Chapter One

Chapter One

Shuuran sneered, “What’s this? You’re not even human! I don’t know why you’re rushing to his rescue, but get in my way and you die. If you want to live, then leave now.”

“I was the last person to meet with him,” the doll answered in silky tones. The blue flowers on the front of her satin dress trembled. Roses. Did blue roses bloom anywhere in nature? No, but the large indigo blossoms glowing on her chest were definitely of the species. “When he returns from the dead, I wish to be the first person he meets. Get in my way and—”

“You’ll kill me? Do you know how long I have lived? I am Shuuran.”

“I do not have a name. Please remember me as the servant of Galeen Nuvenberg.”

Shuuran’s face went blank. “That name—I’ve heard it somewhere. It is definitely on Sir Kikiou’s list. Well, even better. I’ll hold onto you until your master comes to fetch you. As bait.”

“I cannot agree to that,” the doll girl said softly. “Moreover, I cannot allow my friend to suffer. You are the one who will go to her grave.”

A flash of silver hummed through the air and grazed the doll girl’s neck. The girl just stood there.

“Alas and alack.” Sharp canines peeked from the corners of the girl’s mouth. She closed the space between them. Her white stocking feet didn’t move. She glided across the ground. And raised her right hand.

“Ah!” Shuuran cried out as the familiar streak of silver slightly brushed her cheek.

Deflected by the doll’s hand, the silver comb disappeared into the eternal darkness. Shuuran barely dodged the flash of light at her throat, found her footing, and leaped forward. Next came the sound of ripping cloth. The doll twined her hand into the front of Shuuran’s dress and ripped away a large swatch.

Shuuran landed next to Setsura. A white patch of heaving flesh was exposed from her chest to her stomach. Her generous left breast shone in the entrancing moonlight.

“I underestimated you,” the vampiress growled under her breath. A fraction of a second slower and that hand would have removed all the flesh underneath. “No mercy—”

A black rivulet fell from the line in her cheek. The fresh blood dripping from the wound left by the comb gathered on the ground in considerable volume. The blood spread out like a drop of oil falling into a pool of water.

“It’s no time to gloat,” said Shuuran, towering above the doll. “That blood is no ordinary blood. Look—that clay thing forming itself out of the solid asphalt. Oh, a human head. A human hand. A porcelain doll.”

There was an ironic barb in that last word. It was indeed a human-looking doll. The same human doll that had engaged Doctor Mephisto in the Shinanomachi ruins—this time wearing Shuuran’s clothes and face—rose out of the black and bloody mud.

“Pretty little girl. Let me give you a hug.”

She vanished and reappeared poised at the nape of the girl’s neck. The girl was a doll too. But fine glass tubes instead of blood vessels ran through her body, though which circulated a nourishing ambergris-like substance that granted her the facsimile of life.

The porcelain doll attached her mouth to the white neck like the nozzle of a vacuum cleaner attached itself, with a gagging-like sound. The girl froze. A jet of blue water shot up into the air.

Shuuran looked on and grinned.

A puff of smoke like a punctured radiator, a geyser of the doll’s blood. Befitting this fairy tale girl, it created a rainbow in the air.

Another spurt. The porcelain doll sank its fangs into the girl’s head. The girl shook her head, but the doll held on like a Doberman. The curls of smoke spun around dreamlike, climbing higher and higher into the sky, dimming the face of the moon.

“This is the end for you,” laughed Shuuran, her voice rising to the heavens in a shriek.

At that moment, a different sound echoed like a reverse tide. The spectral haze shrouding the three of them parted to the sharp beating of wings. A black bird plummeted downward. Its sharp claws sank into the shoulder of Shuuran’s doll.

The startled doll tried to leap away, but couldn’t move its body. The girl held her legs. The raven crowed shrilly and took to the air, the two dolls dangling from its claws. Before Shuuran could react, it soared up and disappeared into the swirling miasma.

Shuuran glanced at the vanishing trail and immediately initiated another strategy. Drawing alongside Setsura, she reached for the dagger, prepared to deliver the finishing blow. No matter how magical a being, it shouldn’t be able to survive being stabbed through the heart.

She braced herself to yank out the blade. A greenish clod came out of the sky and scattered in all directions, the pieces of Shuuran’s look-alike porcelain doll turning back to clumps of clay as they fell to earth.

The sight distracted her for a moment. Then Shuuran felt a prick of pain on the back of her neck. She reached up to her neck and retrieved the object. A blue rose. She cast it aside contemptuously, grasped the hilt of the dagger and pulled it out.

“Die.”

As she thrust down and felt the blade penetrate, Setsura’s body and black slicker dissolved into a heap of roses.

“Still performing parlor tricks?” Grinding the flowers beneath her delicate shoes, Shuuran came to her feet.

The girl was standing on the road less than ten feet in front of her. Her body was stained from the neck down with her own blue blood. The black raven perched on her shoulder. It was a weirdly beautiful and perversely cheery sight.

The girl laughed. A sound like an angel singing. She extended her right arm. The bird opened its beak and coughed up what appeared to be a wooden stake. The end was planed to a short point like a lance. How a regular-sized raven could store a stake two feet long in its belly was anybody’s guess.

As the girl raised her right hand over her head, Shuuran flung the dagger at her. The girl’s arm traced a broad arc in the air as the dagger buried itself in her left breast. Shuuran’s lunge forward to throw the dagger left her off-balance and unable to move out of the way.

The stake rent the air like a flaming arrow. With a strange, soft sound it pierced her voluptuous chest and jutted out of her back. As she crumpled to the ground in a mist of blood, Shuuran heard the high-pitched cry of that sinister raven.

A man’s face rose to the back of her mind. Behind him, the sun was setting on a vast and distant plain. He reached out to her. Come with me, he said to her. Shuuran knew that this was a desire he had harbored for two thousand years.

She nodded. The fulfillment of that long-hoped desire. “Sir Ryuuki—” And she quietly began walking to the west, toward the sun setting into the distant horizon like a scarlet Chinese lantern.

The raven peered down at the white, still face. “Did she say something?” it muttered in human language. “A person’s name.”

The girl shook her head. “You must be imagining things.” She crossed herself. There were certainly other appropriate funeral rites, but that was all she was capable of.

The dagger embedded in her chest changed to a blue rose. It glimmered hauntingly, as if relieved to finally return to its rightful owner.

“So how’s lover boy over there?”

The girl shot the raven a scalding look. “You shan’t address him like that.”

The raven flapped its wings in annoyance and floated up a few inches. “Well, excuse me. If it walks like a duck—”

The doll girl ignored it, took five more steps and squatted down. Setsura was lying where he’d fallen. He hadn’t moved an inch. The hilt of the dagger still protruded from his chest. Poison on the thorns of the blue rose had tangled the thoughts of the vampiress Shuuran.

The girl pressed her ear against his chest and then straightened.

“Well?” asked the raven.

The girl said cheerfully, “The blade missed the heart. And before the dagger struck, his metabolism sank to the lowest possible extreme. No different than the dead.”

“You can’t kill the dead.”

“There is that, too.”

“I’m so happy I could cry an ocean.”

“You shan’t make fun like that.”

The raven flapped its wings and soared skyward. “Whoa—” came its voice. “You’d better hustle. That woman’s blood is raising a stink. Those cowardly vultures are on the move.”

“I know that.”

The girl put her arms around Setsura’s waist. The servant of Galeen Nuvenberg possessed impressive magical powers of her own, and easily lifted up Setsura’s body.

“You gonna carry him home?” the raven asked, intrigued. “He’s lost a lot of blood. Isn’t lugging him along like that going to cause more harm than good?”

“We’ll manage. Once we get out of here, I’ll have a taxi pick us up.”

“You think a taxi will pick up a fare like you?”

“I think some will do anything for money. What do they call this place?”

“Demon City Shinjuku.”

“Then they must give rides to demons too.”

“Good point.”

A girl, a body and a bird—this strange troupe made its way towards Koshu Avenue. They had proceeded a short ways when the doll girl glanced back over her shoulder. There was already nothing to be seen where Shuuran had fallen. Steel-blue dust coated the tattered clothing. The silvery dust wafted to and fro in the breeze until it drifted over the street.

“Westward,” said the girl. In the direction of the wind.

“Yeah, to the west,” the raven replied.

Towards the setting sun.

Yakou took the incendiary bomb from the back of his belt. He hesitated. He couldn’t shake the vexing feeling that he was missing something important. After killing Kikiou, he’d searched the magnificent manor house for the enemy’s private quarters and turned up nothing.

All the doors opened readily. None required a key. The other two were nowhere to be found. Finally Yakou resolved to trigger the explosive. Seeing that the Demon Princess had established her counterfeit graveyard here, the real thing must be present as well.

And so he descended to the first floor and primed the incendiary. What stayed his hands were those lingering questions about this world. This world—this house of cards the vampires had built—this phony Shangri-La. It seemed a great waste to burn down the manor house without knowing its true nature, without comprehending the clockworks that made the whole thing go.

Where was this in the first place?

The top floor of the manor house afforded a magnificent view of the surrounding countryside. The endless green, the crystal-clear blue lake, swiftly flowing rivers and crashing waterfalls. The distant, slate-blue mountain ranges. Over and over he had to tell himself that it was all an illusion.

It’d be naive to believe that knocking out a single pillar propping up the reality of this world would make the rest of the edifice fall over like a row of dominoes. That’s what his intuition told him, what the DNA in the legendary blood flowing through his veins—the same as theirs—whispered to him.

And as long as this world was not utterly destroyed, they would continue on forever. Hence the vexing indecisiveness that caused Yakou to hesitate at the makeshift destruction of this makeshift world, even while brandishing the weapon intended to deliver the fateful blow.

The incendiary still in his hand, he exited onto the veranda and leaned against the railing. A scent carried on the breeze. The smell of flowers tickled his nose. This counterfeit world was sweet and fragrant. The wind raised ripples on the lake—hardly large enough to even be called a pond—and the deep blue of the water filled his sight.

A word drifted into his senses. Yakou slowly backed away from the railing. By the time he had straightened up, his thoughts had formed themselves into a concrete shape.

“They came on a ship,” he said, with all the gravity of Isaac Newton catching the apple beneath the tree. “And yet there is no ship. Why is that? It could not fit on that lake. Why?”

He turned around, as if sensing a presence behind him. His eyes burned as they took in the manor house.

“It can’t be—but that is the only possibility. Or rather, what other possibility could there be? Perhaps I am not a citizen of Demon City after all. Here, the more unbelievable the circumstances, the closer they are to the truth. Yes, I shall put that supposition to the test.”

Yakou shouted with a steely resolve. He raised his arms. Unable to withstand the burst of colorless, odorless energy, a section of the railing silently crumbled away. He leaned over and picked up a piece of the wood. An ordinary piece from a loquat tree. Painted red.

“And still the wolf wears its sheep’s clothing,” Yakou said under his breath. He pushed through the door he’d exited from and went back inside.

He was in a luxurious living room. He looked around the room and then walked quickly to a bookcase along one wall and retrieved a round, golden censer, along with the chain, and put it into his pocket. It was a product of the Tang Dynasty. Incense could be placed inside a silver sphere engraved with the figure of a dragon. Hung around the neck or placed next to the pillow, it constantly surrounded the wearer with a mist of fragrance.

For what purpose were they parroting the look of a den of thieves?

Yakou hurried out of the room. He pulled the pin of the incendiary grenade with his teeth and released the striker lever with his thumb and tossed it inside the living room. There was nobody there to throw it back.

He spun around and descended the twenty steps leading to the courtyard. A sound arose like a howling wind. The windows and doors blew out. The flaming amalgam of thermite and napalm blossomed outward. The three-thousand-degree fire would reduce the manor house to ashes in less than an hour. Yakou was more interested as to what would become of this world after that, but now he had no choice but to retreat.

Kikiou said that the demon woman was on her way to retrieve Takako. Yakou’s feet kicked against the ground as he sprinted off. The blast of wind rent the back of his jacket, releasing his folded wings. In a few more steps, Yakou had taken to the air without any additional effort.

He didn’t stick around to confirm the results of the fire, but flew over the castle walls and sought out their place of entry. The lights went out. Yakou sensed that he was back inside the earth, in the grotto through which they had entered this realm.

Three had gone in. One returned. But this was no time for worry or regrets. The ten men he’d picked to guard Takako were the best of the best. And armed with the best. But he doubted any armaments would be useful against her. His grandfather could dispatch fifty like them without breaking a sweat, and she had killed him.

For the sake of their good name, Takako must not come to further harm. He had promised Setsura Aki—he who accepted Yakou and his clan as rightful citizens of Demon City—that they would protect her with their lives.

Passing through the grotto, the night descended upon him. He noticed one particular change at first. He took the censer out of his pocket. A blinding light flashed in his eyes. The material of the silver container was transforming.

“Of course.” He nodded confidently.

Out of the corner of his eyes, he took note of the dial of his watch. He’d entered the grotto four hours before, at nine-thirty at night. According to his watch, only three hours had elapsed. It was now half past midnight. Mulling over the possibilities and calculating in his head, he came to a conclusion in a matter of seconds.

“One hour passed from the time we arrived at their world until Kikiou was killed. As for the rest, time passed as it normally does.” Which meant that in their world time came to a standstill.

The moon hung high in the heavens. Yakou took a deep breath. He spread his wings, flexed them, and readied for flight. His supernatural senses told him that a massive and evil presence was closing fast on his position.