Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Mephisto reacted first, before Princess. The white cape fluttered as if caught in a dust devil and disappeared, taking the beauty of the display with him.

He returned several seconds later. “Well?” said the Demon Princess.

“She has fled.”

“That isn’t possible,” Princess objected. “My soldiers of darkness surround the Demon Pavilion.”

“You mean these?”

Mephisto opened his hand, revealing three wooden dolls dressed in old-style military uniforms, only two or so inches tall. The head of each was no longer attached to the body. He said dispassionately, “Another twelve are left out there. Kanan-san is stronger than I would have expected.”

“How much stronger than expected?” Setsura asked.

“All I can say is this: left alone, her paranormal powers will only grow.”

“You don’t say,” Setsura said, flashing an intrigued look at Princess. “You mean, more powerful than her?”

“Idiot!” Princess spat out. She normally would have merely smiled at the mention of such an outrageous thought.

“Having no real grasp of Princess’s powers, I cannot say. However, on her present trajectory, she could well become this world’s greatest menace.”

“This world?”

“She was imbued by Princess with a character that is the very incarnation of the vampire. In light of her current form, her next course of action should be clear. Namely, to rip out the throats of all living things and consume their blood. The world shall become the realm of the dead to satisfy her base desires.”

“Don’t worry. I shall find her presently and annihilate her.”

“She has powers equal to those of Princess. She won’t be found. And if she is, whoever finds her won’t come back alive.”

A long moment passed. Princess looked down at Takako slumped on the floor. “And if severed from her foundation?”

“A perfect partition having been achieved, it would be pointless. They should be treated as two distinct life forms, even should the one be a facsimile of the other.”

“But leave her be and she destroys this world. Huh.” Setsura folded his arms across his chest. Somewhere in his untroubled eyes was a touch of glee.

“This could be considered a godsend,” Mephisto said. Setsura nodded and Mephisto added, “But no. Such a perfect separation makes this into a worst-case scenario for you. Kanan-san will always exist as the coexistence of two distinct people. Having lost one, the other there will become a husk of her former self.”

“Then what do you propose?”

“We must somehow unite her with her physical self.”

“And we end up right back where we started.”

“Not necessarily. There are cases of divided selves coming back together in a different fashion than they were before.”

“Different in a good way?”

“There is no way to tell,” Mephisto answered tersely.

“So you’re saying there will never be a good time for destroying her.” Princess chuckled to herself.

“No disagreement there,” Setsura said. “In any case, treat her with kid gloves.”

“Very well. I will don kid gloves before destroying her.”

“I figured you’d say that. Like I said, a nasty piece of work.” Setsura glared at Mephisto. “Quack.”

“Then it is decided, Setsura,” Princess said triumphantly. “I will destroy Takako’s alter-ego. Or you will save it and return it to her original self. Hoh! How will you keep her from me while persuading her to do so? I do love to see you in anguish.”

“Huh,” Setsura grunted, as if in agreement. So that’s what it comes down to, he seemed to be saying. It’d be hard to imagine any other man so nonchalant in the face of such a quandary.

In a soft and coaxing voice, Princess said, “How about it? Kneel at my feet and plead for salvation. Ask for my help in saving poor Takako Kanan. Give me a little hip-hip-hooray and I’ll listen to anything you have to say.”

“Pass,” Setsura said, turning away.

“If you intend to chase her down, you’d better get going.” Mephisto stepped to the side, clearing a pathway to the door.

As he went by them, Princess said, “Fascinating, Doctor Mephisto. I can’t say I’m not grateful.”

Setsura Aki said, “I’ll remember this, you quack.”

“Good luck to you both,” Mephisto said to the two figures exiting the room. “Don’t worry about Kanan-san here.” The cause of the current trouble picked Takako up off the floor and gently laid her on the bed. “Your treatments are not yet over. For the time being, shall we tend to another while other things work themselves out?”

Her treatments—whatever treatments those might be—treatments that ironically depended on the restoration of Takako Kanan’s alter-ego, replete with its madness and its steadily strengthening of powers sufficient to devastate this world.

To that end Setsura must suffer, and Princess rejoice. And Mephisto? Did he not find some small reason to rejoice in all of this?

But on to preparing the mysterious compounds for his next patient.

Officer Minagawa was ordered down to the special detention lockup in the first basement level. He grumbled aloud that he’d already pulled a regular shift. That changed nobody’s mind.

There were three others besides him. Minagawa was on edge. Along with the four already, that meant twice as many guards as usual.

When he asked the other three, they said they’d booked an unusual suspect into jail the night before. The scuttlebutt around the station identified him as a “person of interest” related to the recent outbreak of vampire transformations in Shinjuku, perhaps even the ringleader himself.

The kind of thing that sent a cold chill down his back. When Minagawa asked how they’d come to arrest him, nobody knew, only that he’d been surrounded and gave up of his own accord.

Minagawa reflexively raised a hand to the nape of his neck. “Yeah, you too?” his partner laughed. “Did it to me as well.”

Everybody knew the defensive protocols. Hit ’em with a peach before coming down here. Some bioengineered type, though they tasted just the same.

Even more surprising, the duty sergeant said the eight of them were there to watch a single cell. They hadn’t deployed that heavy a guard even when they’d picked up a madman who’d infused his muscles and bones with TNT and literally turned himself into a human bomb.

They were decked out in full combat gear to boot. The cell itself was hardened enough to withstand a small nuclear device. Nothing else could house the kind of criminal element found in Demon City.

Peering into the cell with the monitor mounted on his shoulder pad revealed a one-armed man in Chinese dress lying on the cot. Based on appearances alone, he’d seen a thousand others in his life that looked a hundred times as dangerous. Though in this city, outward appearances said nothing about what was hiding beneath the skin.

At five in the afternoon, it was still bright outside. That’s when it began.

The man lying in the cell began to groan in agony. This wasn’t ordinary human anguish. If this was the result of a bad dream, then he should go mad every night.

Suddenly in front of Minagawa’s eyes, he saw the wastelands. The gray endless expanses, punctuated in the distance by flashes of what must be lightning. The ceaselessly howling wind was like music compared to the man’s moans, though the bleakness carried on those shrieking gales made him want to stop his ears and close out every sound.

There was no way he could remain here, Minagawa vowed. A single night and he would lose his mind.

The scene shifted.

Minagawa wasn’t alone. Men wrapped in many colors were crossing the plains, some on horseback, others on foot. They were wounded, smeared with blood. Arrows jutted out of their armor.

Beneath their feet, bones mingled with the sand and dust. No, upon closer inspection, the entire plain was made up of white bones. Layer upon layer of countless skulls, sand filling the gaps, forming hills and fields. Those who trudged across it were cursed to the last man.

Minagawa understood that this was the path he had trodden to get here. So of course he would writhe and wail in the face of such nightmares.

“He’s coming!” someone called out.

“To the door! He’s gonna try and get out!”

“Don’t be a fool. He couldn’t bust out of there with a nuclear bomb!”

The heavy reverberations brought Minagawa back to his senses.

“The door’s caving in!”

“No fucking way!”

Alarm bells sounded. Three foot solid steel doors bowed out from the walls. The hinges creaked and shattered one after the other.

“The peaches!” Minagawa shouted. He got out the pale fruit. They’d all heard they could ward off evil. These peaches weren’t about to end up in their stomachs. With an earthshaking rumble, the door fell outward.

“Run! Get out of here!” he yelled, even as his finger was pulling the trigger on the electromagnetic cannon strapped to his waist.

Fifty-thousand volts charged the fifteen-hundred round magazine. A curtain of steel rounds swept sideways at his colleagues. Ballistic polymer helmets were so much Swiss cheese under the assault. Looking down at his writhing partners, Minagawa put his hand to his neck and felt the faint pair of dimpled bumps there.

Thirty-five years before, at the age of three, the man that attacked him while he was playing by the river was a vampire. Regardless of nationality, the curse of the vampire was universal, without boundaries.

The dispirited figure emerged from the shattered doorway. Minagawa took a step back and greeted him with a silent bow. Such an unexpected reunion after so many years, he thought. The graceful but somehow sad face looked at him. A sharp pain pierced his neck.

Minagawa felt he’d at last laid down the heavy burdens upon his shoulders.