Chapter Three

Chapter Three

When the rain let up and the sun shone down, the most surprising thing that day in Shinjuku was the wild outbreak of trees and shrubs on the city streets.

Around dawn, a fat lady and a golden-haired girl had been seen sowing what looked like seeds. And together with the cawing of a crow, the sight of sand-like grains falling from the sky.

Those who contacted the ward offices were told that the plants were dangerous and not to touch them. Otherwise, the city government did nothing.

People cast baleful looks at the conspicuously shuttered homes and businesses, and reached into their pockets to fondle the peaches they’d purchased at grocery stores and supermarkets, more precious to them than priceless gems.

Signs of life on the roads and thoroughfares had diminished since the day before. And remembering that the same had been true the day before that, people stopped and shivered under the warm summer rain.

The night still came.

The dim shadows from the new trees falling on the roads grew shorter and reached in the opposite direction. The rain splashed on the shadows, the cars, coaches, trucks, and armored vehicles rolled over them; shoes, geta, and sneakers tread on them.

“The sun has set,” said Steel Hair, looking out from the doorway.

He wasn’t saying anything they didn’t already know. The ceiling lights in gang headquarters had automatically come on a few minutes before. Though nobody had bothered commenting on the fact.

“Seems earlier than usual,” said Electric Hands, playing with the blue-white fire.

“There’re gonna be days like that in this city.” Dead Guy took a swig of whisky from a bottle and turned his pallid face toward the rear door. “Taking a peek?” he inquired of no one in particular.

“Yeah.” Three Eyes nodded. The third eye in the middle of his forehead glimmered hauntingly with the colors of the rainbow. “Hamada is sticking by his bedside. I guess he figures if push comes to shove, they’ll go down together in a blaze of glory.”

“How honorable of him. Really must be smitten.”

“Shit!” wailed Cyborg Man. He rapped the silver half of his face.

Something resembling the lovey-doveys—rather unbecoming that this bunch should harbor such delusions—swirled about the room.

Baldy looked at the sofa. “Hey, we haven’t heard from you since noon. What’s with these new guests we’re expecting? What about the four we dealt with earlier?”

“Not—them—” came the thin voice, almost drowned out by the sound of the rain. The speaker was a blackish blob no larger than a child. All the more surprising, without looking too hard, that on that lump could be perceived a human face and a pair of eyes.

A white mouth opened on the dark face. “They were—human. These—are not.”

“Something more than human, eh?” Lumpy smiled. “That makes them the same as us.”

“No,” the Blob answered in a terrified voice. “No. We are—human. Mutant humans. But not—them.”

“How close?” asked Steel Hair.

“I don’t—know. But they will be here—soon. And everybody—dies.”

Blue-white light flashed between Electric Hands’ palms and arced between him and the Blob, raising sparks and smoke and screams. “Wake the fuck up, big mouth!”

But he was the only one shouting. “Leave him alone. If he says it, it’s gonna happen. That’s the way it’s always been. If you don’t like it, then you’d better start running.” Baldy indicated the door with his chin.

Electric Hands fell silent. Nobody moved. In their hearts flickered a dim white silhouette, bathed in light. When it came to kin and kind, these rough men had as much in common with him as the moon and the baying hounds. But it was to them like the smile of an angel.

Whatever cause suffused that countenance, they would take as their own. What they had witnessed was a pure visage devoid of all sentiment.

No sooner had their eyes beheld him than emotions they had never felt before welled up in their hearts. They must protect. They all felt that conviction in their souls, like what the parent feels toward the child, what the lover feels toward the beloved, the strong toward the weak.

Though they didn’t quite comprehend it themselves. But they accepted it as if it had been bred in the bone all along. And so they waited for what came stealing through the gloom of the night.

“They’re coming,” said the Blob behind them.

Nobody turned to look. They all felt it. The rain poured down like torrents of mud. The psychological currents flowed just as hard. Steel Hair got to his feet chomping at the bit.

“I can’t fucking stand it!” Cyborg groaned.

“Maybe it’s about time I died.” Dead Guy—who’d escaped the incinerator once already—set down the whiskey bottle and stood up.

“Now—almost fifty yards away—in front of Nogi’s bar—four of them.”

“I’ll check it out,” said Steel Hair.

Cyborg put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m the strongest one here. Let me see what they’ve got first.”

A four-man hit squad from another gang had raided the place just after noon. That he’d torn off the heads of three of them was fresh on everybody’s mind. The arm on the roboticized left side of his body could punch through ballistic armor like cardboard.

“Yeah, it’s in your hands,” Three Eyes said with a wry smile. “If you live, the young prince may well be yours. A little motivation to bring you home. Otherwise, it shouldn’t last long.”

Cyborg flashed a thin smile in return and left through the front door. The splashes disappeared into the distance. His shadow flickered beneath a street light, and then the darkness swallowed him up.

“Good luck with that,” Three Eyes muttered to himself. He looked at Steel Hair.

“That leaves seven of us,” said Steel Hair. “Plus Hamada. The rest of you split. Sticking around definitely won’t do you any good.”

Everybody nodded in unison.

“I’ll let him know,” said Baldy, heading to the room in the back.

Steel Hair nodded at the sofa. “Take him with you. Maybe he’ll see something useful. And stay there. We’ve got the place covered. No need to come back.”

Baldy cradled the Blob in his arms and left. The walking dead man continued, “You and you, keep a watch on the perimeter. We’ll hold them there as best we can, but I’m not holding onto high hopes.”

Lumpy and Electric Hands nodded and turned around.

“It’s you and me here. Sorry.”

Three Eyes smiled at Steel Hair’s apology. “Hell, we never have gotten along. So, what’s your flavor?”

“Shotgun.”

“Sword for me.”

Three Eyes reached behind the sofa and retrieved a Benelli M93 semi-automatic shotgun and a plain Japanese shirazaya samurai sword. Shirazaya swords didn’t have a hilt guard, and became a single arc of polished wood when fitted with a matching scabbard.

He tossed the Benelli to Steel Hair, drew out the sword and cast aside the scabbard. As he examined the exposed steel, his eyes filled with the eerie glow.

Meanwhile, Steel Hair leaned the Benelli against a chair, sat down, and seized a clump of hair. A clattering sound as he tore it out. Blood spattered onto his face. He ignored it, and did it three more times, depositing the results on the table in front of him.

He wiped away the blood covering his face, grabbed several clumps from the pile with both hands and twisted the strands of hair into curious shapes—each strand as sharp as a needle, that if hurled at a victim would easily pierce the flesh. Making what looked like a beetle with its legs splayed out, he set it aside with a sense of satisfaction.

In less than two minutes, he had fashioned every strand of hair into steel bugs that consisted only of legs. He got up and cast them on the floor, against the walls and ceiling. He clapped his hands together and turned to Three Eyes.

The “beetles” he’d thrown against the walls and ceiling didn’t pierce the surface, but clung to it like the real things.

Three Eyes finished what he was doing. The middle of the blade glowed. “Just in time,” he said.

“They’re coming.” Steel Hair licked the blood dripping past his mouth.

The wellspring of that eerie, unearthly vibe drew bewitchingly near. The meaning was clear—Cyborg had failed.

Steel Hair raised the Benelli to his shoulder. Each twelve gauge shell could perforate a target with nine double-ought buckshot pellets. Every time he bought ammo, the clerk would inevitably ask, “You looking to knock down walls with those?”

An indication of how powerful they were.

A whoosh of air as Three Eyes swung the samurai sword. A moment of silence. He noticed—the enemy was at the door. The sound of the rain. The door opened with great force. Hard enough to smash against the wall and send fissures shooting through the wallboard.

Before the two could react, a twisted body was tossed at their feet. Cyborg’s corpse. He was split in half. From the nature of the wounds, he’d been torn apart. The stench of blood filled the room. When they looked up from the body, the enemy was standing inside the room. Their eyes narrowed.

Her skin as pale as a termite’s—the enemy was a woman. Five eyes focused on the nape of her willowy neck.

“But, of course. A vampire.”

“The bite marks are still there, so she’s still half-and-half. Girl, you came to the wrong damn place to party. You ain’t leaving here alive or undead.”

The bodies of the two yakuzas swelled with the flames of malice. More than any hostility toward vampires, here was the expression of the twisted and muddied emotions they held for this pretty girl who deigned to chase after that young man.

They couldn’t allow him to end up looking like her pasty white self. They couldn’t allow her to add him to their number. They wouldn’t hand him over to anybody.

“Die, bitch!” Three Eyes roared.

He leapt forward, sweeping the sword sideways with all his strength. The girl shifted her stance a split-second before the polished steel could cleave her slender neck in two. The sword sliced diagonally and down across her chest from her left shoulder.

She jumped up, grabbing the blade and deflecting it. The blood didn’t pour out. Thin red streams spilled through the slit in the shroud. She staggered. As a vampire, she couldn’t die, but a human she could be harmed.

“Get back!”

Screams turned to thunder. Nine double-ought shotgun pellets hit her between her breasts. The shroud spouted fire. The impact knocked her against the window. She barely managed to regain her footing.

“That’s not enough to kill her!” Three Eyes shouted. He cocked back the sword. “Leave this to me. It’s gotta be through the heart.”

He ran at her. This time he wouldn’t slip up. He understood the nature of her inhuman strength from the last time she touched the blade.

She became a blur.

Shit, he thought. The sword passed through the borders of the shroud. His miscalculation threw him off balance and he pitched forward as a white hand clamped around his neck.

A gargling, wheezing sound as she crushed his throat. The shotgun barked twice. The rounds gnawed into her torso. The shock slammed her away from Three Eyes. This time the shroud was painted with a bright splotch of blood.

“Finish her off!” Steel Hair yelled.

Hacking up blood, Three Eyes hauled himself to his feet, using the sword to support his weight. Bracing his legs, he drew back the sword in order to deliver the killing blow.

The girl didn’t retreat. The tip of the sword pierced the white flesh of her breast. And stopped. A burly fist curled around the blade. That was when Three Eyes noticed the man standing next to her.

The big, imposing man wore a glittering brocaded tunic. His eyes cast off a fierce red glow. The light welled up from his eyes and dripped from his iron jaw onto his chest.

The man was weeping. “My wife threw herself from the parapets of Poenari Castle.” His voice resounded like a banshee’s howl. Three Eyes and Steel Hair froze in their tracks. “You cannot die. Blasted by bullets, cut by the sword—ah, the pain and the suffering. You should become as I am. Alas, as I am now, I cannot die. The bitterness, Princess. The bitter dregs, Doctor. Fortunately, these fools are not Setsura. So I will snuff out their candles.”

The tall silhouette—General Bey—twisted his right hand. The sword broke neatly in two. His support kicked out from under him, Three Eyes reeled backwards. Next to him lines of fire streaked out.

The repeated impacts shook the general’s upper body and blew away his face. Paying the gruesome wounds no mind, the general turned to the girl—Takako—and dug his finger into the breast of the shroud. Twisting and extracting it, he pinched between his thumb and forefinger a shotgun pellet. It fell to the floor with a metallic clack.

The sound repeated itself nine times. Every time he extracted one, Takako’s body trembled. Her lingering humanity could still feel the sensations. The general looked at her face, quivering with pain. The eyes of one reflected the face of the other. But their emotions were like heaven and earth.

Endless memories wavered in the eyes of the vampire lord. In Takako’s shone the empty, unrecognized reflection of his face.

“Now I am with you,” Kazikli Bey whispered. “How many times I have prayed for our reunion, but could do nothing. I could not prevent you from leaping to your death. At the very least, I will dispose of any obstacles preventing you from destroying Setsura.”

He slowly turned around as the broken sword buried itself into his neck with a thud. His swarthy hand enveloped the face of Three Eyes.

“That sword of mine takes its time getting the job done. So the young man, his name is Setsura—?”

Before the last word left his mouth, the general closed his hand to a fist, crushing the head of Three Eyes to a bloody pulp. The gray matter squirted between his fingers. He thrust the body out of the way. He stepped toward his remaining foe. And then stopped mid-stride.

The general looked down at his feet, then circled his hands around the back of his head. His whole body went rigid. The body-less beetles swarmed over his legs, and like little jackhammers burrowed down to the bone. They sprang from the ceiling and walls onto his back and neck and the crown of his head and sank in their needle-sharp limbs.

“That’s my hair. Made from beryllium steel. It’ll cut you down to the marrow. I’ll send them after the woman next.”

Dark blood splattered across the confident countenance like black ink as the general plucked the beetles off his head and hurled them like stones, killing Steel Hair instantly. Not sparing him a second look, the general marched toward the back of the room. Takako Kanan tottered after him like a wandering ghost.

Through the door and up a step was a connecting corridor. The rain-drenched garden was visible through the glass doors on the right and left. The hallway led to the main wing of the house.

“You’d better stop right there!” came the command when they’d made it halfway down the hall.

General Bey turned his head to the left and right. He was being hailed from two directions. In the garden on the right was a man standing in the rain clenching both hands. On the left, his back against a stone lantern, the man’s body crawled with bulges and protuberances.

“You killed those two?” called out the one on the right, his voice rising above the pouring rain. “Good show. But you’ll never pull that blade out of your neck. And the way you’re walking, those metal bugs must be making themselves at home, doing a job on your insides as well. It’s too bad about the woman, but I’ll be sending both of you to the next world. Bring it on.”

The general hesitated. It was true that, try with all his might, he couldn’t extract the blade from his neck. Moreover, while a few fractions of an inch had showed after the initial impact, it was now completed buried in the flesh.

This was a martial technique Kazikli Bey didn’t fully understand. Add to that the steel beetles crawling in his body, shredding his internal organs and breaking his bones. No matter how impressive this vampire’s powers of regeneration, that he was still standing was remarkable enough.

“Wait here,” he said to Takako, pivoting toward the right. Behind him, Takako quivered, making the general look back.

Electric Hands hit him with a blue shock of light. In biological terms, his internal organs resembled those of an electric eel, able to both generate and store electrical energy. According to the history books, humans with such capabilities were said to exist, but they were exceedingly rare. And this one could not only charge himself up like a capacitor, but could amp up the voltage as well.

And do it in a heavy, soaking rain.

A million volts of electricity burned through General Bey, literally down to his bones. The sword was still stuck in his neck, the metal bugs were inside his body, arcing and sparking. General Bey’s eyes rolled back in his head.

The world was wrapped in blue coronal fire.

A mocking voice arose from the garden opposite. Lying under Lumpy on the grass, pale hands and thighs resisted in a voluptuous struggle. Takako’s breasts and nipples pressed against the clinging, rain-wet shroud, a far more erotic combination than plain nudity.

In the garden they twined together in a downpour. Takako was more vampire than human, and that alone made it impossible for Lumpy to subdue her by himself. “Hey, could use some help over here! She’s a handful!”

From the fierceness of the electrical light, he was confident victory was in their grasp.

General Bey stood there ramrod straight, the whites of his eyes showing. With a contemptuous backwards glance, Electric Hands cleared the hallway with a single jump. He grabbed the white legs kicking in the air. A tingling sensation shot down his spine.

“Interesting. I’ve always wanted to do one of those Toyama bitches.”

Lumpy grabbed the neck of the shroud and tore it open. The rain ran down Takako’s exposed breasts.

But no sooner had Electric Hands seized her thighs than his body bent backwards like a spring. Lumpy looked back over his shoulder in amazement as his body was wrapped in the shimmering blue-white bands of electricity.