Chapter Two

Chapter Two

Whether day or night, whether the wind was blowing or not, a sound like rustling leaves drifted beyond the tall white fence. Hearing that sound, pedestrians on the street outside the fence couldn’t help imagining some thing leaping over the barrier and dragging them in there.

Nobody who entered ever left. That was a fact of life. Anybody who claimed otherwise was lying.

Nobody knew what it was actually like inside the fence. There were maps available from the early days. Nobody could vouch for their reliability. The originals were all stored in a vault in a sub-basement of the Ministry of Defense. It was said that not even the Prime Minister could lay his hands on them without following a prescribed set of procedures.

The original maps had been surveyed by a team from the Self-Defense Forces, armed and equipped with the latest and greatest. Needless to say, none of them had made it out alive.

So nobody really knew what the place was like these days. The only sources of information were rumors and guesswork. They built a wall to keep whatever was in from getting out. And prayed for the best.

No lovers strolled hand-in-hand down the paths on spring evenings. No students pored over their notes at the library in the early afternoons. All gone away. This was Chuo Park in West Shinjuku. The infamous “DMZ.” The most dangerous place in the city.

Nine o’clock at night. A jet-black limousine cruised down the vacant streets. It came to a halt at the entrance to the park, directly behind the Park Hyatt Tokyo.

Three figures emerged, all wearing dark suits. Two middle-aged men and one younger. Even beyond the glow of the street lights, their skin still had a blue-white cast to it. The casual way their sharp eyes scanned the stark surroundings said everything.

The younger man spoke to the driver. The car sped off.

“What was that about, Yakou-sama?” asked Yuen, referring to the limousine. He appeared to be at least ten years older than Yakou.

“If we make it back here,” answered Yakou, “then walking home will be an afterthought. Otherwise, having him wait around won’t accomplish anything.”

“That’s for certain,” agreed Yuen.

“It’s about twenty feet,” estimated Zhang, the other of the two men accompanying him. “No gate. There’s no way in but over.”

“Hold on tight,” said Yakou.

He held his hands against their sides, elbows out. The two men took a firm hold. Yakou sank down slightly and leaned forward as if he were about to perform a standing high jump over the twenty foot wall with no running approach.

His suit coat unfolded to the right and left. It didn’t tear. Rather, it seemed designed to open along the spine.

In a whirl of wind, the three of them soared into the air. Then, in an unhurried fashion, they fell back to earth behind the wall. Though it might be better to say they alit upon the ground.

Vampires weren’t immune to the laws of gravity. Supporting their weight—until they settled back on solid ground—and buffeting the earth with strong downdrafts of wind was an ominous pair of wings that had sprouted from Yakou’s back. Only one species of vampire had these large, black bat wings.

The hot air billowed up from their feet. The two men shivered, chilled down to their bones. Such was the unkind welcome that this strange hot air inflicted upon these residents of the Toyama housing project.

The peculiar panorama filled their view. Gently curved, stone-lined sidewalks, well-maintained trees and lawns, water fountains – dry but unmarred and appearing to be in perfect working order. Except for the absence of people, a perfectly ordinary park bathed in gentle moonlight.

It’d be hard to imagine anything odder than this.

“We seem to have come to the wrong place,” Yuen quipped with a straight face.

Zhang said nothing. They were Toyama’s elite, both hand-picked by Yakou himself. Even welcome at Mephisto Hospital.

“Shall we go?”

Yakou set off. Behind him, Zhang asked, “Does anybody know where we’re going?”

He wasn’t expressing any second thoughts. He was considering a worst case scenario where nobody ended up knowing the enemy’s location. Under Yakou’s master expropriation, the intoxicated vagrant had indicated Chuo Park as the place where those four demons had located their safe house.

“I left a note at Mephisto Hospital.” The two subordinates exchanged glances and nodded. “However,” Yakou added with a backwards glance, “I am not convinced telling Doctor Mephisto was the right thing to do.” There was a hard edge to his voice.

“And by that you mean—”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It is only a feeling. Thinking about it does no good. That doctor is a very dangerous person under normal circumstances. I suspect we do not see eye to eye on many things.”

“Coming from you, Yakou-sama—” Yuen mumbled.

“I have high hopes for Aki-san,” said Yakou, changing the subject.

The men proceeded wordlessly beneath the moonlight like silhouettes on a movie screen. They could feel the very real surface of the road through the soles of their shoes. The warm July breezes played with their hair.

While knowing it was all a facade, the scene opening up before their eyes was the reality, and Demon City and the lives they lived there were the illusion.

Stone steps came up on their right. They climbed the stairs and entered a grove of trees.

“What do you think?” Yakou asked, in a manner suggestive of a man out for a relaxing stroll.

Yuen said, “This seems to be derived from the memories of an actual experience. It’s blocked the inputs from our physical senses.”

Zhang agreed. “And reality won’t return until it is destroyed. It’s also connected to our subjective experience. Yakou-sama, that oak tree there on the left, how would it react to a shuriken?”

Three hands reached out. Three dagger-like shuriken cut through the air and with a burning sound buried themselves into the trunk of the tree. Moonlight glinted off the steel shafts.

Yuen gaped. Each dagger had a completely different effect. Yuen’s sank in half way. Zhang’s buried itself completely. Yakou’s passed through it like it wasn’t even there and shot through several trees behind it.

Zhang grinned slyly at his partner. “Yeah, it’s not easy shedding the conviction that reality is only what you see with your eyes.”

Yuen shrugged.

The magical forces alive in this park disturbed the cognitive powers of even these three supernatural men. A normal person wouldn’t doubt the “reality” for a second, and the park would respond in kind.

“As long as we are with Yakou-sama, at least the blind won’t be leading the blind. We are not likely to see what he sees. But where might the enemy’s hiding place be located?”

“I don’t know,” Yakou said shortly. “This grove of trees? Or probably another one entirely. Doctor Mephisto says that their lair is filled with light, with a view of green forests and mountain ranges. What he means by all that is a mystery to me as well.”

“They came here on a ship, did they not?” Zhang asked.

“Yes. Aki-san witnessed it personally.”

“A street in Demon City turning into a river must have been an illusion. As would be their kingdom.”

“A safe assumption, but I find it hard to believe that the Doctor would be captivated by exactly the same hallucination as ourselves. Somewhere in this city should be found a brimming lake and a magnificent estate in an eternal world.”

For a short while, the men soaked up the moonlight. Then they started forward again. A feeling gripped their chests. They were vampires, as were their enemies. Both sides sought a place of safe refuge. And each side must eliminate the other.

After twenty minutes they came to a place overlooking an expansive lawn. They weren’t the only midnight strollers. Sitting on the grass and under the trees and on the benches were pairs of men and women listening to the whisperings of the summer wind.

Yakou stopped and asked, “Can you see that too?”

“Yes.”

“Definitely.”

“Let’s give the shuriken another try. Pick your own targets.” The odd proposition came from Yakou. Perhaps taking note of them, some of the people turned their quiet eyes on them. Yakou gazed back.

One in a circle of young people on the lawn stood up, strumming a guitar. The unmistakable sound of the guitar drifted toward them like smoke from a campfire. The guitar player separated from the group and approached them. He must have been the leader, for the rest of the group got up and tagged after him.

Yakou said, “That’s no guitar player.”

“I know,” the other two agreed.

The group was now close enough that they could make out the smiles on their faces. Again came the sound of the guitar. Responding to that signal, the young people opened their arms as if to welcome the three of them.

Two daggers sliced through the night air. The string snapped. A small hole appeared in the neck of the guitar. Two daggers, one hole. Such dazzling skill seemed to kill the cheerful mood. The surrounding panorama grew faint and hazy.

In a flash, Yuen and Zhang felt the return of their five senses. They were struck by a completely different sensation. It would have driven an ordinary person mad.

Surrounding them were the creations of some insane god. One directly in front of them resembled a giant crab, carapace almost ten feet across. The waving pincers could slice and dice a half-dozen human beings in seconds flat.

The carapace was densely studded with horn-like protuberances. The legs supporting the huge frame were less those of a crustacean and more those of a large feline animal like a lion or tiger.

The creatures serving the giant crab were equally strange, globes six feet in diameter whose “faces” were so furrowed and wrinkled that their entire bodies resembled a ball of inch-thick yarn.

Two red eyeballs jutted out from the middle of the crab’s carapace. The one on the left oozed oily black fluid. This was the creature that had aroused the hallucinations Yuen and Zhang had seen.

The peaceful park was already a memory. The pristine sidewalks were caked with moss. A carpet of strange, dirty weeds painted the lawn in a nauseating color that the cool moonlight couldn’t disguise.

The pincers loomed over them. The claws fastened around Yakou’s head and torso. But instead of slicing him in two, the steely blades flew apart at the joints. As if careful aim had been taken, the shattered claws buried themselves into the globes flanking the giant crab.

Yakou didn’t run. The remaining pincer lashed out with a renewed groan. He didn’t block it, but matched the movement and dodged out of the way, the palm of his left hand sliding along the claw.

The direction of the claw changed, also a surprise to the crab. The sharpened tips stabbed directly into the crab’s soft underbelly, guided by Yakou’s left hand.

The crab toppled over with a freakish scream. A pale writhing mass eclipsed Yakou’s view—the tentacles shooting out from the living globes on either side of him. White smoke erupted where the tentacles came in contact with the ground.

The fleshy body of the giant crab dissolved and decomposed from the unimaginably strong acid.

Yakou said to his two subordinates, “Let’s get out of here.” He sprinted into the forest on the right.

He could sense the tentacles coming after them. Yuen and Zhang were behind him. He glanced over his shoulder. The two of them bounded right and left. The tentacles pursued them. A strategy to guarantee Yakou’s escape.

A glint of light. The good six feet of the tentacle aimed at Yuen’s back tore away and impaled itself into an elm tree with a burst of white smoke.

Yakou directed his attention at Zhang. The tentacle was drawing back, split vertically down the middle. The acid dripping into the stream turned the water into billowing gas that concealed the retreating enemy.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” said Yuen, running up to him.

“And Zhang?” Emotion flickered across his stern features.

“Here.”

The calm, quiet voice came from beyond the stand of trees, lower down. They ran over. The slope turned into a steep cliff-like embankment. Zhang was standing in a thicket about six feet down, looking at the slope behind him.

“What?” There was expectation in Yakou’s voice.

“That tentacle—it may have done us a surprising favor.” He pointed at the mound of earth.

Yakou jumped down. He understood as soon as he landed. A hole was gouged into the side of the embankment. His instincts told him that it was something much more than a mere cave.

It was a gate that just might lead them to the kingdom of those troublesome vampires.