Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Well, shit, there’s certainly no profit in this,

there’s certainly no profit in this.

I’m the dumbest old broad in the world,

the dumbest old broad in the world.

The hearty voice flowed through the darkness. So did the retching stench. And the sound of a pole stirring the water.

The place resembled a laboratory. The walls were lined with books. Old beakers and test tubes and stone pots crowded the top of a stout wooden desk. Books with cracked leather bindings, a drafting triangle and a Parker fountain pen, the dried head of a lizard, and a desiccated cat’s paw.

It all seemed to belong here.

To the left of the desk, in the center of the room, burned a coke fire. The hearth was a ten by ten foot space blocked off with bricks and covered with stones. The glowing black lumps were heating the bottom of a big earthenware pot sitting on another two courses of bricks.

All the more surprising was the person standing in the center of the big pot: a fat woman, eyes tightly closed, her dress stained up to her chest, merrily stirring the green swirls with a huge wooden spoon.

It’d be hard not to imagine the fat lady was making her own self part of the stew. Except that here, the imagination of any normal person simply wouldn’t do. This was a room in the house of Galeen Nuvenberg.

My big sister, all in bits and pieces,

and only her dear head returned.

So here I stir in my witch’s brew

and will serve up its dregs in hell.

Her sad voice notwithstanding, considering the fate of her sister, Galeen Nuvenberg, it was a strange song indeed. Not to mention that, as she stirred the sticky, thick broth, as if mixed with mashed yams, faces bobbed to the surface—perhaps even the head of Galeen Nuvenberg.

Tonbeau took hold of it by the soup-soaked hair and raised it high over her own head, her thick tongue lapping at the drippings and swishing it around in her mouth.

“Ah, just right.”

A faint light, like that cast off by luminescent fishes at the bottom of the ocean, shone into the room. The doll girl came through the back door. Observing the head of her mistress she said, drawing her fine brows, “Your bad taste on display, I see.”

“Without a doubt,” Tonbeau snorted, returning the ominous thing to the pot. “Excuse me for my bad taste. So how about this?”

She again raised her hand. This time the broth streamed from the head of the doll girl. “Dumplings made with minced snapper, and I didn’t go light on the garlic or the fennel. You eat it starting with the tip of the nose. Wanna try one?”

“I’m afraid my stomach is feeling a tad unsettled today.”

“Huh. Nothing in this bummer of a burg suits my appetite. Here I went to all the trouble of making my famous Prague seafood stew, Tonbeau-style, and you have the nerve to turn up your little nose at me. I won’t forget this.”

“I am sure our guest would appreciate being treated to such a banquet.”

“Guest?”

“Yes. He’s coming to get an appraisal of a certain item. From our conversation on the phone, he did seem on the peckish side.”

“Can a doll even understand that much?” said Tonbeau, honestly surprised. “When it comes to anything my big sister made, I shouldn’t be surprised. I’ve fashioned a few midget gremlins of my own to wait and serve, but nothing that comes within shouting distance of her accomplishments. Where is this guest?”

“He should be arriving at Takada no Baba station.”

“Huh.” Tonbeau dipped her finger into the broth dripping off the doll girl’s head and put it to her mouth. “A little salty. Well, you’d better hustle off to the station.”

“Yes.”

“You’re being awfully obedient.” She narrowed her beady eyes. “What are you up to?”

“Nothing at all. Tonbeau-sama is deporting herself quite admirably, as a practitioner of the magical arts and as a person—”

“Oh, stop.” Tonbeau put down the big spoon and scratched herself all over with her worm-like fingers. “Ah, a little epidermis into the mix. Saying things like that makes me itch.”

“It is true.” The doll girl gazed fondly upon the fat lady’s unladylike behavior. “This morning, I was thoroughly delighted when you came back to the police station.”

Tonbeau looked like a mathematician who’d been caught making a mistake at addition. Five minutes before the nuclear missile strike, the supposedly decamped Tonbeau had suddenly shown up in the special detainment lockup in the basement of the Shinjuku Police Station, where the doll girl was still agonizing over how to put an end to Ryuuki’s life.

She still hadn’t come up with a way to put his mind at ease. It was now three o’clock and no missiles had landed. But then, seeing her mistress’s fat little sister brought new life to her eyes.

“Oh my, oh my. Praise from others is worse than upwind from a pigsty for a witch like me. Look at this rash! Lucifer, that Prince of Darkness, gave me this curse. Get going.”

“I understand.”

The doll girl bowed elegantly and politely, grinning to herself only when she turned around.

Leaving the house, she looked up at the picture-perfect blue sky. No matter how evil the heart, nowhere to be seen was any sign of those lurking nightmares, fiery wings of death. She hadn’t yet gotten hold of any of the particulars, but the abort codes had been relayed to the American Secretary of Defense by the young man dressed in black—who said he was Prime Minister Kongodai.

Whoever it was, this savior had single-handedly given Shinjuku another lease on life. Whatever terrors might still exist, for as long as the sun shone this day, there was no reason not to celebrate with honest joy.

The doll girl turned onto Waseda Boulevard and hurried toward the station. Although the foot traffic was lighter than usual, all the shops were open and the sidewalks were full of people. The tourists and sightseers had sensed nothing amiss.

One in ten, though, hugged the shadowed edges of the streets. They wore sunglasses, scarves around their necks, gloves in warm weather, and went to great lengths to protect their skin. Their presence would have been strange anywhere else. The fear of sunlight, what was that called again?

The doll girl took in the soaring building next to the station with a look of admiration. Once upon a time in Demon City Shinjuku, a certain warlock tried to call forth unspeakable evil from the depths of the earth. A young man from outside the ward had come here to destroy him. His name had been forgotten by most, but the place where he faced off against the warlock was known by all.

A fierce battle to the death had unfolded beneath this ground. The only name that would be passed down from generation to generation was the name of the sword that young man fought with. The name of Asura.

Inside she soon identified the person she was told to look for on the telephone—a man standing in front of the Seibu Shinjuku line turnstiles holding a package wrapped in a dark blue furoshiki cloth. Despite—or because of—his unkempt appearance, the doll girl had no problem picking him out.

She was making her way toward the man in the threadbare shirt and slacks when from behind him came an ominous cry.

“No fucking way!”

Several men in loud shirts ran toward the man holding the dark blue package. A look of fear came over his face. He started running too. They soon caught up with him and seized him by the arms.

“This bastard thinks he can just waltz out of here?”

Reaching into his pocket, a man in a pinstriped suit planted himself in front of him. “What’dya think was gonna happen? Think you can just kill our guys and keep the prize to yourself? I’m gonna go apeshit on your ass!”

He drew out a chrome magnum pistol. All the passersby dove for cover. With a cracking sound the man’s wrist turned at right angles. Stark surprise reached his brain before the pain did. He and his fellow gangbangers looked down disbelieving.

“Please stop. That person is my guest.”

Her gleaming golden hair, cherubic face, clear blue eyes—and hands that could crush a man’s wrist. The thug wasn’t caught off guard for long, not in this city where the abnormal was par for the course.

“Stinkin’ brat.”

“Yank those pretty eyes out.”

They pulled out high-density steel daggers, hundred-round air guns, nitro bars, the incarnation of all that was brutal and atrocious—and all went flying before their lethality could be demonstrated.

Golden hair and purple satin dress danced among the yakuza, as her hands and feet—the sight of which would have otherwise set anyone’s heart at ease—broke knees and snapped shins. Dainty wooden shoes stomped on their chests and bellies, driving ribs into lungs and crushing stomachs. Blood burst from their noses and mouths.

She’d knocked the last one out for the count and laid him out on the floor when two cops came racing up with riot shotguns. Seeing the spectacle before them, “Holy shit,” one of them said, summing up the sight for both.

And then ascertaining the nature of the “victims,” the thin smiles on their faces said, “Good riddance.”

But counting up all the bad guys, their eyes narrowed, and the obvious question was, “Who were they fighting anyway?”

“That would be me,” came a voice from the height of his thigh.

“Eh?” A wave of golden hair reflected in the cop’s sensor eye.

“You are?” said the cop, crouching down. Glancing around at the yakuza, he said, “You took them out?”

“Yes.”

“By yourself?”

“Yes.”

The cops well knew that just because something was unbelievable didn’t mean it wasn’t true. “Could we get your name and address?”

A murmur ran through the crowd. Few of them had ever observed a police officer acting so courteously before.

“Yes, but—” The doll girl cast her eyes down in distress.

“What?”

“My name—”

“Yes?”

“I don’t have one.”

“Oh.” But the cop didn’t belabor the point. “Then the person who made you?”

The girl pushed out her chest with evident pride. “Galeen Nuvenberg-sama.”

“You mean, the one who lives in Magic Town?” His sensor eye popped open wide. “You don’t say! One of her potions cured my wife of her heart ailment.”

“And the arthritis in my mom’s shoulder,” broke in his partner, who was talking with headquarters via the combat watch communicator strapped to his wrist. “One of Miss Nuvenberg’s girls could certainly pull off something like this. Could you come down to the station and fill us in on the details?”

“Yes, but I need to go home first. There is an urgent matter I need to tend to.”

The cop nodded at once. “That’d be fine. Anybody who’s on good terms with Miss Nuvenberg is all right by us. Though I would need to accompany you.”

“That would be fine.”

“Shall we be going?”

“Yes.”

As they walked toward Waseda Boulevard, the doll girl glanced back over her shoulder. The man with the dark blue package had disappeared. She’d have to go back to the house to arrange a second meeting.