Chapter Three

Chapter Three

A human form emerged in the headlights. A man. He looked like a bum or vagrant. He buried his face in his arms and dove behind an outcropping of rocky debris.

“Doctor—” Yakou called out.

Mephisto was a step ahead of him. “Stop the car,” he ordered.

They were in the middle of the Keio Hospital grounds. At this time of night, it was unlikely that any slumbering thing was actually human. It’d be much safer to assume that any “human” was only a creature pretending to be human.

As soon as the car door opened, Mephisto sprinted off in the direction of the mountain of rocks the “man” had disappeared behind.

Beneath the light of the almost-full moon, the ruins took on a cold glow, still as a graveyard. But with the appearance of a single man and the sweep of his pure white cape, the mood of the desolate scene suddenly shifted.

The inorganic rocky mountain seemed to absorb the moonlight. The distant whistle of the wind as well ceased to blow, and instead played a paean to his beauty. Entranced and yet grieving that it could not mingle its atoms with his, the wind sang to Doctor Mephisto.

There was beauty even in his shadow as he circled the mountain. Yakou raced up behind him. Another mountain sat in front of them. The path forked in two directions.

“What do you think?” Mephisto asked.

Yakou closed his eyes and then opened them. “I cannot say.” There was a barb in his words. “I would think these grounds would be more familiar to you than to me.”

“This doctor knows only the grounds of the human body.”

“Sorry.”

“Something on your mind?”

“No, nothing.”

“We needn’t concern ourselves with him.”

“Understood.”

“Stay on your toes.”

Yakou didn’t answer at first. He didn’t know how well Mephisto could see in the dark, but the young vampire’s cheeks burned a rosy pink.

“I’ll go right. You take the left, Doctor.”

“Got it.”

The moonlight scattered around them like silver dust as the two parted ways.

It was a strange path. Despite there being no logic to the piles of debris, in the depths of the darkness, the mountains of rubble completely blocked out the buildings further on. Or perhaps this was because they’d been dumped there without any other purpose in mind.

In any case, the winding paths twisted and turned and combined together again, taking one detour after the other, until all sense of direction was lost.

After walking for five minutes, Mephisto stopped in his tracks. “This feels like the meandering back alleyways of Kabuki-cho. But it looks like the end is in sight.”

The meaning of the “end” soon became apparent. A dozen or so feet in front of him stood a girl. The word “girl,” though, would only describe her face. The fragrance entwined about her sumptuous body radiated with all the ripeness and vigor of a woman in the prime of her youth.

She was wearing a dark green tunic and Chinese trousers. Her black hair was drawn up into buns behind each ear. Setsura would have recognized her on the spot. She was the enchantress Shuuran, one of the gang of four.

She stared back at Mephisto with a dumbfounded look on her face. Perhaps not even an enchantress was immune to the Demon Physician’s physical beauty.

“I don’t believe it’s been our pleasure to meet,” Doctor Mephisto said in Chinese. He bowed. “My dialect is Song Dynasty. I hope you understand me.”

“You speak well,” she said with a dainty toss of her head. “A pretty man in white. Would you introduce yourself? I am Shuuran.”

“I am Doctor Mephisto.”

“How about that!” She did a good job of containing her uncontained surprise. The tension created by her raw physicality shattered. The moonlight congealed into a raw bloodlust.

“But of course. That strange feeling in the air. You must have brought the copper around and milked the information out of him. A good thing I came back to make sure that vagrant was good and dead. It’s up to Princess and me to clean up after Sir Kikiou’s messes.”

“I see. So, the other one is here as well?”

“No, not here.”

“Then where?” Mephisto asked softly. No matter how strange a being he was confronted with, he always proceeded as calmly as if he was filling out a medical chart. The creature did not exist that could throw him off his stride.

Until now—

“She’s gone to see the Elder of the Toyama housing project. I’m sure she’ll stop by later for tea with you and Setsura Aki.”

At the sound of those names, for the first time, a mixture of emotions colored the Doctor’s eyes like a light mist. It too soon vanished. He said, “It was I who discerned your whereabouts first. Remind me to give that useless P.I. a piece of my mind.”

“If you are referring to our kingdom, it is far too early for you to declare victory.” Shuuran’s eyes glowed red. “I will inscribe the epitaph on your tombstone before you set one foot there.”

“Alas, I have already entrusted that task to someone else,” said Mephisto, a faraway look in his eyes. “It seems you are in need of medical attention as well. To cure you of your overconfidence, among other things.”

He spoke almost chattily, as if the reality of the situation was the furthest thing from his mind. But there were graver echoes in his voice as well, pointed enough to make Shuuran blanch. Her quip about the gravestone had rubbed him quite the wrong way.

She reached into the buns of hair behind each ear, plucking out a pair of silver, crescent-shaped ornaments. As he stood there, two streaks of light appeared to pierce Mephisto’s neck, traveling another half-dozen yards past him before turning like boomerangs and returning to her hands without diminishing in speed.

Shuuran said, “My combs.”

They definitely looked like ordinary silver combs. But the teeth were as sharp as fangs of cold steel, the curved handles like sharpened scythes.

“I’m impressed,” Mephisto said softly. “But digging my grave with an ordinary shovel would be easier.”

For a brief moment, Shuuran gaped at him, at his untouched neck. “True, if that had been enough to kill you, I would have branded Sir Kikiou a coward forever after. The real fight begins now.”

Shuuran raised the comb in her right hand and drew it across her left wrist. The fresh blood spouted like a fountain, beautiful in the moonlight, and splashed onto the ground.

She licked her wrist. The blood stopped flowing. She cast her eyes down at the pool of blood at her feet, then spun around and dashed off into the darkness.

What happened next would have startled anybody but Mephisto. He started after her, but stopped. A strange sound struck his ears. An exquisitely sweet melody. Mephisto’s ears alone would have detected that it came from those two silver combs meshing together. The song seemed composed to inspire the listener to chase after the moon and waste his life away listening to lonesome dirges.

The pool of blood rapidly mutated. Something squirmed in the middle of the thick, congealing mass. Earth. But not the natural surface of the ground. Here and there, black dirt could be seen through cracks and fissures. Beneath the blood was asphalt, but it looked to Mephisto’s eyes like earth.

A moment later, the squirming was swallowed up by the blood. It stilled, and then in a flash rose up from the center of the black-red tide. It started out as a doll four inches high and quickly grew to eighteen inches. Eyes emerged, then a nose. The disturbed ground even fashioned itself into clothing.

Another moment later, this doll born from the pool of blood reached the same height as Shuuran. The doll’s red lips parted, revealing her white teeth.

“Hey, big guy. Do me.”

Mephisto stood rooted to the spot, as if mesmerized by the sound of her voice. Any man hearing those words would fall into the same trance. So he did as he was told and reached out his arms. Such was the magical allure of her words.

Then she was there in front of him. And then climbing up his back. How she moved was impossible to tell.

Mephisto didn’t budge.

The doll opened her mouth. A pair of fangs sprang out. She pulled at the collar of his white cape with her little hands and lowered her mouth to the almost-feminine, almost-transparent skin at the nape of his neck.

Uttering sweet, beguiling instructions and stealing away the will of her prey, she attached herself to his neck with movements too quick for the eye to follow. That by itself was fearsome enough magic. Except that the doll’s mouth paused.

Her coquettish face trembled. She blinked.

“Go ahead and drink your fill,” Mephisto said. “But can you find a well that isn’t dry?”

The doll listened for the rush of blood through the blood vessels in order to determine where to sink her fangs. And though she craned her ears and focused her gaze, she couldn’t detect the pulse of blood beneath the translucent skin.

Did blood even flow through the veins of the good doctor? The reason for its existence negated, the doll peeled off his back, dropped to the asphalt and broke into pieces.

“Is that all?” Mephisto asked the darkness. “Then you’ll have to answer to me.”

He took off after the girl and disappeared into the gloom. He raked his hands through the empty air. It was pitch black. He could see nothing, hear nothing. The sound of the wind and the light of the moon had vanished.

Mephisto pressed forward regardless. It was not clear why he decided to. Nobody could claim to understand how the Demon Physician’s mind worked.

A brilliant light abruptly appeared, and his shadow grew long behind him. Other than narrowing his eyes and glancing up at the shining sky overhead, he barely reacted to this unearthly change. The forest rose up around him in a riot of green. Mephisto stood on a narrow path weaving among the trees.

“She left the door open,” he said to himself. He started down the walk, not even bothering to glance back over his shoulder.

The path meandered along for another fifty yards. Mephisto stopped. In the middle of the path was a tea table. Sitting on the table, on a golden stand, was an oblong lump of purple amethyst. It was aligned parallel to the ground, the tapered end pointing in his direction.

“Welcome.”

A naked woman stepped between Mephisto and the curious piece of amethyst. It wasn’t Shuuran. She wasn’t nearly as pretty. Her “beauty” more resembled the carnality of an erotic dancer.

Probably less “resembled” than “was.” Her hips swayed, exposing her breasts and the inverted triangle between her legs. “Come on in,” she said, pointing down with her left hand and reaching out with her right. Her breasts swayed, but with a lively, youthful firmness.

Mephisto approached silently.

“My job is to entertain any visitors who come down this path. You must be the first in a good hundred years.”

Her breath smelled like sour fruit. She draped her arms around his neck. The world shimmered in a white light. In the midst of it, Mephisto caught sight of a thin, incandescent line streaking through the air, angled down toward the earth.

The purple light stabbed through the woman’s abdomen and reflected off Mephisto’s cape. The temperature over the microsecond duration of the pulse peaked at three hundred thousand degrees.

By focusing the sunlight on a crystal to generate a mixed-phase beam of energy, those ancient Chinese alchemists had chanced upon the same principles and materials as the modern ruby laser.

And the woman? An aiming device. The sun above was probably artificial, yet fixed in position. While the crystal could absorb that light energy, there was no guarantee that the enemy would walk right in front of it. With her body and charms, the woman’s purpose was to lure the target into the path of the beam.

Her back and stomach belched blue fire where the beam penetrated her body. The skin turned to charcoal. There’d be another woman along to replace her soon enough.

The smell of burning wood drew Mephisto’s attention off to the left. The fat trunk of a nearby beech tree was burning just like the woman’s torso. The result of the beam that had reflected off his cape. In Demon City, everybody knew that optical weapons were useless against Doctor Mephisto.

“What a curious device,” he said, looking down at the woman’s body, which was melting like wax. It could just as well have been a wax sculpture brought to life.

Mephisto walked around the tea table and continued on his way.

She showed up in the after-hours clinic of Mephisto Hospital just past ten o’clock that night. She had a handkerchief pressed against one side of her face. Though struck by the loveliness of the exposed half, the receiving nurse nevertheless was compelled to answer her questions with a cold objectivity.

“The hospital director is currently out. But there are several qualified doctors on call who can treat burns.”

The young woman in the white cheongsam didn’t reply to this customary brusqueness and turned away. At that moment a SWAT officer hurried by her and asked, “What room is Setsura Aki in?”

After scanning and confirming the validity of his ID card, the receiving nurse consulted her computer. She shook her head. “He is not to be disturbed, and he’s not allowed to have visitors. He’s in the special isolation ward on the seventh floor. No one may see him.”

“Listen, young lady—”

“No one’s even allowed a glimpse. There’s no telling what illnesses a patient confined to the isolation ward in this hospital could have.”

“Do you know why I want to see him?”

“It’s written all over your face.” The nurse lowered her voice. “Are you one of Aki-san’s friends?”

“Well, yeah—”

“So, tell me, just between you and me, what’s the least-busy time of the day to visit his shop in West Shinjuku?”

“I guess I’ll have to ask him next time I see him.”

The nurse watched him walk toward the exits and permitted herself a disappointed sigh. Which may explain why she didn’t catch the brief flash of a white dress out of the corner of her eye as it passed by her, and headed down the hallway leading deeper into the building.

The hospital had erupted into a quiet panic when the ambulance announced it was carrying Setsura Aki. Nobody wanted to treat him. No matter how skilled the doctor, all his shortcomings would be revealed once the patient was reexamined by Doctor Mephisto.

Simply imagining how the hospital director would deal with whoever presumed to treat this young owner of an old and established senbei shop—and the best P.I. in Shinjuku—was enough to make everybody from the assistant director on down think twice before volunteering his services.

Somehow, before the ambulance arrived, an attending physician was decided upon. Within twenty minutes the patient’s condition was diagnosed as a “bioenergetic breakdown, cause unknown.”

Two young women accompanied him. The shop girl was treated for a bout of lightheadedness and sent home. Takako Kanan remained with Setsura. She said she was a friend from outside Shinjuku, and the fact that she was the daughter of a renowned scholar convinced the doctors.

The array of bedside sensors relayed the patient’s condition directly to the nurse’s station and to the attending physician’s office, so they saw no reason not to let her stay there. As a friend, she could prop up his spirits and provide moral support.

Takako sat on the sofa in the luxurious, two-room medical suite. The sofa was next to the bed where Setsura lay with his eyes closed. She tried not to stare at him too much. She got a paperback history text out of her purse. Scanning the tiny text and detailed illustrations, though, she became aware that her attention had been drawn once again to the white, exhausted face.

She shook her head in reproach and averted her gaze. As if waiting for this moment, a warm sensation flared up in her chest. This man had declared war on the monster from the shadow box in order to save her. And such courage came from a man lovelier than most women.

What she was feeling, she told herself, was gratitude. But she knew that the very first time they’d met at the bar on Fifth Street, this young man had left a searing brand upon her heart.

A movement out of the corner of her eye caught her attention. His arms lay on the blanket across his stomach. One hand twitched mysteriously. He’d fallen into a comatose state in the ambulance and remained dead to the world. Trying to imagine what force of the subconscious was prompting such behavior left her utterly vexed.

Takako didn’t know that even in an unconscious state, the devil wires had flowed from his fingers, slipped through the jamb of the automatic doors, and had stretched a cordon around the entire floor.

At that same moment, something wicked this way came, tearing through the invisible coils of razor wire, the hospital room in her sights.

Even in a coma, Setsura Aki would keep on fighting to the bitter end.

Feeling a cool breeze on the back of her neck, Takako jumped up and checked the window on the far side of the bed. Nothing there was out of the ordinary. She whirled around.

A woman in a white cheongsam stood in the doorway. Her hand covered half of her face. The other half—more beautiful than anything else in the universe—gazed down at Setsura.

“We meet at last,” she said in an indescribable voice. “Yes, you are the man I saw that night. I have come to see you breathe your last.”

Takako felt the silent air growing frigid around her. She frantically stifled the scream rising in her throat.

“Who—Who are you?”

It took a long second for the woman to register Takako’s presence. She lowered her left hand. Takako’s scream died in her lungs. The other half of the woman’s incomparably beautiful face was a hideous mass of charred flesh.

To be continued.