Chapter One

Chapter One

Setsura’s feet stopped in sync with the next word out of his mouth.

“Eh?”

Ten yards ahead of him, an old man in Chinese dress was sitting at the base of a big cedar tree. A log lay at his feet, eight inches in diameter and six feet long. The old man seemed to be taking a break from a busy schedule. Puffs of smoke rose from a long, thin hookah.

“Best to let sleeping dogs lie,” Setsura said, detouring around him to the left, which only prompted another exclamation.

The log was lying there in the grass. The end on the right butted against the old man’s feet. But it was now fifteen feet long. Checking to make sure he wasn’t being followed, Setsura said to the old man, “May I pass?”

The old man held out his right hand, like he intended to collect a toll.

Setsura searched his pocket. “Sorry,” he said. Had Kongodai’s consciousness been present, he would have bitten his lower lip in chagrin.

Go that way, said the old man’s gesture.

“This presents a bit of a problem. I really need to go this way.”

Setsura walked to the right. He would circle around the old man. Another surprise—the log inched along like a big worm, past the man and the tree, blocking Setsura’s path. It looked like it could stretch another hundred or thousand miles as easily as another dozen feet.

“Well, that’s what four thousand years of Chinese wizardry will get you,” Setsura said to himself. “How about an IOU?”

The old man smiled and shook his head.

“Stubborn old goat. Guys like you are way worse than the typical enforcer.” An invisible thread shot into the air. “Now, if you would excuse me.”

He rose into the air. And just as rapidly the log grew in diameter.

“Well, shit.”

As he rose vertically, the gray trunk of the tree swelled to completely block out his view. The branch he’d wrapped his devil wire around was beyond the log. They collided.

“Oh, good grief.”

He let go. Landing softly on the ground, he found himself face to face with the wrinkled, kindly old man, his leathery hand outstretched again. The legendary tax collector of times gone by. Setsura could tie him up or knock him out, though the powers of this tree probably operated independently.

At this point, he was running out of options. He was about to cast out a devil wire and stopped. The old man certainly harbored no doubts about his own actions, and Setsura didn’t want to inflict any pain on that wrinkled, smiling face.

Setsura turned around and started to say, “Why don’t we talk about—”

He hadn’t finished the sentence before the old man spun like a top and puffed up like a balloon. And a second after that, popped and blew apart.

Setsura jumped a half-dozen yards down and away. Fresh, red pieces of meat and bowels scattered at his feet. He leapt for cover behind another pair of cedar trees.

Only someone exercising a powerful qi could disintegrate a person like that, without a sound or a shot.

“That you, Yakou?”

No one answered. The tree resumed its original shape, and then it too silently shattered. It was becoming clear that he had an invisible but frighteningly powerful bodyguard.

Setsura sprang to the left. A gaping hole appeared right in front of him, without scattering so much as a grain of dust. Apparently, his bodyguard wanted him to get a move on.

“Much appreciated,” he said, and set off running to his destination.

A figure reared up on a rocky crag a hundred feet from where the exploded old man had set up his “toll booth.” It was Kikiou. He was wrapped in a long gray robe, but the black steel limbs poking out of his sleeves revealed his true form.

He had twice come to the rescue of Setsura/Kongodai. But the eyes watching as the black-clad young man disappeared out of sight burned with hatred and loathing, the lips curled with the taste of bitter dregs.

“Go. Save Demon City from destruction. That place is our destiny, our bloody Shangri-la. I shall protect it, no matter the means.”

Applause welled up behind him. He whirled about in surprise. Here was the rest of the all-star team.

“What a performance, Kikiou,” Princess said with a luxuriant smile. “I couldn’t miss it.”

“The kind of proactive attitude I like to see in our senior citizens,” Setsura observed nonchalantly.

Only Mephisto looked silently and without expression.

“How long have you been following me?” he said, his face as white as a sheet of paper. He could not have imagined such a humiliating scene.

“Right after you left the manor house. Relax. Our missing Yakou turned up as we were headed out. Seems he chanced across a lost old woman who gave him a bum steer.”

“Well, well, well,” he said at last. “It’s about time the real Setsura and I settled our differences once and for all. Shall we?”

He was hardly asking permission. The smoldering anger and humiliation had reduced the great warlock’s scientific mind to a raging brush fire. What he wanted from Setsura was a place to let it all out.

A look of anger grazed Princess’s features as well, and transformed into a smile of unimaginable evil. “Have at it. I’ll watch. Don’t hold back.”

Apparently when it came to covering for Setsura, she’d had a change of heart.

“You sure?”

“Fight,” she said bluntly.

“Fickle as a cat.”

Setsura had no objection to taking out an enemy. He stepped away from the group and faced Kikiou. When one fight was over, it was time for a new fight to begin. That was how anybody living in Demon City counted the hours and the days.

Setsura’s devil wire?

Kikiou’s qi?

The treetops swayed.

The wind blew.

In the midst of the forest, floating in currents of sunlight, an icy killer vibe bathed the figures of an old man and a young man.

But then in no uncertain terms Princess stepped in to stop this otherworldly combat.

“What’s going on?” Mephisto asked.

“Something’s happened at the manor house. The consciousness of those two leapt out at me.”

Those two?

The three there besides Princess each harbored different doubts. And all came up with the same name. Her telepathic connection with Princess was a product of her vampiric nature.

“What has happened to Takako Kanan-san?” asked Setsura, with a questioning glance at Mephisto. This whack job of a doctor must have been concocting one of his quack treatments, and his look said as much.

The transfixing face of the doctor in white was as immovable as the darkness.

“That bastard Yakou. I’m honestly surprised. I was going to have Mephisto restore his wings, but before that, I’ve got this to deal with.”

“What kind of this are you referring to?” Setsura broke in, for once talking as fast as a normal person might. Carrying on a conversation with her was sheer torture. Ask about Takako, get told about Yakou. Such behavior rose out of his sense of irritation.

She shut her eyes. “Hoh, the room given to Mephisto? It is burning. The floor, the ceiling. And the room with the stone walls, they’re melting. You mixed up some mighty curious compounds, Mephisto. What are those arms and legs? I recall seeing them somewhere. Oh, aren’t those Kikiou’s? What fine kindling they make. And who is the culprit? There she is! Standing there like Venus on the Half Shell. What magnificent breasts, Setsura. So ripe at that age. How many men would be entranced by those full, pink hips? Wouldn’t you count yourself as one of them, Setsura? But she is a beast. She threw that stone table across the room with one hand. And just missed Yakou. Stuck to the ground without his wings changes the equation. He must be fit to be tied. Shall we sally forth to save them, Setsura?”

Setsura fixed his gaze on Mephisto. “What did you do?”

“I treated her.”

“And the result is a fight with Yakou? I had my doubts before, but you really are a quack.”

“Rather than argue about it, let the results speak for themselves.”

“If it quacks like a duck—” Setsura turned toward the manor house.

“However mad she might be, she will follow my commands,” Princess said with undisguised pleasure, knowing how that would rattle this young man, who otherwise deported himself like an eternal summer evening.

Setsura stopped and turned around. “You would do so in a constrained manner?”

“Hardly.”

“Bitch to the core. That’s a four-thousand-year-old spinster for you.”

“Kneel before me and plead, and I will do all I can to appease you.”

“I’m too beat for this shit.”

He kicked against the ground and started running. A voice brushed against his back like a quiet flute. “But can you?”

He stopped abruptly and whirled around. Princess and Mephisto were facing each other. “What did you say?”

“I only wondered if you could.”

“My servant will heed my commands.”

“Your servant apprentice might be the better term.” Mephisto’s face and expression revealed absolutely nothing. “Hence the effectiveness of my treatment. Did you order that outbreak of fury?”

“No,” Princess softly responded, though a dangerous tone colored her answer.

“Has the cause of her rage been quenched?”

“No.”

“Sir Mephisto,” Kikiou said, as if to interpose himself between them. This great Machiavellian was actually sweating. “This debate aside, I have my puppets inside the manor house. They can certainly control a single mad woman.”

“And you should certainly try.”

Setsura couldn’t help noticing now that Mephisto was actually enjoying himself.

“Then do it. Know this, Mephisto: if Takako obeys, I alone will scorn you for the rest of eternity.”