Chapter Three
Chapter Three
The gory wind blew down the narrow conduit. The tiger twitched its snout. Though born out of dreams, this creature was formed with a lust for blood.
Go on! Git! Setsura silently scolded it.
The white tiger turned around. The humiliation of its defeat at Setsura’s hand was fresh in its mind. The desire for revenge—the thirst for raw flesh—it struggled between its instinctual desires and the desire for revenge and reprisal.
It snarled. A glowing ball of fire grew like a bubble from its mouth. Then in a flash, it spun around and raced back to the scene of the carnage, slashing at the survivors with its mighty fangs. Planting its severed forelegs, it cut the spine of one officer with the claws of its hind legs, stuffed the head into its mouth, and plucked it off the shoulders with a shake of its head.
The sound of the crunching skull attracted Princess’s enraptured gaze.
“Well, well. My bad for making you smell blood while in the midst of snuffing out Setsura’s candle. No rush, no rush. After you’ve eaten them, keep room for one more in that stomach of yours.”
Her shrill laughter reverberated through that dark realm. This woman’s laughter wouldn’t stop as long as others continued to die. In other words, until the ending of the human world.
The darkness answered back with a differing opinion. Voices welled up around the bloodbath like the lingering resentments of embittered ghosts.
“No matter your malice, why treat us like this?”
“We are Princess’s subjects. Not a speck of uncertainty stains our devotion. However immortal our bodies may be, ripping off our heads hurts.”
Beneath Princess’s feet, around the white tiger, human forms squirmed and writhed and moaned. If not killed in the proper way, a vampire would live forever—with its spine severed, limbs lost, head crushed. A life trapped eternally in that pain was beyond the imagination of mere mortals.
The headless bodies crawled across the piles of brick and concrete as the limbless agents screamed. And so it would ever be.
A mad artist who happened to be present would certainly compose a masterpiece that would give no one who saw it another restful night’s sleep thereafter.
“Forgive us,” said a security officer, torn asunder from the crown of his head to his crotch.
“Why—why are you doing this to us?” wailed another, frantically stuffing his intestines back into his abdomen.
“We live for no one else but you.”
The Demon Princess leaned over and scooped up a handful of the black gore from the lake of blood. She answered with a glance at the man who made that statement, “You live for no one else but me?” She trickled the blood over her white throat and breasts. “Then no matter what fate awaits you, you will voice no complaint to me. That is the calling of a servant. Although I have no use for a person like that.”
“What are you saying?” someone called from far away. “Then for what purpose were we—”
“Why ask me? How should I know? Why does dust exist? What is the meaning of garbage?”
“Are you calling us dust?”
Princess looked around her, stroking her breasts and her thighs, smearing herself with their blood. The voices came from above the culvert, from above her. But such was Princess’s scorn that she lorded over her servants as if from high above. The emperors of old must have beheld her in no less a fashion.
“Listen carefully. Your filthy blood cannot begin to quench my thirst. And yet you multiply like rats and rabbits. Think. Over the past four thousand years, in all the time I have been alive, shouldn’t a situation like this have occurred over and over? Those unclean things who sing my praises as my servants covering the earth in swarms. You are hardly the first. Have you heard tell of them ruling the world, let alone shaking its foundations? Hardly. I drink my fill and the world slumbers on. Why do you think that is so?”
Princess stopped talking. An invisible ardor flowed into the gaps between the sounds of silence. It swelled and reached its breaking point and gushed forth as a single voice.
“Please save us.”
Princess answered simply, “Because I put an end to them.”
It was as if the world had descended into a different kind of darkness. Even the white tiger paused amidst its slaughter.
“Why would you—”
“Why would you—”
“Why—”
“Why—”
“Why—”
“Who could tolerate the sight of a world filled with such vermin? How do you imagine you appear in my eyes? As loving and devoted retainers, our faces nuzzled together as I take you to my bed? No. Ghouls with rancid blood trailing across their black and bloated flesh, corrupt eyes shining with unsated cravings. Ah, the sound of breath whistling across fangs. It stinks. Such filth cannot be allowed to remain in this world.”
“Weren’t you the one who did this to us?”
“You have spoken enough. That is enough to wish my soul to hell.”
“Please extinguish us.”
Their voices swirled around her. “Please extinguish you? Do you dare tell me what to do? No, you are hardly the first. You call yourselves my servants and swear allegiance to me alone, but that is not your true selves, not what resides in your heart of hearts. There is only one in this world who truly possesses eternal life. The maggots that writhe in the depths are nothing but annoyances. It appears that this time only, and only in this city has Kikiou pondered different thoughts. I couldn’t care less about that old man’s dreams. And maybe all the better to let them come true.”
Her voice grew softer. Her blood-soaked visage turned toward the passageway. There stood a man’s silhouette, like a beautiful splotch of ink.
“You heard me, Setsura?”
“I did,” he calmly replied. “It’s said that the ultimate state of every despot is a lone figure surrounded by nothing but death. It seems that is indeed true.”
“Do nothing and that is the fate of this city. Do you think you can stop it?”
“I don’t know.” Setsura shrugged. It was probably the truth. But he wasn’t the type to throw himself into a fit of desperate improvisation.
At a loss for words herself, Princess blinked. “Then what will you do?” she asked, ignoring her own non sequitur.
The white tiger growled beside her. Its brain, intoxicated by the massacre, rekindled its animosity toward Setsura. Setsura shook his head. That was the truth too.
“In that case, best you not hang around here. Run for your life. Ko here has a long memory. It would like to sink its fangs into your flesh right now.”
“That is okay with you?”
“Is what okay with me?”
“To so readily dispatch me, and at the hands of a beast no less. Is that okay with you? Don’t you enjoy first making your enemies drink the bitter dregs and wallow in humiliation, and then have them plead for mercy?”
Princess pressed her lips together. Revisiting the past was not her prerogative alone.
“You can’t very well do that with me dead. Do you know where Takako-san is?”
Princess had indeed made her intentions clear that she would torment Takako and so make Setsura suffer, though this was a risky card for him to play.
“Where?” Princess said, narrowing her eyes. She couldn’t have expected Setsura to reply, but it didn’t hurt to ask.
“Good question,” Setsura said.
But there was no denying that he was still without any options. He knew from experience that there was no way to kill the vampire queen with his wires. He’d been wracking his brains during their conversation, trying to formulate his next move, but only ended up spinning his wheels.
The white beast crouched down on its severed forelegs. Princess placed her hand on its neck and pulled it back.
The tiger roared, more a thunderclap.
Without losing his balance, Setsura soared into the air. Dirt and chunks of concrete rained down on the passageway that until now had been hidden behind him. The fire breathed out by the white tiger had weakened the wall, and the shockwave just now blew it apart.
“Huh?”
Setsura leaned toward the right, did a half turn onto his back, and a moment later swung like a pendulum on the path.
More roars and shadows came down at him from the ceiling, the loose ground setting off a chain reaction. The heavens and earth shook like the day of creation.
And then there was light.
The destruction must have reached the surface, for the rays of light unfolded like a white fan, pouring into the tunnel with a mysterious majesty.
Cries—and puffs of white smoke—rose up, the particular sign of a combusting vampire.
Inside the falling shower of dirt and grit, Setsura drew a bead on Princess’s position—the strand he’d cast out when he’d flown into the air. Princess wasn’t moving. She’d found herself a nook to hide in until the destruction passed.
He could cut her in two, but she’d only flow back together again like warm wax without so much as a scar on her fair skin.
Setsura found himself in the same place where the concrete wall had collapsed. A dozen feet around him in all directions, the rubble piled up forming a sturdy fortress.
The tunnel appeared blocked by a great black mass. The vampires lying crushed beneath it would, until it was removed, live out their lives literally within the earth, gasping for breath, tongues licking the air in search of oxygen, unable to move.
Setsura jumped. He wrapped a wire around a sturdy ledge in the ceiling and landed in Princess’s lair. He looked at the ceiling again, and picked out a steel girder jutting out horizontally. He tossed out a demon wire, yanked it down, seized one end, and adding an extra twist with his wrist.
The pale naked body sprang up from the smoke and debris, a good six feet into the air—though shrouded in the dust it was hard to tell—flailing her arms and legs.
“Put me down. If you don’t—” A mist enveloped her. Her limbs were exposed to the sun.
“Sunlight won’t kill you, but it’s got to hurt. You should be cuttable now.”
“You bastard. Put me down!”
Princess grasped the invisible string holding her up. Her five fingers dropped off like pieces of marshmallow.
“So it is effective.”
But then, for a moment, he hesitated, perhaps savoring that moment of victory. A moment of unpardonable neglect for a citizen of Demon City.
From the side came a blast of white-hot heat. The wire he reflexively whipped in response severed the flames in two and slashed at the white tiger bounding over the mound of earth. Setsura’s left sleeve, covering his face, caught fire.
The tiger nimbly ducked the wire and opened its mouth. A second torrent of flame burst out, from a range that must be impossible to avoid.
Setsura suddenly looked up. So did Princess and the tiger.
Something like a curling mist descended. Its skin appeared cool and damp. A mist in a rain. Two dots of light grew closer from deep within the black semicircle. Setsura recalled what Tonbeau had told him—of the two beasts released from the box the mayor had brought her, one was a dragon.
Fire spilled from the tiger’s mouth. Steam billowed up. The rain became a clear drizzle.
As the old saying went: Tiger at the front gate, the wolf at the back door—or in this case, the dragon. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. The cold wind touched the back of his neck. Setsura couldn’t move. The breath of a dragon. The creature breathing it emerged from the tunnel.
It pushed its long snout forward, the long slit of its mouth, from which drooped an almost comical Fu Manchu moustache, though the humor was lost in the fearsome menace of its glittering eyes. Its body was covered with golden scales edged with a green patina.
“You cannot escape, you fool. Choose which one—choose the claws that will tear you apart!” Princess cried out from the air. She was already shrouded in smoke. The sunlight seemed to have robbed her as well of her powers of levitation.
The tiger roared. The dragon opened its mouth. Its teeth appeared quite small in proportion, but the sheer power of its red mouth appeared to outshine even that of its feline companion.
A flood of fire or water would surely gush forth.
Setsura jumped. As he soared vertically upwards, the two magical beasts turned their snouts towards him, but didn’t attack. Princess was directly along their line of fire.
In a not very sporting move, Setsura put an arm around Princess as he climbed higher, using her as a shield. Only those without their lives truly on the line could call it cowardice.
With Princess under his arm, he passed over the heads of the beasts and set down on the stable pile of bricks.
Past the dragon, the hole revealing the sun was surprisingly small, perhaps a dozen feet in diameter on the surface. Considering the amount of light six hundred feet down, dimensional refracting qualities must have arisen in the tunnels, one of the strange blessings of the Devil Quake.
Setsura was about to shoot to the surface when his vision was obscured by an expanding tide of blue. The flood unleashed by the dragon rapidly exceeded what he’d anticipated—as the strand of devil wire slipped out of his hand.