As Setsura started up the hill, a single tourist stared dumbfounded as the black figure passed by him, and then set off with all due haste, repeatedly rubbing his eyes. And not because he was impressed by what a handsome young man he was.
1. Shinjuku Chuo Park.
Setsura looked down. The stone steps beneath his feet were grimy and black, the oily soot left behind by a flamethrower. Here were the remains of previous eradication campaign efforts—to rid the world of what kept coming down.
He kept going up.
2. Shinjuku Station on the Seibu Shinjuku Line.
Five steps later, a huge fissure—easily ten feet across—again brought him to a halt. The runoff spilled into it like a waterfall. Setsura sprang off the stone steps with his right foot. And lightly landed on the stop above, the tails of his slicker flapping like a giant raptor.
He’d crossed the rest of the way. The giant structure rose up above him from these commanding heights, lording over all it surveyed. Here was the ruler of the shadows of Kawadacho.
3. Fuji TV.
Setsura circled around to the front lobby.
Around the building, parts crushed and fallen in, riven with cracks like all the rest, was stretched a fence of steel netting. The handiwork of the Self-Defense Forces. Rusty in some places, in others bright and gleaming, evidence of at least eight visits by the SDF.
Next to the front entrance sat a rusty round tower. A large-capacity electrical generator with “JGSDF” (Japan Ground Self-Defense Forces) stenciled on the side. They’d obviously had to beat a fast retreat.
For two months, the fence around the television studio had been charged to two hundred thousand volts, keeping whatever was inside from getting out. The gaping holes in the fence made clear the futility of that effort.
The wires had been twisted and torn and pushed outwards.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Setsura stepped inside the fence. The warm moist air surrounded him, a sticky agglomeration of tiny droplets. The same temperature as the air, but with the unpleasant sensation of the skin being covered with a thin film of oil.
Standing there, the world around him seemed to glaze over, grow listless and muddy.
In front of the lobby leading to the main news bureau was something altogether appropriate to its current state. A hearse. And not a scratch on it. Parked there placidly, like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, making the weirdness lurking beneath that calm exterior all the more so.
No one blithely drove a car right up to the Fuji TV studios. Here, nothing could be stranger than the ordinary.
The doors of the hearse were all open, including those in the back. The vehicle was empty. No casket, no driver. Beneath the front seat was a machine pistol, a Magnum .45 “Grizzly,” a slightly larger version of the Colt Government M1 11A1.
True to its nickname, the Magnum carried the heaviest load available for a .45 round, but there was no evidence of this one being fired.
Setsura checked the breechblock. The thumb safety was off and the hammer was cocked. Not something any man did for shits and giggles. He’d need a damned good reason to pull the trigger on such a big gun in the small confines of a car—like sweating bullets and fearing for his own life.
Setsura engaged the safety. Tucking the three-pound weapon into his pocket, he stepped into the production bureau foyer without a second glance. The dusty floor was littered with the gleaming brass of spent cartridges. A hundred at least. Somebody had really come loaded for bear. The walls were pockmarked.
But this was no ordinary shootout.
Setsura flicked the rain off his slicker and wiped his face with his sleeve. Approaching the reception area he took a left, down the corridor deeper inside to the production bureau.
Here were more shell casings. An assault rifle was lying on the floor. It was a Model 89, produced domestically to replace the much derided standard-issue Model 64. A dark stain spread out on the floor beneath it. It looked like a blood stain at first, except the edges were dark blue.
“My, my, my,” Setsura murmured to himself. The first words he’d said aloud so far. His boyish face twisted into a bored grimace, as if fed up with a prank taken too far.
“The sound stages in that place are plenty big,” Setsura had pointed out. “Where do you figure he’s hiding out?”
After dispatching two of the three assassins who’d attacked him in his safe house and making the third his driver, he’d dropped Yoshiko Toya off along the way.
“I haven’t got a clue either,” Yoshiko said, scratching her three-foot-wide butt. “Yeah, it’s a big place. He’s gotta be somewhere in there. He wouldn’t have gone in otherwise.”
“The critter escaped from the Ichigaya Research Center,” Setsura said. “Are you saying he was already that big?”
“Naw. Word is he camped out in the Kawadacho sewers and SDF warehouses, didn’t resort to the television sound stage until he’d reached a good sixty feet.”
“What about now?”
“A hundred feet at least.”
There was a floor map on the wall to his right. Setsura checked his location against that of the sound stage and started off again.
He’d taken note of how uncomfortably hot and humid the air was. Perhaps he even heard the faint reverberations of an air conditioner. At any rate, some mechanical device was purring away somewhere.
He passed down several hallways before coming to a large room with walls of glass on his right. “Public Relations” said the sign on the board. Without breaking stride, he went inside.
And quickly crouched down.
Two beats later came the sound of gunfire. The bullet passed eighteen inches over his head and struck the window of the manager’s office. Right at the height his head had been. The shooter’s timing was off but his aim was true.
Still in a crouch, Setsura waited. The PR office door opened. A man jumped in cradling a rifle. With strangely sluggish movements, the muzzle of the gun drew a bead on Setsura.
Then his body froze. Like a wind-up robot running down, his limbs stiffened and came to a stop. He wouldn’t have understood this was because of the devil wires cast out by Setsura’s right hand.
The man was in his early forties. From his disheveled long hair and beard, gray face covered in grime and ragged clothing revealing a rib showing through his papery skin, he seemed little more than a vagrant. Only his eyes glowed with a ghastly light.
This was clearly a man possessed.
“Renfield, eh,” Setsura remarked, coming to his feet. He meant the character in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, an inmate at the lunatic asylum attended to by Dr. John Seward. During the day, when the vampire was confined to his casket, Renfield watched over his casket and kept the vampire hunters at bay—when not snatching young girls at his master’s command.
The Renfields of Shinjuku were the hit men who worked for the movers and shakers behind the scenes. Though in the movies that came later, the Renfield of the novel was more often depicted as a slave from the start to Dracula’s intention rather than a mentally ill individual who fell under his influence.
“So tell me, where is this master of yours?”
In response to Setsura’s question, the man only bared his teeth and growled. The reaction of a wild beast devoid of reason. Setsura moved his right hand ever so slightly. The man reared back and roared like a wounded lion as the pain radiated from the marrow of his bones and shook his whole frame.
Setsura furrowed his brows. “The light in your eyes—you’ve lost your command of language as well. Sweet dreams, then.”
Those words had barely disturbed the air when the man crumpled to the floor with an inarticulate grunt.
Drawing the invisible, sub-micron titanium threads back inside his hand, Setsura looked down at the man and pinched the bridge of his nose. The man had on the tattered remains of a white T-shirt and camo trousers. His weapon was a SDF-issue Model 85 assault rifle.
They’d been expecting him, and there were bound t
o be more on the way. Setsura set off again, his footsteps detectably heavier than before.
Chapter 2
Her back pressed against the wall, Azusa was getting assaulted standing up. She didn’t feel the coolness of the surface. Slender jabs of pain interrupted that solace.
Hemp ropes crisscrossed her bountiful upper torso, her breast jutting out from among the fluffy frayed strands—an unbearably arousing posture.
Her right leg raised, Hyota had his face buried between her thighs, lapping at her like a dog at a bowl of water. The disgust on Azusa’s face was colored by naked arousal.
It’d been going on for ten minutes now. Her loins were sloppy with saliva and cum. Whatever she secreted Hyota sucked up, and never seemed to tire of the effort.
Her folds belonged to him. Licking her slit, teasing her bud and thrusting deeper. It simply didn’t end. Penetrating her with his thick tongue, twisting and writhing with a stubborn unyielding tenacity, as if spelunking his way through the soft flesh.
When it came to a woman’s sex, Hyota’s hunger knew no depths. The sounds were already spilling from her lips. The pleasure filling her brimming body was sharp as a knife, impossible to hold in.
“Does that feel good?”
“It feels fine.”
He asked the question over and over. Feel good? Followed by Feels fine. She wasn’t lying. Didn’t matter what man the tongue belonged to, the ripe fruit responded.
Hyota was into ropes as well. “Turn around,” he commanded her.
Azusa did as she was told. Pressed her cheek against the concrete pillar, thrust out her ass. Hyota grabbed her ass. His fingers dug into her buttocks and got straight down to business, screwing his tongue into her ass, shaking his head back and forth as he attempted to burrow in.
His sheer dogged pursuit, as much as the stimulation, got Azusa hot and bothered. She tried keeping it in, but her vocal cords moved without her consent. This was a girl who knew no taboos.
Her body trembled. Her hips moved of their own accord. Entwined in the ropes, standing up while he was going down on her, her mind melted into a hot puddle.
She’d already been run ragged any number of times. First by the evil brood in the basement of the Tohan Corporation ruins. Then, after bringing her here, Hyota had gone at her again like he’d been storing it up for years.
From the back—doggy style—from the front—missionary position—polling her on her preferences each time. Hyota was thoroughly versed in the erotic arts, devouring her body in an insatiable frenzy. She couldn’t help but respond. And each time he moved on to an even more delicate part of her physique.
Ropes, her ass, hoisting her senses to ever greater heights, the sadistic assaults wrenching free every masochistic tendency lurking inside of her.
“Even untied, you will not flee,” Hyota said, finally giving her backside a rest. The words came out in a groan. He was getting himself off as well. He said, while licking her again, “You will never forget the taste of me. Nor I you. Yours is a body seldom seen in this city of sin. I won’t let go of it so easily.”
“Don’t let me go,” Azusa moaned. “Give it to me more, more.” Half her intent was to arouse him all the more. Half came from the core of her being. “Unleash me and I will heel. I’d never forsake someone like you. The kids around here are rank amateurs by comparison. Tie me tighter. Fuck me harder. Take away my freedom. Heap humiliation on me. It feels so much better that way.”
“I’ll lick you all over.”
“Do it, dammit.”
Hyota buried his ugly face between her peach-white cheeks.
At that moment, from somewhere else, a groan shook the air. Azusa glanced backwards. Hyota spun around and dashed off toward the back of the hallway. Azusa followed him. Hyota departed in such haste that he forgot all about her.
They came to a spacious area filled with wan light. Here Gento Roran had his sleeping chambers.
At some point, Hyota had picked up a flask. The sound grew louder. This wasn’t the voice wrenched out by ordinary pain. These were the torments of hell.
Gento was lying naked at the foot of a six-foot-high dirt mountain.
“Gento-sama!” Hyota cried out with heartrending sorrow. He wrapped his arms around Gento and rocked him back and forth. Gento didn’t awaken, his face still twisted in agony.
Hyota abandoned the effort, popped open the top off the flask and pressed the opening to his master’s mouth. A thin stream of liquid spilled from the corners of his lips. He clearly wasn’t swallowing, but Hyota persisted.
Seconds later, the stream had drained to a trickle. His Adam’s apple finally moved.
“You drank it,” Hyota said, the tension oozing out of his frame. “You should be okay, then.”
“W-what’s that?”
Recognizing Azusa’s voice above him, Hyota’s eyes flashed warily. He hadn’t noticed her approaching. “Holy water,” he said proudly. “It softens the pain.” He glanced up at Azusa. “You didn’t leave?”
“Eh, whatever. Didn’t have a reason to run. I’m not dead yet. And I have to admit, I’m curious about what you’re brewing up here. Besides—” Azusa licked her lips. “You get it, right?”
Hyota gave the rope-bound body of the voluptuous woman a long glance. Without comment, he returned his attention to Gento. This same gremlin of a man had dodged Setsura Aki’s devil wires two, three times.
Those perverse pleasures fading from her body, Azusa looked down with great interest at Gento’s pained countenance. Hyota’s holy water worked its wonders. The strain slowly left Gento’s face. His features softened. He twitched several times, then opened his eyes.
Hyota relaxed considerably. He reverently laid the young master against the slope of earth.
Gento’s lips moved. “That you, Hyota?”
“Yes.”
“I must have collapsed.”
“Yes.”
A moment of silence followed, a silence containing two sets of expectations.
“I dreamed a dream,” he blurted out, as if trapped somewhere within this beautiful jinn a strange clump of cells had voiced their will. Strangely human words.
“Two of them. Do you understand what manner of dreams were these?”
“I can well imagine.”
“How are you faring?”
Realizing that the question was directed at her, Azusa took a step back, cognizant of her improper appearance, her sense of propriety finally rising to the fore. She turned around, more a reflex. Though her buttocks were no less full and sensuous than her bound breasts.
Gento continued, “My father appeared in the first. He pointed at me and told me I had changed. I comprehended his meaning soon enough. I comprehend it now. I am not the man I once was.”
Hyota silently bowed his head, a sign of agreement or respect. “You took your rest in a fine house.”
“Exactly,” Gento said in a far cooler voice. Then he said, still lying down, “Hyota, let’s try working up a sweat.”
In reaction to what could be taken as an eerie order, Hyota bowed and backed away.
“Out of the way,” Gento said to Azusa, and this otherwise headstrong girl retreated at once, as if pushed to the side by cold unseeing fingers.
“This okay?”
“There is no need for you to concern yourself so,” Hyota answered in a muddled voice.
Not only his forehead, but the Inverness topcoat—of a sort once favored by Sherlock Holmes—shone with that dull wet glow. Azusa stared harder. She saw the glistening threads twine around his frame, gone in the blink of an eye.
An aura—fey and demonic—welled up between master and servant. For a moment, Azusa felt like she was observing combat among mortal enemies. She trembled.
“How do your skills fare?” asked Hyota.
“I have a ways to go,” said Gento, a cool-headed scientist evaluating the results of an experiment. “Compared to Setsura?”
“I cannot say.”
Gento’s eyes flashe
d. “Don’t play the fool with me.”
“I would say that the one is the mirror of the other.”
“In that case,” Gento said, a touch of humor in his voice, “everything depends on the degree of our abstention and dedication henceforth. He must be training himself vigorously in order to defeat you. While I watch and wait. Is that what it comes down to?”
“It is all as your father wished.”
“So there was value in hibernating for fifteen years after all.”
“There most likely was.”
“This calls for a celebration. Have you ascertained yet where Setsura lives?”
“I am still searching. However, a representative from the Shinjuku Restoration Society says they know his whereabouts.”
The organization Hyota referred to worked for the producers of the Assassin Games that Setsura and Gento had made such a mess of. The power and influence of Hyota and Gento reached even into their secretive group.
“And what did he have to say for himself?” Gento asked with genuine curiosity.
“They sent three men after him. No news yet. I had planned on telling you as soon as you awoke.”
That Hyota had not sallied forth was likely due to his thorough knowledge of Setsura’s true strengths.
“They think three dogs can defeat a tiger?” Gento spat out. “Fools. Unlikely that he’ll even be there. Can you employ the same means as this Restoration Society to find out where he is?”
“Probably.”
“Something to get to later. In my current state, there is no need to rush. This body does not understand the workings of a simultaneous attack. By the way, where is the doctor?”
“Right here.”
The answer came as if he’d been waiting there all along. With an understandable start, Gento glanced behind him. Hyota let out a little gasp. The doctor was standing in his white cape atop the mound of earth.
“We met in the infirmary of the Coliseum, but I do not believe we’ve been formally introduced. I am Mephisto.”
“Gento Roran,” Gento replied with a polite nod.
Gento was naked. A woman bound with ropes plus his dark and feral servant made for a most unusual reception party. But what had the good doctor been up to since Hyota brought him to this underground cavern?
Maohden Vol. 2 Page 10
