Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Instead of going into the manor house, Princess instead went down to the lake. The waves lapped against the shore. She did not slacken her pace as she entered the water. The waves washed over her feet and rose to her waist.

“Hey,” said Setsura. “Where are you going? Consigning yourself to a watery grave? Way to go. I’m impressed.”

“Quit dawdling,” she answered over her shoulder.

“I don’t like water. I can’t swim.”

“Kikiou tells me otherwise. Relax. Here alone the lake is make-believe.”

“Eh?” was all Setsura said in return. It would make more sense if she’d said the entire thing was an illusion. Trust Kikiou to pull off something like that. Only a portion of the oncoming waves were unreal?

“What are you doing? Come. Not a hair on your head will get wet.” Sunlight glimmered off the whitecaps as Princess disappeared beneath the waves.

Setsura stood at the water’s edge. He knelt and dipped his finger into the water. And felt the dampness and coolness of the real thing. He pulled out his hand. Water dripped from the skin onto the palm of his other hand. He couldn’t describe the sensation as anything but what it appeared to be.

Wrinkling his nose in distaste, Setsura stepped forward. The water came up to his ankles. “A slut and a liar,” he grumbled, but kept on walking into the clear water.

He stopped when the water came up to his neck. His skin was used it by now. It all seemed a dumb joke. He nodded his head forward. With a well, whatever look on his face, he submerged himself.

His hair floated up. The bottom of the lake was a faint green. Princess was twenty yards in front of him, the outlines of her body warping in the currents. His head rang numbly.

By now the water’s surface was far above him, but strangely seemed to be carved in bas-relief. He reached the limits of his lungs and took a breath.

The lake water rushed into his lungs. He coughed. The cough came out easily. He put his hand to his chest, surprised. He was surprised, but the expression on his face never changed. Nor its beauty.

The beautiful drowning man strode

along the lake bottom

His complaints above now reduced

to faint grumblings

Taking care so the bubbles bearing

the poison of his final prayer

did not muddy the lake’s floor

His hair rose up full of indignation

His eyes beheld with ill humor

the stones and mud at his feet

All equally beautiful

Any maledictions he breathed here

could only sound sorrowful

If the fishes could recite poetry, that would be the poem they would sing.

Princess stopped. Setsura looked up. The sun was far away. The clear water was very deep. The dark shadows of fishes glided back and forth in front of his eyes like strange flying creatures.

The Demon Princess was standing before a soaring structure. It rose to the height of a two-story building. If the surface really was finished in green marble, he couldn’t tell, which he considered a failure on his part.

“Your final resting place?” His voice rang out clearly.

“I rarely use it, but Kikiou appears to have moved the casket. Naturally, putting any other one into the water would make breathing difficult.”

“You have a strange way of doing things.”

Princess climbed a stone staircase leading to a doorway. The building was shaped more or less like a cube. Setsura recalled the mausoleum floating in the center of the lake. The steel door opened. Setsura entered after her and was bathed in white light. He heard the door closing behind him.

A moment later, the water had all disappeared. Setsura looked at his arms and legs, unencumbered by the weight of the water. Far from being damp, running his fingers along the hem of his slicker produced the dry sound of skin against fabric. No fluid filled his lungs either. He couldn’t help feeling a touch of admiration for the old alchemist.

They were in a hall that took up about a dozen yards on each side. At the back of the hall was a black double door set into the wall. Princess stood in front of it.

Without her touching it, it parted in the middle and opened silently to the right and to the left.

A deep blue twilight filtered in from the bottom of the sea, perfect for endless sleep, Setsura couldn’t help thinking. Within the blue glow, gauzy curtains wavered in the breaths of air like waxworks cast in an uncertain light. A single ply unfocused the eyes, and when additional layers were added front and back, the misty shadows seemed to project themselves onto the back of Setsura’s retinas.

In front of them the casket rose up like a small black mound.

A casket was an attempt to keep the deceased in the land of the living. Setsura had come here to release the soul from that curse and guide it on the long journey back to the realm of the dead. He had to wonder whether its surface could be severed.

Not turning around, Princess said, “Don’t think such trivial thoughts.”

“Are you a telepath as well?”

“In this room, everything is borne on the currents of the air.”

“How about that.”

The two stood in front of the casket. “Do you want to see inside?” Princess pressed, taking a step back.

“It won’t open in any event. I’ll leave that in your good hands.”

“Open it.”

“Pushy bitch.”

“Don’t you care what happens to Takako?”

“I’m such a featherweight.” Setsura shrugged and leaned forward and reached toward the lid. It must be the lid, but he couldn’t see any seams.

His fingers brushed the surface. A bolt of lightning shot through his brain. He tucked himself into a black ball and bounded away. His poker face had paled considerably.

“Did you see?” Princess asked, a smile in her voice. “This casket was made from white wood. It was not painted with black paint. This color is not black. This is blood, coated with the blood of those whose souls as well as their bodies I thrust down into darkness. You saw just now, didn’t you? What did they say to you?”

Setsura shook his head. Not in denial. To shake off the lingering horror. The memories stuck to him like glue. Four thousand years of blood and torment. He tried to forget the myriad of faces but couldn’t erase the images. They would be showing up in his dreams. He might have to resort to sleeping pills.

“Over the past four thousand years, some have come this far on their own. But none has ever opened the lid of the casket. When the night beckons, what I see are madmen standing in front of my casket, mumbling to themselves in delirium. There’s no need to explain what becomes of them.”

Her white teeth gleamed. Her pale hand softly touched the lid. A fissure ran around its circumference. A coward might imagine it a creature of unknown origins opening its black maw. The interior was inky black as well. The overflowing blood of the victims had seeped in everywhere.

Setsura detected the aroma of fresh wood, kindling a strange sense of incongruity. He drew closer and looked in. Takako lay there quietly in the undecorated darkness. She was dressed in a white gown.

“I haven’t sucked her blood since then. So if you were to liberate her now, she may yet return to human form, say, if Doctor Mephisto took her under his care.”

Certainly a heartless declaration, knowing full well that he was already one of them.

“So what’s the plan?” Setsura asked, as if he were inquiring about the weather.

“As long as that girl is here, you will do as I please. As I have explained to you, I will take that soul and thrust it down into the muck and grime, pull it out of the sewer and make it kneel at my feet. Get in there.”

“I don’t think so.”

Setsura closed his eyes. The Demon Princess opened hers wide as the blood-red gleam sank into the depths of her eyes. She waved her hand. A moment later, an unearthly scream rose from the casket. The cry of a soul tormented by eternal pain and hunger. But even knowing it was Takako, Setsura didn’t move.

“Oh, so you will kill her then? Your thoughts are not far from the mark. Slit the throat with those mysterious threads of yours and not only Takako, but I will die as well. Go ahead and put that theory to the test. However, only she will die. My throat cannot be cut, as long as I will otherwise.”

“And when will you not will otherwise?”

“When my one true desire is lost and all the color is gone from this world. But that time is still a long way off.”

“I would not disagree with you on that.”

“Get in,” she commanded, her face brimming with a smile stolen from the devil himself.

Another scream echoed from the casket, longer and higher. Setsura cleared his throat and put his hand on the edge of the casket and vaulted over the side. Inside the casket, a generous space for two had already opened up.

Takako’s pallor was not so different from the last time they had met. Her eyes and lips alone were redder. The awful fangs jutting from her gasping mouth were the same.

“Takako-san,” he said.

Takako turned to him. “Aki-san—? Setsura-san—?”

Somehow she turned her whole body to face him. She reached out a pale hand to his chest. There was no place to retreat to, no place to run. Takako leaned over him, the smell of blood on her panting feline breath. Setsura quietly looked back into eyes suffused with a raw lust.

“Help me, Setsura-san. I hunger for blood. Please—just a little—give me just a little—”

She spoke as if in a fever. Her red lips pressed against Setsura’s throat. But a force acting against her will suddenly twisted her face away and pinned her hands to her sides. She bared her fangs and hissed at him like an enraged cat.

“Sorry,” Setsura said. “You’re going to have to hold out a while longer.”

“And what will holding out gain her?” Princess asked above them. “What trick do you still have up your sleeve?”

“Shut up. I’m thinking here.”

“Let me show you something.”

Something white floated down and covered them.

“Now what are you up to?”

Setsura tried to push that something aside, but it was like wrestling a down-filled pillow. And yet Princess was surely lying face down above them.

“So you’ve bound Takako? How sad. The man who came to save her won’t spare her a single drop of blood and then trusses her up to boot. Aren’t her cries for your blood cries of love? If you won’t satisfy her, then I shall.”

Princess moved smoothly on top of Takako. Though held fast and firm by the devil wires, her face glowed in ecstasy.

“Stop,” said Setsura. At the same time, a crimson ring circled Princess’s neck.

“Hoh. Aren’t you playing an interesting game.” Her neck was clearly bisected in two. But she laughed. “I didn’t do this. My blood flows thanks to you! What fate awaits the young woman? Ah, the eyes will tell.”

She raised Takako up. When Setsura tried to pull them apart, she grasped his shoulders. Her white face turned. The red lights of her eyes flashed through him like hot nails.

“Be quiet and watch. I won’t make her one of us.”

She brought her neck closer to Takako’s face. A thin stream of blood from the wound left by the devil wire fell onto Takako’s mouth. The thin line of her lips opened and with a gasp she swallowed it down. A rapturous look of satisfaction rose to a face twisted with pain and hunger.

“Isn’t my life force delicious?” she said, lowering her neck. “You can thank Setsura. This is my blood, but he is the one who makes it flow. He came to save you and ended up feeding you. Don’t move, else I may end up ripping her throat out.”

Takako’s lips touched her throat. Her bloody tongue trailed along the wound. Setsura calmly observed this strange sexual union between the two women.

Princess pulled away and Takako cried out in disappointment. “Patience, my dear. More of my delights are still to come.”

She ran her fingers down Takako’s robe. The fabric fell apart to the right and left, exposing the swell of her breasts. Princess put her hand to her wound and pulled it open.

The gout of blood spilled onto Takako’s sternum in splotches like what might be left behind by a giant amoeba. Princess slid down her body, her face hovering just above her belly button.

Princess’s blood glided down the natural channels of Takako’s abdomen, reached her navel and pooled there. Princess’s long, sharp tongue reached down and lapped at the pearls of blood. Her lips closed and her cheeks moved as might a sommelier’s while tasting a fine wine.

The blood was her own. She had baptized Takako with it. And yet the mood engendered by Princess’s actions was as if Takako had spilled her own blood in an equally lascivious manner.

Once again she lowered her head. Takako moaned. Princess’s tongue glided up Takako’s belly, spreading out the blood and mixing it with her saliva. She moved onto Takako’s breast, licking the spots of blood off the luscious curves, sending shivers through Takako’s body.

Her bloody lips closed around the nipple. Takako groaned aloud. Blood dripped from between Princess’s sucking lips, spreading the scarlet stain across the breast. She coated Takako’s body from her neck to her flanks.

“How do you find the scent of my blood? The nectar of the heavens. Do you want it?”

“I want it,” Takako groaned in a delirium.

“You may have it.”

Princess pressed her lips against Takako’s. Their lips parted. Princess’s tongue dipped into Takako’s mouth. Takako’s throat hummed and swallowed and drank all she had to give. Princess should not be able to hold so much in her mouth, but Takako choked and the blood erupted from between their lips.

Princess pulled back just a sliver and asked, “Satisfied?”

“No,” Takako whispered.

Together with their entranced expressions, their conversation echoed the pillow talk of aroused lovers.

“You want more blood?”

“Yes.”

“Whose blood do you want?”

“Yours—I want your blood.”

“Would blood other than mine suffice?”

“Yes.”

“What about the blood of that man—Setsura Aki?”

“His—”

A faint glimmer of rationality flickered across Takako’s face. A moment later it had clouded over with surging desire.

“What do you say?” Princess pressed, her voice suffused with malicious joy.

“I want—Setsura-san’s blood—”

“Then you shall have it. Behold—”

Takako’s body was suddenly free. Setsura didn’t move. The situation had turned in a perilous direction.

“Drink your fill,” Princess whispered into Takako’s ear. She bit down on her lobe and snaked her bloody tongue into her ear. Takako moaned and writhed. “What do you say, Setsura? How does it feel to be assaulted by the woman you came here to save?”

Princess’s voice now echoed in his own ears. Takako crawled atop the black slicker like some phantasmal insect. Princess’s eyes glowed with a fierce and eerie light.

“Setsura-san—I—understand—” Takako bared the cravings of her soul. “I understand—at last. I love you. At last—I can say it. I want the blood—of the person—I love—”

The words of this once ordinary college coed welled up from the bottom of her heart. She opened her mouth wide. The two ivory fangs glistened inside the red maw. Tears poured from her eyes. Red tears. Tears of blood.

With the growl of a wild animal, Takako pressed her face against Setsura’s neck.

In that instant, everything inside the casket changed.