Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Setsura grumbled as he walked along with Takako, “The games have begun.”

Knowing how Princess’s mind worked, this kind of horseplay went without saying, though it was the kind of horseplay that put lives at risk—the product of the most ill-natured person in the universe at that moment.

Knowing that, however, and describing the conflict thusly suggested a state of mind that was no less mysterious. To start with, wandering around this world like he was going for a walk in the park. And bringing a girl with him to boot. But the clincher was that nonchalant expression.

Half of it was for show. Then there was Ryuuki’s qi, dammed up in his gut like a chronic disease. The fatigue seeped into his cells, the ague coursed through his blood. But he drove himself forward. The fine control required to manipulate the devil wires was growing iffy as those same devil wires shredded his fingertips.

The rest of his body wasn’t much better. He was surrounded on all sides by enemies and incompetents. Only Setsura Aki—a resident of Demon City—could keep a stiff upper lip in such a situation.

The heavy mist wrapped around his face and slicker. “Hurry up—” and get out here already, he was going to say, when he looked down at his feet.

A circle in the grass some twenty inches in diameter, the meadow grass neatly trimmed around the edges. It was less a hole than a wormhole into a separate space.

“The prime minister fell in here,” Setsura said, like a professor reviewing a paper before publication.

He hadn’t fallen in himself. An eagle-eyed observer would have noticed that since they set off in the thick mist, not a blade of grass had bent out of place. The soles of their shoes brushed the tips of the grass but didn’t touch the earth.

Bushes and trees were scattered here and there across the meadow. The devil wires stretched around them, allowing Setsura and Takako to safely pass across the meadow a fraction of an inch above the ground.

The hole closed in on itself and vanished. “And where will it appear next?”

Setsura Aki set off once again. After ten more steps, he stopped. Something was coming at them out of the mist. Bipedal, a hundred forty-five pounds, wearing size eight leather shoes—this much information was communicated to Setsura through the fine vibrations.

Another shimmer came down the threads. And stopped. They were fifty yards apart, checking out the situation, it seemed.

Strangely enough, Setsura didn’t sense any kind of animosity aimed at him. He cast out a devil wire. And, startled, reflexively drew it back in. “What the—” he blurted out.

From his forehead to the bridge of his nose ran a thin line of red. Blood. The enemy’s attack had only grazed his forehead.

The weapon was the same as Setsura’s devil wire. It drew back along the same angle and didn’t attack again. The same as Setsura. He knew as well that it was the same titanium wire that he used.

“Unbelievable, meeting here of all places.”

He started walking without hesitation. The presence of the other grew closer, an unbelievably calm presence. Setsura didn’t stop. He and Takako kept on going.

Twenty yards, ten, five, two, one—as if from beneath a white veil a man’s face appeared—collided with him, passed through him as if through the air itself, and emerged behind him. Setsura still didn’t stop, only glanced over his shoulder.

And found he was looking back at himself. The face of Setsura, a line of blood trickling down his face. His opposite, soon lost in the mists, was himself. He’d known it as soon as the devil wire he fired off returned along the exact same vectors, in a reflection of himself. The target had done the same.

“Enough with the practical jokes,” he grumbled, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief.

“Hey!” From far away on his right came a familiar voice. Realizing it was Kongodai, a rare look of delight rose to his otherwise languid face.

Though he hadn’t spun his titanium threads in that direction, forty or fifty yards before and behind him he recalled two pine trees at an angle to himself. Tying the trees together, Setsura shifted the threads until he and the voice were directly aligned, then returned to his hand.

He ran along this slender new path. The sky sang out above his head. A moment later, streaks of smoke bursts from fists, the devil wires rising up to meet the darts falling down on him.

His ten fingers spun their own kind of magic, swatting away the rain of darts while snagging dozens of them and snapping them back up. Humming through the air, the darts were sucked back into the sky from whence they came.

Followed by a scream. Not the usual kind of ear-piercing scream. Without a sound, not disturbing the mist. But it was a cry, as if the atmosphere itself had shouted it out.

The earth trembled. Setsura didn’t have time to transfer to another thread and was tossed into the sky. A sound like fingernails on a blackboard—the devil wires stretching to the breaking point. The air shook, on the scale of a natural disaster.

The mists tore apart. Surging green hills appeared like waves on the sea. The surging crests beneath his feet bounced him like a trampoline. In the air, Setsura saw gravestones growing out of the earth. So Sejika wasn’t lying after all.

He wound a wire around the cemetery’s gravestones and sinking pine trees and perched on one and then the other like a hopping bird, then pulled on the thread in his left hand. Takako sprang up from where she was lying on the ground, riding on the wire.

“We’ve repulsed the first attack. What about the second?”

As soon as he got on top of the tree, he wrapped a wire around a branch and swung down like a pendulum and flung himself toward the forest. Letting go at the crest of the arc, he cast out another and transferred to it. An onlooker would have only seen the two of them dancing through empty space.

Nothing was amiss in the forest. The strangeness seemed confined to the rolling hills. “I wonder what happened to those bodyguards,” Setsura muttered with a touch of concern.

The shuddering sky had broken the thread connecting himself and Sejika. The rest was up to fate.

The most likely explanation suggested that “something” in that piece of land—or rather, a region of this world—was at the root of it. Not that this “something” ruled over it, but that this “something” was the land. When Setsura sent the darts flying back to where they’d come from, that “something” had felt the pain.

If Mephisto were here, he’d deliver a lecture on the subject. “It is called the Landlord,” said a voice beneath his feet.

Speak of the devil—not believing his ears, Setsura looked down at the white doctor standing beneath the tree.

“What are you doing here?”

“Quite the spectacle,” Mephisto said, placing a hand against the trunk. “You seem in good spirits.”

“I was until you showed up.”

An almost evil smile came to the physician’s face. “I have been observing you up and about. My diagnosis is that you ruptured the Landlord’s eye.”

“That territory is its world, including the air above,” Setsura said, recalling that he’d flung the darts back into the sky.

“Exactly. A demon of the old school. It leases what is in the land.”

“Hence, the Landlord. And what does it lease?”

“Itself.”

“Itself?”

“See for yourself.” Mephisto gestured at the seething ground.

“Holy cow,” Setsura said in blank surprise.

The green hills had transformed into a wasteland of red dirt, dead still except for a few withered shrubs swaying here and there in the wind.

“Left in the wake of the Landlord’s departure. In short, it breathes brimming life into the lodging earth.”

“Sounds like a certain doctor I know,” Setsura quipped as he surveyed the scene before him. “I don’t imagine you came here alone. Where are Princess and that traitor? You may beg off, but if you’re helping to conceal the prime minister, I won’t be so forgiving.”

From the utter lack of intensity in the conversation, they could have been chatting over tea. But as far as Doctor Mephisto was concerned, saying such things in such a manner was Setsura’s raison d’être.

“Making your life miserable is Princess’s hobby alone. I have nothing to do with it. Neither does Yakou.” A stray strand of his hair got caught in the breeze. Mephisto raked it back with his fingers.

“And where is she?” Setsura asked in a suddenly surreptitious voice.

“I don’t know. I was at the manor house. She invited me to come and see something spectacular.”

“Then she’s still in the manor house?”

“I do not know.”

“There’s still that favor I asked of you,” Setsura said with a smile.

“What would that be?”

“This girl, of course.” Setsura indicated Takako, sitting on the branch next to him. “She still hasn’t transformed completely into a vampire. Her eyes turn clear from time to time. At this juncture, it should still be possible to treat her.”

“I can say after I have examined her,” said the Demon Physician.

“The sooner the better.”

“Agreed.”

“And if she complains, I’m sure you’ll have a good excuse.”

“Not even Heaven may lay a finger upon one of my patients.” He may have turned into a vampire, but Doctor Mephisto remained very much Doctor Mephisto.

“Much appreciated.”

Setsura gave Takako’s shoulder a slight push. She slipped off the branch and slowly alighted on the ground in front of Mephisto.

“Leave it to me.”

Thousands and tens of thousands of people visited the old government office building in Shinjuku to hear those words. He reached out. His cape spilled like a clear stream down on top of her. Enfolded as if in a cocoon, Takako’s expression took on a rapturous glow.

“My long-lost patient. I will examine you most carefully.”

Setsura raised a hand. “She’s all yours.”

Entrusting the vampire Takako to the vampire Mephisto—that could be called a profound sort of trust. Through the branches, Setsura watched as the white-clad figure disappeared among the trees.

“That’s a relief,” he said, pressing a hand against his abdomen, as if doing his best to convince himself. “Though I do have to wonder.”

A more honest emotion perhaps. Setsura directed his gaze away from Mephisto and to the ruined village. The final battle would take place there.

“Hey,” a voice called out, in the vain hope that somebody else might hear him.

The mist had begun rising to the treetops where he was standing. Now it flowed like a dream toward the village. This manhunter had to figure out how to save the owner of that voice, Prime Minister Kongodai.

Fresh blood welled up. As long as he kept wielding his devil wire day and night, the flesh was never going to heal, the blood was never going to stop.

“Ouch, that stings.”

Showing no other evident signs of pain, the young man in black swung down into the center of the mist.