Chapter Three

Chapter Three

White-hot anger coursed through the casket. Takako’s lips were about to close around Setsura’s windpipe when Princess took hold of her hair and jerked her head away.

“Why?” Takako pleaded in a strangled cry. “Let me. Let me drink his blood.”

“No,” said Princess, grinding her teeth. “That will never happen. I am the only person who may drink this man’s blood.”

Having ordered her to, this was certainly an unexpected change of heart.

“You shall remain with me for the time being. All the better to torment those who came to save you. Were I to truly make you my servant, they would abandon the cause. So that is the one thing I won’t do. I won’t give them the satisfaction. You will drift for all eternity between their world and ours. I alone—who drank your blood—will decide which. Hoh, won’t that make Setsura suffer. How he wishes to destroy me and save you. But he knows that he cannot do even that. No matter how sharp his wires, I will not die—not as long as I still have hopes for this life of mine.”

Princess pressed her lips against Takako’s, entwining their tongues together, inviting Takako to penetrate her mouth. Their mouths were smeared with blood. Their breaths blended together, hot with arousal and yet cold as ice.

Princess pulled away. Takako’s tongue pursued her. With the dexterity of a gymnast, Princess shifted her position and buried her face between Takako’s legs.

“Humans like you are never satisfied with our manner of delights. But shall we see what Setsura thinks of the natural physical response to more mundane pleasures?”

Princess’s white hands seized Takako’s thighs. Her hips rose up and Princess went down. A raw, wet sound like a dog lapping water. Takako’s upper body twisted and arched to seemingly superhuman limits, as Princess’s assault on her senses aroused in her otherworldly ecstasies of the flesh.

Princess raised her head. “How does that feel?” And lowered her face again.

Takako clasped her hands to her breasts. Her fingers dug into the flesh, tracing lines of welts in the skin that filled with blood, and in a frenzy she rubbed it all over her body.

Setsura watched it all. He couldn’t move. The power of Princess’s eyes had insured that much.

Princess squeezed Takako’s nipples. Takako writhed in the throes of a passionate purgatory. Such a display suggested that the enthralled girl would give up her life to wanton pleasure before the vampiric ritual could ever commence.

Princess abruptly lifted her head. “Hoh. So now he’s crashing the party. A man who hates water like a cat—he just can’t let go of this cute little catnip,” she jeered him, even as her words expressed a kind of admiration. “But having come this far, how will you open this casket, General Bey?”

The door of the mausoleum easily deflected the harsh pounding. General Bey gave up after five blows and considered his next move. When his mounted knights couldn’t get through the lines, rather than simply redouble the effort, he’d have his archers lay down covering fire before sending the cavalry in once again.

This adroitness in switching strategies is what made a good commander great.

Bey retreated five steps. He bent over and pushed off against the ground with all his strength and charged the door like a mad bull. The force his physical body alone imparted was felt not so much by the door but by the walls supporting it. Cracks shot through the support pillars. The door collapsed inward.

The crash echoed after him as a thunderclap follows lightning. The general stepped inside and stood on the fallen door like a fierce Deva king. He glanced contemptuously around the room, his frame filled with the same might and power that was on full display five hundred years ago when he’d toppled the strongholds of the invaders.

His eyes fell on the black casket. With an inhuman growl, he wiped his mouth. The dark red blood on the back of his hand belonged to Galeen Nuvenberg.

General Kazikli Bey licked the blood off his hand and descended the marble staircase. Lust burned in his eyes like a petty thief stumbling upon a dragon’s hoard. Without a moment’s hesitation, he seized the lid of the black casket.

And was hurled back across the room.

Not on purpose, not the result of some surge of power. His body itself reacted reflexively, without any time to take safety measures or the like, and threw itself away from the casket.

He quickly got to his feet—and sank back down to his knees, the energy sucked out of him. His nervous system took on a life of its own. His face was the color of clay.

Laughter rang out around him like the ringing of silver bells. The general forced his head to turn as Princess stepped out from the shadow of a stone column.

“How sweet of you to come, General.”

A light wavered in her right hand. In the black steel candelabra, three candles burned with a blue light bluer than the bottom of the ocean.

“A wonderful aroma—but you wouldn’t understand. In fact, there is no aroma. These candles draw up any odors. I cannot tolerate my casket casting off any other aroma but my own.”

In one ear and out the other. “Will you open this casket, Princess?” the general barked. “Or will I have to smash it open?”

“Can you, General? The bride you seek is indeed inside the casket. But she is not alone. She is sharing her pillow with a beautiful man who is the love of her life. Do you have what it takes to separate them?”

“Are you talking about Setsura Aki?” he asked, his volcanic voice strangely subdued. His face slowly changed—knowing what atrocious evil had twisted that face would surely convince the most hopeful saint that God had made a mistake.

“I can hear them whispering sweet nothings. Groaning. Oh, she’s a tiger in the sack. I wonder what they’re doing right now? But with a lover that pretty, who could resist him?”

General Bey’s lips trembled again.

Princess noted it and added, “Yes, that loathsome Setsura Aki. The same one fucking Takako as we speak. Will General Bey preserve the honor of his good name and open that casket and call down the judgments of heaven upon them?”

“The loathsome Setsura Aki.” This time the words spilled clearly from General Bey’s lips. “I shall personally deliver any man who touches Takako’s fair skin to the bowels of hell.”

“That’s the spirit, General.” The flames cast shadows across her twisted and lewd smile.

Once more, General Bey stood in front of the casket and swung his right fist down on the lid. And again his body was wrenched about and sent flying. As he sprawled on the floor, Princess’s sneering laughter chased after him.

The general convulsed as if gripped with a fever. He could not know that Setsura had met with a similar fate. He knew only the true nature of the force that repelled him—the torment and anguish of those whose blood covered this casket. The damnation of those humans whose blood Princess had sucked and who turned into creatures of the night.

And one more black art of the woman who had led them to such a fate must be her ability to alter the nature of that curse when they tried to open the casket.

“What? Can’t the devil who skewered thirty-thousand Turk soldiers summon any more reservoirs of strength?”

The general retreated, a glowering light shining in his eyes. It’d sunk in that there was no touching the casket. He tucked his right hand into his pocket, making a throwing motion as he withdrew it.

A slender band of light connected him and the casket and undulated to no effect. The flash of devil wire—that he and Setsura had exchanged on the roof of the Keio Plaza Hotel—was also repelled.

“Oh, please,” Princess chided him. “You have reached your limits. None may open the door to my sleeping chamber without my permission, not the greatest emperors or warlocks. Or Kazikli Bey.”

As if sweeping those words out of the way, the general charged forward. Watching as his hands reached for the lid of the casket, Princess burst into laughter.

It was a scream or a war cry that shook the heavens, but the general didn’t lose his footing. However his body tried to flee of its own accord, his hands reached for the casket and held him back.

His elbows twisted and cracked and his own body rebelled against him. The flesh split up the arms. The triceps, biceps and extensor muscles frayed and tore one after the other.

“Idiot,” Princess sneered.

The smile froze on her face. General Bey’s hands were useless. He couldn’t even twiddle his thumbs. And yet the casket moved. Contortions fanned out from the bottom of the casket and the floor. The striations were more like soft ripples at this point, but they were definitely spreading.

“Takako—”

Her name spilled like rough gravel across the floor of the mausoleum. Once again he applied his shoulder to the casket.

The back of his tunic bulged out, his right shoulder blade dislocated and tore free. This vampire lord had surely never suffered so in his life. And never would again. His greatest enemy was himself. There were few in the world who would smash their bodies to bits in order to achieve their goal. And the terrible ferocity of this unfolding scene was rarer still.

No sooner had he taken a full step than his hip bone broke, followed by his thigh. The quadriceps and fascia snapped. A moment later, his upper body sunk down as the kneecaps shattered.

He slumped to his knees as the big casket lurched against him.

The whole frame of the Demon Princess shook with laughter. “Can you even stand, General? Or will you bear my resting place on your shoulders for eternity? What a waste your second life turned out to be.”

The peals of laughter echoed around the mausoleum. The flames of the candles flickered. There was no reason to doubt her self-confidence and scorn, what with the general’s limbs bent like toothpicks.

The eyes of the general and the Demon Princess met. That implacable tenaciousness hadn’t dimmed in the slightest.

“Ah, what a stubborn bull of a man,” she said with an exaggerated sigh. “I shan’t be getting a wink of sleep like this. Time to put you out of your misery.”

She brought the candelabra up to her mouth and pursed her red lips. The flame on the right winked out without the slightest waver.

The general’s throat rumbled. It took all of his self-control to keep the contents of his stomach from erupting out of his gut. An indescribable stench—that would send the risen dead back into their graves—filled the interior of the mausoleum.

“That’s one,” whispered the Demon Princess. “And here is number two.”

Just as the flame on the left winked out, the general vomited. The contents of his stomach—his food and sustenance—spilled onto the floor. Bright red gore. The thick fountain of blood continued to pour from his mouth, raising a small tsunami in the ocean of red. The wave lapped about his knees.

A picture of the damned writhing in a sea of blood.

In that instant a change was born. The torturous wrenchings ceased. The twisted limbs returned to normal. The knees and elbows knit themselves back together with a loud clicking sound.

Princess was the only one amazed. The look on General Bey’s face made it clear that he wasn’t the source of the transformation. Princess whirled around. General Bey’s gaze followed hers.

The two sets of eyes focused on the open door, taking in the image of an old lady in a wheelchair.

Galeen Nuvenberg. The front of her dress was wet with the blood dripping from her neck. Her face was the color of water. General Bey’s resurrection could only be the work of this powerful witch. Except that he was the one who had left her in this dire condition.

“Pull yourself together, General Bey,” she said, pushing the words out through her dry lips. “Destroy Daji’s casket. The resting place of the vampire is her dark source of life energy. Destroy it and you will deliver the fatal blow. Not even Daji can exempt herself from the rules. You have consumed the blood of Galeen Nuvenberg. You should be capable of that much.”

“You—”

Princess ran, her hems flapping. But the remaining candle erupted into a ball of fire before she’d taken three steps. She cast the candelabra aside and leapt back as the fire consumed the front of her gown. Brushing it off as she landed, the flames wrapped around her hand.

“—bitch!”

The fire sucked into her mouth. Princess bent over as it seared her from the inside out. But the choreographer of this beautiful dance of death was paying no attention. She folded her hands across her chest and mumbled an incantation, her eyes tightly closed.

A stark silhouette rose from the floor. The slanting casket came almost to the vertical. Roaring like a lion, the general lifted the black casket over his head.

“No, you won’t!” Princess’s voice rang out from the midst of the conflagration.

In that moment, a dark blue mass pressed inside the mausoleum. Fighting magic with magic, in a flash Princess had liberated the real water from the barriers erected by Galeen Nuvenberg.

The wheelchair-bound witch disappeared. The general was swallowed up as well. As darkness engulfed the mausoleum, the fiery form standing in the middle shrieked with laughter. Until that too was soon swept away in the raging currents.

Seen from the air, the water in the lake suddenly spilled into the long, narrow trench with a frothing of whitecaps. In less than two seconds, the lake was flat and calm, as if nothing had happened. Bright sunlight poured down. The wind soon beat down the waves that remained.

In the forest, a bird plaintively called out.

Five minutes after the deadly struggle at the bottom of the lake, a boat set off from the wharf near the manor house and sculled to the center of the lake. The white figure standing in the prow was none other than Doctor Mephisto. Yakou pulled on the oars.

Mephisto had resuscitated him after he’d collapsed during his battle with Setsura. Flying about in search of Setsura, Yakou spotted the watery road leading beneath the water. He was about to take that road himself when the calamity occurred.

The man pulling at the oars looked a bit put out, not surprising considering his true abilities.

“Something happened beneath us,” mused Mephisto. The red boat came to a stop. He gazed down into the water.

“You don’t think that—Princess?” Yakou asked uneasily.

“Setsura lost his queen and was about to be checkmated. I don’t think this was his doing—though there is no way to say for sure.”

Mephisto brought his hand to his chin and gazed around.

“What do you think, Doctor?”

“All we can do is wait and pray that nothing untoward is going on below us. The going assumption is that the average Occidental cannot swim. What about the average Oriental?”

“Hmm.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning some sink and some swim.”

“Depending on whether they can or not.”

“That would be the case.”

“A fairly useless answer.”

“I apologize for that,” Yakou said. He narrowed his eyes.

Mephisto could tell that he’d noticed something. Two hundred feet or so off to the right, a human-looking object bobbed to the surface.

“What’s that?” Yakou exclaimed.

“Ah, what did the great national hero come here to accomplish? I don’t imagine your mistress has made it through unscathed either. Seeing that she hasn’t floated to the surface, perhaps the currents swept her away.”

Just then, something like a white, tube-like sash slithered beneath the boat and headed toward General Bey. The boat rocked, the waves raised by other things coming through the water. Around the big man bobbed heads and white torsos.

“Water dragons,” Yakou observed.

The undulating white skin and scaly flanks resembled those of snakes. But the heads were human. The head of a salaryman with a comb-over reared up twenty feet into the air and looked down at General Bey. The face of a middle-aged woman, a student, an office lady—bangs falling over their foreheads as they eyed the prey below.

“Doctor—” Yakou said, rising to his feet, but Mephisto urged him to sit.

The office lady rushed toward General Bey. The small mouth opened from ear to ear. Two pairs of fangs top and bottom glittered in the red maw.

The salaryman in the steel-rimmed glasses struck her in the side. Blood spouted into the blue sky. The salaryman’s jaws sank into the office lady’s guts. Taking that as a signal, the college coed tried to sink her fangs into the salaryman’s neck. She was shrugged off and lunged at in turn.

The foamy spray rose higher and rained down blood. A red mist appeared here and there on the surface of the lake. The flailing torsos thrashed the water, tipping the boat wildly back and forth.

“Doctor—what is this?”

Instead of answering Yakou’s question, Mephisto tucked his right hand inside his coat.

With a thrumming sound, a ray of silver light danced toward the surging waves.

Looking askance at the frenzied water dragons with human countenances crazed perhaps by the smell and taste of blood, a new visitor split the water in leaps and bounds, racing toward the floating vampire lord. Yakou shouted in surprise as it vaulted out of the water and jumped through the air. Red tendrils like whiskers drooped from the snout of the giant carp thirty feet long.

It flew like a phantom, a streaking swallow, and with a single gulp swallowed one of the water dragons standing out of the water. And fell back with a huge splash. Then again, and again. Leaping and falling. After each time there were that many fewer water dragons.

The giant carp’s enemies outstripped its actions. Fresh creatures were closing on General Bey from three sides, showing their fangs, when a horrible panorama unfolded.

Three of their torsos were sliced and diced where they swam. Their faces contorted in their death throes, and they sank below the waves. One after the other, each meeting the same fate. The giant carp did not slacken in its rampant domination. It wasn’t long until the last of the blood-hungry serpents had vanished into the depths.

“I’d like to take a break, if you don’t mind,” Yakou groaned.

Mephisto nodded. With a single stroke of his large wings, Yakou drew himself up into the sky. It stood to reason, after all; any creature attracted to the smell of blood would find this a harsh environment.

The muddy red water spread out for several hundred feet. The neatly bisected sections of the water dragons bobbed in the water. The half-submerged human faces stared blankly at the awful scene surrounding them and gritted their teeth, unable to stand what they were seeing with their normal human nervous systems.

And in the very center stood the strangely beautiful tableau of the white doctor in the small boat, a testament to the saying that at the extremes, the gruesome became its own kind of art, such as that appearing in a brilliant landscape painting by one of the masters.

“Splendid,” said the water on Mephisto’s right. The giant carp’s face poked out of the water. The voice was Kikiou’s.

“You’ve been watching.” Less a question than an observation.

“I still cannot move, so I send substitutes in my stead. Whatever I could do is all thanks to you.”

“Do you have the woman?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t say whether he meant Princess or Takako.

“And could you show what you have in your stomach?”

“Understood.”

After a moment’s hesitation, the big carp opened its mouth. Inside, half of his body visible, was General Kazikli Bey.

“Would you have any plans for him, Sir Kikiou?”

“Yes.”

This time the answer was markedly more forceful. But this was Doctor Mephisto.

“I would like to borrow him for a while, Sir Kikiou. I think it would prove useful in making your arms and legs.”

The fish’s mouth flapped open and closed. “Understood,” it said.

Then a small wave rippled across the lake and Mephisto was alone.

“Kazikli Bey, I would be honored to treat such a renowned patient.”

What did he really think of this unconscious vampire lord? What did he plan on doing with him? The doctor in white stood like a solitary statue in the small boat. And it seemed that dread more than beauty warred for his attention.