Chapter Three

Chapter Three

“And—?!” the doll girl exclaimed with surprise.

Setsura only hiked up his eyebrows. Which of Princess’s declarations he was reacting to and how was anybody’s guess.

“I cast my spell on the ruler of this country. If only for a short while, I thought he might be an interesting toy to play with. I suppose I could add stopping the firing of that nuclear missile to the list. However, Setsura, don’t think you can relax. I can return to any place I have ever been at any time. What becomes of you and this city means nothing to me. As far as Kikiou and I are concerned, wiping the place clean once and for all would probably be the most refreshing course of action. So, how will you reward us for saving you? What you are prepared to pay, Setsura?”

Her voice ceased. The wind roared at their backs. Black clouds covered the moon and the wind tore them apart, as if the heavens and earth too awaited the answer. The world stood poised at the crossroads of light and dark.

“What do you want?” Setsura asked, as if ordering dinner.

Princess cracked the whip against the side of the carriage. “Are you making fun of me?” she growled. She said, managing to control her rage, “What about your life?”

“Well, that is a head-scratcher,” said Setsura, as the doll girl seized the sleeve of his coat.

“Hoh. The cute little girl has such a serious look on her face. Relax. I don’t want his life. I’ve got plenty lives of my own already. But in exchange—”

She crouched down and leapt into the sky. Her white hand seized Setsura’s neck. Her red eyes flashed at his not a foot away from his face.

Setsura reflexively closed his eyes.

“Oh, he’s a quick one. But if you don’t open your eyes, neither will I. The ruler of this country is called Kongodai. In any case, controlling him requires these eyes. So what will you do?”

“What do you plan on doing with Setsura-san?”

Princess looked down. “Hmm. I wonder. Keep him penned up in my basement for the rest of his life? Turn him into a literal son of a bitch?”

“I would not permit such a thing!”

“I’m only hypothesizing. I have no desire to kill him, either. Killing alone isn’t much fun anymore. I have to parcel the hell out in small doses to gain any true satisfaction from it. In order to do that—” Princess didn’t finish the sentence. Instead she looked at Takako, standing there ramrod straight. “You can come too.”

“No!”

Princess glared at the little girl. She didn’t retreat an inch. Her clear blue eyes stared back defiantly into the fires of hell.

Setsura patted her on the head. “I will accompany her.”

“You’ve resolved yourself?” Princess looked away and smiled. The doll girl wavered a bit, clinging to Setsura’s side as if to maintain her balance.

“However, there is one thing I’d like to ask you.”

“What is that?”

“Will you be taking Takako-san and me to your kingdom?”

“Exactly.” Princess nodded. “I considered making you a prisoner of my eyes, but not for now. I fancy instead a brief stroll down a dangerous path. All the instruments have been arranged. All manner of things unimaginably cruel and sordid. Items even I would hesitate to use. Though there will be places appropriate for every one of them.”

Setsura said, “Now that you mention it, I have only been in the vicinity of the manor house.”

“This time you would be well advised to keep your eyes peeled. I shall serve as your personal guide.”

“And for that I thank you.”

The one shot through with infinite loathing, maledictions and menace, and the other, full of the carefree promise of spring. The indescribable mismatch of characteristics in this odd give-and-take revealed well the nature of the beasts involved.

“Then get on board.” The whip cracked and pointed at the covered chariot.

“Wait.” The doll girl said in a strained voice, “How do you intend to fulfill your end of the promise?”

“Relax. If I had enough spare time on my hands, I could destroy and resurrect this city a hundred times over by noon tomorrow. I will keep my word.”

“Well, there you have it. I guess we’ll be going then,” Setsura said to the doll girl, as if he was going out for a stroll and would be back presently.

Princess drew her brows. Even she had a hard time understanding him. The look in her eyes suggested at times that she thought him a bit off his rocker.

“Do you know what you are coming here for?” she asked him.

“You don’t?” was the reply, as if surprised.

Princess didn’t answer. She would have all the time in the world to torment Setsura later. This was not the place to launch into some strange debate.

“Sorry, but you’re going to have to come with.”

Setsura put an arm around Takako and ducked into the veiled canopy. With a smug look of satisfaction on her face, the Demon Princess cracked the whip. The creak of the wheels and the clomp of hooves filled the night. As the chariot vaulted over the sidewalk and whirled around, the doll girl jumped out of the way and with a dejected expression watched it speed away.

Along with the fat witch standing there uselessly like an oversized fireplug.

Setsura settled onto the soft seat at the back of the canopy. “Where are we going?” he asked the whip-wielding Princess.

“We are going where we are going.”

“Your world—where is it exactly?”

“Do you think I would tell you?”

“Well, worth a try. Maybe you’d slip up and say.”

Princess must be annoyed that Setsura didn’t fear her in the least.

“Today—well, yesterday—I heard there was an earthquake around noon. Then there was this dimensional vortex that tossed me about. The one caused the other?”

She didn’t answer. But Setsura didn’t take that as a cue to stop talking. No reason to stop doing things his way at this juncture.

“Seeing as it was a Shinjuku earthquake, it must be cousin to the Devil Quake and its aftershocks. If the epicenter is close by, all sorts of repercussions are bound to result, such as personality transfers and mutations in the internal organs. It follows that your world must have been very near. But I think there’d be limits to the abnormal changes a Devil Quake could cause in a separate world. Aren’t the mountains and the lake and the manor house on this side of reality?”

“Enough with the chatter.”

Setsura couldn’t see the look on her face. This time the beautiful vampiress was smiling, as if to say, He’s putting two and two together.

“Sorry for saying such presumptuous things, but I’d like to see you deliver on your promise first.”

“Oh, you don’t believe me?”

“Not so much, no.”

“No beating around the bush for you,” said Princess, baring her fangs. “Fine.”

Now she turned around and smiled. A bewitching smile that would utterly disarm the strongest man. But utterly devoid of charm and guilelessness, the smile of a sadistic child about to vivisect a frog.

“But neither can I trust you. I can order around the prime minister and his ilk from my kingdom. We’ll continue the conversation there.”

“If you say so,” Setsura said a bit peevishly. It wasn’t clear if Princess picked up on it, but he wasn’t eager to go to her kingdom.

All of a sudden, she wasn’t there in his line of sight. The curtains of the canopy blocked his view. Perhaps she wished to disguise the entrance to her dwelling.

“Hey!” Setsura called out, cupping his hand around his mouth. “Don’t be such a spoilsport.”

The curtains soon lifted. “You have a point,” Princess said. On this she was resolute. That she had destroyed her fair share of dynasties was no vain boast.

The chariot turned off the Koshu Highway and approached the south entrance of Shinjuku Station. Setsura looked at Takako on the seat beside him. She was no longer burning with a murderous rage, and appeared as little more than a pale empty shell, devoid of life. But at least when her demonic powers slackened, some of her original character returned.

Setsura thought of the lively image she’d presented when they first met at his shop. Young, pretty, burning with curiosity about the legends of ancient China—though at the end of the day, an ordinary college coed—with no comprehension of how her own fate hung in the balance.

If nothing else, then he should save this girl alone.

The disinterested mien vanished from his face. Takako suddenly turned and leaned against him. He cradled her head against his chest. Her sad eyes looked into his. Then just as abruptly, she reared up. Her fangs flashed. Uncoiling her body like a spring, Takako lunged at Setsura’s throat.

But Setsura had already gently pushed her aside and gotten up. There was no telling if the look on her face had even registered.

“You got some strange chaps out there, eh?” he said, but received no answer.

On the street in front of the south entrance was a seething black mass. A crowd of people with red eyes and fangs.

“Hold on to the railing!” the Demon Princess cried out.

Setsura grasped the horizontal pole as the chariot plowed through the middle of the throng. This was an act of gratuitous, reckless violence. As soon as they saw the chariot and recognized Princess’s true nature, the crowd had parted to the left and right, creating a path for her. Knowing this, or despite this, she plunged ahead.

Shouts and screams and gouts of blood. A woman slow to flee was run over, her back crushed and peeled by the heavy wheels. That also caved in the chest of a homeless man, the ribs puncturing his organs and sticking out like a porcupine’s quills.

Half of the face of a salaryman standing there gaping at the gore disappeared when Princess cracked her whip at him. The whip parted the air again and took the head of a high-schooler off her shoulders, and split a janitor’s chest in two.

“What are you doing?”

“Are you out of your mind?”

Princess’s soaring, loud laughter overrode these cries of dismay. She urged the horses forward, and lashed out with the whip and threw back her head and laughed as if this was the most delightful thing in the world. The tyrants of the ancient world who tortured their subjects must have created scenes like this. Her face overflowed with joy. Her whole being sparkled.

She was intoxicated by the indiscriminate mayhem and violence, high on the smell of blood. The divinity of her countenance—her inherent comeliness as she cracked the whip—a vivid testament to the twinned opposites of beauty and brutality.

And then the brutal storm ceased.

Scattering anachronistic thunder behind it, the chariot of death turned onto Meiji Avenue and galloped full speed down the hill.

Prime Minister Kongodai hadn’t been sleeping well lately. After falling asleep, it wasn’t more than a few minutes until the pain and anguish began, and his own unearthly screams jolted him awake. When his doctors and wife tried to console his frenzied state of mind, he thrust them away with superhuman strength. Tranquilizers and sleeping pills had no effect.

When he eventually calmed down enough for the doctor to examine him, he would only mutter, eyes heavy and his features haggard, “That woman—those red eyes—”

The rest was gibberish incomprehensible even to him. His hollow-eyed state worsened with the decision to bomb Shinjuku. From somewhere within his iron will—fully prepared to vaporize its hundreds of thousands of people to prevent a vampire invasion of greater Tokyo—welled up a blood-red tide of voices calling out with cruel and accursed ire.

The nerves of the Japanese prime minister had sharpened to the point where he felt the ticking of every second.

At three o’clock in the morning, after a private conference with the ruling party secretary general at the official residence, he retired to his bedroom and emerged ten minutes later, telling his bodyguard that he would be going out undercover and in absolute secrecy.

His late-model Rolls Royce left the official residence at three thirty-seven in the morning. With that, the prime minister disappeared into the darkness of the city.

Setsura lazily observed the approaching lights. In the smoky orange glow, they resembled the eyes of some nocturnal monster. The fog swirled around them. Winter, spring, summer and fall, the fog never dissipated from this plot of land. Perhaps nothing in these precincts had ever been clearly seen.

The blood-sucking plants and insects that on any other night would be on them in a flash, now consisted of a few discombobulated creatures lying in pieces around his feet. The rest must be in their nests fretting about what the morrow would bring.

“He’s here,” said Princess. She was standing six feet or so in front of him. The chariot was a dozen yards behind them, hidden in the fog.

The sound of the engine died. The lights dimmed. The back door was flung open. A gray mass flew out. Just before striking the ground head first, the mass deftly rolled onto its shoulder, got its feet under it, and stood up.

As soon as a second jumped out, two silhouettes emerged from the front door, and another from the back door opposite emerged into the warm night air.

The last of the silhouettes said to the second, “Mr. Prime Minister, where are you going?”

But he had already run up to Princess. She grinned and said, “Thank you for coming.”

Prime Minister Kongodai made no effort to hide his pale and frightened face. “Why—why did you call me?”

“Oh, for no reason of my own.” She glanced at Setsura. “Pretty boy here insists on talking to you. Hoh, I did not expect you to extricate yourself alone, but with only four of your retainers? My, my, how the mighty have fallen in this modern world.”

A critique only to be expected from a woman who had destroyed three dynasties.

The three of them were lit up in a spotlight. One of the bodyguards had turned on the car’s headlamps.

“Who is this chick?” The speaker and his colleagues had their semi-autos and submachine guns out and aimed. “Keep your hands where we can see them. Resist and we’ll shoot.”

Despite the menace in the order, the behavior of the prime minister was strange enough that they moved very cautiously.

“Just the right number of players for this game,” Princess said happily. “Listen to me, all of you. I’m only going to say this once. You are all coming to my kingdom. Up to the appointed hour, Setsura will search for the prime minister and his lackeys. Mine is not a calm and peaceful place. A wild and woolly world even I do not enter blithely. The prime minister’s four armed retainers will be there, but the monsters will be after them too. Retrieve him before he is eaten alive and bring him back to me, and I will make your wishes come true. It is now a little before four in the morning. Including a generous margin for error, that gives this manhunter seven remaining hours to put all of his skills and abilities on display and save the city.”

To be continued.