Chapter Three
Chapter Three
The three men stood silently in front of the cave—the mouth partially obscured by green grass—like the dead waiting on the shores of the River Styx.
Yakou went first. Yuen after him. Zhang brought up the rear. The moonlight glittered briefly and then was gone. Even here in the infamous DMZ—the most dangerous place in Shinjuku—they were phantoms in the dark.
Cool drops struck their cheeks and necks, the dew shaking off the ground. The cave seemed a natural formation. The roots hanging from the ceiling and squirming around their feet seemed proof of the fact.
Their footsteps glided along. The roots blocking them sprang out of the way before touching them. Or rather, were cut away, leaving only the cleanly severed ends. After all, that’s why they were here. Not only to capture and detain. Not just to kill. But to exterminate.
The change was sudden and drastic. Yuen and Zhang shouted and jumped back into the darkness.
The sky above was filled with light.
“Don’t panic. That sun isn’t real.”
“Yeah.” They’d already figured that out.
“I wonder if they see this same dream,” Yakou mused to himself.
The path meandered toward a forest off in the distance. Above and beyond the line of the trees—so densely arrayed they looked shrouded in mist—soared an enormous rusty brown wall. And beyond the wall, the blue-green mountains. Their objective surely lay in the direction of that wall.
“Let’s go,” said Yakou.
Three sets of footsteps left their depressions in the ground. They arrived at the foot of the ramparts two hours later. The sun hadn’t moved in the sky. The rustling wind and the sound of singing birds hadn’t changed either.
An ordinary afternoon.
Having become Daji’s slave, perhaps the Shang Dynasty’s Emperor Zhou had also lived in this false, eternal daytime, rubbing his red and swollen eyes and coveting sleep.
“Yakou-sama, there seems to be a gate here.”
The path ran along the wall until it was sucked into a cavern-like entrance beneath a soaring arch. It was wide enough to admit a brigade of cavalry fifty horses wide, and was secured by a rusted red iron gate.
Yakou went up to the gate. He peeled off a strip of rusted metal and crushed it between his fingers. With a sharp sting, it crumbled into powder and drifted to the ground.
“Though this is a fabricated world, time wears away at it. And yet life here could hardly be called life.”
“That would seem to be the case. I doubt it would open at the asking. Shall we jump over?” He looked up at the top of the gate.
A screeching sound like giant claws scraping on a blackboard pounded at their eardrums.
“Look—the gate—”
“It’s opening. What’s that noise—”
A thread-like fissure ran down the middle of the rust-caked iron gates. It widened to the width of a narrow stream and finally stopped.
Yakou said to the men on either side of him, “Did that damage your ears?”
“Apparently.”
Yuen and Zhang nodded. Thin lines of red ran down their necks. The groaning of the gates was some sort of acoustic weapon designed to drive any cavalry attacking the gate mad. It had ruptured the eardrums of these two elites. They responded to Yakou’s question by reading his lips.
Whatever had projected that weapon at them was not physically there. Only its disembodied will stubbornly existed within these walls.
The gap in the gate was just wide enough for them to enter three abreast. No more, no less.
“Let’s stick together.”
“Got it.”
They passed through the gate single file.
The world inside the gate was a heaven and an earth unto itself. The ground was densely planted with trees and plants and shrubs. Fig trees and dandelions and patrinia and Chinese bellflower bloomed with wild abandon around the arbors and along the banks of the brimming primeval lakes, in complete disregard to the season.
Hearing the flapping of wings, they looked up to see gorgeous phoenix birds flying through the air. Their eyes were drawn to the magnificent manor house rising eerily above the dense carpet of greenery.
“Unbelievable,” Zhang muttered. “This must be a different dimension. If it was part of our world, it would be filled with gloom. Beings who thrive on darkness should not be surrounded by so much light.”
“What do you think, Yakou-sama?”
The young clan leader didn’t respond to Yuen’s question, but looked at the brilliant flocks of color arrayed along the banks of the lake. Peacocks. One spread its tail feathers. The dazzling colors of a hallucinatory sunset were entrancing.
A second later, Yuen and Zhang bounded to the right and left. They’d been carefully following the every move of their leader, and before they knew it, he’d extended his right hand toward the peacocks.
What sent the two of them scurrying—the alarm evident on their faces—was the strange demonic force welling up around the birds. It engulfed them. The beautiful birds were reduced to white bones tumbling to the earth, their skeletons crushed like tissue paper.
“As I expected,” said Yuen.
“It was a facade,” said Zhang.
They couldn’t help but admire such beguiling evil. Another voice mingled with theirs, rumbling like a tremor in the earth while descending from the sky.
“And you saw through it. Those who press on ignorant of what this world contains will be consumed by it before they get far. Bless their souls.”
The voice ceased. Yakou smiled thinly.
“What do you think?” asked Yuen, sensitive to every flicker of emotion on Yakou’s face.
Yakou said, “Useless pretenders are everywhere, twiddling their thumbs and biding their time.”
“Eh?”
“Let’s go. Our objective is the manor house. Hold on tight.”
The three came together and soared into the sky. Yakou selected the veranda that wrapped around the top story of the manor house as his landing point. The silence flowed back as he folded his wings, uninterrupted by even the song of a bird.
His two subordinates looked to him for his next command and saw that he was temporarily lost in thought.
“What’s on your mind?” Zhang asked softly. As he couldn’t hear what Zhang had said, Yuen continued to train his eyes on the world around them.
“Though this world is an artifice, a deception—what is the true nature of the make-believe?”
“The what?”
“That peacock, this manor, the surrounding groves and forests, that blue lake, those mountains—we do not have the resources to investigate, yet it concerns me. The answer seems to be on the tip of my tongue—at least, that’s what my intuition is telling me.”
“So you’re staying that this world itself is within our ability to comprehend?”
“I don’t think it would be presumptuous to assume so,” Yakou said in his normally placid tone of voice. His mostly deaf subordinates made do by reading his lips.
“I don’t really understand it, but it’s not so different from what we see in the course of our everyday lives—”
“Understand that much and its destruction becomes more than just a dream. To the extent that these living quarters are in regular use, their loss would be extremely damaging.”
“Precisely. But a deception this grand in scale—how should we deal with it by ourselves—”
“Not a task for the faint of heart,” Yakou said with a thin but fearless smile. After all, he was the Elder’s grandson.
“Somebody’s coming,” Zhang said in a low voice. He hadn’t heard footsteps, but sensed an approaching presence.
The three men disappeared in a flash. Kikiou emerged from a corridor on the right, walking quickly down the veranda. He gave no indication that he knew they were there.
A black shadow alighted on the eaves above his head. It was strange that Kikiou—who had before raised the hairs on the back of Setsura’s neck—didn’t notice it, but such was Zhang’s mastery of the cloaking technique that disguised them.
A long, slender blade like the leaf of a willow tree pressed against his neck. “This is—” the old man said in a dry voice.
“I don’t expect you wish for an early death,” Yuen whispered.
Kikiou’s mouth cracked open. A thin line of spittle formed a web between his upper and lower lips. “Who are you?”
“Don’t play the fool, Kikiou. You are a Hsia Dynasty warlock. You must have seen us coming for some time now. Surely you heard the creaking of that gate.”
Kikiou’s surprised eyes flitted to and fro. It wasn’t an act. He really couldn’t identify the source of the voice. A voice that sounded like it descended from the heavens and roiled up from the earth, a voice that nobody else but the person in question heard.
A self-satisfied smile rose to Kikiou’s face. “Ah, the Elder’s scion. I heard your name was Yakou. Do you remember me? We met once, back when the wings on your back were barely bigger than a chick’s.”
“My grandfather told me,” Yakou said without speaking. “But there is only one thing I wish to know now. Where is your master?”
“Do you think I would confess that fact to you?”
“When you witness us destroying your place of rest, you will change your mind. Perhaps she comes home to the false day and finds herself sleeping in the true sunlight.”
“Bastard—” Kikiou’s body trembled. In this false world, his stark horror was the real thing. “Do you fear time? The glories of immortality? May heaven curse such fools!”
A red line blossomed on his throat. Yuen’s blade moved. The scarlet line grew and became a ribbon, welling up and pouring down.
“Walk.”
“As you wish. Let us proceed. These four-thousand-year-old bones still hold life dear.”
Kikiou stepped forward. Yuen stuck to him like a monkey on his back. From his gliding steps, it was clear that he did not feel Yuen’s weight.
They entered the manor, passed down a gray hallway, and descended a flight of stairs. As large and resplendent as the manor house was from the outside, on the inside there looked to be no beginning and no end.
Kikiou stopped in front of a heavy wooden door.
“Here?” asked Yakou directly behind him. Up till now, Kikiou hadn’t sensed he was there at all.
“Yes.”
“You first.”
“No, I insist. I do not wish to witness any of your villainous deeds.”
The cold, hard metal pressed against the nape of his neck. Kikiou drew a long, shallow breath. On the verge of penetrating the base of his skull, the tip of the short sword withdrew.
It was hard to believe that someone like Kikiou should so willingly bow to the demands of these invaders without any show of resistance. Yakou must have suspected he still had something up his sleeve, and so ordered him to take the point.
“Next time, it’ll go deep enough for you to taste it.”
“I am well aware of that.”
Kikiou picked up a wooden mallet hanging next to the door and struck the oak sounding board hanging from the ceiling. A smooth depression had been pounded into the wood by the innumerable strikes of that mallet.
“Who is it?” asked a woman’s voice. The lascivious echoes in that voice would excite the loins of a man with a heart of stone and veins filled with ice water.
“It is Kikiou.”
“State your business.”
“Ryuuki and Setsura Aki squared off against each other.”
“Oh? And?”
“I’ve brought along Setsura’s right-hand man.”
“Then come in.”
That instruction was accompanied by the metallic click of the lock mechanism releasing. Without any force being applied, the door opened and swung inward.
“Good job,” said Yuen.
Again the blade was pressed against Kikiou’s neck. But this time the edge sank through the flesh and muscle, down to the bone and through to the other side. All with a deceptive ease. The old man’s head tumbled to his feet and came to a halt, the eyes peering up at the now headless body, standing there motionless.
Three men pushed it aside and advanced deeper into the blue world. The magnificent room was more than twenty feet long by thirty feet wide. Stealthily, with nary a glance at the antique furnishings and decor, they pursued their singular objective—waiting there like a treasure chest of precious jewels at the bottom of Davy Jones’ locker.
Six eyes focused on the black casket, covered by a curtain of sheer silk that looked like a hazy, wet morning. They too dreamed scarlet dreams while slumbering in very similar beds.
In accordance to the ancient rites, Yakou in the center, Zhang behind him and to his right, Yuen guarding the left flank, his back to him. Nobody spoke. It was still. Deathly still.
Yuen reached back between his shoulder blades with his right hand and drew out a black stake. The tip of the yard-long steel bar was sharper than the point of a needle.
With equally reverential movements, Zhang pulled from his back a white wooden stake. Yakou took it with both hands. Switching to a backhand grip, he chanted a curse of the night that only their kind understood.
Zhang retreated a step. The blade of his short sword glittered in the faint light. He concealed it behind him and waited.
Yakou would strike first, driving the stake through the heart. Then Yuen would immobilize the body by pinning the vampire through the abdomen to the bottom of the casket. Finally, as the coup de grace, Zhang would sever the head with his short sword.
“Who are you?”
The strength of demonic force in the voice—spilling as if from cracks in the casket—checked the advancing Yakou.
“You killed my grandfather on a hill in Toyama. This isn’t the time for you to be taking a nap.”
He sensed a breath being taken.
“I see. You are the Elder’s grandson. They say your name is Yakou. And you came all the way to see me. You do know that there are traps everywhere?”
“I’ve known all along,” said Yakou, adjusting his grip on the stake.
A quiver transmitted down the shaft from his hand, the thin sliver of wood inexorably devouring the outpouring waves of his power. But the movement was so slight it drew no attention to itself. Not even his fingers moved.
“I’m leaving. We shall see if your stake is quicker than I am.”
In the same breath—the lid of the casket flew open with great force, with great intention—and flew end over end at Yakou’s face.
Yuen’s iron lance and Zhang’s short sword stopped it. Skewered down the middle, the lid split in two, revealing the white figure rising out of the casket.
A scream shattered the air like a sonic boom—the frustrated cry of the woman in white—and Yakou’s roar as he soared over her head and buried the stake into her heart with all his might.