Chapter Three

Chapter Three

Ten minutes after four in the afternoon, a human hippo entered the heavily air-conditioned suite. The occupants looked on in amazement.

“There a girl named Yuriko here?” the hippo wanted to know. “If so, send her out.”

The hippo—no, a fat lady with a bright red scarf around her cheeks—transfixed the “Trendy Miss” date club employees with her overpowering presence. Her eyes glided from the forty-somethings wearing too much makeup to the barely twenty-somethings and finally settled on a girl in the corner stuffing her mouth with shaved ice.

“You there. Come here.”

The rest of them did nothing to slow the steps of the lumbering cow but scattered to either side. Aside from her ample physical presence, she projected an earthy vibe about her that was something quite apart from the norm even here.

Yuriko stood there holding a plastic container and spoon. Tonbeau Nuvenberg grabbed her wrist with her mitt-like hand and dragged her toward the door.

“Just a sec, grandma.”

Stunned like all the rest by this lightning raid, the man handling the phones came to his senses and positioned himself in front of them.

“What?”

“You just can’t burst in here and march right back out again. Who are you? What’s your business with this girl?”

“I’m her guidance counselor.”

“You?” The man gave her a large frame a long look.

“You got a problem with that?”

“No problem at all. I got a problem with people acting funny. Where do you think you are? Nobody’s gonna cut you a break in this city just because you’re a woman.”

The man’s shrill voice took on a threatening tone. On closer look, he sported false eyelashes and rouge-covered cheeks.

“Out of the way, you freaking tranny!” Tonbeau thundered.

“I warned you!” he said, settling into a fighting stance. He probably worked out at a boxing gym. He grunted and threw a right jab into the center of Tonbeau’s chest. Then gaped as his fist sunk in between her breasts, like sinking into wet cement.

Tonbeau shook her upper body. Her breasts let go, sending him sailing head-first into the wall.

When the shaking stopped and the room settled down, Yuriko and the fat lady were gone.

Down in the front lobby, Yuriko finally found her voice. “What do you want with me?” She could see no good coming of following this fatso anywhere. Her own powers of premonition were kicking in.

“You swiped a package in Takada no Baba.”

“That’s news to me.”

That answer was followed by a tap to her abdomen. Excruciating pain shot through her nerves. Her muscles cramped. She couldn’t breathe. Her vision dimmed.

“Another one of those could kill you. You want to go to the same place as that vagrant?”

Yuriko spilled the beans. The package was in the apartment near Okubo Station she shared with her boyfriend. It was a five minute walk from the date club suite.

Tonbeau hauled the girl along to make sure. The boyfriend wasn’t home. Neither was the package.

“What happened to it?”

Pinned down like a butterfly to a board with a look that could belong to no ordinary fat lady, Yuriko gasped, “San-chan took it. Probably because I said it must be worth something. He knows someone.”

“What kind of someone?”

“An information broker. Not a big mover and shaker, but someone who knows everybody. At a time like this, that’s probably who he’d try to hook up with.”

“Think back. Try and pull any cheap tricks and—” Tonbeau thumped her on the sternum.

“I don’t know!” Yuriko wailed. But she did know her boyfriend, Sanji Hisakane, would be getting home around seven that night.

The sun was setting when the door opened. Blurry eyes focused on Yuriko, sitting in the middle of the six-tatami mat room.

“San-chan,” Yuriko said in a tearful voice.

“What?”

“Where’s the package?”

“Oh, that,” Sanji said in even tones. “I sold it. For good money. Look—”

Yuriko stared in blank amazement at the bundle of a hundred ten-thousand yen bills he tossed at her feet. That wooden box had transformed into a million yen.

“Wow, San-chan. Like, wow.”

“It’s all yours.”

“What?”

Yuriko raised her head to find her lover’s face right in front of her nose. “It’s all yours. There’s something else I want from you.”

“From me?”

“Your blood.” The fat silhouette emerged from the kitchen nook. Sanji bared his fangs, retreating. She jabbed a finger in his face. “You got turned into a vampire,” Tonbeau said, her words stabbing like a knife.

Compared to the weeping fit when her big sister got killed, here was the cool courage of a completely different person.

“Maybe it happened along the way here, but answer my question and I will send you on to that other world.”

Sanji growled like a wild beast. Fangs peeked out from the corners of his upturned lips.

“Answer me,” Tonbeau ordered him.

Sanji charged at her. No matter how powerful the witch, she was unlikely to conquer a vampire in a competition of raw strength. But in some strange test of the laws of physics, they slammed together like two top-ranked sumo wrestlers colliding head-on.

Muscle and fat banged against each other with a resounding thud. All well and good, but what happened next was even harder to imagine. Sanji tried to straighten himself and pull away. The witch hugged her arms around his back and pressed her lips against his, like a sucker fish against the vampire’s mouth, fangs and all.

A scream gurgled from between the two pairs of lips. It belonged to Sanji. Yuriko watched aghast. Her lover might as well be locked in the embrace of a sex-starved cougar who’d found herself the perfect young gigolo.

Sanji pushed her away and threw his head backwards and clapped his hands to his mouth. Jabbing his fingers down his throat and hacking violently, he coughed up a plume of white smoke and flame. A moment later, the culprit sailed out like a comet.

A peach, the skin still intact.

There was as yet no name for a conjuring trick like that. Tonbeau Nuvenberg had stuffed her cheeks and jammed the demon-crushing fruit into the mouth of this vampire with a kiss.

“All right. Answer me. Where’s the package?”

Tonbeau stood there, hands on her hips.

Yuriko jumped at her. A swat with a hamhock-like fist sent her flying. She fell to the floor next to Sanji. She jumped up at once, waving a bloody paring knife.

“Ow! Ow! Ow! Dammit!”

It was Tonbeau who collapsed, her arms and legs kicking. The room swayed like a sinking ship in a hurricane.

“Run, San-chan!” Yuriko helped her suffering boyfriend to his feet. “I killed that man with this too. And I’ll protect you!”

“No, but how about this?”

“What?”

No sooner had she turned to face him but a white-hot sensation sprang from his writhing body and pierced her neck. Crazed by the thirst for blood or having intended to from the start, Sanji shook his head and bit through her throat down to her spine.

A blood-red mist enveloped them.

Tonbeau was still thrashing about on the floor. Sanji clambered to his feet and started towards her, but another look at that fat corpulent mass and he spun around and raced to the door.

He ran through the corridors and down the stairs to the car park. He was about to head up to the street. His feet seemed to sink into the pavement. Standing at the exit gates was a small shadow. The moonlight glinted off her golden hair. The doll girl.

Above her head fluttered a shadow. Sanji didn’t take the time to realize it was a raven. He charged at them. The doll girl’s hand reached heavenward. A column of white momentarily connected the raven’s mouth and her hand.

The satin dress flashed past the onrushing man and came to a halt. Sanji didn’t.

A white stake pierced his chest and jutted from his back. Sanji made it twenty more steps before collapsing on the sidewalk, the impact driving the stake deeper in and the bloody tip further out.

When the doll girl and the raven entered the apartment, they found the whimpering Tonbeau slathering some sort of salve over her right side.

“Dammit, that hurt!” she whined and sniffled.

The bird and the girl exchanged glances. “Are you all right?” the doll girl asked.

“My life has been spared for the moment. Except for the pain! I never should have come to this town in the first place!”

“Is the wound deep?” wondered the raven.

“It doesn’t look that way.”

“What are you two talking about? It’s a serious wound! Serious!” Tonbeau fumed. “I could have died!”

She struggled to her feet. In the face of her hulking presence, the raven beat a quick retreat to the door.

“What’s with the vampire?”

“He’s dead,” the doll girl said calmly. “What about the package?”

“Eh?” Tonbeau hiked up her brows.

“Eh?” responded the doll girl. “Um, Tonbeau-sama, you said that if he ran, we were to finish him off.”

“What are you talking about? If he ran, you should have figured out that I was the one in trouble. Stupid piece of wood.”

“Yeah, and who’s the fatso around here pushing people around telling everybody else to put a sock in it?”

Tonbeau glared at the big raven. A moment later she fell backwards onto the tatami mats in a swoon of pain and chagrin, all their efforts up to this point for naught.

The blade of the paring knife never made it past the first layer of fat.

Setsura opened his eyes. His internal clock said it was night. He was giving his exhausted body a breather. Takako was asleep on the bed next to him. She would soon awake. In this world, a vampire could sleep whenever she felt like it.

Meaning there was plenty of time to plot and scheme and put those plans into motion.

He hadn’t detected any demonic miasmas approaching. These weren’t the types to bare their teeth and come charging in. Knowing that much, he stifled a small yawn.

“Everything’s ready,” he said to the door.

Somebody was waiting beyond it. Whether long or short, a battle to the death, with life and soul in the balance, was about to commence.