Maohden Vol. 1

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  Chapter Three

  The miasma parted in front of him. Somebody was coming down the path. Bathed in the white moonlight, Setsura calmly waited for the enemy to arrive.

  A pale face rose up in the mists a dozen feet away from him, about the same height as his own.

  The word “cherubic” sprang to mind, meaning angels mingling among humans disguised as children. Amakusa Shiro, the teenaged samurai who led the Christian rebellion at Shimabara in 1638, was often described in similar terms, a person possessed of a disposition, intelligence and appearance that, at a glance, were obviously not of this world.

  The countenance in front of his eyes had all of those qualities. Though whatever angels sent him down from heaven were surely in league with the devil.

  Setsura and Gento Roran. The world knew nothing of the menace lurking in any showdown between these two. Fifteen years condensed into a single moment as these two beautiful genies came face to face.

  “Sorry if it sounds trite, but long time, no see.” Gento gazed around him, deeply impressed. “Shinjuku Gardens has certainly changed.”

  “I met Hyota,” Setsura said, as if talking about time gone by with an old friend. “He’s getting on there.”

  “He says he couldn’t get the upper hand. The same as fifteen years ago.”

  “Aw, you’re making me blush.” Setsura scratched his head.

  Sasaki’s severed limbs and head lay in a sea of blood at their feet. The odor of his ruptured entrails wafted up.

  This was a conversation between two genies. “By the way, Setsura,” Gento said, stepping forward. The moonlight revealed him to be about the same height as Setsura. He was also wearing a black slicker. “Dig up any leads about the seal?”

  “Nope.” Setsura shook his head, sending the kaleidoscopic pollen flitting through the moonlight like the scales of a fish. “Not a clue. But I haven’t looked. My father only told me to keep you and yours from laying your hands on it. That raises a good question—how to guard something I’ve never seen. He must not have known either. What about you? Hyota seems to think it was in a good place.”

  “I don’t know what he’s been telling you, but it looks like you are no better informed than I am.”

  “My father said with his parting words that you guys buried it somewhere.”

  “Come to think about it, it is odd. Somewhere out there for the taking, and you determined to protect it. But what is it? And where? And why do the two of us remain in the dark?”

  “One more thing to add to your puzzle box,” Setsura said, raising a finger. “What happens when the seal is opened?”

  “Quite right,” Gento said with a faint smile.

  Stranger still, these two were prepared to launch into yet another death match over something without knowing what it was and what it was supposed to do.

  “Though my father said that the two of us being roused to action would affect the seal in some way. We should be seeing its omens and portents already.”

  “You mean, giants clawing their way out of the earth, words written in blood across the sky, that sort of thing? Or maybe one day all the dogs bark an octave lower.”

  “Well, that would be something to keep our eyes and ears out for,” Gento said quietly. He shifted his stance. A croak arose from his feet as he stepped on the big frog-like creature. The wriggling webbed feet stuck out from beneath black soles.

  “Gross,” said Setsura.

  “Listen,” Gento said with a scowl, “No matter what happens, is there any reason for us to be enemies? What good comes from the one of us shedding the blood of the other?”

  “I’d say that was a self-evident truth. I’ve got a senbei shop to run. It’s grossing thirty million a year. Makes me wonder about continuing to moonlight as a P.I. Opening branches outside Shinjuku would be a lot more profitable. This is just a little side business I indulge in when I’ve got a few hours to kill.”

  “In other words,” Gento said with a wry smile, “I’ve upset the applecart on your boring and predictable life. There’s one way to remedy that. Join forces. We won’t know what’s in that seal until we find it. Depending on its uses, there may even be some profit in it too. For all we know, we could end up with the world on a string. What do you say? A mutual effort for the common good?”

  “You’ve been stewing over it for fifteen years and this is what you come up with?” Setsura said with a tired sigh, “How bathetic. We both know how it’s going to end. We’ll be back at each other’s throats as soon it shows up.” Having stated the obvious he concluded, “Let’s settle matters here and now, especially while your knowledge of this city remains lacking.”

  Gento smiled like an angel. A sharp, painful bleat followed by a mushy crushing sound welled up from the ground as he squashed the frog beneath his foot.

  Seeing something in that expression, Setsura Aki vaulted backwards, a black leaf carried by the wind. A myriad of spider’s threads sprang after him, while other glittering filaments knocked them out of the sky—Setsura’s unique titanium-steel devil wires.

  They cut through the wind and sliced through the darkness. A moment later the look on Setsura’s face wavered. Those devil wires had been seized by another swarm of threads. Devil wires that could sever high-carbon steel and equally unbreakable strands—

  “The sword cannot cut itself,” Gento said with an entrancing grin.

  The filaments floated through the air towards their target, ready to tear the body limb from limb, no different in their application and use as Setsura’s devil wires. And no less unbelievable, made of the same substance.

  “That last one was intended to do some serious damage. The tree of knowledge my father instilled within me is beginning to bear fruit. I will continue to move inexorably forward.”

  The sleeves of his coat fluttered. Another tangled braid of threads soared forth. Setsura was forced to retreat again. The ghostly blades missed him by a hair, snipping off the stalks of the foliage as he slipped deeper into the underbrush, sending petals raining to the ground.

  As long as his movements stirred the air, the demon strands would follow. His feet sank slightly into the ground. The black surface of the water stretched out behind him. The lake in the center of Shinjuku Gardens covered 615 square yards, now known as the Black Lagoon.

  The moon reflected like a silver plate off the surface of the lake. Soaring above the scene was a twisted and mutated zelkova tree.

  His path of retreat blocked, Setsura sent a bundle of three devil wires at Gento’s quietly encroaching demon strands, entwined them and turned them aside.

  “The next one splits you in two,” Gento said, approaching from the path. “I thought of giving you another chance, but it’d only be a waste of time. We’ve hardly gotten to know each other.”

  “The feeling is mutual,” Setsura agreed with a nod, seemingly unaware of the rippling surface of the lake at his back. “Well, then,” he said with a casual smile. “What do you say we wrap things up?”

  Gento started. The enemy had changed right before his eyes. The shape and form was the same, but the substance was different.

  Setsura waved his right hand. The demon strands entwining his devil wires all broke apart.

  “Hoh.”

  “You still have a ways to go, Gento.”

  The easy-going senbei shop owner was now nowhere to be found. Unfathomable depths lurked behind his smile. A ghostly aura cloaked the beautiful genie that was Setsura Aki, that caught even Gento off guard.

  “I let you go unscathed as well, in order to draw you here.”

  “You don’t say. Then perhaps we take this from the start once again.”

  “No, there is no going back.” He slowly shook his head. His words were suffused with what could only be called a demonic air of confidence. “I am standing in the field. You came along the path. Like I said, Gento, you have got a lot to learn.”

  “What the hell?”

  He reacted not out of fear, but because at that moment a
foul stench and a fierce ague made his body shake. He retched and writhed like a prawn.

  “The plants here have curious properties. Every species becomes poisonous to the others at night, so covering yourself with the pollen of all of them immunizes yourself against the effects. But you came along the path where the pollen doesn’t reach. Only the poison. Not everybody who lives in Shinjuku knows this, but anybody with a desire to learn can find out. It appears your father was not one of them.”

  Gento glowered at him. A gruesome loathing filled those bloodshot eyes. The cherub sent down by the fallen angels had transformed into a ghoulish child.

  Here was one monster caught in the trap and subjected to the torments of hell by another perhaps no less monstrous. The outpourings of the ghostly auras was caught up by the wind. The magical threads danced through the silver light. The contest was surely already over.

  A soft and certain voice rose up. “Another legend has it that a strange creature emerges from this lake on moonlit nights. Like this!”

  Timing this pronouncement to the approach and appearance of that presence behind him, Setsura jumped out of the way just as the dark shadow split the surface of the lake, grazed past him, leapt through the air and aimed at Gento.

  At first glance, this was an animal who’d swallowed so much water it’d blown up like a balloon. But the thing definitely was human, with two arms and two legs. The blue-black skin was swollen, split and peeling from years stuck at the bottom of the lake. Rivulets of dark water streamed off a plaid flannel shirt.

  With a shout of surprise, Gento raised his right hand. A myriad of invisible silver threads tore at the creature, wrapped around the body and sliced through the limbs. But the dripping water knit the pieces together and not a finger dropped off.

  “He’s known as Bog Kobo of Shinjuku Gardens. He came here to fish one day and drowned. The elements in the water transformed his corpse into this creature from the Black Lagoon. You can’t cut water, so no blade can hurt him. Where are you going to run now, Gento? How about you join forces with him and spend the next fifteen years literally treading water?”

  Setsura’s question shot like a spear from the weeds and bushes. Gento tried to jump backwards, but sank to his knees with a hacking cough. With a splish and a splash, the watery creature—its cells turned entirely to water—reared up over Gento as if to engulf him in a wave—

  A thunderous roar scorched the wind. Bog Kobo staggered. Flames licked at his head and chest. Napalm was the likely cause. The hellish oily orange fire flowed like burning fuel over water, turning those accursed cells into steam.

  Now Bog Kobo was the one writhing in torment.

  Setsura flung a devil wire in Gento’s direction as he bolted for the cover of the undergrowth. He felt no response in his hand. It slipped off him. In the split second he’d been distracted by the conflagration, a lubricating substance had poured from the treetops and covered Gento’s body.

  “That you, Hyota?” Setsura called up into the trees.

  “Aye.” The voice was that of the four-legged beast he’d encountered in Golden Gai.

  “Just like before, eh? You and your fat to the rescue. But the third time’s not always the charm. What next?”

  “Do whatever you like. But don’t think I’m coming down from this tree.”

  “I appreciate your prudence. But you’re free to go.”

  That presence in the treetops wavered.

  “Well? I may change my mind if you don’t leave right away. What I’m saying is, I’m impressed that you would stick by your master with death waiting in the wings. It’s the kind of thing I would do, though not so much me.”

  Setsura felt the heat on his face. Bog Kobo lumbered toward him. Enough of him had billowed off in steam that he was already a size smaller. Seeking the comrades he lived with at the bottom of the lake, he stretched his melting arms out in front of him.

  And abruptly leaned heavily to the left. Along a line from the left side of his sternum to his right hip, the upper half of his body slid off and fell into the water with a fiery splash. A long second later, the lower half followed and disappeared into the black water.

  Except that Setsura was the one who said that Bog Kobo couldn’t be sliced asunder. Without a backwards glance at the wave washing onto the beach, he gazed up at Hyota’s hiding place.

  “Gone, eh?” he said coolly. “Gento couldn’t cut him but I could. However I might have the upper hand now, that will not likely be the case the next time we meet. What an annoying foe he has become.”

  Part Six: Hunter and Hunted

  Chapter One

  The same voice as always from beyond the sliding screen doors. “C’mon, honey. It’s been a rough one. Look, I haven’t had a drop all day!”

  “No, Kanauchi-san. You always say that, and then when the time comes—I said no!”

  Followed by the sound of one mouth wetly covering the other, the creaking of the bed as two bodies fell upon it.

  Her lover of late was the sixtyish owner of a woodworking shop. He didn’t have a hair on his head. But from the neck down his body was covered by a thick coat of fur. Boasting of his animal spirits, he claimed that every wife and widow in the neighborhood was his for the taking.

  Rumors said he had access to drugs that were hard to come by even in Demon City.

  “Ah—” Her mother’s voice. And she was surely already buck naked, shedding her clothes the second she hit the bed.

  The screen doors were open. Not merely an inch, but revealing a thick gap of darkness. Perhaps the carpenter had left it like that, but equally likely her mother had. When it came to the persuasive power of money, she was one to let the ends justify the means.

  Mayumi stared through the darkness filling that gap. A history book about Shinjuku from the library sat open on the desk behind her, patiently waiting for her attention to once again be directed its way.

  Light spilled into the next room. She could begin to make out the bodies squirming like tangled leeches in the midst of the blackness. Everything else could easily be imagined.

  Her mother pinned to the bed, him lapping at her cheeks and nose and forehead, continuously licking her eyelids, because he knew that was her most sensitive spot. Her mother gasped uncontrollably and pleaded for him to stop—

  While she waited for him to press his lips against hers and force his tongue into her mouth. Her throat hummed as she drank him down.

  His caresses attuned to her age, his fingers and tongue exhibited an intimate knowledge of her senses as they played across her skin, drawing out the exquisite pleasures until her entire body was soaking with sweat and saliva.

  “Louder,” the carpenter ordered her.

  “No, Mayumi will hear,” the mother protested, her voice shaking with arousal and expectation.

  “What’s the problem? She’s your daughter. She’s gotta be getting it on with the customers too?”

  “That girl is different.”

  “What’s different? She’s your daughter. Another nympho just like you. A little bird told me the boss bought it ’cause he did it with her. Quite the girl, offing her old man like that.”

  “Quit it—ahhh—”

  The carpenter dove in between her legs while thrusting his taut member between her lips. He was a big man, the word was. Mayumi’s mother wrapped both hands around his impressive girth and sucked him in a trance.

  And so the old man and the cougar went down on each other in a burning phantasm of oral sex.

  The carpenter flipped her around and grabbed her thighs, his fat fingers sinking deep into the flesh, and buried his engorged cock inside her. She made a cooing sound, chirping like a bird. She raised her hips, the pleasure mounting as he plunged down deeper. An act of pure copulation, sex in its rawest form.

  She climaxed with a gasp and a long moan.

  The next sound was that of the sliding doors rattling open. Mayumi took in the strange scene—his entire frame covered with fur. Only his head was hairless.
On the carpenter’s face was clear evidence of the drugs.

  The shape-shifting drug accelerant was originally the byproduct of a metabolic amplifier developed by a pharmaceutical company outside the ward.

  With its emphasis on restoring the endurance and appetite of a wild animal, because of the primordial violence and brutal animal natures aroused by these compounds, they were banned outside Shinjuku. Just as they were celebrated in Demon City.

  Ignoring the risk of being unable to return to normal, a mixing and matching of drugs could result in a beast of unrivaled capabilities. A man merely stronger than average could take on the strength of a gorilla and the speed of a leopard and the man-eating appetites of a lion. A combination that was quickly preferred among bank robbers.

  As was to be expected, the authorities stepped up the severity of the countermeasures and prohibited the use of ninety-eight varieties that boosted power and resilience. But they continued to sell well on the black market, a hundred milligrams for only a hundred thousand yen, well within a middle-class budget.

  The carpenter may have taken the drugs for their original purposes, but the accumulation of side-effects eventually took on the drastic forms that Mayumi now witnessed.

  A ragged red strip hung limply from the carpenter’s mouth, one side white, the other side crimson. Meat. Her mother’s flesh, Mayumi thought. The man had sunk his teeth in a woman, hardly an unexpected act for a carnivorous beast.

  Mayumi heard the carpenter chewing and crunching, and couldn’t help thinking he sounded like a man chomping down on a juicy steak.

  “It’s delicious, Mayumi-chan,” he said with a satisfied boast. “Your mom tastes good. Just the right amount of fat. But Mayumi-chan, you look lip-smacking.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” Mayumi said, without a twitch of an eyebrow.