Chapter Two

Chapter Two

The old witch said, “It looks like your friends decided to pay us a visit.”

The glass shattered. The sound echoed down the street. She said to the shadows clambering through the window frame, “You really did pick the wrong house to break into.”

She stretched out her right hand. It disappeared into the blackness down to her wrist, and then erupted from the back of the invading shadow, sending blood and shards of flesh flying.

Three more were blown away in succession. The ones still outside beat a quick retreat. The hearts of the fallen vampires had exploded out their backs, as if Nuvenberg’s hand had done its damage from the inside out.

The other shadows bent over the fallen bodies like wild beasts.

“Behold your comrades!”

General Ryuuki looked at where the old woman was pointing. They were already upon their erstwhile accomplices, sinking their fangs into their necks and arms and slurping up the blood. One lifted her head. A five-year-old girl, her lips smeared with blood.

Ryuuki stood there like a statue.

“Don’t forget. They too have a right to live in this city. However, inflict harm upon another and it will be returned with interest. That also is the law here.”

“I do not disagree. But I cannot countenance what I created, nor what they will spawn. I will pay the price.”

“Well, I’ll be.” Nuvenberg nodded several times.

“However, if Setsura has already gone in, then Kikiou will have surely sealed the exits. A new entranceway must be found.”

“And when would be convenient for you?” Nuvenberg asked, sending two more shadows flying from the window.

“That world must be connected to this one. They cannot only exist there. There must always be a here. To the extent that Princess does not impinge upon my powers, I should be able to uncover its whereabouts.”

“Then the faster we get started, the better our odds,” said the old woman, casting a withering glance at the shadows squirming outside her window.

A ghastly light erupted in the street. The vampires screamed. Bolts of lightning stabbed through them. They had picked the worst place in the city to party that night. This was Magic Town.

“If you wouldn’t mind, my assistant is still in the shop. I’d appreciate a push.”

She took her hand off the joystick and tapped on the grips. Hard to believe that General Ryuuki should be reduced to a wheelchair attendant.

They took a taxi from Waseda Boulevard to Chuo Park. Vampires were on the prowl there too, but they had an almost medieval respect for class and stature.

This was Ryuuki, after all. He had once incurred the displeasure of the emperor and been dispatched to the far north. Rather than curse his fate, the gallant warrior quietly bore up under the hardships of defending the capital. When he stood before the creatures who roamed the night, that spirit still shone forth.

Hungering for blood, gnashing their teeth, these vampires—who would just as soon drink the blood of the monster next to them—shuddered with horror and slunk away. Ryuuki didn’t move a finger. He simply was. And the monsters parted to the left and the right, clearing a safe path for him.

“I’m impressed,” said the driver. “You can run them critters over and not leave a scratch on them. And you push them aside just like that. You wouldn’t be on good terms with the Toyama Elder or Doctor Mephisto, perhaps?

“Not exactly, but neither are you far wrong with that supposition,” answered Nuvenberg. “However, do you regularly drive where the likes of them are thick on the ground? We didn’t come across any other taxis.”

Just as the lights of a privately-owned cab sped by.

“Naw,” said the driver. “There’s plenty about. You can’t be afraid of the dark and monsters and such and call yourself a Demon City cabbie. I’ll drive around Chuo Park at midnight and cruise the Imperial Gardens to boot. Hey, there’s one.”

The pale form of a woman rose up in the light of the headlamps at the side of the road. “That’s a ghost,” the cabbie said, passing by without a second glance. “Got no time for her tonight. But on days when the fares are few, I’ll give ’em a ride, crazy as it sounds. A ghost that can hail a taxi will always figure out a way to pay.”

Such legends and folklore were not only the province of Demon City, but the capital as well.

A famous example was the cabbie who picked up a wan, pale girl near a graveyard and took her home. He waited while she went inside to get the fare. But she never came out again. When the cabbie went to the door, he was told that this was the anniversary of the girl’s untimely death.

But one of many variations of taxi folklore.

When it came to Demon City, they were of an order of magnitude more than where that one came from. Every night, dozens emerged from the ruins and appeared along the roadways begging passing taxis to take them home. The record for a single night stood at a hundred and seven.

No Demon City cabbie could afford to be afraid of ghosts. When it came to things not of this world, veteran hacks were more trustworthy authorities than mediums and psychics.

They believed they had a religious duty to return individual spirits to their homes. Furthermore, they’d bring any evidence left by the departed in their cabs—jewelry and watches they were wearing at the time of death—to the family members, who were sure to overpay the fare or offer them a little something on the side as a reward.

This was only heaven smiling down on them, and they were all the more likely to cruise the graveyards and ruins by choice rather than as a last recourse.

In Shinjuku at night, just about anything was likely to pop up at any time. Protecting themselves from the thieves and mad killers and shapeshifters required a generous collection of talismans, guns, and other assorted magic items and weaponry.

Right now, hanging over the cabbie’s head was a gold and silver chain with at least a dozen charms. Some added holy water to the windshield wiper fluid. In the corner of every cab company was sure to be an altar for every faith, and a dispensary with amulets, Christian crosses, holy water and rosaries for sale.

Most important of all was the sheet of high polymer plastic separating the front and back seats.

They saw gangs of vampires here and there battling it out with neighborhood watches and night shift cops. The driver didn’t show any sign of concern as he turned onto Juniso Avenue and pulled up to the back entrance of Chuo Park a little after eight o’clock p.m. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

“You really want to get out here?”

Nuvenberg tipped the incredulous cabbie and said, “Thank you for the ride. If it breaks down, I’d recommend you stay inside till morning.” She got out and the taxi took off. “Here?” she asked Ryuuki, because Setsura had gone in on the side facing the Park Hyatt Hotel.

“The new entranceway is close to here.”

Ryuuki paced several yards to the shoulder of the Koshu Highway, stood there and closed his eyes for several seconds. Then without a word he approached the high fence that enclosed the park. Nuvenberg followed him in her wheelchair.

The air suddenly grew cold. The evil spirits came at them like a hard winter wind. They couldn’t retreat, but had to turn and lean into the demonic gale.

There on the corner of Juniso Avenue was the large Romanesque frame of the man. The only one who possessed such a wicked aura.

“What an unexpected meeting,” said Kazikli Bey.

“Where are you going?” Ryuuki asked.

“I should ask the same question of you.” The general’s eyes burned like a pair of fiery torches.

“Looks like the same place,” Nuvenberg muttered to herself. A voice to make the blood run cold. A spirit willing to do what it took to get things done. “Isn’t that so, Bey?”

“And if it was?”

He approached them with large strides. His right eye was a black pit, the scar left behind by Princess’s stake. It had penetrated to his brain, but here he was in fine fettle. Needless to say, evidence of what an impressive member of the species this vampire lord was. Though perhaps the more fearsome conclusion was that, despite his greatness, the wound inflicted by Princess had still not completely healed.

Ryuuki and the old woman didn’t move.

“However it pains me to admit it, I am possessed by memories I cannot extinguish. And the source of them resides in that manor house. General Kazikli Bey has never let the object of his desires slip through his fingers.”

Ryuuki’s entire frame dimmed behind a veil of swirling dust.

“And her name is Takako.”

Challenging that soft answer, General Bey’s harsh voice demanded, “So you know her? How is that?”

“Princess told me once, around a hundred years ago. Your wife threw herself from the top of your mountain castle. Princess also has the portrait you painted many years later. The image of a small woman from the Far East. I can see the resemblance.”

Visible in the moonlight, the expression that passed across General Bey’s face was one of undeniable grief. But a moment later, he threw his head back and roared with laughter, laughter that seemed to shake the earth.

“Well, fine. As long as you know why I’m here, know as well that I cannot allow you to return to that kingdom.”

He laced his fingers together—the fingers of a pianist—and bent them backwards, cracking the knuckles. With the humming of an electric motor, Nuvenberg backed the wheelchair off the sidewalk and onto the roadway, the path of the wheelchair tracing a wide arc on the blacktop.

General Bey stood still. He noticed that his fighting potential was being divided in two. Not to mention that Ryuuki and the old woman were hardly forces to be trifled with in the first place.

Bey furrowed his brow and said to the old woman in the wheelchair, “Have we met somewhere before?”

“This all does seem familiar,” Nuvenberg muttered.

At the same time, a glimmer of light spilled from her lips onto the road. Spit, General Bey realized. Something arose from it like a wave of heat off of hot pavement. It resembled an indistinct cloud of insects. They swarmed over General Bey.

A haze of blood erupted from his body. “Sons of bitches!” he roared, flailing at the enemy. Small holes opened in his arms. They multiplied and grew larger. And became gaping pits. A chunk of his head disintegrated. A shoulder caved in. He was being eaten alive.

The demon lord that had once defeated Setsura, that even Princess feared, was being devoured and there was nothing he could do to stop it. Nuvenberg’s swarm had turned into a formless cannibal.

In the year 1800, one Henry Durbin published a monograph titled, A narrative of some extraordinary things that happened to Mr. Richard Giles’s children. According to the account, the children were strangled by unseen forces, not only beaten and bludgeoned but bitten more than two dozen times. The bite marks were triangular in shape and deep enough to strike the bone. The adults who’d witnessed the atrocity said that even when they restrained their arms, the invisible assailants left marks beneath their hands.

Nuvenberg had conjured similar monsters out of her spit.

General Bey’s body had already shrunken to half its size. His hands, legs and torso could not retain their original form. And yet he desperately continued to struggle, his movements looking like those of some crazed modern dancer running across the stage of a nightmare.

At length those struggles ended, and all that remained were half-eaten and unidentifiable body parts scattered about. Soon they, too, disappeared.

Nuvenberg’s magical powers were truly awesome. All that time, the old woman had sat in the wheelchair with her eyes closed, chanting an incantation in a low voice. At last she opened her eyes. Her face was gray. Her shoulders slumped.

“I wonder if that finished him off,” she said, wiping the sweat off her face. It was the consistency of cold glycerin.

“Impressive,” said Ryuuki with unfeigned honesty.

“Shall we be on our way, then?”

“Shouldn’t you rest a bit first?”

“Time is of the essence. Despite the grave countenance I’m wearing now, I’ll be back to my jolly old self in a jiffy.”

“This way,” Ryuuki said, with a jerk of his chin. He stood in front of the soaring wall and glanced curiously over his shoulder.

“Don’t worry. I won’t be a burden to you,” she said, catching her breath. “This wheelchair has some curious properties of its own.”

She closed her eyes.

“Hey—”

Ryuuki reached out his hand. His fingertips brushed against her shoulder. He stood still and watched as she and the wheelchair rose into the air. Anti-gravity controlled by the will alone—the phenomenon called levitation by the few monks and yogis capable of it.

After Nuvenberg disappeared over the fence, Ryuuki crouched down and jumped after her, an admiring expression on his face all the while.

A warm summer breeze drifted down the now vacant street. A creature akin to a grub or worm appeared from a nearby manhole, inching along on centipede-like legs. It slithered up to the bloody remains of General Bey, opened its tube-shaped mouth, and commenced sucking them in.

For several minutes the vacuuming, sucking sound alone filled the darkness. The strange worm reared up. If it had visible ears, it would have pricked them like a wary cat at another odd sound—a sound like a person trying to hack up a bit of food caught in the throat.

There was nothing else around that could make such a noise.

Then it came again. As if signaling a response, the groaning mingled here and there in the surrounding air as something leapt off the ground with a wet slap and spatter. A dark red glob of fresh meat. Closer inspection would have revealed it to be a torn chunk of small bowel.

Blood and sinew followed after it. A section of viscera.

However ripped and masticated, turned to soft pudding, each appeared to nonetheless possess a mind and will of its own. Each sought out its own kind and fused together, gradually forming distinctly recognizable shapes and sizes.

A shadow fell across the road and sidewalk as the moon scurried behind a black cloud. And then popped out again. The big, burly frame rose up in the white and glittering moonlight and stood there like a heroic Renaissance statue.

The statue took a breath, its heart beat and its lungs resumed their normal function. It scooped up the centipede and dropped it into its wide maw, the movement of its cheeks replaying the death struggle between the slug and the giant’s teeth.

And then it was over, and the giant’s Adam’s apple bobbed as it swallowed what remained.

His right eye was a black cave—a tempered body that could only belong to a soldier—he laughed at the moon—this was none other than the man who’d been devoured minutes before by invisible bugs and wiped off the face of the earth.

Kazikli Bey.