” monsters. Headhunters with a taste for fresh heads. Packs of ghouls wandering from their home ground in the ruins. One of those flying, squid-like monsters that could swoop down on a person like a hawk snatching up a prairie dog. A shapeshifter who could appear at the door, only showing its true form after passing through the threshold.

Which alternative would the attacked prefer? A “clean” death? Or a cursed life? According to a poll conducted by a private supernatural research laboratory, sixty percent of Shinjuku’s residents chose the former.

So even this night, feeling the tension but no overwhelming fear, the vast majority readied themselves for whatever creatures of the night might appear.

The Shinjuku police helicopter landed on the roof of the ward government building. Mayor Kajiwara climbed aboard.

The large aircraft carried a crew of ten during night patrols. It was armed with a 20 mm Vulcan Gatling gun, AAR 70 mm air-to-ground missiles in two nineteen-round, rapid-fire pods, and a 30 mm laser cannon. Compared to similar models outside Shinjuku, it was a veritable killing machine. In this city, it was considered lightly armed. The pilot and crew had already asked for heavier weaponry.

Kajiwara was joining a regular night patrol. He was there to boost troop morale and foster goodwill with the local television reporters he’d brought along. But there was one other important reason he wasn’t sharing with anybody.

Including the cameraman and pilot, there were already nine on board. Kajiwara stepped onto the deck and then off again. He turned to his security chief. “You’ve screened everybody, right?”

“Yes, sir. No problems, sir.”

Assured by the security chief’s confident declaration, he stepped forward. But just to make sure, he asked again, “How did you run the checks?”

“With a crucifix.”

“And that means we have nothing to worry about.”

“I appreciate the compliment, sir.”

“Then you’re relieved of duty.”

“Sir?”

“First tell everybody to line up. Show them this.”

He took a peach from the pocket of his jacket. After an internal struggle—pride warring between the rock and a hard place of social position—the security chief took it. With grim resolve, he relayed the mayor’s command to the guards behind him. As the crew lined up, the disagreeable expression was plain on his face.

“One, okay. Two, okay. Three, okay.” And down the line. Last were the cameraman and the pilot. The guard brushed the peach against the cameraman’s nose. “Okay,” he said over his shoulder.

Behind him the pilot threw his head backwards. And when his face popped back it was a gruesome sight.

“Hit him with the peach!” Kajiwara cried.

The pilot seized the startled guard by the shoulders, holding him rigid as he brought his pallid face to the man’s neck.

One of the cops jumped forward. Drawing his Magnum from his hip holster, he pressed it into the pilot’s side and pulled the trigger. That he didn’t try pulling them apart first reflected his training as a Demon City cop.

As the hollow point bullet tore through his insides, the pilot threw a roundhouse with his right arm. Kajiwara watched as the blow broke the cop’s jaw and sent him flying, and then stepped forward himself.

“Mayor!”

Kajiwara plucked the peach from the guard’s trembling hand and fearlessly jammed it into the pilot’s face, right beneath the rim of his helmet.

The pilot raised his head and bellowed. The landing lights of the helipad lit up the pair of scarlet lines falling from his mouth. Dripping juice and pieces of fruit clinging to the side of his face, the pilot backed away, his hand pressed against his cheek.

“Quarantine him! Don’t kill him! He’s a citizen of this city!”

If any of them harbored doubts about the authority of the office of mayor in Shinjuku, then surely Kajiwara settled them then and now. None of the itching trigger fingers pulled the rest of the way.

“Thank you!”

The guard staggered, his hand clamped against his neck. As Kajiwara grabbed him by the collar and pushed him back toward his comrades, he couldn’t help smiling to himself. He’d raised his credibility considerably since stepping onto the helicopter.

He body-checked the vampire pilot. The flesh beneath the uniform squirmed like a bag of eels and the pilot screamed. Kajiwara pushed the pilot aside and the rest of the cops were on him.

As they hauled him and the injured guard away, Kajiwara called out, “Hey, if you want to keep him in lockup, fine. Just make sure there are peaches at the exits.”

“I understand,” Galeen Nuvenberg said into the phone, and then returned it to the table. She rubbed her fingers on the armrest as if to wipe away the plastic feel. It was a sensation she couldn’t accustom herself to. She’d much prefer handling snakes or leeches.

She’d spoken for hardly a minute, and yet the fatigue creeping through her body was like that at the end of a long trip. Her cousin in Prague was insisting that she come to her granddaughter’s wedding. That was the least of her concerns these days, and so she had refused. The “granddaughter” was eighty-four. And her suitor was a young man of twenty-five.

Nuvenberg warned her about casting spells and tried to hang up, but there was no way she could stop casting them now. She just wanted to borrow some magic to make sure everything got settled with nobody seeing through the fifty-year facade.

She couldn’t think up a good answer, so that’s how she ended the call. It was a five-year ritual. Who knew if she’d live that long, or even survive the current troubles.

Her stomach felt like she’d swallowed a couple pounds of lead. This was the first time she’d experienced such a troublesome qi. Driving a stake through the heart of the man who’d left it there hadn’t removed it. She’d have to resort to other methods.

The motorized wheelchair hummed down the hall, through a door and into a narrow corridor. Doorways lined the walls on either side. An infinite number of strange paths opened up behind each one.

Passing through one on the left, a familiar face greeted the old witch. Lying on the workbench was the young girl dressed in blue, an expressionless look on her face that her own world could barely comprehend.

The black bullet holes in her chest and forehead were a little shy of a half-inch in diameter. But there was still nothing inside. Using the tools scattered around the doll girl, Nuvenberg connected the glass blood vessels. All that was left to do was fill her with blood.

“I’m going to have to ask you to make a quick revival,” she said, repressing a stab of pain in her abdomen. “This is one load I cannot carry on my own. I am hardly in better condition than you. That man’s demon qi is a fine piece of work.”

She was still complaining when a hard knock came at the front door. The reverberations were much stronger than could be expected from even a normal house.

“What’s that? What a racket.”

She ignored it at first. But her senses were drawn toward the sound. The wizardess awkwardly maneuvered the wheelchair over to a cauldron in the corner of the room filled with water. She plunged her forefinger into the water. The small ripples spread out. In the center of them appeared the face of a man.

“What in the world!” she exclaimed, as if being greeted by the appearance of a long-lost acquaintance or relation.

The one arm of the man in dark Chinese dress hung limply by his side. The heroic features bathed in moonlight were none other than those of General Ryuuki.

Three minutes later the two were face to face in the front foyer. “A strange man has come to my strange house. I have to admit I am a bit curious. Clearly a stake alone won’t do the trick.”

“That is a question not even I can answer for certain,” Ryuuki said. He shook his head. “The power comes from Princess. Though I would think that was something Galeen Nuvenberg could overcome.”

“Another curiosity. We may both be overestimating each other.”

“If you lacked the confidence to destroy me, you would not have allowed me into your house.”

The slight smile that rose to his mouth was mirrored by the one on the old woman’s lips. “Did you come here for something other than conversation? Perhaps you wanted me to finish you off for good?”

Ryuuki nodded. “Precisely.”

This man had pushed back the invading barbarians in the lands of the north. But now his stouthearted features bore the marks of a sorrow and fatigue he wished wiped away.

“I have abandoned Princess. I have already taken the blood of another, because I could not stand living in exchange for Princess’s favor as the sole reward. She does not fear eternity. She is content with simply being alive. But not me. The life I am living now is not my own. I once believed that I could live my own life in this city. But I see that is not to be.”

“Aren’t you jumping to a hasty conclusion?”

“Prague’s greatest witch should listen to what I have to say. The night you plunged the stake into my chest, I drank the blood of the girl who pulled it out. The same girl who had given me shelter in her home.”

Nuvenberg closed her eyes and drew a long breath. “What became of her?”

“Afterwards I killed her. To be honest, I cannot say whether that was the right thing to do or not.”

“In this city, vampires are not necessarily loathed simply for being vampires.”

“There are vampires who loathe themselves for being vampires.”

“Do you find living as a vampire so loathsome? This city is home to all kinds.”

“And how many of those kinds attack innocent children?”

Nuvenberg didn’t answer.

“And tasting the hunger for blood, would rip out the throat of his own child?”

Again, no answer.

“I would. And those whose blood I have taken would. This is the eternal reward that I inherited from Princess. Moreover, for every ten victims, there is no inclination to make even one of them one of us.”

“Really? And when you do?”

“They kill and lap up the blood. Until only the rotting corpse remains. This is not bloodsucking. This is work of brutal murderers.”

“And when you are the sire, are those your spawn? And their victims?”

“The same.”

“And does the same apply to you?”

“It does.”

“Even so, this city may accept you yet. For a man on the run, there are plenty of places where you could hope to at least survive.”

Ryuuki smiled. “Perhaps. But I am tired—living like this, killing every night, drinking the blood of the innocent. I could not find forgiveness for that within myself.”

“You are a man of the old school.” Nuvenberg laced her wrinkled fingers together. “But I agree. I will give you the death you desire. You and that dust woman who dances around you. But there will be a fee.”

“Would jewels be acceptable?”

“No.”

“I have no other means to pay you.”

“Old school to the end. This is the information age.”

Ryuuki’s eyes narrowed.

“All this morning I have been divining a man’s fate. All by himself, this brave warrior has taken on the likes of Princess and you. But his future does not look bright. Great calamities await him. One way or another, I must take action. He is surrounded on all sides by traitors and turncoats. Which is why I would appreciate directions to your mistress’s hideout.”

“I cannot do that.”

“Then there is nothing more I can do for you.”

“She saved my life. Even though my existence was cursed in the process, I remain grateful. I cannot betray her, even to secure my release.”

“A man cannot serve two masters,” Nuvenberg said coldly. “Choose me or her. Then we can talk.”

Ryuuki shut his eyes. The comet trails of dust swirled around him.

“My, my. She’s upset with me. I do not know who you are, but dust to dust and she continues to protect you. What a terrible and tragic burden of karma to carry—it must be a woman.”

“Her name is Shuuran,” said Ryuuki, opening his eyes.

“Then pardon me, Shuuran. But I must have an answer.”

“Please forgive me intruding on you like this.”

“Will you be leaving then?”

For this general, perhaps it was better to live accursed than die a betrayer.

“I do not know how, but I will seek out my own end.”

“Wait,” Nuvenberg called out, glancing out the window.

The street lamps in Takada no Baba’s Magic Town were gas-lit. A horde of shadows seemed to be scurrying beneath them, coming this way. They sprouted arms and legs and drew close to the window, pressing their faces against the glass.

The faces of young men and women. Though they looked human, their dreadful and vile expressions were anything but. Like ravenous wolves, they opened mouths to reveal fangs dripping with drool.