Chapter Four

Chapter Four

“I believe you two have met,” Kikiou said. “This is Doctor Mephisto.” Having introduced the seated doctor, he asked Ryuuki, “What happened to your hand? I can’t imagine you losing it to a mere weapon. As the doctor said, Setsura Aki’s skills cannot be underestimated.”

Ryuuki didn’t answer at once. He fixed Mephisto in his sights with eyes that glimmered like black obsidian. “Is Sir Kikiou the one who invited that man in here?”

He received no answer.

“I recall Sir Kikiou stating that he must be destroyed.”

“I did extend the invitation, but it was Shuuran who took advantage of the circumstances.”

“Really?” His eyes were like a pair of deep mineshafts.

The pretty girl nodded. “I became concerned about the man I was supposed to finish off. He should have had his throat cut, but all at once I wasn’t so sure and went outside to make certain.”

“You’ll be punished for that.”

“I know.” The girl paled and bowed.

Ryuuki grabbed her throat with his black arm. Not giving her time to moan, he embraced her, and pressed his lips against her white throat. Mephisto caught the brief glimmer of his sharp fangs.

“Ahh—ahh—”

She bowed her head back in ecstasy. Two trails of fresh blood trickled down her skin. Ryuuki’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He was drinking her blood. The blood of his colleague.

“Losing an arm and famished to boot,” Kikiou said in a hard, cold voice. “You really blundered badly.”

Mephisto had nothing to add to that.

“You are correct.” Ryuuki shoved the waxy-pale Shuuran into a nearby chair and wiped his mouth. “The same goes for you.”

“I know.”

Mephisto quietly asked, “And how is Setsura Aki?”

Ryuuki’s black eyes—that a moment before had been brimming with death—shone with a deeper sense of “humanity” than anybody else’s in the room.

“A friend?” he asked.

“I fancy myself so.”

“He broke my qi. But still got hit by a good half of it. He should be in your hospital by now.”

“You returned at exactly the right time.” As the three vampires watched, the white figure came to his feet. “I must be on my way. But not before ridding the world of you.”

Sitting in the chair, Shuuran opened her eyes and glared at him. Crossing her line of vision, a black hand moved—almost as in slow motion—towards Mephisto’s chest, pushing outwards with the palm.

The devastating qi that had sent Setsura Aki to the hospital and Galeen Nuvenberg to the brink of death. That something shot through the air, striking the glittering cape with a slanting blow and splintering apart.

At the same time, a similar force broke like a wave against his upper arm. “Oh, so you can do it too,” came Ryuuki’s voice, observing a qi similar to his own radiating from Mephisto’s hand.

“Well, monkey see, monkey do.” A small wave of sound came to life beneath the right-hand side of Doctor Mephisto’s cape and circled his waist.

“That was my iron qi,” Ryuuki explained, planting his left foot behind him. “Next comes my penetrator qi. It’s what brought down Setsura and that decrepit witch at the government building. That cape of yours might as well be made of tissue paper—”

He left his words hanging in the air. Ryuuki leaped to the left. A sharp sound rent the air where he had just been, like the cracking of a whip. Invisible bands of power stretched between the man landing on his feet and the man standing there stock still.

The cape fluttered, and Doctor Mephisto collapsed. A moment later it became apparent that his “body” was a wire mannequin.

“You’re fast.”

The voice came from where Ryuuki had been standing. He pivoted and stretched out his left hand. The beautiful man again crumpled to the ground. And changed into a jumble of wires.

“Your technique certainly is deadly, but not if it can’t hit anything.”

Ryuuki didn’t turn toward the whisper directly behind him.

“If a patient of mine cannot settle down when I’m not around, I use a stand-in. It is helpful when I am late for important dates. But it is only useful for deceiving the eyes of ordinary humans.”

Imbuing a wire mannequin with the illusion of his real self wasn’t much of a stretch for Doctor Mephisto. But on the battlefield it proved quite effective. Multiple Mephistos confronted them from the middle of the living room, next to the window, in the doorway. Kikiou and Shuuran looked on dumbfounded.

Within this devilish hall of mirrors, a strong voice—tinged with rust—answered, “Exactly. For ordinary humans.”

All the Mephistos narrowed their eyes.

Ryuuki closed his. He extended his hand. Toward the Mephisto standing in front of the couch facing the door.

The white figure staggered. All the other “Mephistos” vanished. But the surprised gasp was Ryuuki’s. His penetrator qi could split a boulder in two and bring down a rampaging tiger. And yet in the face of such black arts, Mephisto just stood there. At most, a small bead of sweat gathered on his forehead.

Ryuuki’s attention was instead concentrated on his left hand. Four fingers remained. A strand of wire wrapped around his wrist also entwined his thumb and the rest of his pinky above the second knuckle, holding it tightly against his palm.

“The power in your hand resides in those two fingers. The more proficient the user, the more important they become.” Mephisto spoke in a subdued tone of voice.

“You haven’t suddenly mastered the art of qigong breath control, have you?”

Mephisto shook his head. “A little. A very effective technique. But I was expecting a single and deciding coup de grâce.”

Again Ryuuki extended the arm of death. Except that it came to a halt at a forty-five degree angle with his body. The silvery wire binding his wrist to his waist wasn’t there a split second before. Even he hadn’t known it’d been from the time he’d first jumped out of the way, dodging the wire that split the wind like a whip.

His left hand was immobilized. And if he tore it off, he had no right hand to fall back on. But before he could act in any case, he felt a sharp pain around his waist. His body was bowed backwards.

“You might not have noticed, but the wire is wrapped around your torso. Not as cleanly as Setsura Aki could do, but enough to cut you in half.”

“Not before my penetrator qi gets you.” Ryuuki’s face grayed and his voice pitched up half an octave. “You took that qi on purpose—”

“A diagnosis is impossible without a thorough knowledge of the disease,” Mephisto said, wiping his forehead. “And there is no better way of discerning the nature of a disease than by contracting it yourself. But I may have overdone it a bit.”

The cape fluttered. Ryuuki groaned and fell back against the wall. His purple lips parted and he panted like a dog.

“I’d prefer that you repent for the harm done to the people of this city in another world.”

Mephisto was about to yank back on the wire with his left hand when his body grew stiff. The loop of wire fell to the floor with a pleasant ringing sound.

“It finally took hold,” Shuuran said, her icy words filled with hatred. “The drug took that long to kick in. He really is a formidable man.”

Ryuuki dropped to the floor with a thump. Kikiou and Shuuran kept their eyes fixed on the white-shrouded doctor. Shuuran stepped toward him. This time, the Demon Physician was as helpless as a baby.

But before Kikiou’s hand reached out to intercede, Mephisto came to his senses. Silence filled the white room.

“How was it?” Kikiou asked. His voice seemed to be coming from far away.

Mephisto’s answer was short and to the point. “I saw.”

“And?”

“First I have to dispose of this man.” Mephisto leaned over and picked up the coil of wire.

“What is the nature of this obsession?” Kikiou wondered curiously.

Mephisto didn’t answer. He settled into a stance, about to yank back with his right hand, when—

The room wavered back and forth.

“What? Now?”

Kikiou goggled. Shuuran stared in blank amazement at the ceiling. Mephisto looked out the window. The world outside was still as death. And yet they knew that everything in eyesight was coming unglued from their moorings.

The world was on the move. A sudden sense of vertigo gripped Mephisto. Everything was suddenly far away and he was sucked down into the blackness. Further and further away, Kikiou and Shuuran floated on the rumbling, seething dark.

He heard only their voices. “We must be on our way. We will meet again at some later date. We’ll be looking forward to your answer then.”

The two of them remained distinct as the darkness swallowed them up, down to the lines on their faces. Simultaneously Mephisto’s consciousness was engulfed by the infinite night.

“Doctor!” someone shouted close by.

Yakou was standing there. Behind him was a mountain of rubble. The rubble took on a hazy blue glow, night yielding its temporary hegemony to the day.

This place, Mephisto realized, was where he’d last stepped forward with their kingdom in his sights.

“Where were you? I’ve been searching high and low.” Yakou couldn’t hide the disapproval in his voice.

Mephisto sank to one knee. “What’s wrong?” Yakou implored. He was about to lend him his shoulder, when he sensed that this doctor was the one person who wouldn’t appreciate such a gesture. He hesitated. “What happened?”

“Oh, this and that.”

Mephisto took a thin breath. He felt like warm, soft lead from the neck on down. Ryuuki’s penetrator qi had caused him no little discomfort.

“Can you stand?”

“More or less.” Mephisto drew out his right hand from beneath his cape and looked at it. “You haven’t seen a coil of wire around here somewhere?”

“Not at all.”

“What a strange world.”

Yakou’s expression shifted. “Did you break into their stronghold? Where is it?”

“Here,” replied Mephisto. He directed his gaze at the nearby mountain of rubble. “I entered there, then through a forest, across a river, and then here. For all my travels, I traveled all of one foot. What a remarkable kingdom.”

He spoke in almost disinterested tones as he got to his feet. He didn’t betray the slightest discomfort. Like a fountain of water flowing upward towards the sky. His eyes fell on a man collapsed against the pile of rocks behind Yakou.

“The man they were after.”

Yakou pointed at his neck. “His throat was ripped out and he was swallowing his own blood. He must have been one of their victims. Even with half his neck missing, he managed to keep on living. He put up a fight, so I put him to sleep.”

“Good job,” Mephisto answered, remembering what Shuuran had said. She’d left their hidden fortress in order to confirm his death—to clean up after herself, not out of any compassion for the human condition.

Glancing down at the man’s disheveled, flaccid features, Mephisto added in a small voice, “I wonder if it’d upset anybody if I said he reminded me of Ryuuki?”

“What’s that?”

“Let’s go. Tonight’s hunt has yielded both of us worthy trophies.”

Yakou blinked, but said nothing. The white-caped figure passed by him. What did he see? he couldn’t help asking himself.

But as long as he was working alongside this doctor, he should expect to be whisked away without a second thought to demon-haunted places that even he, a citizen of the supernatural realms, couldn’t begin to imagine or understand.