Chapter One

Chapter One

“Is he asleep?” The fat lady asked the doll girl when she emerged from the steel door and shut it behind her.

“Yes,” she answered with a nod of her small head. The glittering strands of gold spilled to one side of her face in a silky wave, casting off flickering beads of light.

It wasn’t the lamp in the ceiling lighting up the doll girl’s hair, but the early morning glow pouring in from a crack in the curtains. Demon City still slept soundly at four o’clock in the morning.

“Even I am taken aback. He could have run for the hills but chose to return of his own accord.”

Her mouth bent into a frown. Tonbeau Nuvenberg sighed. As a precaution, she’d gone to the hospital to have the wound looked at—the one inflicted by the vampire gangbanger at the apartment in Shin-Okubo. But hearing that she’d be charged for the visit had returned home an hour ago.

While basic hospital services were free for residents of Shinjuku, those from outside the ward were charged an arm and a leg. And Tonbeau was very much an alien here.

The doll girl updated her on Ryuuki’s status. Tonbeau sat down at the living room table and mumbled and grumbled as she wracked her brains. All of a sudden, her eyes flew open wide.

“We’ll kill him, of course!”

“What?” the doll girl said with a start.

There was normally no end to the fat lady’s greed, her avarice only outmatched by her timidity. That is, until she came up with some hair-raising scheme that only the sister of the Czech Republic’s greatest witch could pull off.

“That’s it! Leave a piece of trouble like that just lying around and nobody could say what’s going to happen next. He’s all peaceful as a baby now that’s he’s drunk his fill and all, but once the cravings start, it’s gonna come back and bite me in the ass.”

A vulgar image to conjure up, but not off the mark, especially after the death and carnage the doll girl had witnessed. As the old saying went, even the hunter refrained from killing a bird who flew to him seeking shelter. But be seized by the ravenous hunger for just one night, and this bird would bare its poisonous claws and fangs and turn into a demonic vulture.

That was why, in any case, the duty of the hunter was to kill the prey.

“But—” the doll girl said. “How to destroy him?”

The impossibility of the task had been well demonstrated in the Shinjuku police station special detainment lockup. Even a staking by Galeen Nuvenberg hadn’t caused any deterioration to Ryuuki’s body.

Tonbeau furrowed her brows and scratched her butt in studious contemplation. “Push come to shove, there’s nothing special about that vampire. The only sure way to turn him into dust is to destroy his sire. But that is a whole lot tougher than giving him a long nap.”

“It is as you say.”

Tonbeau’s eyes flashed. “Don’t you have anything to be upbeat about?”

“What?”

“Something smells fishy to me. Somehow or another, when it comes to killing him, seems like maybe you aren’t so raring to go.”

“Not at all.”

Even as she spoke, the doll girl’s glass heart sent an unprecedented volume of blood flooding through her body. This was one of the most frightening characteristics of her mistress’s sister. Grandmother’s intuitions had reached an almost supernatural acuity that covered all of creation in ways that Tonbeau’s could never compare with. But in certain respects, nothing could approach her own ominous abilities.

“Well, that’s okay,” Tonbeau said stiffly. “You’re my big sister’s servant. You’re not going to betray us, no matter what. But there’s one more way of doing away with that chap. What do you imagine it is?”

“I don’t know.”

“We predestine the fact that it will happen.”

The doll girl drew her picturesque eyebrows.

“You still don’t get it? That. We make use of that.”

“And by that—”

“I’ve always wanted to give that a whirl.” Tonbeau’s voice hushed to a whisper. “The very experiment banned by the Vatican in the year 1400, that only Doctor Faustus successfully pulled off. Even my audacious big sister did not dare dabble in that arena.”

The doll girl’s eyes flew open with surprise, with an expression of horror that came to human eyes on gazing upon the black death.

“It is not possible. No record of it was ever made!”

“No, I’ll do it. I’ll give it my best shot. There is nothing we can do but that. Faced with such a powerful vampire, we cannot turn away from predestining him to destruction.”

Tonbeau clenched her fists in a show of determination. The doll girl didn’t raise an objection to this silly and ostentatious show of bravado. More than respect for her mistress’s sister, the black hand of fear had seized her celluloid throat.

Reading in between the lines of their conversation, “destruction” could be “predestined” using the “record.” Even in Demon City Shinjuku, there should be no one capable of such a thing. What was this “record”? And what would Tonbeau do with it?

“Let’s get down to work, then.”

The woman who looked like a paper bag stuffed with pastries rolled up the sleeves of her hamhock-like arms. The doll girl turned her eyes toward the foyer.

“Somebody coming?” Her vim and vigor dimmed and she asked the question in a disquieted manner, perhaps because of having messed with a JDF Special Forces contingent on a previous occasion.

“Yes. A civilian automobile. A man.”

A knock came at the door.

“Tell him to strip before letting him in. He could be carrying one of those suitcase nukes for all we know.”

The doll girl didn’t say anything as she went to the door and threw back the bolt.

“I apologize for barging in so early in the morning,” said a very haggard Mayor Kajiwara, stepping into the house.

“You’ve arrived at exactly the right time!” Tonbeau said with an excited little jump. “You don’t need to apologize for anything. I was just thinking of ringing you up. We need to talk. Supposing I was able to rid Shinjuku of all that ails it at the moment—”

“I’ll pay whatever I can.” In front of the pair of greedy eyes, he thrust out a brown overnight bag.

“What?”

“Whatever I’ve got in my pockets. But first you need to take care of this.”

Tonbeau and the doll girl exchanged glances. The mayor placed the bag on the table and unzipped it with stiff hands. He reached in, then thought better of it and backed away.

“I put it in there, but lack the confidence to extract it. If you would, please.”

“Me? No way. What the hell is it?”

“A wooden box.”

“A box?”

“Yes. But no ordinary knick-knack. There’s a dragon and tiger painted on the cover. They escaped last night.”

They didn’t doubt what he said was true, not in Demon City. At the same time, Tonbeau picked up on something else.

“They were certainly there to guard the box,” she observed, a white-hot intensity in her voice. “If they escaped, it must have been because they were beckoned by the person they were supposed to protect. Or went to her on their own volition.”

“That’s not all,” Kajiwara said, wiping the sweat from his brow. “After the creatures took off, I peeked inside the box and saw green forests and fields beneath white clouds. And from the window of a magnificent mansion, an old man the size of a grain of sand looking back at me.”

“You don’t say.”

Tonbeau wasn’t addressing the mayor, but the bag on the table. She opened it and peered at the thing inside. Her beefy arms reached in.

“I shut the top right away. A minute later I tried to open it again, but couldn’t. I wasn’t dreaming. So I brought it here. An item like this can’t be casually tossed aside. This is a mystery that needs unraveling. I’ll make it worth your while.”

Her fat wrist disappeared inside the bag and stopped. “Worth how much?”

“I’ll make the necessary arrangements.”

“Make sure those arrangements amount to more than a trifling.”

“Rest assured they will be made.”

Tonbeau harrumphed and fell silent. A trifling was all she could expect. She wouldn’t have been surprised at all to learn the mayor’s salary. Though official salaries amounted to no more than sparrow’s tears, the movers and shakers in Demon City could expect to receive generous additional perks and benefits. The “honorariums” bestowed on Shinjuku’s civil service whenever a “specialty product” was added to the list of “allowable exports” were frequent and generous.

Tonbeau smiled, as if to say: Then let it be so. There would be many more ways to skin this particular cat.

“Let’s see what the fuss is all about, shall we?”

She buried her arms in the bag down to her elbows. And removed them without incident. The doll girl focused her attention on the cracked and desiccated surface. Small colorful flecks fell off.

“A part of the paintings. It seems to have been damaged when the creatures fled.”

Tonbeau seized the lid. The mayor took a deep breath. She exerted all her strength but the lid didn’t budge. She jiggled it back and forth and lifted the box off the table.

Then softly set it down. “It is sealed with magic, and securely at that. However, Mr. Mayor, those guardian beasts didn’t lay a hand on you. They were in a hurry to get somewhere. Or crazed out of their minds. You give the box a good shaking?”

“Ah, yeah,” Kajiwara answered with a vague nod. “The top wouldn’t come off again, so I turned it upside-down too.”

“And maybe that drove them out of their little heads. I wonder how old this thing is. I haven’t seen a complex gadget like this in a hundred years.”

“Is there nothing you can do about it?”

“I can’t make any firm promises, but—hoh, this is beginning to sound like a business negotiation.”

“I have promised you remuneration.”

Tonbeau raised the box overhead. That view proved no more revealing. And yet she smiled broadly. “We’ll do whatever we can do. I assume you won’t mind entrusting it to our care for the time being.”

“That would be fine.” Kajiwara finally felt the tension beginning to unwind. “In fact, I stopped at Mephisto Hospital on the way here, but the director was nowhere to be found.”

“The doctor wasn’t in?” said the doll girl.

“He hasn’t told us where he is, only that he is working on behalf of the city, he and Aki-san too.”

“Yes.”

“Well, then. I shall bid you goodbye. My wife is waiting with the car. Later.”

After Kajiwara left, the dawning light mixed with a heavy silence that filled the room.

“This is it,” Tonbeau said in a tired voice. “No mistake about it.”

“Can it be opened?”

“One way or another. The mayor managed to peek in once. The timing probably coincided with the mechanism being thrown out of kilter. In that case, we should be able to duplicate a similar chain of events.”

“I certainly hope so.”

“The problem is, which comes first? The box or that lover boy you’re so fond of?”

Tonbeau pursed her lips in evident pleasure. Her ability to look the total bitch no matter how good a mood she was in was one of her more particular characteristics.

After watching the mayor’s car speed off, the head nurse turned to the front foyer. Her lips parted in a silent expression of surprise. There was the person the mayor had come to see—and missed. The doctor in white.

“Director, when did you get back?”

“This very moment.”

The head nurse stared at him. Five seconds was the limit. Any longer than that and her vision dissolved into a misty rainbow. Her goal that year was to lengthen the time she could look at him by one second. Now at five seconds she must look through the shell of the authentic and the pretense to the physical and the transcendent.

There was nothing wrong, and yet as they stood there in the half-light of morning, something still seemed “off” about him.

“Was there anything else?” Mephisto asked.

“No, nothing. Oh, Director, the mayor was just here to see you.”

“Official business?”

“No. His wife was doing the driving. I told him you were out and he left without giving any reasons.” The head nurse narrowed her eyes and searched her memory. “He was carrying a big duffle bag. I assume it contained something he wished to show you.”

Mephisto turned his gaze toward the car, cruising through the front gate. “Any indication of where he was headed next?”

“No, but if you allow me to hazard a guess, sir—”

“Go right ahead.”

“Coming expressly to see you, and discovering you were not available, he did not seem terribly disappointed and drove off in a hurry. He surely had another resource in mind. In this city, though, any such resources to equal that of yourself would be limited in the extreme.”

“Then it seems I have no choice but to meet with the mayor. Nurse, I’ll be in my room. Please refuse all visitors for the time being.”

“I understand, sir.” She bowed as the hospital director strode toward the doorway, the morning light gradually exposing the shapes and details of the world around them. She couldn’t explain why, but the director seemed to her at that moment to be fleeing the dawn.

Shortly before the mayor left the Nuvenberg residence, a strange group of shadows surrounded a flower shop in Yocho. The dark sky was still barely tinged with blue, and the streets were empty except for this particular throng of silhouettes.

Any witnesses would surely describe them as bathed in some sort of acid, and give them a wide berth. And they would have been correct.

Wearing dark suits and fedoras, they all were spouting white smoke. They all knew the fate that awaited them. They wouldn’t die. But the sun would scald them terribly, and they would carry the scars with them as long as they lived—perhaps for eternity.

Even this gentle and wan sunlight was anathema to vampires.

So what were they doing here? Why risk the hellish pain of being burned alive inside their indestructible bodies instead of hastening home to their peaceful abodes?

“You’re sure this is it?” asked one.

They were at the back door of the establishment.

“Yeah,” said somebody else. “Got confirmed reports. Watch your step.”

They all nodded as one. Right hands slid inside their suit coats. Without another word, the signal went out. The door wasn’t locked. They were through it in a flash.

The back of the shop consisted of a rose garden. They searched for their quarry and found it. Those citizens of the city turned into creatures of the night having scattered in all directions, here in this flower garden that should surely be seeing no visitors at this time of day, surrounded by all its gaudy excess.

White roses, yellow roses, red and purple roses—and in the center of the roses warring for supremacy a dark stain was slowly reaching outwards. The color of the flowers themselves were changing.

And in that center more beautiful than any flower, the voluptuous body of a naked woman, dreaming whatever dreams the Demon Princess dreamt.