Chapter One
Chapter One
Setsura was aware of everything. Everything Princess did and said outside the casket—the appearance of General Bey—the battle between Galeen Nuvenberg and Princess—the water flooding into the mausoleum—he grasped every detail.
The casket was jostled about by the force of the water before being swept outside the mausoleum. It floated about for a long time before the currents finally pushed it to the surface. It had arrived at the foot of a cliff.
When the Demon Princess was engulfed with flames, her binding spell on him had fortunately been broken. At the same time, though, the one she’d used on Takako before slipping out of the casket also dissolved. Takako recommenced attacking Setsura.
A little tap was enough to knock her unconscious. He was left with one concern. “Is this thing going to open?” He pressed on the lid above his head. It moved with scarcely any additional pressure. Bright sunlight spilled into the casket. “Today’s my lucky day, I guess.”
He smiled at the slumbering Takako and sat up. Take away that aura of imperturbable nonchalance and that smile was the personification of a perfect summer day.
“Well, I did want to take a look around.”
He opened the lid the rest of the way and climbed out of the casket. They were indeed at the foot of a craggy cliff. Floating out of the lake, the casket had bobbed to the surface here and snagged on a rock. They were a considerable distance downstream. To the right and to the left was the densely mottled green and brown of the forest.
Setsura scooped Takako out of the casket and proceeded into the trees.
He hadn’t figured out how this world was constructed yet, except that all the surrounding land should in one way or another lead to the manor house. So there should be a road or path or something.
He set Takako down against the trunk of a stout oak tree. After probing the surrounding environment with his devil wires, he returned to the casket. Despite being cast into the midst of nature, it maintained a spooky if dignified presence.
“What to do—what to do—”
Setsura tilted his head to the side. However tired and famished he was, the casket aroused a degree of curiosity in the carefree lad that put everything else out of his mind. The invisible knives arced out from his hands, slid without effects off the casket’s surface, and were drawn back into his fists.
“I can’t cut it after all.”
He pondered this a while longer and then went back to the forest. Five minutes later he returned with a chunk of wood. He got a lighter out of his pocket and set it ablaze. The wood was fairly green and took a good ten minutes to produce a strong flame.
Setsura watched over the fire until he heard the flapping of wings overhead. He quickly went back for Takako and scurried for cover. Behind him, came the sound of a big bird alighting on the ground and then taking off again.
“The guy moves fast,” he grumbled.
Yakou’s voice rang out above him. “Can you hear me, Setsura? Sorry to inform you, but you can’t burn Princess’s casket so easily. But you did broadcast your whereabouts well enough.”
“You don’t say,” he said to himself.
“Where is Princess?” Yakou said in more pointed tones. “No answer? That is fine with me. In any case, even if you had won possession of her, I would proceed to lay waste to your physical body. For some reason, she’s taken a fancy to you. She will surely remonstrate with me later, but if I let you live, you will surely harm her. That is something I cannot allow. Seeing that we once fought nobly together, I will place flowers on your gravestone. Is Takako with you?”
Setsura didn’t answer, figuring that Yakou hadn’t pinpointed exactly where he was. Pipe up now and this Yakou would be all over him in a red-hot second.
“You there or not? If you don’t answer, I will assume you aren’t there and commence with my attack. If you are, I will give you five beats of my wings. You have until then to come out. Hers is the only life I’ll be saving. What about it?”
The whooshing stroke of his wings was very close.
Another one.
And another.
“It’s now or never, Setsura. We didn’t know each other long, but I can say I’m glad I met you.”
And another.
“This is it. Down to vampire hell we go.”
With the fifth stroke of his wings, a copse of trees twenty yards away burst into an orange ball of fire. Napalm. Something Yakou had on hand or Kikiou dreamed up. The oily flames traveled like a quick-moving tide. Setsura threw Takako over his shoulder and started running.
Another burst. Closer. A dozen feet away. It’d be upon them in another second. The six-thousand-degree tongue of fire licking at his heels. An instant later he was airborne. He swung like Tarzan half a dozen feet above the ground with no visible means of support.
He flew through the air, casting a strand of devil wire into the trees in front of him and turning himself into a pendulum. After flying in a zigzag fashion for a hundred more feet, Setsura set down on a tree limb. Despite bearing the weight of two humans, it hardly moved.
He focused his attention on a gap between the trees. In the air forty or fifty yards away he spotted Yakou hovering.
“Overconfidence is your greatest enemy. And the fire is raging.”
Setsura fixed the target in his mind. He’d prefer a fair fight. But he had this girl on his shoulder he had to save.
“Setsura!” Yakou called out.
Setsura answered with a strand of devil wire. Yakou whirled around and grabbed his shoulder. Blood oozed from between his fingers. The killing blow had missed its objective.
Something must have happened, Setsura’s consciousness already being absorbed by the reason of this strange world. Takako fell and landed on the limb where Setsura was standing.
The man dressed in black wavered and faded.
Ah, after resting for several days, the clam at the west entrance of Chuo Park was once again weaving its dreams of Setsura. This time there was nobody else—to defend or destroy the exquisite dream that Setsura had become.
His body glimmered. Bands of light erupted from his back and surged at Yakou. But he flew far away into the sky.
“So that’s where he is.”
The winged young man took a small flute from the pocket of his suit coat. The shining streamers, the myriad of devil wires lost him and fell back into the forest. And suddenly vanished. General Bey’s flute, that had awakened the clam from its dream.
As Setsura stood on top of the thick branch, the dagger-like blades of three shuriken hummed through the air and buried themselves in his solidifying neck.
His eyes lit up with surprise, then lost all the life in them. The black beauty fell to the earth directly below him. Had the blades not struck home in the instant he’d awakened from the dream, and had Yakou not thrown them from a closer range than any human being could achieve, Setsura would have easily anticipated the attack and dodged it.
Not to mention that, however coincidentally, he had been rescued by the clam’s dreams several times already. So there was certain irony in him being undone by those same dreams.
The black slicker twitched slightly as Yakou landed silently beside him. Perhaps because of his confidence in the kill, he did not deliver a coup de grace. He nodded. “What a disappointment. Now for that woman.”
He looked up.
Takako was still draped over the tree branch. After a moment of thought, he spread his wings and flew up to her and picked her up.
He looked down.
The shadows of the trees played across the prone body. The napalm-fed conflagration pressed ever nearer.
“I believe you’d prefer being laid to rest in some quiet corner of Shinjuku. But you would also want the girl to be returned alive. In any case, being consumed by fire strikes me as a most appropriate fate for such a genie. The same end undoubtedly awaits me. We will meet again in hell!”
He jumped off the branch and shot like an arrow through the forest, unfurling his wings in the blue sky and making a beeline for the manor house.
Embers from the fire rained down on Setsura’s face. He didn’t move. A widening pool of blood from the shurikens spread out under his head. The beautiful genie had surely breathed his last.