Chapter Two

Chapter Two

After summing up the situation to date, Setsura leaned against the pillow. Galeen Nuvenberg’s secret curatives were doing their job.

“So one has left the stage,” Mephisto said, without obvious emotion. “But there are still three plus one, and that one seems a formidable foe.”

“That is for certain.” Setsura closed his eyes. The ague in his gut reminded him that Ryuuki’s demon qi was still hanging around. “He can read my next move before I make it. Not to mention that he’s a true immortal. How do you propose handling him?”

Mephisto answered without hesitation. “Reason would dictate that the first blow must settle the contest. Strike down the part that cannot resurrect itself—the head.”

“There’s no guarantee that he won’t grow a new one. As long as he’s still walking around, there’s no way we can settle things with the other three.”

“If all you are going to do is bitch about our predicament, then go back to your shop and bake senbei and don’t come out at night.”

“Once we’ve wrapped up this business, I’ll take that advice,” Setsura said in a languid manner completely out of character with that of a brash, young Adonis. He could have an emotional breakdown and still look ravishing.

“This occurred to me before,” Mephisto said in a way that made Setsura look at him. “But why continue taking on missing persons cases? The moonlighting is hardly a necessary aspect of your business.”

“If a mind reader turns up among your patients, introduce her to me. I’d like to know myself.”

“How about a straight answer?”

“You serious?”

“I am always serious.”

Setsura smiled. Even someone familiar with the depth and breadth of their friendship would find this an unlikely exchange. And all joking aside, Setsura smiling at Mephisto was so rare an event it deserved being put on an endangered species list.

He laced his fingers across his chest and said, as if reciting verse, “I hear a person’s voice.”

Mephisto just returned the look.

“I can’t say what kind of voice. Call it a sad voice. Find me, it says. Get me out of here. And then a client shows up.”

“The height of sentimentality.”

“Wouldn’t argue with you on that point.”

“And if you plug your ears?”

“Let’s say that I tried it one night. Stuck in earplugs and put my hands over my ears, went to bed that way and kept them there all night.”

“And did you hear their voices?”

“Ah—”

“What did they say?”

“That’s privileged information.”

“They came here looking for something. I do not imagine salvation was high on the list.”

“Then who comes knocking on my door? Is it them, or fate?”

The expression on Mephisto’s face took on an unusual hue. “You are one peculiar man.”

“I’m a citizen of Demon City Shinjuku,” Setsura softly replied. He lapsed into silence. The faint mist swept about his face and body like waves. “How about we get going?” he said.

Mephisto’s eyes glittered. “Where to?”

“You forget about my job?”

“We have not turned up any clues about their safe house. Walking around in your condition will only accelerate your return to my hospital.”

“You don’t know anything?”

“Unfortunately no.”

“What the hell did I hand over Ryuuki and Shuuran to you for anyway? How about you just stop admitting the bat-shit crazy ones after this, okay?”

Not waiting for Mephisto’s reply, Setsura turned toward the windows opposite. Mephisto held his tongue. Perhaps he was feeling a bit sheepish that those two vampires went on the lam on his watch. Or rather, that what he’d told Setsura was a lie. By the time he’d secluded himself in the Resurrection Room, Ryuuki and Shuuran were already mingling with the crowds on the Shinjuku streets. It wasn’t likely that he was ignorant of this fact.

And then there was Yakou.

He’d headed off to Chuo Park without a face-to-face with Mephisto. He wouldn’t march off to war—at the risk of body and soul—and leave the director in the dark. Was Setsura saying he didn’t have a clue?

Hiding his mouth, Mephisto looked at Setsura’s back. His eyes were tinged with color. Red—red—ruby red.

The white doctor stood up. The mist did not move.

Ah, what are you after, Doctor Mephisto? The doctor’s white shadow silently approached the lovely manhunter, not even stirring the air.

The red light vanished from his eyes.

When Setsura rolled over and looked up through the skylight, the doctor was sitting in the chair, still as a mannequin.

A knock at the door, as if the doll girl had taken note as well. “Come in,” said Setsura. She entered the room and quickly came to his bedside and pulled on a thin cord hanging against the wall.

The skylight opened. Seconds later, its black wings beating back the night mist, the big talking raven flew in.

“Ah, as I expected. Everybody’s been waiting for me.” The raven had to stop and take a breath, having traveled here at top speed.

“Did you see something?” asked the doll girl.

The proudly pedigreed bird nodded. “I was putting in a few turns through the sky before settling down to sleep, and happened by a shopping district off Shokuan Avenue—”

As soon as they got out of the taxi, the steel scent struck their nostrils. The taste of blood in the air. This being no place to hail a cab, the driver offered to stick around. Setsura suggested that he’d better take off and come back in a few minutes.

He looked up. The raven wheeled about the sky over ground zero. Setsura turned to Mephisto behind him. “Hay fever?”

The handsome doctor had covered his nose with the scarf as well. He didn’t answer.

Setsura set off at a run. He noted that Mephisto wasn’t keeping up with him. He really didn’t have the legs for moving quickly across open ground. Glancing over his shoulder and urging him on, he quickened his own pace.

A number of bodies came into view beneath the light of the streetlamp. Vagrants and itinerants.

“What say you?” he asked without turning around.

“They are all dead,” Doctor Mephisto answered in his unflappable voice. “The middle three are completely drained of blood. For two of them, the wounds in their necks point to the primary cause. As for the other seven—”

Mephisto left it at that. Setsura sighed. If anything, the itinerants could be said to have died peacefully. Not so with the scene in the foreground. These were deaths a heartless man would not wish upon his enemies.

Two bodies torn in two, neck separated from torso. A body whose neck had been wrung like a chicken’s before decapitation. The disposition of the other four corpses wasn’t so straightforward.

Collecting them together under the caved-in storefront of one shop seemed an expression of the killer’s whims. The four bodies were staked through with the exposed wooden posts, hovering there in the air like dragonflies pinned to a butterfly collector’s box.

The beams penetrated their bodies through the back and abdomen with the clear intent of prolonging the pain. And, in fact, it hadn’t yet ceased. Their limbs and trunks writhed back and forth, like bugs in their death throes impaled on a thorny branch by a butcher bird.

About thirty minutes had elapsed since the raven witnessed the events until Setsura and Mephisto arrived. These living sacrifices had been in agony all that time.

“Nice of you to show up,” said an old white-haired man, trembling back and forth on the stake shoved through his gut. He coughed. Frothy blood poured from his mouth. “It’s a real bitch hanging up here. Pull that thing out, would you?”

“Wow, those two are hot,” the office lady gasped. “It’s like a dream.”

Despite her labored breaths, echoes of desire were clear in her voice. She should have died a long time ago. Her thighs jutting from her tight skirt wriggled as if of their own accord. If this was a dream, then she was part of the nightmare.

Setsura right hand traced a lazy arc through the air. Even after the heads had fallen to the earth, the torsos continued to squirm like haunted creatures.

Setsura pointed at the sky. “The bird says he went into a rage after they laid hands on a young woman that was lying there. His character certainly does seem to agree with the history and the legends. What do you think he’ll do next?”

“I would expect a rampage,” Mephisto said soberly. “He is a cancer born out of every evil this planet has produced. I do not expect there could ever be a cure. He must be eradicated with all due speed.”

“That’s some big talk there,” came a voice behind them.

All the more remarkable that there existed something in this world that could approach Setsura Aki and Doctor Mephisto from behind undetected—

They calmly turned around. Kazikli Bey struck his chest with his right hand. An old custom. To Setsura he said, “It is an honor to meet you again.” To Mephisto, “It is good to make your acquaintance as well, Doctor Mephisto.”

He spoke in a rough and uncivilized voice that seemed a stranger to grace and refinement.

“In any case, I control myself when and if the necessity arises. Amidst all these sweet scents, I steeled myself, expecting only to taste the blood of that witch who pulls the strings of the big raven. And behold my reward. What began two days ago shall be brought to an end.”

This last statement was of course directed at Setsura.

“All of your techniques I have made my own. The Doctor is welcome to watch.”

“I am afraid I cannot agree to that.”

“Hoh. You wish to take him on?” The general lowered his right hand from his chest to his side. The tone of his voice suggested that a face-off with Mephisto hadn’t been in the cards.

“We have known each other for a long time.”

“Oh, stop it,” said Setsura lightly. “We’re not such bosom buddies that we’re into that whole joining forces and killing people thing. Feel free to take a hike if I get beat.”

“I never know when to take him seriously,” Mephisto said, facing the general. “But if he says so, I shall respect his wishes and retreat to the sidelines.”

“That would be fine,” the general said agreeably. “Pitching in to help would be futile.”

“So I had assumed,” said Mephisto, quietly retreating to the store behind him.

“The air is sweet and the moon is high. I prefer a world ruled by wind and rain. But this is not a bad place to die. If you prevail over me, then I take it all back.”

“Much appreciated.”

Despite having already battled once right up to the point of defeat, Setsura was oddly at ease. With no overt signs of tension or fear, the two men faced off at a distance of a dozen feet or so.

“This really is a wonderful world,” the general said unexpectedly. “More than anything else, it has blood. It has life. And dark nights. Not to mention other pleasant diversions. Disco, for example.”

Setsura gaped at him. But from the look in the man’s eyes, there was no doubting that he was the real deal.

“All that music and movement—like it was all perfectly designed for drill sessions.”

“You’ve got a strange way of looking at things,” Setsura said, calculating the timing and distance between them. “You learn stuff like that aboard the boat? Who was it that sealed you up in there anyway?”

“When I was picked up in Constantinople, the ship was already sailing the world at will. That such a thing exists suggests a god who rules time or life itself.”

“If they were intending to protect you, then they shouldn’t have brought you here.”

“What are you saying?

“This is Demon City. Nobody leaves happier than when they arrived.”

“I do not intend to leave. Didn’t I just tell you how wonderful a world this is? Those getting in the way—”

The general’s voice hardened. Setsura heard a sound like a cracking whip. Blue points of light winked in the air. The devil wires thrown by them both entwined and entangled, throwing off sparks.

“Where did you get hold of that wire?” Setsura wanted to know. A sensible question.

“That is a weakness of limited creatures like yourselves. Everything in this world is patterned after something from a long time ago. This wire was found in an oil-filled pot in long-forgotten ruins in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Now—you die.”

The wire swept at him in a slashing sideways attack. Setsura’s sliced through it. As soon as the end touched to the ground, it bent and rebounded. As this was his own technique, he dodged it easily. The wire flew above where his head had been a split second before like a spring, cleaving the air.

The sudden action opened up his wounds, throwing Setsura’s movements out of whack.

The ancient wire floated to the ground like frayed hair. A sideways shot of power from the side had disintegrated them into their constituent molecules.

The general and Setsura as well spun around in surprise.

“Hoh,” exclaimed Mephisto, at the appearance of this new opponent. He was still leaning against the shop door.

They all knew who this was.

“General Ryuuki,” said Setsura. “To what do we owe this pleasure?”

“I was in the Takada no Baba neighborhood. The smell of blood and my own two feet brought me here.”

“And what did you come here to do?” asked the other general.

They sailed aboard the same ghost ship, engaged Setsura upon the same orders, and both “generals” stared icy daggers at each other.

“That young man is carrying around a gutful of my penetrator qi. If you’re looking for a fair fight, you might reconsider after he’s rid himself of it.”

A scornful smile etched on his Romanesque features, the general focused his eyes on the graceful face of the man who’d addressed him. “If I didn’t know better, I would think this some demonstration of Oriental chivalry. Why settle for merely deflecting my weapons? Why not play the complete traitor and take his place?”

“Well—”

“Take a hike,” Setsura said quietly to General Ryuuki. He looked at the one-armed man with whom he’d already fought twice to death’s door with what could only be described as gentle eyes. “This is my job.”

“You and I still need to trade our life stories over a drink or two. You’re in no condition to fight this man.”

“You might want to keep such opinions to yourself. Not that I would disagree with your assessment though.”

The general laughed loudly. “I am hungry. I am angry. And the taste of blood is fresh in the air. Let us engage. Either one of you, but the sooner the better. I shall take on both of you at the same time. That is fine with me.”

He had his arms folded across his chest. The fingers of his hands sang out. His invincible limbs incorporated the supernatural skills of his enemies in an instant and responded in kind. He had taken in Setsura’s devil wires. What would he make of Ryuuki’s demon qi?

The one taking a flying leap, like a silhouette falling on a shadow, was Setsura Aki. The demon qi released from Ryuuki’s hands silently soaked into the ground.

“You stay put.”

More than the pain from his wounds, Setsura tasted Ryuuki’s towering dignity in the rebuke. He stayed put. Bands of white rustled around his feet. It wasn’t the fog, but swirling bands of enlivened dust.

“General versus General, is it?” General Bey muttered, his words scattering in the wind. “How interesting.”

Ryuuki advanced toward him. Even the Demon Princess could not predict the outcome of this death match. Or more likely, the probability of their dueling had been beyond her imagination. But the two wizards could have no better stage for their contest, or a better pair of spectators.

The stage was Demon City Shinjuku and the audience was Setsura Aki and Doctor Mephisto.

“I have already learned all there is to know about your techniques,” boasted General Bey.

Ryuuki narrowed his eyes to slits. He didn’t sway or smile, show fear or remorse. The moon shone brightly in the sky. Far away a bird sang. Its song was shattered by the waves of colliding energy.

“I am impressed,” Ryuuki said with honest admiration for General Bey’s skills. He once again raised his left hand.

The general did too. The sleeve of Ryuuki’s right arm flapped against the air. The general’s face twitched with confusion. His second blow vanished with the swing of Ryuuki’s right sleeve. And the qi Ryuuki had flung at the general disappeared in the moment before contact.

All in the blink of an eye.

Sensing something else afoot, the general was about to jump away. A colorless, odorless shockwave of energy erupted from beneath his feet and engulfed his entire body. His limbs twisted weirdly and he was thrown violently on his back to the ground.

“You didn’t get around to learning this one.”

Ryuuki’s demon qi did not simply radiate outwards, but could dissolve into the air and inject itself into the earth, even biding its time to attack from unanticipated directions.

“Better you go to that peaceful kingdom first. Though I have to say I’m a bit envious.”

Ryuuki raised his left hand and began to lower it. An excruciating pain kept him from completing the gesture.

“No, I have already learned it.”

General Kazikli Bey lay on the pavement and smiled. His ghoulish fangs glittered in the dark.