Chapter One

Chapter One

“So, the sadistic minx and the traitor,” Setsura observed calmly. “It’s a good old family reunion.”

Facing off against these two was trouble enough, not to mention that waiting for him below was another quisling with a gun.

“Checkmate, Setsura. Give up. Receive Princess’s favor and affection as I have. You cannot begin to comprehend the joys you will thereafter partake of.”

“Have you looked in a mirror lately?” Setsura said to the triumphant Yakou. The particular quirks of this young man were such that intrigue suffused the question, not the expected stresses and strains. “Chasing tail and getting led around by the nose. What a fool a man makes of himself trying to impress the wrong sort of woman. Your father would weep to see you now.”

“Shut up,” Yakou raged in return. Though his will was under Princess’s command, his memories remained fresh.

“Hah. Where there’s anger, there’s promise. You should have your head examined by Mephisto as well.”

“Idiot,” Princess rejoined in wry amusement. “As long as you are not going there, we might as well kill him here. But promise to become my servant and I will spare the politician. Though only after Shinjuku has burned to a crisp.”

“Why are you so stuck on this servant business?” Setsura asked plainly. “Talk about one-track minds, looking at people and saying servant, servant over and over. So what do you do with these servants anyway? Short on doormen? Butlers? Chippendale bathhouse attendants?”

“What’s that?” she asked Yakou.

“I have no idea.”

Setsura harrumphed. “You’re not very bloody useful, are you?”

Princess said, the words dripping from her mouth like hot honey, “Your fate is set in stone. You will tend to me every night in my sleeping quarters. A glorious privilege. Zhou of the Shang and Jie of the Hsia obediently pledged their lives to me and received untold delights in return. I will give the same to you.”

“Princess, that is—” Yakou unexpectedly interrupted. “That is my role, to say nothing of the proper order of things. Why this man, of all people?”

“It is decided,” Princess said scornfully. “He is a hundred times more handsome than you.”

In the face of such coolly-stated and undeniable reality, Yakou was at a loss for words.

“You sure are hot to trot, Yakou. When are you gonna shake the scales from your eyes?”

“Be quiet.”

“The scion of the Toyama vampires is a fool for love. Except nobody would think that’s funny.”

“What are you going to do, Setsura? Stay here, all safe and warm, or attempt to safely escort him out of here?” She dared him as if the promised break would be complete.

“You keep talking about him so dismissively,” Setsura observed, glancing at the face of the gasping man on his back. “Perhaps you first ought to make sure you know who he is. As for us, we’re going to get our wounds taken care of.”

And so he played his trump card. Princess realized it several seconds later. The corners of her eyes lifted and she shouted, “Yakou! Look! That man’s face!”

The winged man plummeted down and grabbed the man’s head by the hair and jerked it up.

“No?”

Setsura smiled at the shocked demoness. Princess’s trembling hand pointed at him. “You picked up two masks in the mask maker’s village. The first was to drive away the villagers. The second is that one. If that man was the prime minister, there would be no need to transform him. Go to the manor house and I shall be nipping at your heels. The man in black you sent to the outside world—he was the prime minister?”

“Elementary, my dear Watson.”

“In which case, that face is the Dancing Fiend sporting your mask. But why go to such lengths? Had you left this world, I would have seen you off as promised. And that gait truly suggested a wounded man.”

“The wound was equally shared,” Setsura calmly explained. “The same as the Dancing Fiend. The same severity. It would have been best if we’d switched masks after leaving the house. But it took a little time convincing the ogre—the old man—he wasn’t me. Then the prime minister became me. Because he was me, he believed what I had to say.”

“You’re saying you are not in fact Setsura but this country’s head of state?”

“Though I can hardly say for sure myself.”

“How would the Dancing Fiend—the mask maker—play the part of the prime minister? A stroke of luck his face agreed with his name, but I do not think he could pull off the role so easily.”

For some reason, this observation left Princess in a good mood. Yakou was left to stew on his own.

“All of the masks remaining in that village are those of the villagers,” Setsura said. “Excepting him, the mask maker. I convinced him by letting him carve my face.”

“So you appealed to his sense of aesthetics?” Princess smiled and covered her mouth with her hand. “Yes, the man I insist must be my servant! But why send the prime minister alone to the outside world? Did you intend to bring Mephisto along afterward? Or has Demon City had a better doctor all along?”

In that instance, Yakou’s expression changed. “Princess, he has done nothing of the sort!”

“What?”

“Setsura has deliberately been keeping his distance from the manor house. He’s been buying time for the prime minister to get there!”

The light in her eyes changed in a flash from cool surprise to incandescent rage. Setsura’s relaxed grin smeared into a blur. In that same instant, Yakou’s wings separated from their joints. A startled voice descended downwards. The hands of the bodyguard dropped off at the wrists.

“He’s here!?”

Writhing in the air, Princess’s back was sucked up against the trunk of the tree she had appeared from behind.

Tearing the fabric he’d severed from around his torso, Setsura shouted in midair, “Idiot! Go!”

A short ways off, the branches creaked. “The manor house! Follow him!”

Princess’s order was aimed at Yakou. He bolted and then was flung back, red lines running across his chest and right knee. “Move and they’ll cut deeper, Yakou. Could you revive yourself minus your head?”

The web of devil wires wrapped around him must have come from both Setsuras, trapping the wingless vampire as if in amber.

“Fool!”

Princess shook her body. Whether pure rage, or a martial art, everything in her vicinity trembled like a mirage. The trunk snapped, shattered, and disintegrated to dust. The invisible wires were reduced to their constituent atoms. Her clothing met the same fate under the force of the unimaginable vibrations.

When the outlines of her body returned to solid form, she was naked. Perched on the large limb, Setsura stood there for a stunned moment. So did Yakou, beneath him.

Tantalizing flesh, and a body to entrance the mind, darkened only by the dusky triangle between her legs that she made no effort to conceal.

Princess laughed in a high loud voice. “The body that stole away the souls of emperors and kings! Setsura, do you wish to challenge it too?”