Chapter One

Chapter One

It was past eleven at night by the time they arrived back in Takada no Baba. Tonbeau Nuvenberg was gasping for breath. They hadn’t been able to hail a taxi, so had trudged all the way back from the scene of their death match in Ichigayadai.

She plopped herself down in a chair in the living room. “What a night! I am beat! And with absolutely nothing to show for it! So much ado about nothing.”

The way she pounded on the table, that weariness didn’t seem much in evidence to the doll girl, who looked in surprise at her mistress’s sister and said, “If you have that much vigor left, perhaps you could tend to the raven? It looks quite serious.”

“I almost got myself killed, you know. My God. An old woman like me out on a night like this. I got into this line of work so I wouldn’t have to do all this manual labor, dammit. I’m pouring myself a stiff drink and going to bed.”

She got to her feet with a thump. Behind her a tired voice asked, “Ah, you’re back.” Mayor Kajiwara emerged from the back of the narrow hallway.

“Goodness gracious, you’re up already?” Tonbeau rubbed her hands together and speedily lent him a shoulder to lean on.

Unfurling the wings of the raven lying on its back on the floor, the doll girl soon understood the reason for Tonbeau’s sudden burst of charity.

“I was wondering when I could collect on my reward, you know, for saving you. C’mon, don’t think I did it out of the kindness of my heart.”

“Of course. You will be justly compensated, a gift for which you will thank me for the rest of your life.”

“What? Are you trying to play me, Mister?”

“Leave Shinjuku before tomorrow noon. That is my gift.”

“What the hell kind of a gift is that!”

The mayor raised his right hand and made a circling motion with his index finger.

“Are you saying I’m crazy?”

“No, the prime minister and the American president. Right now, in geostationary orbit twenty-two-thousand miles above us, a nuclear missile is drawing its crosshairs on Shinjuku.”

“What?”

“The zero hour is noon, Japan standard time.”

“W-w-what?”

“Are you certain?” the doll girl calmly inquired.

“Unfortunately, yes. I was hoping that the egg could somehow avert it. I hope you don’t mind, but while you were out I made use of your phone and called Prime Minister Kongodai. I was told he was at an undisclosed location. I tried contacting the Defense Agency Director with the same results. Trying to bluff that egg was a mistake. Its decision of when to dream its dreams is subtle. Director Yamase ending up in the hospital counts as some sort of payback.”

“Don’t make me laugh. That doesn’t count as anything in my book. What are you going to do about it? Why didn’t you tell me this when you asked for my help?”

Tonbeau was mad enough to spit. When they’d first met and Kajiwara asked for her assistance, he said to come looking for him if he wasn’t back by the next morning. He identified the hospital as the place to start, so he must have anticipated the effects of the egg.

“Where’s the prime minister? Negotiate with him! Negotiate!”

“That has been my intent all along. In the meantime I have instructed the ward to issue shelter and evacuation orders. You should get out of here, too. First, if you don’t, the likelihood of being fried to a crisp is strong. Second, I strongly suspect your landline is bugged.”

“By the Defense Agency?”

“And probably the NSA.”

“Why didn’t you inform the public earlier? You knew about this missile business before you sallied off to the Defense Agency, didn’t you?”

“Hard to say now.”

“Another irresponsible political hack.” Tonbeau banged her hands on the table.

Kajiwara added nothing more, only pressed his hands against the sides of his head. The fat witch sighed and exchanged a glance with the pretty doll girl, and then started with an audible gasp.

Tonbeau backpedaled as ooze spilled out between Kajiwara’s fingers. She comprehended its true nature in a flash. Her disagreeable disposition notwithstanding, she wasn’t the Czech Republic’s second-greatest witch for nothing.

“That’s a dream! The nightmare that put the old man into a trance at the Defense Agency. Oh, it must have been a bad one.”

“But why now? The mayor isn’t asleep.”

“It’s a reaction to this house and to me. Get back. Touch him and we’d get sucked into the same nightmare, despite ourselves.”

The “dream” looked like cans of paint spilling onto the center of the table. Something crawled along the surface. Familiar shapes twisted through the amalgam of chaotic colors. And what they would reveal when the canvas cleared—

The table burst into flame. The dazzling column of light washed the expressions from the faces of the fat witch and the doll girl. The reverberations shook their bodies. The cloud rising up from the liquid revealed its terrible true colors.

“That is—”

“—a nuclear explosion.”

The death of the world pounded against their eardrums. The scene changed. Spreading out on the table was the charred and ruined remains of the city. A black cloud blanketed the sky. Lava coursed around the shattered, shapeless buildings. The only thing ruling this world was the scorching heat.

And changed again.

The falling snow cast off blue-white beams, as if wrapping the tableau in bows of intense radiation. Beneath the tumbling ash, black ghosts trudged down unknown paths, clothed in rags, faces streaked with soot, eyes vacant.

The clouds of nuclear radiation veiled the ground, stole away the heat, cast down the brilliant snow and plunged the world into nuclear winter.

The doll girl said, “A likely scenario.”

Tonbeau Nuvenberg nodded. “Seeing this, a person of normal sensibilities would go mad, even envying the dead. What we are seeing is only a pale shadow of the original.”

“It’s fading,” the doll girl said.

The dreamworld dimmed, lost its shape and contours, and was drawing back between Kajiwara’s fingers when Tonbeau mumbled something.

The two looked at the scratched surface of the wooden table. Kajiwara groaned and lifted his head. He blinked. “You saw it too?”

“Relax,” Tonbeau said confidently. “See something like that more than once and it’d plague you for the rest of your life. You’ll sleep soundly after tonight. I’m not so sure about the Defense Agency Director and his ilk.”

“I’ll pack your suitcase,” said the doll girl, starting for the hallway.

“Wait,” said Tonbeau. She turned back to Kajiwara. “When did you inform the ward?”

“About twenty minutes ago.”

“I’m going to hide in the basement. You’ve got guests.”

Kajiwara turned his surprised gaze toward the window, but saw only gloomy darkness beyond the glass.

“Five or so. Dammit, I so do not look forward to getting involved in another unprofitable brawl.”

“I shall go greet them,” the doll girl said coolly. “In the meantime, Tonbeau-sama, the raven needs looking after. I shall make arrangements for your escape, should things turn in that direction.”

“I’ll leave that up to you. It’s looking like the sooner we get out of here the better.”

The doll girl went outside three minutes later. As soon as she left, she felt a strange change. The enemy had closed in on them in those three minutes, but something else had happened too.

Her blue eyes peered through the dark. Her small lips smiled. Standing on the blood-soaked street, scanning his surroundings, was the handsome visage of none other than Setsura Aki. He was holding a girl in his arms, and—

“Grandma!” the doll girl wailed in a wretched voice that human ears rarely heard. Not “mistress,” but “grandma.”

She clung to Galeen Nuvenberg’s head, hanging from his waist, and called out to her again and again. Setsura impassively looked down at her. Finally he gently nudged her shoulders.

“Your grandmother died saving my life.”

“I thought as much. Such a person would not throw away her life on a personal whim,” she said plainly. She touched her cheeks. “But of course. Tears do not flow.” Setsura didn’t know how to respond to that. She added, “Please do not misunderstand. I am capable of crying. However, in this case only—on the occasion of Grandma’s death—am I not allowed to weep. That is how she made me. For her alone I was not to mourn. And so I do not.”

“She was a good person,” Setsura said softly. An expression that could even be called human shadowed the unearthly beauty of his face.

The doll girl fixed her gaze on the street Setsura had come down and saw several bodies lying on the ground. “And them?”

“They were spying on your house. I asked them why and they attacked me. They weren’t carrying IDs, but from the way they moved, they’re company men. Military would be my guess. And in Japan—”

“The SDF.”

“What did they come here for? Well, we should probably ask them directly.”

“I agree.”

The two walked back to the house. After ten steps, one of the shadows stood and tottered after them.

The man was a ranger in the Ground Self-Defense Forces. He’d been ordered to go to Nuvenberg’s house and take Mayor Kajiwara into custody. If that wasn’t possible, then he was to kill him. He had on his belt enough plastic explosives to bring down a three-story house.

The pain from the invisible knives pressing against his vital organs was enough to make him yield to the questioning, after which he fainted.

Weeping filled the Nuvenberg household, not ceasing even during the man’s questioning. In the adjacent room, her round face wet with tears, Tonbeau Nuvenberg cradled her sister’s head and cried out loud lamentations.

After the ranger confessed everything he was going to, Kajiwara caught Setsura up to speed on the situation. Not looking at his watch, Setsura said breezily, “It’s midnight. That gives us twelve hours.”

“Exactly. I’ll call an emergency session of the city council. Sorry to have to ask, but I could use an escort to the ward government building.”

“No problem. But perhaps the evacuation would best begin at dawn. There are plenty of peaches along the main thoroughfares, but the back streets are still ruled by the vampires.”

“I don’t suppose that even the impending strike of a nuclear missile will convince them to behave otherwise?”

“Probably not. Then there’s the question of whether a missile would do the intended job on them.”

Kajiwara gaped a bit at that. “It is as he says,” the doll girl added. “It may be effective so long as they are completely vaporized. But scalding and radiating them alone will not destroy the vampires. The accursed blood keeps them alive. Modern military technology will not help in this regard.”

“If only Prime Minister Kongodai and the American president would understand that.” Kajiwara sighed and leaned back in his chair. His face was pale and his breaths shallow. The echoes of the dream were still with him.

The telephone rang. The doll girl went to answer it. “It’s from the ward,” she said to Kajiwara.

He held up a reassuring hand to Setsura and left the room. When he returned ten minutes later, the expression on his face was even graver.

“What’s up?” Setsura asked, with a concerned look of his own.

“All the gates to the outside world have been shut and sealed. The reason given is the outbreak of a contagion of unknown origins.”

“There’s at least method to their madness,” Setsura said lightly, and then swore to himself. Kajiwara glared at him.

“Do they intend to destroy all of Shinjuku?” the doll girl wondered aloud.

“I called the prime minister at his home, but nobody is saying a thing. I have the feeling the quarantine will continue until dawn.”

“Until then, the citizens of the ward can get ready to move and take shelter a safe distance from the strike zone. How possible is that?”

Kajiwara shook his head in response to Setsura’s question. “Sunrise is at five o’clock. Seven hours isn’t enough time.”

“Then there’s no assurance that the quarantine will be lifted at dawn. The evacuation order should probably be belayed. It would only cause chaos.”

“I’ll tell the ward to hold off for the time being. But I do need to get back.”

Kajiwara stood up. He was still in pajamas. His upper body swayed a bit.

“What’s the government up to?” Setsura Aki leaned back in his chair. “The prime minister is not an innocent citizen of this city. That Princess could suck his blood for all I care.”

Rubbing his head, Kajiwara’s hand suddenly stopped.

“What?”

“Sucking blood or having it sucked—it’s hard to believe, but—” His strained voice soon found new life. “I can’t dismiss the possibility. The prime minister must have met her.”

“Meaning what?” Setsura leaned forward. Even his nonchalance had its limits when it came to the destruction of Demon City.

“Something like this—”

Kajiwara described what had happened the night of the destruction of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Complex. His information wasn’t originally first-hand, but he’d later been filled in by the Cabinet Secretary. A standoff between Princess and the outside world had apparently led to the destruction of the Complex. Prime Minister Kongodai was there when it happened, and the shock had put him in the hospital.

As could be expected, no other emotion clouded Setsura’s face. “Princess lets an enemy head of state out of her clutches, and he’s confined to his bed with emotional exhaustion—”

He sunk back into silence. It was hard to tell what thoughts were going through his mind. For a while, the near-feral weeping filled the house.

“So, what do you propose? Go back there? Anybody have any better ideas?”

“There?” The doll girl furrowed her brows with a clicking sound. “The world of the Demon Princess?”

“Yeah,” said Setsura, stifling a yawn.