Chapter Three

Chapter Three

A knock at the door. A sound that would have utterly enchanted a normal person. But a normal person would have also recognized this as anything but a normal fist striking normal wood.

“Come in,” said the Demon Princess.

Mephisto pushed the door open and paused to examine the inside of the room. He hadn’t been in this room before. Kikiou had labs here and there in the manor house that no one other than Princess had ever entered.

Princess was lying on a long bronze bed. She raised only the upper half of her body. A grove of trees surrounded the bed, though the specific species was hard to tell. Clustered around the trunks—the top branches rising out of view—bushes a yard tall spread out their branches.

Mephisto narrowed his eyes. The shaded forest behind the canopy of the trees faded away into the distance. It seemed to him a scene created by a holographic projection.

“Why did you come here?” Princess raised a hand. On either side of the bed grew squat bushes that, instead of climbing higher, reached out their stout branches like arms, as far as the tip of Princess’s nose. The dangling fruit was the size of a winter cherry. She brought one to her mouth.

Whatever the fruit might be, the impression formed by her lips closing around it was altogether lewd.

Mephisto ears pricked up at a wailing very much like human distress. He didn’t answer Princess’s question but drew closer as she popped several more of the fruits into her mouth. Each time a scream could clearly be heard.

The cries came from the fruit itself. Dotting the pale pink and green skin were human faces. Men and women and young and old. Knowing their fates, she plucked them from the branches and put them into her mouth and bit down, swallowing the gushing screams and the savory juices.

The blood stained her mouth red.

“And how do you find your appearance?” Mephisto asked, standing by the side of the bed.

“You don’t want to know how I feel?” she countered, licking her lips with her bloody tongue. She placed a hand against her forehead. Her fingers slowly trailed down to the white fabric covering her breasts, precisely bisecting her body. Only several hours before, her body had been neatly divided in two along that same line.

“Is it simple pride? A lack of interest in the treatment of others? In either case, I don’t see you taking the place of Kikiou.”

“Putting Kikiou’s body back together again was no easy task.”

Perhaps sensing something in his tone of voice, a wary tint rose to her eyes. And just as quickly disappeared. “Yes, as I expected, the Demon Physician should come in very handy.”

“And whose eyes are you seeing through?”

“Yakou and Bey.”

“Where are they?”

“In a bus traveling the streets of Demon City. They are presently headed toward Yotsuya.”

“So you have familiarized yourself with the geography?”

“I had the time. More than enough.”

“And what about Setsura?”

“He is sleeping. The shock of dimensional vortex has not worn off. He cannot easily awaken himself.”

“Would you know how to do so?”

“I know. Moreover, I could do it from here.”

“That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“And why not?” Princess demanded with an unexpected flash of emotion. “He is surrounded by Bey and Takako and Kikiou and Yakou. He will soon receive his just rewards for rending this body apart.”

“You love Setsura,” Mephisto said matter-of-factly. “Love can turn to hate and back again. You mustn’t give Setsura the opportunity to strike back.”

“Who do you think you’re talking to, Mephisto? Though I expect that the time will come when even you must be reminded of your place.”

“The ways of love are as numerous as the stars,” Mephisto said with an almost unctuous civility. “In that sense, your approach may be more straightforward. Yes, indeed. Those so impudent as to feign comprehension of the depth and breadth of my thoughts also find themselves, in time, consigned to the fires of hell.”

Princess warily observed the comely countenance spouting such mellifluous words. She had beheld countless people in her four thousand years. From the highest of the high to the lowest of the low, from the greatest of men to the meanest—she had seen them all from her ocean of blood.

And yet her senses whispered that this doctor was different. Not human. But human.

Confronted by this fair-complexioned face that could melt heaven and earth, the even more beautiful Princess—though well outside the laws of human conscience—felt a sense of unease ripple through her heart.

He was now at her beck and call. As Ryuuki had taken his blood, it was only natural that he should be. She should likewise be accorded every courtesy. And yet there was a cold and stark distance between them. She couldn’t dismiss the thought that he was secretly laughing at her behind her back.

Of course she had no doubts, if push came to shove, about her ability to utterly vanquish the Demon Physician. But until that moment came, just as Yakou was to Kikiou, Doctor Mephisto would remain her Achilles’ heel.

“I was pleased with your plan.” Princess plucked one of the human-faced fruits and raked her nails across its surface. She showed it to Mephisto. Takako’s face. “Right now, she is facing off against Setsura. Ah, the mortification of having his blood taken by the person he is sworn to protect. Hoh, strangely enough, that is something I understand better than he.”

“Setsura cannot feel it himself?” Mephisto asked.

Princess hesitated. Setsura had lost consciousness.

Mephisto said icily, “You must not awake him. This is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Should Takako fail and General Bey kill her, Setsura will see none of it. But Takako will surely drink his blood. Striking while he is in this tranquil state is a sorely disappointing prospect, but unavoidable. Perhaps you should chew on this instead.”

The slender hand plucked a fruit from the branch, rolled it around in his hand, and then handed it to Princess. The fruit featured Setsura’s face. She took and examined it. The flash of repugnance was quickly replaced by a much brighter expression. She placed the beautiful fruit into her mouth and bit down hard.

The blood—the juice—trickled from the corners of her mouth. A scream, and the face of the little Setsura writhed in agony between her white teeth. Her eyes burned like hot coals. They focused on one spot above her. “I will make Setsura Aki one of us, but will not give him the easy way out.”

“Princess—”

“Your words are futile. I will open his eyes.” And she ground the fruit between her teeth.

Several moments later, on a bus racing through Shinjuku’s streets, Setsura Aki got to his feet.

“Surely a citizen of Shinjuku,” Kikiou said in an amazed voice. A reaction to Setsura’s powerful karma or to the terrible splendor of the scene before them—it was difficult to tell.

Had the great Italian artist Caravaggio gone mad and depicted in his famous painting Salome kissing the head of John the Baptist as it rested on the silver platter, the savage and mesmerizing beauty of the composition might have been comparable.

Yakou and Takako and even General Bey were equally dumbfounded—or utterly enraptured. However long the two kisses lasted—a second, a minute, an hour—they waited.

Eventually—after seconds rather than minutes or hours—Setsura set the two heads at the height of his waist. When he took his hands away, they hung there suspended in the air.

All at once, the time for the real battle had come.

Silently the heads of the remaining passengers flew off. And Takako launched herself at him. The attack never came. Even when he gently put his arms around her, she didn’t move an inch.

“Wait!” called out General Bey.

Both Yakou and Kikiou pulled up. In this contest of qi against devil wire, the two demons dodged Setsura’s attack. But what halted them in their tracks was not some new binding of Setsura’s threads, but a stern exclamation.

“The eastern sky,” Setsura said ominously.

The eastern sky was directly tied to the morning sun. The sun itself had set not two hours before. Despite knowing that, the vampires shuddered with fear and briefly disconnected from the scene in front of them. The shock and tension Setsura had injected into the scene was that compellingly delivered.

The man in the black slicker sprang straight up as invisible knives cut through the air, punching two neat circles in the windows, but otherwise meeting with no resistance.

“Above us!” Yakou looked up. The stars appeared in a perfect square opening in the roof.

“Bastard!” The general whirled around and plunged through the back window as nimbly as a gymnast. He leapt onto the roof.

Setsura’s silhouette stood there, striking as usual. But this wasn’t the same Setsura. It was as if Demon City had awakened the beautiful genie to decorate the wet and starry night.

“You and I haven’t met since our encounter at the Keio Plaza Hotel, Kazikli Bey.”

The demon started forward and came to a halt, taking note of Setsura’s transfiguration. “Return Takako,” he moaned, every speck of the fearless warrior replaced by mad infatuation. “Give my wife back to me, Setsura Aki.”

“Think back, Kazikli Bey,” said Setsura, his voice deeper than the night. “Your wife threw herself from the parapets of Poenari Castle. That night in 1462, watching as the fires of the Turkish siege troops filled the valleys, she gave up hope. I hear she came from the Orient, a lovely girl.”

“My wife is not dead. She is right there in front of my eyes, in the arms of a vile Lothario. Once I have rescued her, I shall cleanse her body in his blood.”

“Why did you reincarnate yourself, General Bey?” Setsura asked, speaking of a day from an era long ago. Takako squirmed in his arms. “Why leave Istanbul? In your pickled state, you never would have pined for her or any woman ever again. And you would never have visited this city.”

The two of them swayed as the bus navigated a corner, sweeping people off the road and onto the shoulder. Others watched on silently with glowing red eyes.

“Yasukuni Avenue. We’ll soon be to Yotsuya.” There was feeling in Setsura’s voice. “I’ve been driving the bus for a while now. This bus travels the streets of Demon City. Do you know what that means, General Bey?”

“Exactly. It will soon become a fortress for me and my wife. You can listen to us building it in hell.” The general leaned forward. Stopping him was the girl in Setsura’s arms. The vampire lord ground his teeth. “Put her down, you blackguard.”

“And if I say no?”

General Bey was too startled to answer. He hadn’t expected the young man to resort to such measures. There was something different about him. No, Bey understood that it wasn’t a matter of difference so much as this Setsura was the yin to the other’s yang. Yet the incomprehensible image lingered in his brain, like a springtime haze slipping through his fingers.

Now it became a cold blade.

“What are you doing, General Bey?” Another shadow rose up behind him and castigated him. “Stop stalling. Kill Setsura. And kill the woman first. That’s what the doctor ordered. You cannot confront Setsura until you do.”

“The doctor—Mephisto, you mean?” Setsura mused, “He’s still sticking his oar in, is he?”

“Get him!” Kikiou shrieked again, loud enough to kick up a small gale.

The general hesitated. He had at least recognized the perverse impulse buried deep within his brain—the murderous desires directed toward the woman in Setsura’s arms. Kikiou hadn’t told him about all the mind-controlling instructions Mephisto had instilled in him.

After being brought here from Princess’s world, all he knew was that Takako would attack Setsura. Only if she failed would he step forth. And he had obediently gone along. Needless to say, the Demon Physician had blocked the willful expression of his overweening pride.

Kikiou had purposely revealed the existence of the mind control because Mephisto had said that by doing so it would take immediate effect. To be sure, the general had eagerly gone along for the ride. He’d agreed to hunt down Setsura with Takako at his side. And now, with the prey within his grasp, the general seized upon the awful truth.

“What have you done to me!” The vampire’s cry erupted out of the depths of the night.

Kikiou didn’t understand such emotions. “What the hell is the matter with you? Are you enjoying this bus ride? What a bother. Allow me to—”

What the great warlock meant to say—”destroy Setsura” or “kill Takako”—he didn’t get to finish the sentence.

The way General Bey whirled around, he must have suspected the latter. His right hand slashed past Kikiou’s neck. A gushing sound like a whale clearing its blow hole. The great warlock threw his head back—there was no time to deploy his demon qi—and clasped his hand to his neck. Blue blood spat between his fingers.

“What are you doing, General Bey!”

Kikiou swayed, breathing curses and spitting with malice, as the vampire bore down on him. A split-second before the second strike struck home, a large pair of wings beat against the air above his head.

Sweeping hands and claws batted away the blue liquid pouring down from above. “Who planned on it all happening this way?” Yakou’s question vanished into the pitch-black sky. “The bloke really rubs me the wrong way, but right now I have no choice but to save him. Hang in there, Setsura, if you can!”

When the human silhouettes carved out against the backdrop of the stars had dwindled to the size of the stars themselves, General Bey turned back to his foe. Nobody was there to interfere, and the morning was hours away.

“Put down my wife,” he growled.

“Or else what?” Setsura answered in the voice of the night. “To kill me, you must kill Kanan-san. Can you do it?”

“Put down my wife,” he repeated, though he had no way of knowing whether that would turn the situation to his benefit.

Setsura turned his gaze to the buildings on either side of them. “Yotsuya. The station should soon come into view.”

In that instant, the general sprang into the air.

Miyako and the doll girl silently backed away from Ryuuki’s burning body. Miyako stretched out her right hand. A black hole opened up in her palm. She was a battle cyborg who could take a division of air, sea or land forces all by herself.

On the verge of being incorporated into the SDF Special Forces, the Human Rights Commission wanted to know what in the world this business was of turning women into robots, and banished the cyborg corps. That was when she settled down in Shinjuku with the kids.

A silver knob jutted out from the hole. A phonon maser. Just as the ultrasonic sound waves began to pummel Ryuuki’s head, Miyako fell over. Not because of the radiation, but due to a strange paralysis in the metabolic regulators induced by an unknown source of energy.

Fire eating down to his marrow, General Ryuuki’s demon qi was yet alive and well. The doll girl stood there, as if protecting the gasping female cyborg. Could even this creation of Galeen Nuvenberg withstand Ryuuki’s demon qi?

The air shook. Excited electrons transitioned to higher energy levels, awaiting the photon-induced discharge.

The invisible stream of energy diverted inches in front of the doll girl and dove into the ground. The burning man stopped. New skin regenerated beneath the charred flesh and was consumed again by the jellied gasoline.

“Tonbeau-sama?” exclaimed the amazed doll girl, as the witch waded through the deadly blue mist, her being brimming with dignity.

“It’s about time you minded your manners,” snipped Tonbeau Nuvenberg, not detecting the usual sardonic edge in the doll girl’s ‘sama.’ She stood next to the doll girl and looked down at Miyako. “Collect her and get her out of here. And then come back for me. I’m not taking all this on my own shoulders, I assure you.”

“Ah—yes.” The doll girl took hold of Miyako’s arm and led her out of the vacant lot.

Tonbeau watched them leave and said to Ryuuki, “Seeing how you’re letting us walk out of here, I guess you do have some speck of chivalry left in you. Hey, how about you and me go into business together? Well, you don’t much look in the mood for conversation. But listen, okay? Here’s what I’m thinking—even in Demon City, you gotta have a few screws loose to be happy getting chomped on by a vamp. So you pick out a target, suck some blood, the poor victim goes clamoring for justice and revenge, and that’s when the world’s best vampire hunter—none other than me, Tonbeau Nuvenberg—comes calling. Look, we can just keep killing you over and over, right? And do it pretty painlessly to boot. So, how about it? Shall we seal the deal and make ourselves some money?”

Something flew out in front of her eyes and blew her backwards a dozen feet. “Whoa!” She rolled like a barrel, but quickly popped back to her feet. “Nice one, bud!” she said, rolling up her sleeves. “You may be a four-thousand-year-old vampire from China, but don’t go looking down your nose at the Czech Republic’s second greatest witch.”

She smacked her plump, mitt-like hands together. Her sausage-sized lips mumbled a series of spells—

“Princess—” said the roaring flames.

“Huh?” Tonbeau craned her ears.

“Princess—where are you?”

Ryuuki trudged forward. Faced with the sheer awfulness of the scene, the fat witch forgot her incantations and quickly retreated.

Several minutes later, having set Miyako down at a safe remove, the doll girl ran back to the vacant lot as fast as she could. When she arrived, she saw an oily napalm inferno crawling along the ground, and inside it the dancing bands of radiation.

The Czech Republic’s second greatest witch looked on blankly and mumbled, “The horror, the horror.”

General Bey realized as he jumped that Setsura had simultaneously vaulted over his head. What stayed the devil wire from leaving his hand was knowing that Takako was still in his arms.

What impressed him all the more was that Setsura had accomplished such a powerful jump while hauling along two severed heads.

He threw the wires instead at Setsura’s feet. They snaked along beneath him, then rose like a cobra and slithered into the cuffs of his slacks, opening up tiny slits and wrapping around his legs, torso and neck. With a single jerk of his hand, the general could slice and dice Setsura like a deli ham.

And so he yanked.

Simultaneously, Setsura raised his free hand and rose up on his toes like a dancer doing the Bolero. The only thing missing from the image was a red rose clasped between his lips.

The general stared in disbelief. Without encountering any resistance, the wires reeled back to him. Striking that pose, Setsura managed to move his body in a manner that rendered them useless. And he couldn’t understand how or why.

Attacks made with devil wires could assume many forms. Setsura had worked out many defenses using his threads and his own body and various other available tools, the same as with General Bey’s assault.

But then why didn’t he get off the bus? Even racing along at seventy, he could have lashed his devil wires to a passing building and swung off like Tarzan or like a literal high-wire artist climbed out of danger. With Takako in his arms, General Bey would be powerless to do anything but watch.

The bus ran through the darkness of Yasukuni Avenue. Yotsuya Station was just ahead.

“Are you sure you want to be here?” Setsura said from the back of the bus. Red lines entwined the general’s neck and torso. Blood scattered like red rain. “There’s no budging you?” he said, reversing the severed wires. Again with the cryptic observations. “Or will you be changing rides? Or shall we?”

Setsura was driving the bus with his devil wires. The titanium threads issuing forth from his fists had disengaged the autopilot and taken over the steering wheel and the brakes. He was the driver on this night shift bus.

This bus normally ran on Yasukuni Avenue from the old SDF garrison and Honmuracho in Ichigaya to Shinjuku, turning toward Ichigaya Daimachi and Yochomachi at Akebono Bridge. But now from the far end of Yasukuni Avenue, it headed in the opposite direction on Shinjuku Avenue toward Yotsuya.

Something must be waiting there.

The general waved his left hand. A simple gesture, but Setsura knew that he’d severed the wires controlling the bus. General Bey noticed something also.

“Don’t care for the bus either? It’s time for us to make a transfer too.”

What Setsura did next beggared belief. He leaned over and laid Takako down at his feet. The king had just sacrificed his queen—for nothing. On the narrow roof of the bus that left him little room to maneuver, giving away the advantage to an opponent like General Bey who could hurl Setsura’s moves right back at him and heal any wound at once had surely lowered his odds of prevailing to close to nil.

Setsura narrowed his eyes. The outlines of the familiar station building came into view. The old JR Yotsuya Station.

“Bring it on, General Bey,” he said, and jumped forward.

General Bey came running. Bands of light brightly wove through heaven and earth. Then separated as the two returned to their positions. Setsura stood at the front of the bus, the station behind him, while the general held the rear.

Holding Takako in his arms, the vampire lord roared with laughter. A victory cry of conquest and defeat that shook the darkness. A song of love and blood and pain.

“You strung your wires around my neck,” said the general, glaring at Setsura. “As did I around yours. If we both pull together, both will fall. But will yours regenerate?”

Setsura didn’t answer. He stood there mutely, like the night had carved itself into human form.

“And wrapped them around Takako’s neck too. Once you are dead, I will slay her as well. Then hide myself in this city. I have no other choice. From this night hence, this city will become the metropolis of the dead, Setsura. The cemetery surrounding Takako’s gravestone. And one day, I shall leave this place for the outside world. Hoh, I do not recall possessing such resolve at the height of my battles with the Turks. Even in death, a woman’s power is a terrifying thing. I will offer up the world in remembrance of Takako’s soul. Hold back your horses, Princess, at least until I have finished. No, you should have no objections. I am only fulfilling your dreams!”

“This is Demon City,” Setsura finally said. The wind blew his black hair across his crystalline cheeks and forehead. “Whether people or demons, we drive on the left in Japan. General, one day we’ll meet again in hell.”

Setsura leaned to Bey’s right. Not to avoid an oncoming attack. Keeping his body in a straight line, he tipped almost to the horizontal. Not grasping this strategy, General Bey was about to yank on his deadly wires.

His body went rigid.

With Setsura leaning out of the way, the view down the long canyon of the city street to the station and the soaring steeple was now unobstructed. This particular view could only be seen approaching Yotsuya Station along Shinjuku Avenue and driving on the left-hand side of the road.

The cross high atop the steeple of St. Ignatius Church, adjacent to Sophia Catholic University. When had it dawned on him—Setsura Aki, citizen of Demon City—to make of it a spear through a demon’s heart?

The cross glowed with a fierce white light. The general’s eyes sparkled as the cross’s phosphorescent light burned through his corneas and retinas, down the optic nerve, and out the back of his head.

“Takako—my wife!” His cries themselves incandesced into shafts of light that poured from his mouth, from his nose, from his ears. A moment later, his head flew from his shoulders into the air. Scattering shards of light like a disco ball, the head fell away into the darkness.

The headless torso stood there defiantly as Setsura scooted in and swept Takako up in his arms. The general’s body crumbled down to his feet. The wind swept the gray dust into the sky, along with the ash and embers of his clothing.

Vampires feared the cross, but destroying them required a stake through the heart or a beheading—to that extent, the legends were correct. The cross shining in the night instilled terror in General Bey’s heart, and for a moment that terror nullified the regenerative powers Princess had bestowed on him. And before it could resume its normal functioning, Setsura Aki’s devil wires had raced through the darkness.

That was the final ace Setsura had up his sleeve, and he bet the house on intervening in the split-second those regenerative powers were held in abeyance.

And now the greatest general of the Middle Ages was gone. Another phoenix had plummeted to earth in Demon City.

Setsura held the girl in his arms and looked down the street at the glimmering point of light. A thousand tragedies played out every day in Demon City Shinjuku, and now the curtains drew closed on but one more.

He cast a doleful glance down at the two heads swaying against his chest. “Let’s go,” he said.

The darkness closed around the comely countenance—sans anger, sans sadness, and far from joy.