Chapter One

Chapter One

The Clairvoyant saw the whole thing in minute detail.

When Chan was cut to pieces by the devil wire, the telepath’s spell broke. But the grotesque scene that followed kept him rooted him to the spot. The raven watched. Setsura was a witness. Chan’s final destination was no mystery to him.

After that, the outrageous future that awaited them became clear as day. The necessity of contacting his colleagues about the strange scene unfolding before him temporarily slipped his mind.

When he finally came back to his senses and rushed to his car in order to get the word out, a hoarse voice called out to him.

“You look like you’ve seen quite the ghost. I wouldn’t mind a look myself.”

The Clairvoyant whirled around. Seeing the strange trio next to the tall wall, he narrowed his eyes. An old woman in a wheelchair. Next to her, a golden-haired girl. Above their heads, a black bird flapped its—wing. The bird was missing its left-hand side.

But more than the weird bird, the haunting vibe he felt in his bones looking at this small, inconsequential grandma made his blood freeze in his veins. The Clairvoyant swallowed hard.

“I don’t know what sort of clairvoyant you are, but seeing into Chuo Park is quite the feat. What organization do you belong to and what are its objectives? And where is Setsura Aki?”

The Clairvoyant ran through a quick list of strategies for dealing with the three, and discarded them. He didn’t respond and put his hand on the door handle.

What the—? He suppressed the instinct to scream. The door handle turned into a cobra and flicked its red tongue at him. He let go like it was a red-hot iron.

The snake’s eyes glittered and turned back into a door handle.

“That’s a good boy,” the grandma in the wheelchair said with a bright smile. “I didn’t think a little sleight of hand would work on a natural clairvoyant. Went all out on that one.”

“You try anything funny, Grandma, and you’ll find yourself six feet under. Or are you plenty satisfied already with your three score and ten?” The Clairvoyant raised his ACR to his hip in a threatening manner. “You an ally of Setsura Aki? I have a few questions for you, too. But I’m in a hurry right now. Maybe later.”

“Take care, now,” the old woman said as the Clairvoyant slid into the driver’s seat and started up the engine.

A dull thud and the engine screamed. The car rocked back and forth. The Clairvoyant noticed the world beyond the windshield changing. The wall and the road were lifting up.

By the time he realized that he was sinking into the ground and tried to open the door, the asphalt was level with the bottom of the door. Too frightened to scream, he leapt out head-first and tumbled onto the sidewalk as a crunching sound reached his ears.

The car disappeared into the sudden sinkhole, leaving only the open door behind, torn from the frame. Three seconds later the car was completely swallowed up by the earth. The roof was briefly visible, and then it too vanished.

The surface of the asphalt returned to its normal state, with all the original cracks and stains exactly as they were. A scraping noise. The car door had toppled over onto the pavement.

The Clairvoyant stayed on his knees and brought his rifle to his shoulder and aimed it at the strange trio. “Who the fuck are you guys?”

The old woman said brightly, “Manners, manners. Why don’t you introduce yourself first?”

The next moment, a small hole appeared between her eyebrows. The mach four flechette punched through her skull and out the back like a nail gun through tissue paper, and sailed off toward some distant, unknown target.

It was a 1.5x42mm projectile with a carbon steel jacket that flew with the characteristics of a dart. The shot ran flat at 600 meters, yet produced negligible recoil, making it the preeminent round in its class. Under demanding battle conditions, the mechanism compensated for shooter fatigue and firing errors.

The impact knocked the grandma’s head against the back of the wheelchair. Not letting her out of his sights, the Clairvoyant pointed the rifle at the girl standing next to her.

But a strange thought made him hesitate. There was something “hard” and “solid” about the pretty young lass.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the grandma smiling. “You just missed the medulla oblongata. Why not give it another shot?”

Before being assigned to Demon City, Operational Detachment F soldiers were drilled to take the simplest, most effective measures first when dealing with the citizens of the city.

The Clairvoyant took an incendiary grenade from his chest, pulled the pin and tossed it at the feet of the trio. A clunk and the grenade rolled up to the feet of the girl.

The Clairvoyant jumped backwards. The fire from the incendiary grenade would engulf a good five-yard radius.

An achingly slender white hand reached out and picked up the rough gray lump. The Clairvoyant broke out in a cold sweat.

“Look, Grandmother,” she said in a voice like a bell. “The man dropped something.”

The wrinkled old face nodded. “Well, you’d better return it.”

“Yes.”

The afternoon breeze fluttering the hem of her light purple dress, the doll-like girl respectfully held out the murderous weapon with both hands as the soldier scurried backwards.

“Stay where you are!” the retreating Clairvoyant ordered. His knees shook. He was only now beginning to grasp the true nature of his opponents—and that Demon City was home to every kind of being imaginable.

“What are you running away for?” the girl asked, tilting her head to the side. “Is your heart so small? Like this raven’s? You don’t mind throwing things at people, but object when they are returned?”

The Clairvoyant pulled the trigger. His frenzied state notwithstanding, his aim was true. Except that no bullet emerged. He heard the pop of the primer igniting, but it was like the casing had leaked and the powder was wet. What the girl did next set his hair on end. She stood in front of the rifle and peered curiously down the barrel.

He shrieked, turned and ran. Behind him, the old woman said, “Enough of the hijinks. Time to get down to business.”

He felt a weight on his shoulders. “You just can’t see where you’re going,” said a voice like a strumming harp. White fingers laced themselves together beneath his chin. The hands of the girl hovering over his head. The hands turned. Bones broke with a creak and snap.

The Clairvoyant heard the sound. The next thing he knew he was looking at the raven and the old woman. His vision had revolved 180 degrees. Nothing hurt, but his whole body was as stiff as a board.

“Let’s go.”

His body moved according to the command. But whether that meant moving forwards or backwards—the head of the psychic’s body faced the grandma. The rest was pointing the other way. So the rest of him glided in reverse like he was moonwalking.

“What shall we do, Grandmother?” asked the girl. Straddling the man’s shoulders, her unladylike stance was a curious contrast with her dainty countenance.

“Look.”

The girl’s eyes followed the direction of the old woman’s dry twig of a finger. “Oh, my,” she exclaimed.

Something bright and shining was spilling over the top of the wall. The surface was like a glimmering feather. The midday sun made it sparkle like inlaid gold. The wave of light dammed up by the wall was breaking through the levee, like a work of abstract art singing praises to freedom.

“That is—?”

“Setsura Aki’s devil wire.”

“But of course.”

“And yet, a dream.”

“So it would seem.”

“Take me there.” The old woman indicated a point along the wall.

“Do you know what you are going to do?”

“Anyone that would deign to ask Galeen Nuvenberg such a question must be in need of adjustments elsewhere as well. Perhaps your big toe is sticking out a bit too far?”

“Please forgive me.” Perched on the man’s shoulders, the girl gracefully bowed her head.

“Onward.”

The order was issued to the Clairvoyant. Like an old servant at the beck and call of his master, he turned the wheelchair around, the golden-haired girl riding on his shoulders, only his head facing forward, the rest of him pointing the other way.

When they arrived at the wall, the wave spilling over the top had reached halfway down the side. And just how would this rare specimen of a witch counter these overflowing threads of death?

The old woman lined up with her right side tight to the wall and drew up her sleeves. Her arms were so skinny as to make a person wince in sympathy. A tangled mat of veins ran across the surface and the skin was blotchy and stained. It really did look as if rebar had been embedded in the flesh to provide support.

Her long black fingernails were tidy and manicured, suggesting materials devised of some unknown chemistry.

And yet this was all that stood against the destruction of the world?

The Czech Republic’s most accomplished witch pressed the palm of her hand tightly against the wall and began to chant an incantation deep in her throat.

Barely a second later, a change was born within the devil wires slipping down the wall. The coiling, curling ends stalled and came to a halt six feet above the ground.

Galeen Nuvenberg’s spell continued. She raised her left hand.

“Grandmother.” The girl’s hard face seemed clouded with concern. “Performing such sorcery in your infirmed state—”

A bright drop of sweat appeared on the old woman’s forehead. Her incantations were no longer audible, but emerged only as murmurings from her lungs and larynx.

The Clairvoyant saw that her upheld hand was drawing in the silver light. If the devil wires born from the beautiful manhunter’s back was part of the big clam’s dreams, then what nightmare must this extraordinary witch be seeing?

The wave covering the wall merged together into the form of a writhing python. The end changed into the tip of an auger and rammed through Galeen Nuvenberg’s left hand.

The thing disgorging the dream and the thing drawing it in—the battle to the death between them was beginning.

The wind roared. A black cloud grew from a single dot in the heavens like India ink spilled into water, blanking out the sun. Lightning arced across the heavens, lighting up the old witch’s face like a majestic marble statue.

Demon City was said to be at the forefront of the study of vampires—those demons that suck the lifeblood out of humans. A large part of the scholarship was thanks to the cooperation of the Toyama clans. However, despite all the data gathered, among the questions that remained unresolved was what went on during the time a vampire slept.

Generally speaking, they slept at “night.” But was the time of “night” relative or absolute? Supposing it was absolute, when it came to vampires, the time most necessary to sleep would be from sunup to sundown. In many cases, they feared the light of day and so preferred the dark.

But shaded from the sunlight, did vampires prowl about in houses sucking the blood of the residents?

Here was where the relative concept of “sleep” arose.

The world’s most complete set of vampire studies—the Toyama Vampire White Papers—today constitute the Vampire Archives at the National Museum of Romania. According to this research, as high as 99 percent of all vampires retired at dawn and woke at sunset.

However, because of the many individual methods for sensing light, this could be many hours after sunrise, or several hours before the last rays had vanished.

Vampires could operate fully in twilight, and did not appear to possess a strict circadian rhythm or an internal clock that operated according to the presence or absence of daylight.

For all vampires everywhere, the bottom line was whatever it took to stay alive. And if that meant the middle of the night, then so be it. The prosaic truth was that vampires were creatures of the night because they couldn’t operate fully in the light of day.

Though seeing that they were loath to appear even on overcast days, the sleep of the vampire was in any case very deep. The heartbeat fell to once in ten minutes. The breath wouldn’t fog a mirror held in front of the mouth. Drop red meat into a casket and most would doze right through it.

For the vampire, this was a time of fatal vulnerability, when an interloper with malicious intent could bring their existence to a sudden close without them noticing until it was too late.

As a consequence, as the legends of these creatures of the night spread across the globe, a plethora of countermeasures were spawned in response.

Rudimentary measures such as having hungry wolves and poisonous snakes and spiders guarding a casket were already known across Eastern Europe. A tendency for poison-spouting mannequins and trip line-triggered crossbows was common in parts of Western Europe and China.

More recently, the materials out of which caskets—and the structures housing them—were made were proceeding apace with the technology of the times. But there was no such thing as a perfect defense.

As a case in point, in the Toyama housing project—in response to an invader or of their own free will—only the Elder and his grandson Yakou could wake themselves up, no matter how deep the sleep.

And there was one other as well.