Chapter Two

Chapter Two

“I would have expected nothing less,” Mephisto rejoined.

Kikiou responded with a hopeless look on his face.

“Suit yourselves,” said Setsura, and sprinted again toward the manor house.

Only Kikiou spared him a parting glance. “To the manor house alone, eh? Not only have they unbound that evil star, but opened the door and invited him in. Princess, I must return as well.”

Princess ignored the old man sulking like a recalcitrant child. She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, the look would have caused any lesser of a person to shrink in fear. She scowled at Mephisto.

“What did you do to that girl?”

“I treated her,” he said, as if resuming the same line of inquiry that Setsura had started.

“And will she follow you?”

“No.”

“What?”

“It is a natural phenomenon arising in the course of treatment, not something that anybody could have prevented, nor should anybody try.”

“Hoh.” The murderous temper faded from Princess’s eyes.

Observing that, Kikiou said with evident relief, and no longer able to refrain, “I’ll be going.”

His head still slumped, Kikiou galloped off. Nobody watched him go.

Princess continued, “If we stand by and do nothing, the manor house will be destroyed. If she runs into Setsura, she will attack him regardless. She has the soul of a devil today.”

“Wouldn’t you consider that a stroke of good fortune, Princess?” Beneath the blazing sun, Mephisto’s features were cool and serene. “Setsura wishes to save the girl. She will exhaust every effort trying to kill him. If that wouldn’t gladden a tormentor’s heart, what would? If we’ve the time to stand around here and debate the matter, Princess, then let us repair to the manor house with Kikiou and observe the contest.”

“You do have a point,” said Princess, her lips twisting into a small smile of satisfaction.

A shadow passed across the sun. It was as if, within this forest, two unimaginably dark wills had found their kindred spirits. Princess raised her hand and touched Mephisto’s cheek. To imagine he would allow such a thing, even were those slender fingers fashioned from the most precious rubies.

“I realized it just now, Demon Physician, how beautiful you are.”

Was this how she took a liking to something? Her speech and tone of voice hadn’t changed, but there was an aura in the air and a scent on the breeze, so dense and penetrating that a bystander would have been knocked for a loop, suffused inside and out with all the symptoms of a deep lust and longing.

If she said stand, he would stand. Kill, and he would kill. And if she so desired, fuck her for a hundred days and nights without ceasing. Such was the nature of this rarest of all harlots.

Her finger traced a rainbow on that beautiful cheek—that must be thought of as a fond work of Mother Nature herself—until he grasped it.

“Mephisto.” In her voice were the indistinguishable echoes of desire and disgust. Her red lips opened slightly as they approached his.

Only the sharp force radiating down her finger stopped her. “Am I meant as a substitute for Setsura, Princess?”

Mephisto softly let go of her finger.

“Of course,” she said, just as calmly.

“Such words come at a price. Becoming one of you gave me access to a great store of knowledge. Knowledge is a two-edged sword.”

“Nobody is more aware of that than I am,” Princess said. “Don’t imagine that I spent the last four thousand years raiding hospital beds. Schemers and dreamers, wizards and alchemists, geomancers, necromancers—they all challenged me. They all failed. Then came the scientists and sages and mathematicians and theologians. Every one of these wise men bowed down before me, overwhelmed by what I knew. Knowledge polishes the lens of self-confidence with the cloth of pride. I wear it like a fine garment, its reflection in the mirror a thousand times more grand. It makes comprehensible the heavens in their courses, the changing of the seasons, the hearts and souls of men. Perhaps that should concern me, but what might be gained from ten thousand books and centuries of experience dwindles to dust with one look at my breasts. That is how it should be. That is what it means to be human. Mephisto, are you even alive?”

“Well—”

“I know—the nature of your predilections, the extent of your beauty, the personification of an accursed perfection that exceeds even Setsura’s and yet that loathes the female sex. It is well, Mephisto, that you should return having partaken of a separate knowledge here. Go, to the manor house. Hoh, the pleasures only increase.”

Setsura entered the manor house through a window on the second floor. From the forest to a tree in the courtyard, wrapping his devil wire around a banister on the third floor, he became a bird in flight.

The hallway was wrapped in black smoke. His objective was Mephisto’s laboratory, specifically the adjoining room. Flames poured from the door. He got there in a little over five minutes. Strangely enough, nothing else along the way was scorched or scarred. The ruggedness of Kikiou’s handiwork was something to behold.

The heat beat against his face. He soon encountered Yakou. “Good job,” Setsura said.

“She’s in there,” Yakou said, not turning around.

The air howled within the spouting, crimson flames. The experimental apparatus and mechanisms fused together in odd shapes and wavering silhouettes. Setsura cast out a devil wire and cocked his head to the side.

“She is sitting in the midst of the fire in the lotus position. She seems to be enjoying herself.”

“You’re kidding.”

“See for yourself.”

Setsura gave Yakou a push. Yakou twisted around. “I was tending to my wings when she grew restive. I don’t understand why.”

“The reasons may be unclear, but the screw-ups are obvious.” He looked at Yakou’s back. “Thinking you could slap a Band-Aid on that was pretty naive to start with. A pair of pigeon wings would be a better fit for a man who can’t handle a single girl.”

“She isn’t the same as the rest of us.”

More than the words, the way he said it caught Setsura’s attention. “Meaning what?”

“Though we will recover, fire will scorch or burn us. Does she bear any scars at all?”

Yakou seemed to have grasped that Setsura’s devil wires told him as much. However a captive of the enemy he might be, the Elder’s grandson was still working on all cylinders.

“No.”

“On top of that, her strength is a thousand times my own. And if you ascribe her actions right now to madness, such a mental maze might be unraveled, but the physical aspects remain a mystery.”

“And if we extinguished the flames?”

“Why do such a thing, when not a single hair on her head is singed? Right now, the better course is to observe. What is she doing?”

“You are beginning to resemble a certain doctor.”

The irritated Setsura and passive Yakou stared at the whirlwind of fire. Two seconds later, Yakou said, “She’s moving.”

Setsura noticed that as well. Takako stood up and was walking toward them. What had she accomplished sitting in the lotus position?

A woman’s unblemished arms materialized from the curtain of combusting chemicals, followed by her breasts and face, and thighs and legs. It was undoubtedly Takako Kanan.

She looked at Setsura and smiled, flashing her unsightly fangs. “We meet again, Aki-san. No, Setsura-san. There are so many things I want to do with you. Such nice things. Once and you’ll never go back.”

“True enough, Setsura,” said Yakou, jabbing him in the ribs with his elbow.

Setsura answered with a return jab of his own. Gazing at Takako with his always languid eyes. “Who is your master now? That woman or that quack doctor?”

“Neither. I belong to me. My will is your desire, Setsura-san.”

Her breathing was labored, this beautiful naked young woman continually aroused by her own passionate desires.

Yakou spun around behind Setsura and pinned his arms behind his back.

“What are you doing?” he asked, though not in a panicked manner. Neither did he attempt to jerk free.

“You are an obstruction between me and the woman I love,” Yakou said, and Setsura didn’t doubt a word that he said. The vampire looked perfectly serious. “Princess is stuck on you. That makes you my rival.”

“You definitely spent way too much time in England,” Setsura griped as Yakou dragged him ever closer to Takako. “Whether love or infatuation, being able to blurt out stuff like that without chagrin is evidence enough. Pretty soon you’ll be going on about even more embarrassing things like chivalry and manly pride and camaraderie.”

“You know nothing of love,” said Yakou, tightening his grip. “I will kill you in order to protect my relationship with Princess. I will disobey her, if that’s what it takes. Drink his blood, Takako. Or slit his throat.”

“Yes.”

Takako’s hand clapped down on Setsura’s shoulder. Then reached further, striking Yakou in the chest. The greatest of the Toyama vampires flew backwards and struck the wall and fell to the floor.

This was truly amazing power.

“Ouch.”

“Soon it will feel so much better. Everything will.”

Yakou’s command to kill seemed to have gone in one ear and out the other. Takako’s lips shifted toward Setsura’s neck.

“Stop!” cried Kikiou from the door.

Takako shouted back in a rage, “Don’t interfere!” More the bellow of a beast than human language.

Pushing Setsura aside, black pincers closed around her outstretched hand. This hand had emerged from beneath Kikiou’s long robes. The four limbs appeared to be legs, but half bore hands on the end.

“Old buzzard.”

Putting distance again between herself and Kikiou, Takako seized the pincer at the joint with her free hand and threw it into the flames as easily as tossing a hammer.

“Criminy,” said Setsura, jumping back six feet. When Takako whirled around to find him, he added, wrapping his wires around her body, “How about you teach me about all those good things later?”

“No. Right now.”

Takako thrust her arms out to the side. The titanium net silently shredded into pieces.

“But of course. A different life form.”

Setsura shifted strategies. He’d strike at her pressure points. He doubted it would work, but he might as well try.

He didn’t have to. As she closed on him, the black hand rose out of the flames and grabbed her and raised her high into the air.

“Let go!”

Takako reached behind her with both hands and tried to grasp the steel arm, but Kikiou learned from experience and his engineering adapted to new circumstances. He seized her at an angle and in a place she couldn’t reach.

An aperture in his torso opened like the iris of a camera, a motor hummed, and a hypodermic needle jutted out on a hydraulic arm. It looked very old school, like something he’d built a long time ago.

The mechanism plunged the needle into the base of Takako’s skull, injecting the vial of yellow fluid into her brain.

The lower half of Takako’s body lifted up, and then forcefully swung back down again. The joints of her arms separated. The grating friction of steel against steel made Setsura put his fingers to his ears. Takako’s body shook violently. The sound grew louder. The joints shattered. The black arm set the naked lady down next to Kikiou.

The ancient robot retreated on two legs. In order to avoid the heat, the head had turtled into the torso. Now it popped out again.

“It seems the doctor has a fondness for practical jokes of his own. He wrecked one of my toys and fashioned it into a facsimile of her, and one hardly lacking as an opponent. There is no way Setsura can be allowed to join the same family as Princess, not even according to the whimsies of Doctor Mephisto.”

Takako turned over. And with a fluid back kick that would impress a karate master—a talent she acquired from who knows where—not only sent Kikiou skidding backwards, but inflicted a sizable dent to his body.

The old man grimaced. Something in his torso buzzed like stripping gears.

Takako reached out toward Setsura, her hand beckoning to him. As if pulled along behind her hand, her body fell forward.

“Holy cow,” Setsura said, rubbing his shoulders. He wasn’t impressed that she’d been brought down, but that a woman made mad by Mephisto had been knocked out.

“What I’d expect from four thousand years of Chinese technology. This is bound to get Mephisto’s dander up.”

Kikiou’s tube-like body surged toward him, and Setsura danced nimbly backwards. “This old geezer doesn’t want to act his age, picking fights wherever he can find them.”

“Exactly. I have saved Demon City. Doctor Mephisto surrendered to my might. The only obstruction that remains is you. Wither and die in these flames, Setsura.”

A door in Kikiou’s torso popped open. From the same opening that housed the hypodermic, poked out a metal device shaped like a tuning fork.

“Whoa.”

Setsura didn’t jerk out of the way. Kikiou fell over on his back, as if a defect had arisen in his legs. A circle large enough to admit a person opened up in the ceiling without a speck of dust. As he tried to get up, a burst of power hit him from the side. With a sound like a timpani drum, he rolled to the edge of the flames.

“Killing you is my job,” said Yakou, rubbing the back of his neck and wincing. “Take the girl and get out. I’ll take care of Kikiou for now.”

“Hey, thanks.” Yeah, that’s gotta smart, he didn’t bother saying. Setsura hoisted Takako onto his shoulders. He’d either forgotten about riding to Yakou’s rescue or it was all the same to him. “See you.”

He stepped lightly out of the room.