Chapter Two

Chapter Two

“My pardon. My pardon. Take your eyes away for a second and away they go.”

The otherworldly tiger fixed its ferocious eyes on Princess. Kikiou crept up behind it and seized it by the back of the neck. The murderous aura enveloping the beast’s huge frame vanished.

Princess asked in tones that could make a strong man shiver on a blistering hot day, “And who is this animal’s owner, Kikiou?”

“As this animal’s master, I bear full responsibility for such acts of insolence. Please let your will be known regarding it.” The old man bowed his head low.

“If you are this animal’s master, then who is your master?”

“That would be none other than Princess.”

“Which would make me the animal’s mistress.”

“Y-yes.”

He could not have been unaware of Setsura’s presence, but Kikiou lowered his head even further. That was how terrifying Princess could be, even to a colleague. “And as its mistress, I cannot countenance having one of your made-up, hand-fed creatures baring its fangs at me.”

Those words had barely left her mouth when a strange sound burst from the end of the tiger’s spine. She ripped the snake’s tail out by its roots, followed by a spray of blood—if that’s what the green substance was.

“Stop!”

Ignoring Kikiou’s command, the big beast whirled on Princess. Its blood-red gaping mouth swallowed Princess’s arm up to her shoulder. Tragedy awaited one or the other.

Princess yanked out her supposedly eaten arm. The sharp, white tusks banged onto the floor next to Setsura’s feet. The beast howled and slumped to the ground, green blood spewing from its mouth.

Princess gazed down at it. Soon the only evidence of life was its quivering pelt. She said coldly, “Foolish thing,” and shook her hand.

The pink tongue, more than a yard long, joined the tusks with a splat. This wasn’t the result of a desperate struggle to the death, but Princess’s intent all along. And why she had let the tiger have her hand in the first place. She wiped her left hand across her right arm. Not a spot of blood or gore remained.

“Leave.”

“Yes.”

Not a flicker of anger showed on Kikiou’s face. He bowed. He glanced at the nearby jar-bearers. For the first time, Setsura observed a brief flash of ghastly light in those eyes. Gone a second later.

With a flutter of her white sleeves, the Demon Princess passed through the foyer with Setsura as Kikiou stood there, head bowed, looking for all the world like the Chinese equivalent of a faithful old Jeeves.

“Goddamned oversized monkey,” the beautiful woman cheerfully intoned as they proceeded to the main hall. “A rare scholar of unusual guile and cunning. But he does play the fool at times. That creature was designed to attack you.”

“I assumed as much,” Setsura agreed with equal nonchalance. An onlooker might have mistakenly believed him to be taken by the colorful grandeur of the mansion. “Yourself aside, my presence doesn’t seem to be welcome. I wouldn’t want to cause a rift between you.”

Princess reacted to Setsura’s unusual concerns with a cold smile. “I go and come as I please. I don’t consult with Kikiou.”

“So it would seem,” Setsura said.

No matter how many eras the scholar had surmounted, he still was not in the same league as the Demon Princess, who had personally destroyed three dynasties.

Bathed in blue light, the two of them continued on silently.

“Big house,” Setsura observed blandly. “Must take two or three days to get from the front door to the bedroom. I haven’t seen a single servant. Seems inconvenient.”

“They’re unnecessary.”

“Why’s that?”

“If I want to live in a large house, that doesn’t mean I want a lot of riff raff underfoot. I choose to live my life as I see fit, according to my own whims and desires. Fuck a man when the mood strikes, drink a woman’s blood when I feel peckish. If you know me, then you know the kings and kingdoms I have brought low. Do you think me cruel and heartless?”

“Well—”

“Emperor Jie of the Hsia Dynasty. Emperor Zhou of the Shang Dynasty. Emperor You of the Chou Dynasty. They perished in my arms. And none of them regretted it in the least. They vowed in their beds to give up their kingdoms and their people in exchange for the pleasures I bestowed upon them. And wouldn’t you know, their wishes came true. Later generations would slander them as despotic fools led astray by a witchy woman. The envy of the ignorant. That is where a man’s true happiness resides. The world for a pretty face, including their own souls. No fame or fortune can equal it. In my bedroom, those who speak ill of them would say the same things to these breasts of mine.”

Her finger traced the hills and valleys of her décolletage. The flesh trembled at her touch. Neither in dreams nor in ancient memories had any mortal man withstood the restless carnality of her magnificent body. The appetites of this succubus’s blood forever drove its lascivious fangs into the heart of the here and now.

She was the incarnation of the inexhaustible lusts of the human world.

“Here.” She stopped.

Without descending any slope or staircase, they had gone underground at some point. Setsura could sense with his entire body the great mass of the earth looming above his head.

The Demon Princess at last reached out to a door set into the wall. A black iron door. The hinges creaked.

“Please, go ahead.”

“You don’t want to escort the guest?”

“That would spoil the surprise. The mysteries that await you here have no equal elsewhere.”

“Being preached to by a vampire—sounds like the name of a movie.”

Setsura passed through the doorway like a tourist at a hot springs resort sauntering into the sauna.

The hallway was about as wide as the door and bent around in a gentle curve. The wall on the right was made of wood. On the left, beneath the finely-engraved handrail, tracing the outer circumference of the pathway, was an elliptical opening.

A nasty odor assaulted his nostrils. A pungent, rotten smell. The dark earth was dotted with red-black lumps. Like animal droppings. Setsura’s eyes were drawn to a pair of black bars crossed fifteen feet above the ground, each about eight inches wide and made of iron.

Behind him, Princess asked, “Do you understand what this is?”

“Dear Emperor, lay two iron shafts across the caldron in the shape of a cross. Your servants shall walk across the branding iron and scald their feet and tumble into the hell fire. Emperor Zhou’s idea of fun, I take it.”

“Exactly. You’ve never seen one with your own two eyes.”

“Of course not.”

Emperor Zhou of the Shang had taken the advice of the demoness Daji, forcing victims to walk across the red-hot iron and cling to it as lions and tigers waited in the writhing hell below for their dinner to fall to them.

Setsura stopped.

“Oh? Why do you hesitate?” chimed Princess’s voice, full of mirth. “I brought you all this way so I could have someone to share old memories with. Look—” She spoke as grandly as she always did. “Let us cut to the chase. In the four thousand years since the demise of Shang, unknown numbers have sampled the pleasures Emperor Zhou first tasted here in this subterranean chamber. I do not know for what purpose you exist on the earth, but insight into what tickles the heart of a king can’t hurt.”

“Good grief.” The physical weariness in this reply was likely not an act. Though any vestiges of a haggard expression just as quickly vanished.

The oval hall was sixty feet across at its longest, thirty feet at its most narrow. At the far end of the iron shaft forming the major diameter, a human figure appeared.

“Relax. It’s not real. All visions of what was done back during the Shang Dynasty. Even so, you can taste the boiling blood well enough to enjoy all its dark joys.”

The Demon Princess sounded very far away. Setsura gazed at the spectacle, as if her voice had stolen away a piece of his soul.

The phantom was a voluptuous young woman. More than her vivacious naked body, what drew the attention was the look of fear staining her features. More than the raw scars on her thighs and her breasts—over which her hands were placed—this look spoke to the fate she had been delivered to, and the reality she was yet to face.

“A farmer’s wife. The executioner told her that she could return to her family if she crossed the bar successfully.”

The naked girl set off with unusually sure steps. The hope of returning to her family surely steadied her balance and disciplined her fear. She arrived at the intersection of the two shafts in under five minutes, an impressive feat.

Setsura’s eyes strayed from the girl to the remaining half of the shaft. Only inches from her toes, the red glow of the iron was obvious. By the result of some unseen technology, the scorching heat arose only from the remaining thirty feet of the shaft.

The girl froze in place. She looked back the way she came, but soon abandoned that option. Perhaps hidden soldiers brandishing spears.

She had two options—the shorter iron shaft intersecting at right angles. But looking to the right and left, she trembled with a newly aroused sense of despair.

Two shadows crouched at the ends of the shaft. Human on the right. A four-legged beast on the left.

The girl first gave the human figure a closer look. But lost hope again. Wrapped in a long blue robe was the mannequin of a young man. Glancing left, her feet froze. The beast resembled a large dog. But only the head. The body had the color and spots of a leopard. Two horns projected from above its snout like those of a bull.

“A dog with the spots of a leopard and the horns of a bull—that is a jiao dragon, as described in a collection of ancient geographical surveys known as the Shan Hai Jing.”

The creature roared, as if answering Setsura’s musings on its name and etymology. A ferocious, intimidating sound.

Which way to run? Which of these four dreadful fates to choose? The girl stood at the crossroads and pondered her options. Finally, she resolutely turned to the right, toward the young male mannequin. With each step, the place her feet had just left burned red hot. There was no retreat.

“They always make the same choice,” Princess said behind him. There was none more beautiful, and none more evil. “Save one. A brave man. He was eaten by the jiao.” She laughed. “That was the correct decision.”

Her meaning soon became clear.

As the girl approached the mannequin, he slowly raised his arms. She froze for a second, but there being no other option left open to her, she quickened her pace, hitting the mannequin head on even as his arms reached out to her.

The arms wrapped around her waist with the zeal of a lover. The girl pressed her palms against the sturdy chest but he hugged her all the tighter. She must have realized the gravity of her mistake when the mannequin placed one hand on the back of her head and turned her face around, and pressed its hard mechanical mouth against hers.

Against her lips, moist even in the throes of terror.

She struggled and squirmed, but the mannequin’s steel-like arms stole away her freedom. Her legs found no purchase. Something bittersweet and fragrant plied open her teeth. The mannequin’s tongue.

She gagged, and cried out as another unmistakable sensation radiated from between her legs. Without looking down, she knew that a rent had opened in the mannequin’s robe. He had penetrated her.

Even choking to death, her throat eerily quivered, and she swallowed him deeper.

The mannequin was endowed with a wooden cock more generously shaped and finely made than that of the best man alive. And functioned as must the dildo of the gods. He buried its throbbing length inside her. Gasps of pleasure escaped her lips. No man had or could ever have fucked her so, such were the pleasures produced by this perverse union.

The girl abandoned all sense and comity, ramming her hips against his, taking him deeper and deeper. His wood thrust and pulsed and made her come and come in ecstasy. Her back bent like a bow. Her body spasmed. She screamed, something female but no longer human.

The mannequin opened his arms and released her. Her sensuous body—sparkling even—tumbled down into the pit.

Setsura felt the impact up through the soles of his feet.

“Such a happy girl. But that well must run dry. She is still alive. Thanks to that mannequin’s tongue, for it possessed yet another special property.”

The woman’s body writhed where she had fallen hard onto the ground. She was lying on her back. Her breasts swayed. Her thighs glistened. She could not walk, perhaps because her legs were broken.

The roars of animals all around her, their species unknown but clearly carnivorous. Moaning in pain, the girl had returned to her senses sufficiently to take note of her surroundings.

The gasping girl lay almost directly in the center of the pit. Mythological beasts like the one Setsura encountered in the foyer paced around her. One placed its forefoot lightly on her chest. Seemingly on the verge of sinking its tusks into her fear and sweat-stained body—on the verge of death—it instead licked her with its long, rough tongue.

Another joined it and licked her head. Another, her arms and sides. Another, her nether regions.

“Look at that! Her limbs broken, her internal organs ruptured, and yet she is satisfied. Such is human nature. Who can dare find fault with Emperor Zhou? The substance inside her body emits a smell that arouses them. Oh dear, licking her isn’t enough. They’re tearing off her breasts. Oh my, now they’re biting off her neck. They’re flipping her over. Oh well, it’s all good. They so love mounting dead women.”

The Demon Princess laughed hysterically. Then her words froze like ice. Setsura turned his back to her.

But was it Setsura? Princess heard a hoarse sound in her ears—the sound of her own voice. “Who the hell are you?”

The answer came just as quickly. The shadow in the black slicker glanced over his shoulder at her and said softly, “Setsura Aki.”

And that was who it was.

A transfixing countenance that crystallized the darkness of the night and the radiance of the moon, that shushed the howling of the wind. The beautiful body that supported it on its strong shoulders. The mesmerizing and yet dignified gaze. Nothing had changed at all.

Except what was inside it.

In a pleasant, comely tone, Setsura Aki asked, “Shall we have at it again, Princess?” Like a demon. Like Rakshasa, the Hindu devil. “As I am now, the cut may prove fatal this time around.”

There was no answer. Princess looked down at her feet. Her lips trembled. Anger and loathing permeated her dusky voice. “I was moved—” The product of fear perhaps. “I have lived in fear of people for four thousand years. I won’t forgive it. I shall never forgive it. Not from you, and not in myself.”

A red glow reflected off Setsura’s eyes—the fires of hell burning in hers. Even as they stood there on the narrow way, she wished to rampage through the whole wide world above them and reduce it to ashes.

Those eyes suddenly wavered. A small smile rose to her lips. Ah, but what a smile it was, as bewitching as it was cruel.

She whispered, “I had originally intended to meet with you in another room. But my wounded honor demands recompense. This is more appropriate for that—the trial by fire that turned the Emperor himself into a bawdy beast. Behold—”

Princess pointed at the end of the hallway, where another iron door was set into the wall. It didn’t appear to be open. Except that a human figure suddenly appeared standing there.

“Of course,” Setsura Aki said.

It was Yakou.

“He is my servant,” Princess said gaily. “He shared my bed, clasps me to his chest, and swears undying fealty. Yet he hunted me down as your colleague. I so want to see the blood flow, each of you stealing the other’s life to preserve his own.”

She turned her ruby red eyes upon him.

“Her wish is my command,” Yakou said. His mien and voice were only slightly different from what Setsura remembered, lending to this statement an all the more uncanny feeling.

“Are you game, Setsura Aki?”

“Fine with me.” He replied without hesitation.

This Setsura felt no sentimentality toward a friend. Yakou was an enemy under the command of the Demon Princess. That was all. Expecting from him a great show of angst, Princess’s eyes flickered with malice.

“Setsura.”

“Understood.”

The two of them vaulted over the railing with the grace of world-champion gymnasts. The mannequin and jiao were gone—no doubt Princess’s doing—and the two confronted each other above the cold and black iron shafts.

Setsura Aki and Yakou.

Doctor Mephisto had become a vampire. And now even Yakou bared his fangs. Would the time ever come when Setsura was not left to fight this fight alone?

“Bring it on.” Yakou struck a fighting pose.

Setsura knew nothing of the demon qi that had sent Kikiou flying apart.

With a state of nothingness—that exceeded even the strongest blood lust—as their mediator, the genie and the vampire launched into a duel to the death.