Chapter Two

Chapter Two

“What am I doing? I’ve got to get out of this city. You too, and the faster the better. This whole place is going up in smoke. Nostradamus prophesied it all. The wrath of God will rain down from heaven.”

“Here we are.” The uniformed guard escorting the fat, whining woman came to a halt.

“Ah, right.”

Tonbeau Nuvenberg cleared her throat and examined the steel bars. They’d arrived at the special detention lockup on the first basement level of the Shinjuku Police Station. In terms of hard and rugged, it was a world apart from a normal holding cell. Even taking the criminal element of Demon City into consideration, only one in ten ended up here, meaning that nothing else could handle them.

Based on the nature and brutality of the run-of-the-mill crook in this city, maybe one in a hundred million matched the same criteria outside Shinjuku.

That was what it meant to be in a Demon City lockup.

“I was getting all ready to skedaddle myself. There had better be a damned good reason for dragging me down here. I expect an apology! In writing!”

“I’ll see about that,” the officer said with a smile.

“Really?”

“Leave it to me.”

“Much appreciated,” she said, livening up a bit and peering through the bars. “Now, which one of these ne’re-do-wells wanted to see me?”

She was about to take a step forward when a pretty hand tugged on the hem of her skirt. Tonbeau Nuvenberg looked down at the doll girl behind her. “What do you want?”

“This is too dangerous for you to go poking about. Let me handle this.”

“You do have a point there,” Tonbeau readily agreed, stepping back. “You check things out.”

“Yes.”

The girl wrapped in dark green velvet answered her new mistress with an obedient bow and proceeded down the corridor of iron bars.

“I see,” she said three or four minutes later, peering into a cell.

In a single night, the demon had sucked the blood of fourteen vagrants, and then when taken into custody, had requested an audience with Nuvenberg. Now he sat on a cot in a regulation black jail uniform in a solitary cell.

“General Ryuuki,” the doll girl said disbelievingly. “He allowed himself to be arrested?”

“Sure, after wrecking a chameleon,” the officer said, as if it were all in a night’s work. “At that point, sixteen weapons that could destroy sixteen armored vehicles drew a bead on him. There was a lot of curiosity about what would happen if they unloaded on him. Alas, it didn’t happen.”

Faced with an array of weapons, he had strummed his koto. As soon as the most beautiful sound in the world flowed though this corner of the night, his would-be attackers froze in place.

“I promised to give up without a fight. In exchange, I requested a meeting with the witch called Nuvenberg who lives in Takada no Baba. If she wasn’t available, then the next most powerful witch would do.”

The steely voice came from the man at the back of the cell. Before the doll girl could call his name again, he turned toward her and softly said, “I see you came.”

“Yes.”

“Where is your mistress?”

“You mean me?” The fat lady marched up and, hands on hips, threw out her chest.

“So she hasn’t returned?”

“No.”

Tonbeau stamped her feet. “Hey, I’m standing right here!”

“Only her head. Setsura Aki-sama had it with him.”

“That is—good,” Ryuuki said. The doll girl could hear the sincerity in his words.

“Thank you.”

“What is Aki-san up to?”

“He again stole into your kingdom in order to save this city.”

“That is a—”

“He will surely return.”

“A man like him always will.”

“Why did you ask for us?”

“After Miss Nuvenberg’s death, this is Magic Town’s second most powerful witch?”

There was a touch of derision in his eyes, but Tonbeau heartily slapped her immense chest. “The same. Speak your business. I’ll warn you, though. If you’re gonna try and recruit me as a vampire hunter, you’re a little late to the party.”

“I understand. The opposite, actually. There is nothing to hunt. I would like you to destroy me.”

For a moment, it was as if the world had frozen in ice. The two of them looked at each other. The doll girl said to the occupant of the jail cell, “Are you sure about this?”

“I have never been so certain in my life. Ever since the day I was spared by Princess at the border of the wastelands, I have been driven mad by the smell of blood. I would have otherwise chosen death by my own hand long ago.”

“And now you cannot?”

“It is too late for that. This body is resistant even to my own efforts.”

“Such a task would be no less difficult for us. You could reconstitute yourself from a nuclear blast. You no longer can be classified as an ordinary living thing.”

“That is why I requested you. Only you could deliver the coup de grâce to this accursed body.”

The doll girl said, “We have only met once, without evil befalling any other party. Do you remember?”

“Ah, the house of that innocent girl. Shuuran told me about it later. You staked me in the heart.”

“That is correct. Nevertheless, you came back to life. What other methods might we avail ourselves of?”

“I see. So there are none?”

“Only one: vanquish the one who first took your blood.”

“That is impossible.”

“Setsura Aki is attempting to accomplish the same.”

“No matter how powerful the magicians in this city, Princess cannot be destroyed. She will be removed from this Earth when she herself despairs of living any longer in it. And I have never met anyone who desires to live more than she.”

“How enviable,” the doll girl said. “In this city, those people who go on living despite their despair are as numerous as the sands in the sea. If despair alone is enough to wreak the wages of mortality upon her, then she surely must be cursed.”

“The thirst for blood will return to me tonight. It would take only a moment to tear out enough throats to quench the desire. When that happens, I will leave here and shroud this city with the wings of death. Nobody will be able to stop me.”

“We can only do what we can do,” said the doll girl, casting her eyes downward. “We cannot save your heart or your soul. But a defiled body ruled by a craving for blood—there is much we can do.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Then I leave everything up to you.”

No one noticed Tonbeau agreeing until she spoke. “The compensation is always dear, my dears, especially when a murderer is involved. Ten million, for starters.”

“Fine.”

“That’s only to satisfy the cops. Your portion comes to thirty.”

“I’ve no objection.”

“Paid up front.”

“Everything I had on me was burned. When my body is rotting in the grave, the koto Silent Night is yours to do with as you please. It is a great treasure, with which you can reign over the human heart at will. It should be worth a billion or ten.”

“Agreed. You all heard him,” she said, grabbing the officer forcefully by the arm. “That man’s koto belongs to me now.”

“Yeah, okay, sure,” the officer babbled, as if she were dragging him off to the altar. “But we’ll need him to sign a transfer of property form.”

“No problem. I’ve been forging signatures since I was in diapers.”

“She is such a dependable resource,” the doll girl said sarcastically. “But how shall we proceed after this?”

“Release him into our custody.”

The officer shook his head. “Absolutely not. A face-to-face meeting is one thing. Releasing a hardened criminal is quite another.”

Tonbeau nodded. “I figured you’d say that.”

She lowered her head like a bull and drove it into the officer’s solar plexus. He dropped like a rock. Before he hit the floor, Tonbeau got her shoulder under his arm and whispered in his ear, “Listen closely, dearie. You’re not a public servant, you’re my servant now. First, open that door.”

Setsura followed Princess along the mist-swept road. They’d long since passed the point at which the road turned toward the sculptor’s house. He could swear they’d been walking for an hour or more, though he couldn’t be sure about the passing of time.

“How long is this going to take?” he asked.

“Hardly a minute has passed.”

Setsura stumbled a bit. There was no end to the mysteries of China’s past four thousand years. But he might as well keep on walking, he resolved uncharacteristically.

“We’ve arrived.” Princess stopped and glanced back at him. “Are you dissatisfied about something?”

“Not at all,” said Setsura, looking up at the building towering before them.

The scale—big enough to swallow up five or six of the surrounding houses—was evident through the haze. The windows were few in number and small.

“A warehouse?

Princess said, “The raw materials for the mask makers are stored here.”

“The prime minister is inside? Is that any way to treat a nation’s leader?”

“Differently than you would?”

“Ah, probably not.”

“Compared to the tyrants whose hearts I have stolen away, what passes for this country’s king is a field mouse peeking out at the world from the weeds, thankful simply to have a roof over his head.”

Setsura couldn’t really disagree with that assessment. She opened a wooden door. He went in after her.

Thanks to the windows, he could clearly make out the dim interior. The smell of earth tickled his nose. It wasn’t a bad smell—compared to that of blood.

Inside the warehouse was a wide, empty space interrupted by no pillars, none of the expected crates or boxes. Directly opposite them, thirty feet deeper in, were three big pots in a row. The gray surfaces were covered with cracks. These were period objects as well.

Setsura asked, “Inside one of them?”

“See for yourself.” Princess smiled, the evil oozing out of practically every pore. “The prime minister and the rest of them are in those pots. But that is not the end of it. One body, three pots. Do you understand what I’m referring to?”

“Yeah,” Setsura said in a startled voice. He raised his right hand and drew it across his throat. “You mean this?”

“Exactly. Their bodies—head, torso and limbs—are divided among the three. Oh, don’t be alarmed. They’re not dead. That wouldn’t weigh much on your mind, would it? They are filled with the medicinal waters that quell the pain and prevent decay. I could restore them whenever the whim struck, though it has got to sting.”

“Whaddya want me to do ’bout it?” Setsura asked in an Edo dialect.

“Don’t talk funny,” Princess said gaily. “When you remove the lid, the waters inside will pour out and the body inside will die. You get two chances, the limbs and the torso. If, last of all, the prime minister’s head still remains, I’ll have his mouth reveal the nuclear abort codes. Got it?”

“The concept is clear enough,” Setsura said, his eyes narrowing to slits, the same look the young shop owner reserved for the ill-tempered old lady who haunted the back alleyways. The kind of look that was rarely ignored for long.

“The same game I played with Emperor Zhou of the Shang Dynasty. His uncle accused me of being a demoness. So I divided him into three pieces and promised that if his head survived to the end, the emperor would comply with every jot and tittle of his slanders.”

“What happened?” Setsura said, as if inquiring about his own fate.

“The head popped up on the second try. He only had time to call out the emperor’s name before decaying away. And so the dynasty was destroyed.”

“I am sure you enjoyed yourself fully.”

Princess didn’t react to that. “Get going,” she said with a complacent smile, pointing a translucent finger at the crude containers.

“One more thing,” Setsura said.

“What?”

“How much time is left?”

“There are exactly three hours until noon.”

Setsura couldn’t help being impressed at the lengths this woman went to to torment the human race.