Chapter Two

Chapter Two

“What are you up to, Kikiou?” the Demon Princess said, shifting her gaze away from Setsura. Her voice might even be described as gentle, which made it all the more menacing.

“In fact, I have been spending considerable time constructing a means of linking us back together.”

The great warlock, though, appeared a little worried. After activating the Akashic Records in the Nuvenberg house, he had made his escape with Ryuuki. And then on an outdoor television screen, he’d caught news of the boat showing up and had run over as quickly as possible.

They broke through the Seal of the Yellow Emperor using Ryuuki’s qi to get to the device. It was a miracle they’d been able to pull it off without the doll girl being any the wiser.

“Huh. So you’re the one who destroyed our world.” Her icy glare pierced him like knives. “Well, whatever. Given a thousand years, ten thousand years, you can make as many as you want. Let’s get down to the business at hand. You got here just in time. I am granting you the opportunity to turn away from your apostasy and reclaim your fidelity. Ryuuki, seize Setsura and kill the man on his back.”

“Understood.” Kikiou nodded. He turned to Ryuuki and said, “Princess has spoken. The only reason you could have come this far is because you still desire to return to the service of one’s master. Now you must put it on display.”

Ryuuki didn’t react in the slightest. Several long seconds of silence passed. Then unexpectedly he said, “Setsura, are you going to release him?”

“No.”

Though enemies before and behind him blocked the way, not a quaver of fear sounded in the word, despite a sense of the fatigue clearly being there.

“Why not? I have not been instructed to kill you. Discard him and run away and you will likely return home safe and sound.”

“Would you?”

Ryuuki fell silent. Then answered with a thin smile, “I thought you would say that. Be on your way.”

Next to him, Kikiou looked on disbelievingly, struck speechless at such a blatant display of betrayal. “You—You—You will disobey Princess?”

“I believe he just did,” said Princess, closing her eyes as if she couldn’t care less. “So what will you do, Kikiou?”

Setsura had already set off. He’d gotten ten yards and made a left at the intersection. Mephisto Hospital was only a stone’s throw ahead.

“Princess, you can school Ryuuki afterwards. I will deal with Setsura now.”

Kikiou reared back and took aim with his qi cannon. As if materializing out of nowhere, the red-eyed throng froze on the spot. They had felt that demonic vibe beyond human ken, with no idea what would happen next.

The wave warped the air and ran after Setsura—and suddenly disappeared. At the same time, the old man was torn from his left shoulder to his right waist.

Setsura’s devil wire. But how had he negated the effect of Kikiou’s attack?

“Ryuuki—Ryuuki—you traitor!” Kikiou hissed, looking and sounding like an ill-mannered ogre.

General Ryuuki had interposed himself between Setsura and Kikiou and Princess, as if protecting him.

“Explain yourself, Ryuuki,” Princess quietly said.

“At a certain time, in a certain place, I learned the joy of coming to the rescue of another. That is your answer.”

He seemed to tower above them, the ghost koto Silent Night strapped to his back.

An eerie light filled Princess’s eyes. “What an adorable answer. I’ve thought that perhaps since I saved your life at the border of the wastelands once I might hear you say the same thing. But it was not immediately forthcoming, General Ryuuki.”

“Please forgive me, Princess.”

“No, I don’t think I will. Look, Setsura has turned the corner. If he gets into Mephisto Hospital, I won’t easily get him out again. That is all on you. It’s been a long and winding road, Ryuuki.”

For all the sentiment in the words, there was no emotion in her voice. She strode up to Ryuuki. No less amazed by her casual manner, Kikiou was about to jump back.

General Ryuuki stood there like a statue, his face no more revealing his thoughts than a piece of stone. The Demon Princess stopped in front of him and reached out, her left arm parallel to the ground.

The slender hand pierced the right side of Ryuuki’s chest with no more difficulty than plunging it into warm water. In light of the relationship between them, and taking into consideration his own long years, the impression this scene left upon him could not be any more profound.

Gazing at Ryuuki’s tortured mien, Princess inserted her right hand to the wrist and slowly churned it back and forth, massaging the flesh. Blood brimmed up. Not a drop fell to the ground.

“What do you say, Ryuuki? No matter how difficult, I will chase him down and bring him back.” The sound of her voice grew muffled. Her lips pressed against Ryuuki’s chest, sucking up the trickle of blood. “I changed my mind. You need to live a little bit longer. Doctor Mephisto is in his hospital, you see. He is the man whose blood you drank. I am your sire, and he should obey my commands, though he is a most unreliable servant. Live your limited life for a while longer. When you have used him to deliver Setsura into my hands, these arms of mine will pluck out your true heart.”

“No.” He spoke with the low voice of a dead man, though the word was laced with shining steel.

“No?”

“That young man will never become your servant. In this corrupt and fallen city, he is the manifestation of the freedom of a soaring cloud, the unrestraint of a whispering wind. I wish to be like that as well.”

“Hoh. Then what will you do?” Her hand still connected her to Ryuuki’s chest.

“To turn such a man over to you would be the same as prostrating myself at your feet.” Ryuuki’s face was exceedingly calm. “You mean, will I once again choose to live out the endless days at your side? No. And neither will I help you capture Setsura Aki.”

“Then I will go after them myself.”

“Suit yourself. As for me—”

In that moment, Ryuuki’s body unsheathed itself from Princess’s hand and flew backwards a dozen feet.

“Will you betray me, Ryuuki?”

A quiet power suffused Princess’s voice, became a luminous point of golden light that was drawn into the valley between her breasts. Trailing a rainbow behind her, she flitted over the general’s head.

Just as a mask of gray dust blew against her face. “Shuuran!” Princess growled. “You are here too!”

The rending sound of flesh silenced that cry. All motion stopped. In the center of the world, the two of them stood close enough to be locked in an embrace.

Princess’s right hand had plunged through Ryuuki’s chest.

There was no telling how much time passed until the world jerked back into motion. The mighty man fell to his knees and collapsed to the ground, rugged as the side of a mountain to the very end.

The strings of the koto hummed. The sad note stirred the air. The Demon Princess didn’t move until it faded away.

She looked down at her bloody right hand and then at the body at her feet. “What a strange man,” she said to Ryuuki. Her eyes obstructed by the dust that was Shuuran, he had taken the blow straight to the heart. Silent Night had given him sufficient opportunity to react.

The dust covering him like a protective blanket remained motionless as well. A gentle night wind swept them up and carried them together toward the west, to the land of the setting sun.

“What are we going to do, Princess?” said Kikiou.

“You would do well to ask that question of yourself.”

Princess flicked her hands. Ryuuki’s blood scattered onto the ground. Her hands gleamed white in the moonlight, as befitted their owner.

“I know what I am going to do. I am going to take possession of Setsura and grind him into the mud and make him my servant.”

“And then?”

“Whatever. You got any good ideas?” she said with a dazzling smile. “Make your dreams come true. Stay here and bury the world with our minions. Travel off to some unknown country. Or sleep for an eternity in the casket in that ship. Take your pick.”

“Whichever you choose, you intend to bring Setsura along with you?”

“You think not?”

“No,” said Kikiou. Did the Demon Princess notice that when it came to Setsura, he answered the same as Ryuuki? “My divination has proved accurate. Setsura is our most unlucky star. Consider the proof. You killed Ryuuki and extinguished Shuuran. Will you destroy the world, leaving behind but a single boat? Make him your servant and the fate of that unlucky star changes not one whit. As long as he is by your side, none of our ambitions will come to fruition.”

“Those ambitions you speak of are all yours.”

Kikiou started at the cold edge to her words. “What—What are you saying? For the past four thousand years, our agreed-upon goal has been to fill the world with your kin, beginning with the accursed city as the cornerstone.”

“Really? We agreed on that? It slipped my mind.” Kikiou glared back at the moonlight-dappled face with the look of a man whose soul was dead. Princess paid it no mind and continued, “Our world or this world, whatever will be will be. As long as I can spend the endless days doing whatever I want, I have no complaints. Who knows when it will end? That matters now only to the two of us.”

“Then—Then as for my goals and desires?”

“You might want to give them a rest.”

Kikiou froze. This was how the woman he’d spent four thousand years with bid the great warlock goodbye. He finally said, “How can you—this city will soon fall into the hands of your servants. The rest of the world will follow not long after. You will become their absolute monarch. Without you there to guide them, they will be reduced to nothing more than a disorganized rabble. What have we been working for all this time? Are you so willing to render it a meaningless waste?”

“I am absolutely willing. Shall we call it a day and go our separate ways? Kikiou, you can walk down whatever road and toward any horizon that meets your fancy.”

Princess looked at the bend in the road in front of her, the intersection where Setsura turned off Yasukuni Avenue and was heading to the hospital where the white doctor ruled.

“I am not letting you get away, Setsura.”

With four thousand years of her previous existence weighing upon those words, Princess set off without another look back.

That day, Mephisto Hospital had been visited by one unexpected patient after the next. First was Takako Kanan, borne there by Yakou’s subordinates. An hour later came Yakou himself, carried in by Setsura. They were quickly admitted and taken to the director’s special examination room.

There to meet them were Doctor Mephisto and Tonbeau Nuvenberg.

Tonbeau had been raring to go as soon as she’d learned that an ancient Chinese ship had shown up at the Keio Plaza Hotel. Mephisto urged a wait and see attitude. She was certainly conspiring to use Mephisto’s offices to wheedle more reward money from the mayor. The doctor didn’t leap into action at once, pointing out that others had been engaged to investigate and they should await the enemy’s next move.

A prudence, very much like him, that had perhaps been additionally affected by the blood of those interfering creatures of the night.

“You seem to be in one piece,” he said to Setsura, lying on the bed. There was a different timbre to his voice as well, though only he and Setsura would ever have noticed.

“What about Kanan-san and Yakou?” Setsura asked, his face waxy and pale.

“They are in the next room. Miss Tonbeau is watching over Kanan-san. There’s no need to worry.”

“The enemy is those two,” Setsura said coldly. “Bedding us down together like this, the security around here is going to the dogs.” He looked up at Mephisto. “To make matters worse, you and they are probably still buds.”

“Bridle such thoughts.” Mephisto pulled over a chair, sat down, and examined Setsura’s neck. “You haven’t used the bottle you were given?”

The bottle given him in Galeen Nuvenberg’s house, back when she was still alive. Setsura had treated himself with it.

“I will drink it afterwards.”

“How many times have you been bitten?”

Setsura held up three fingers.

“It might not be in time, then. You are a miser when it comes to deploying available resources.”

“You don’t have anything newer?”

“My knowledge reaches no further.”

“Well, run a few trials to see whether it is still effective now that I have become that woman’s slave.”

“I am not compounding that medicine again. Drink up.”

“Supposing I do, what about destroying that woman?”

“Such as driving a stake through her heart?”

“Do you think that would work?”

“No. Destroying Princess is impossible.”

“Then what?”

“Hold off going anywhere and don’t go anywhere by yourself. That woman is obsessed with you. Or to put it another way, refuse her and she might well wreck the world for spite.” Mephisto waited for a reaction from Setsura. When none was forthcoming, he said, “That woman is antimatter facing off against matter, a nihility facing off against existence itself. Any life that touches her ceases to be. There is no way to lay hands on her. Moreover—”

Sensing something in his voice, Setsura closed his eyes. “Don’t carry on just like her, Mephisto. You are strangely like me. You have a grasp of the situation.”

“Not at all.” Mephisto’s white face came within a hand’s breadth of Setsura’s nose.

“What are you doing?”

“I thought it time for a face-to-face talk.”

“About treating me?”

“About treating my troubled heart.”

“Get a freaking grip,” Setsura said in a weary voice.

“Somebody commands me to.”

A tense air, as lurid as it was sublime, filled the space between the two comely countenances. Mephisto suddenly pulled his face away. His hands flashed through the air, revealing a bespectacled man in a white lab coat, looking as long in the face as a man could.

“What is it, Takahashi-kun?”

“The patient has disappeared from the examination room.”

“Takako Kanan?”

“Yes.”

“What about her attendant?”

A black shadow slipped by Mephisto and headed to the door. With Mephisto at his heels, he sprinted to the next room.

The only person there was Tonbeau stretched out on the floor, snoring like a content hippo. She was sound asleep.

“Silent Night,” Setsura said, thinking of Ryuuki’s koto. “Does that mean Ryuuki’s shown up here?”

Doctor Takahashi soon ran in and dispelled that notion. A short time before, he’d ducked out to the back courtyard to take a breather, and spied there what he could only describe as the Goddess of the Moon. As soon as their eyes met, he lost consciousness. The woman had what looked like a koto in her hands.

He was only out for a moment, though when he checked his watch, ten minutes had passed. Recalling the beauty of the ghostly girl who had devastated the hospital previously, still in a mostly dazed state he had hurried to check Takako Kanan’s room.

“If that woman was playing the koto,” Setsura surmised, “then Ryuuki no longer lives.”

Mephisto didn’t contradict him, meaning he agreed. Setsura took a long breath and glared at Mephisto. “You would have known that Ryuuki was gone. Somebody commands you to, eh?”

“Let’s not bicker about who said what to whom,” said Mephisto, feigning utter innocence.

Setsura dropped the matter. He had other things to worry about. No matter where Princess was, Takako would go to her when beckoned. And no matter where Takako was, Princess would know where to find her. She must have used Silent Night to keep interfering busybodies out of the way.

The video cameras observing Takako’s room twenty-four seven were working normally. But none of them recorded Takako leaving the room. The dulcet tones of the ghost koto Silent Night had powerful directional abilities, or they would have put Setsura to sleep as well.

But why hadn’t Princess summoned Setsura while she was at it? Because she wanted Setsura to come to her by his own choice, of his own free will. She was trying to arouse his concern for Takako and make him suffer—by stealing back the girl he’d only managed to rescue a few hours before.

He should not have experienced such levels of existential despair, like the condemned criminal who receives a last-minute reprieve as he sits in the electric chair, only to be ordered back as soon as he exits the execution room.

“Did you tie one of your threads to Kanan-san?”

“It broke. Did you inject her with a GPS device?”

“Settle down.”

“You did? Where is she? That boat?”

“I did inject a tracer agent into her blood. But there’s been no response.”

Setsura was about to tear him a new one, but checked himself. A demonic aura emanated from the white doctor’s being. Princess had spirited Takako away from his hospital.

“My commission hasn’t ended. No, I shall give you a new one. Setsura, find out where Princess is.”

“And in exchange, are you going to clean up the pieces when it’s all over?”

“That is not my job,” Mephisto said bluntly. “But the bill for violating the sanctity of my hospital on three separate occasions shall be paid. See that she falls from the heights of bliss to the depths of hell. All I desire is confirmation that it happened. And you need a blood transfusion.”

“Promise that you don’t spike it with anything funny.”

“Your own blood. Synthetic, of course, but no different down to the DNA.”

“Manufactured how?” asked Setsura. He watched as an automated gurney rolled up next to him.

“Utilizing their knowledge. They’ve succeeded in a number of other areas also. Let’s go.”

“If something turns up about that woman during the transfusion—”

“Nothing to worry about. It’ll be over in thirty seconds.”

Mephisto wasn’t exaggerating on that score.