Chapter Two

Chapter Two

“Setsura Aki?”

The question was posed with a detached air, the hints of hellish hunger gone. The manner in which it was asked could even suggest an air of propriety and politeness.

“Have you been waiting long?”

At a glance, Setsura had surely summed up the situation and the nature of his “guest.” Yet his question was equally calm and mellifluous.

“This is not the first time we have met. I observed you from the deck of the ship. I am Ryuuki.”

“The pleasure is all mine.”

And he sincerely meant it. He didn’t move from the storage area. The bloody body of the yakuza thug lay at his feet.

“Pardon me for asking, but did you happen to visit the ward government building today?”

“And how would you know that?”

“Thanks to you, I had to pay a visit to the hospital. The ward mayor was there. It seems that this city has a new practitioner of the dark arts who can move through the night in the middle of the day. I catch a whiff of it floating around here as well.”

“You are as I expected. A pity you should waste those skills as a private detective.”

“Well, it is only a side job. But seeing as you are capable of springing unexpectedly from a cover of darkness, what are you doing here? Now?”

Setsura addressed the question as he would to a friend, as if fully expecting an answer.

“I had planned on visiting the Toyama housing project before coming here. But I couldn’t quite shake off that bungled effort at the mayor’s office. I, who was unable to take on a single decrepit witch by himself, was left behind in this shadow box. The next thing I knew I found myself here. This girl filled me in on the details.”

Setsura’s eyes communicated his surprise. He hadn’t imagined that his opposite would speak in so freely a manner. “Makes sense. The old man was by himself.”

“So you have met Sir Kikiou?”

“We had a bit of a dust-up.”

“And you came away unharmed.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. He gave as good as he got. If I’d been there alone, we might all be arranging my wake this evening instead.”

“No mean feat, fighting Sir Kikiou and living to tell the tale. He grossly underestimated you.”

Ryuuki bared his gleaming teeth and laughed loudly. The husky laughter swirled around the storage area and the back office like a small gale.

“What a pleasant surprise, seeing him rocked back on his heels like that. He certainly must regret leaving me behind now. Not everything goes the way he expects it to. I hope he enjoyed a taste of his own medicine. I shall be the one to return with your head and his name shall be dust.”

Setsura answered the extravagant boast by closing his eyes and nodding. Sure, I get where you’re coming from, he seemed to be thinking. “So I take it you plan on leaving with my head?”

“That I will,” Ryuuki answered brightly, disarmingly so.

“The woman must be out of harm’s way first.”

“Of course.”

Setsura glanced at Takako. “Can you walk?”

“Yes,” she said. And then, “No, I can’t.”

“Well, then—”

Before Setsura had stopped speaking, Takako felt a slight, acupuncture-like prick on the back of her neck. The paralysis left her feet a moment later. The work of Setsura’s devil wires.

“Get out of here. Through that door to the shop. I’ll bring you up to date later.”

“Yes!”

Takako ran toward the door. One step through the door, and her feet took on a life of their own.

The door banged shut, and Setsura said, “Where do you want to do this?”

“Anywhere you want.”

“Anywhere I want? There could be traps around here everywhere.”

“All the traps in the world won’t help you when death taps you on the shoulder. We all go to our doom when our time is up. I’ve always believed that.”

“How sporting. I never would have taken you for one of Kikiou’s subordinates.”

“I am no one’s subordinate.”

“I apologize.”

“Though I hardly possess a status worthy of such a boast. Running freely across the endless steppes in pursuit of the Hun King—how long ago was that?”

“So you have chased the setting sun?”

The man smiled broadly. “And will this city also set?”

“Yes.”

“So you are familiar with that tint and that color?”

“Yes.” Setsura’s voice brightened as well, as if nothing delighted him more than talking of sunsets.

“I saw it in the western deserts far from the capital. You have seen it too, from the western reaches of this accursed city? You know what it means to chase the setting sun?”

“A long time ago.”

“I see.” He nodded, like the older brother silently accepting the opinion of the younger.

“And nowadays?”

“My moonlighting keeps me busy. But now and then.”

“Humans love the sunrise and loathe the sunset. Especially the citizens of such a prosperous capital. We have seen much in our lives. Both joy and sadness. But more of sadness.”

“A tumbleweed or dust in the wind—at times I feel that way. But it comes with the territory.”

Those who bent like the grass, floated like the clouds, and calmly went where the breezes took them, to a place where no hearts could be broken—there were times when Setsura wished he could be like them too.

Ryuuki asked, “And what would this moonlighting be?”

“Chasing after the Hun King, earning a little on the side, and trying to balance the books in the meantime.”

Ryuuki smiled at the nonsensical answer. “And what do you do?”

“I look for missing persons.”

“That is not your main line of work?”

“That would be running this senbei shop.”

“And looking at sunsets. You are an odd man.”

“Thank you.”

“What a strange relationship this is. In this place of death I meet a man with whom I wouldn’t mind talking the night away.”

Setsura shrugged. “That’d be fine with me too.”

“I’m sorry, but that is out of the question. Princess is keeping this body alive.”

Ryuuki’s mouth briefly turned down in an expression of self-derision. He smoothly recovered. His calm and shining eyes began to change in color, began to turn red.

Setsura stood there. At ease. Like dust in the wind, like a blade of grass bending in a breeze, taking a pose that adapted itself to every variable in the environment around him.

Ryuuki’s malevolent qi.

Setsura’s devil wires.

“One thing,” Setsura said.

“What?”

“The koto you played at the hospital that put us to sleep. Why didn’t you use it tonight?”

“I was in no mood for a fight that night. Now I am facing off against a true warrior. I could never live with the disgrace of taking a head by such means.”

A faint smile rose to Setsura’s lips.

Then Ryuuki’s right forearm separated below the elbow. It took another moment to become clear that it had actually been cut away. Ryuuki heard a faint hum beyond the hearing of a normal human—from his right elbow toward his throat.

The arm tumbled onto the tatami, scattering fresh blood like the end of a spinning hose, sticking the landing with a jerk, its remaining two fingers spread apart and pointing skyward.

The mysterious force stretched between the ceiling and the floor. Ryuuki leapt in a single motion to the back of the room, thrusting his left hand out in front of him. As if with its last gasp, flopping over and growing purple, the right arm directed its qi into the strand of Setsura’s devil wires, deflecting it and staving off a second attack.

“Like a rolling tumbleweed, eh?”

Taking aim at the upright Setsura, Ryuuki’s demon qi shot at him. The figure in the black duster staggered and fell to his knees. But he didn’t collapse. Perhaps it hadn’t contained a sufficient killing force.

Frustration flickered in Ryuuki’s eyes as he summoned his energy for another attack. But then Ryuuki froze. In the very moment before impact, the countenance of the beautiful manhunter changed into that of a different person.

“What? Compassion will be the death of you.”

On one knee, head bowed, the haunting, mellifluous voice flowed across the room. He was the same Setsura, but not the same at all.

“You severed my qi,” Ryuuki grumbled under the breath.

His face still hidden from view, the other Setsura said, “You’ve done well enough to send me to the hospital. But your right arm is now useless. Both my hands are fine. Shall we see who is the fastest?”

Ryuuki hesitated. A split second later, the fierce fighting spirit shone in his eyes. He raised his left arm, again clenched his five fingers, and cast his eyes forward.

“I sense one too many obstacles before me now. Perhaps a return engagement—”

The words hadn’t left his mouth before he vaulted through the window of the back office. The glass exploded outwards like a fireworks display and the night swallowed him up.

Startled shouts came from outside, repeated cries of “Freeze!” Gunfire followed.

A brief silence.

Setsura was still down on one knee when a squad of officers decked out in flak jackets and SWAT gear barreled into the room, right arms jabbed out in front of them.

“B-Boss?” cried out the shop girl, behind them. Takako was with her.

The SWAT officers stepped into the storage area and put their arms around Setsura’s shoulders to help him up. And then grunted in obvious distress and stepped back.

The officers wore special thermal gloves that insulated against heat, cold and electric current. They were made from fabric proven to resist the harshest Siberian winter. But touching Setsura all but turned their fingers to icicles. They yanked off their gloves to find their fingers turning blue.

“W-What the hell—!”

Mistakenly believing that Setsura was deliberately causing this reaction, their colleagues pivoted and pointed their right arms at him. Each had a 4 mm caliber automatic mounted on his forearm. It was synced to a heads-up display inside his sunglasses that tracked and aimed along his line of sight. Despite the small caliber, the rounds contained high-explosive charges that would make short work of a grizzly bear.

“I meant to tell you not to touch me.” Setsura sounded like an old man on his last legs.

“Are you all right?”

The shop girl pushed through the scrum of SWAT officers and ran up to him. She stepped right on the yakuza’s bloody torso but didn’t seem to notice. She was a citizen of Demon City, after all. Takako followed after her.

The shop girl said, “What’s going on? I didn’t have a clue until this girl told me.”

“Has the ambulance arrived?” asked the senbei shop owner in his normal voice.

If the SWAT teams hadn’t arrived when they did, he’d be a dead man. A multipurpose armored personnel carrier that doubled as a critical-car ambulance had been dispatched at the same time.

“Setsura, where are you hurt?” Takako’s voice shook. The shop girl stood in her way, not knowing who she was or what was her intent.

“Can you walk?” asked one of the SWAT officers. The man with frostbit fingers had already left to summon the ambulance.

“More or less. What about the target?”

“He ran off,” the SWAT officer quickly answered. He had a magnificent moustache and the approximate build of a small boulder. “We gave chase, but he gave us the slip. Still, anybody who’d invade the home of Setsura Aki and wound him before taking off is one bad character.”

“There’s no point in pursuing him, Kusama-san. Call back your troops. Let’s not add to the body count.”

“Hey, you remembered my name.” Kusama thumbed the mike in his left hand and ordered his men back to base. “It’s an honor, sir. I was hoping I could settle my debt to you today, but it looks like that will have to wait.”

“You showing up was salvation enough,” Setsura said, deadly serious.

“You’re in bad shape. The EMTs will be here soon.”

“You probably don’t have a good way of transporting a patient without touching him. Well, here goes—”

Setsura gathered his remaining strength in his legs. It felt like digging a buried boulder out of the ground. He slowly lifted his head.

The shop girl let out a strangled cry. Takako’s eyes went wide.

The wan, sunken cheeks of the beautiful man’s face made him look like the walking dead.