Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 3 Omnibus Edition

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “Huh.”

  Setsura looked down at his feet, but could barely see them. The water had reached his neck.

  “As for the second, you would not understand even if I explained it. I questioned Yakou after he became Princess’s servant, and he and his underlings seemed to have noticed. When you join him in hell—which will be soon enough—feel free to ask him.”

  “How did she surmount those skills of his?”

  “Only Princess knows. But I have heard that the leaves of the moon lily brewed into a tea will weaken the strongest magic.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” Setsura said, spitting out a mouthful of water.

  He kicked off the floor. The water flowed around him all the more vigorously.

  Part Eleven: Handsome Madness

  Chapter One

  Hitomi decided that as soon as it was morning, she would dress Takako and take her to the hospital. This was not the safest time of day in Shinjuku. But Mephisto Hospital was open 24/7.

  The kiss of a vampire didn’t require much in the way of a diagnosis. Though the Toyama clans didn’t drink the blood of outsiders, now and then exceptions popped up. Usually a vampire interloper.

  Even so, there was something off about Takako’s appearance.

  Her pale, wax-like skin. Lips that had lost all color. Her emaciated frame. Empty eyes that from time to time radiated a hair-raising light. The standard reaction of a victim. Hitomi had worked in the muckraking trade long enough that none of this was all that unusual.

  Except that vibe in her gut saying Takako was altogether different.

  Right now she was sitting next to Ryuuki in the completely dark back room. Ryuuki was lying down. She was sitting with her legs under her in the “traditional” fashion. She didn’t move. She didn’t once look at the man who had brought her here. She just sat there.

  Since bringing Ryuuki back here, bathed in the light of dawn, only once had she cracked open the sliding door and peeked inside. And it was enough to curdle her blood. That was how creepy a human being could be doing nothing but only sitting there.

  This was no mere victim. Hitomi didn’t think she belonged with Ryuuki. The relationship between them was not the ordinary one between master and servant. She was afraid this was more a case of the tail wagging the dog.

  Hitomi firmly secured the door and left with Takako. She was wearing a tracksuit and a head scarf. The ashen young girl remained as silent as the morning sky.

  Hitomi had planned to hail a taxi on Okubo Avenue. But a bus showed up when she got there. The largely autonomous Shinjuku was not part of the Tokyo metropolitan bus system. This was one of the small, unscheduled ward buses that ran off the main lines. They usually ran on a set course, but could be convinced to make detours.

  A raised hand brought it to a halt. This one ran the number 37 route. From Okubo Avenue across Meiji Avenue to Shinjuku Avenue and the station. If she got off at Yasukuni Avenue, it’d be a five-minute walk to Mephisto Hospital.

  There were seven people in the bus. The driver waited until they had taken their seats. Hitomi was impressed by his consideration, a feeling that stayed with her even after she fell asleep.

  The bus didn’t take the usual left at the Meiji Avenue intersection, but went right and continued on to West Waseda and Takada no Baba.

  A short time later, a taxi paused at the same intersection and turned right onto Okubo Avenue. The caw of a raven came from far away.

  On a back street in the Wakamatsu District, an old woman in a wheelchair got out of the taxi. Fatigue played like shadows across her deeply-wrinkled foreign face. But her eyes held an uncanny clarity. Not cold. Not possessed. Eyes that saw a different world than the one governed by natural law.

  Those eyes gazed up at the sky. With a loud flapping of wings, a raven flew down and alighted on her shoulder.

  “The automobile cannot continue further,” said Galeen Nuvenberg, the Czech Republic’s great wizardess. “Onward.”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” said the big raven with an unusual meekness. It took a firm hold on the back of the wheelchair headrest. The sweep of its wings stirred the dust in the alley. The wheelchair slowly moved forward.

  “She’s pretty carefree about making such demands,” the raven said under its breath.

  “How is that?”

  “Why do I have to be the engine that makes this crate move? I may be made out of ectoplasm, but ectoplasm gets tired too.”

  “You haven’t been flying as much as you should lately. I hazard that was a good six pounds that landed on my shoulder. The smart and handsome bird of my making was half that.”

  “Oh.”

  “Any further complaints?”

  “No.”

  During this exchange, the beating of its wings didn’t abate in the slightest. The old lady had the crow cowed but good. At the same time, Nuvenberg wasn’t doing it for spite or out of laziness. Her hands clasped together, her eyes closed, from her thin lips issued the words of a spell.

  That kind of preparatory work was required when visiting the person they were going to see next.

  What looked like a passing tour group gave the duo long, curious looks.

  The two eventually arrived at a clearing among the demolished buildings and a house shaped like a mushroom.

  “That?” the old woman asked.

  “Yes.”

  “The ward mayor and I may have awakened to the reality of the situation with a deadly slowness. Fortunately for us, he is still inside.”

  “What about the girl?”

  “She is not. Only one demon vibe.”

  “So—shall we do it?”

  “For what reason do you think we came here?”

  “Yeah.”

  Nuvenberg glanced at the bird perched over her head. “We could sure use her at a time like this.”

  Having received the brunt force of two .45 rounds, the doll girl’s “corpse” had been taken to her house in Magic Town by the mayor’s men. The raven followed Matthews and his team, and then Takako when she slipped away during the death match between Princess and General Bey. It observed the chance meeting between Takako and Ryuuki and tracked them here.

  Nonetheless, her frustrations were understandable. “Did you not have the good sense to split in two and follow General Bey or Princess as well? Ah, the sun could have risen in the west and your grandfather wouldn’t have bungled a job like that.”

  “No, indeed,” agreed the raven, scratching its head with its right wing. “But I wasn’t made to come apart like that. And when I do, I can’t fly very well.”

  “Then give up the ghost and recite your last will and testament to the rats and the worms.”

  “As you wish.” The bird bowed deeply. More than a mere master-servant relationship truly tied the two of them together.

  “However, the Demon Princess and Mephisto, General Bey and Ryuuki—do we want to make enemies of all of them, including Setsura Aki? That is one scary man.”

  A look of fondness crossed the old woman’s face, as if bringing to mind the face of the handsome senbei shop owner. And then was quickly replaced by her normal, serious mien. “The house of a stranger. We must mind our manners. Knock on the door. No, do as your grandfather would do. Rap on the window.”

  “Will do.”

  Invigorated by its master’s spirit, the big raven powerfully flapped its wings in a manner quite unlike it and flew over to the window of the mushroom house.

  Kajiwara was beside himself with anger. The casket of the Demon King, General Bey, had been spirited away from its underground bunker in a cloud of sleeping gas. It could be anywhere by now. The doll girl was a wreck. Not to mention the atomic bomb left behind as a going-away present.

  And to top things off, the antidote for the gas wasn’t fast-acting, so they didn’t wake up until morning.

  There was only one group who would go to such lengths. While shouting to get the Ministry of Defense on the line, his strongest ally, Galeen Nuvenberg, went missing. Accordin
g to a nurse at the police headquarters infirmary, sometime around two o’clock there came a tapping at the window. She opened the window and a big crow came flying in.

  And when she shooed it out again, it said, “I am a servant of this woman. Go on, get lost and don’t come back. Nevermore.”

  Hearing the fierceness in its voice and sensing the echoes of filial affection toward the old woman, the nurse left the room. She was called to an emergency case, and when she returned, the crow and the woman were gone.

  “I am surrounded by incompetents. Can’t anybody come through for me when the chips are down?” he railed to the one man left in the room.

  He raced back to his Ward Government Offices, got the Defense Ministry on a secure line, and demanded to speak with the Director of Special Forces. He was told in turn that no such person existed.

  “Then get me the Minister,” he persisted.

  Perhaps because of the weight that the mayor of Demon City could throw around, this request was granted. But the Minister only laughed at the mention of a Special Forces contingent operating in Shinjuku.

  This was standard operating procedure when it came to any kind of covert action, but Kajiwara hit the roof. Slamming down the receiver, his mind went into overdrive.

  The goal of Special Forces Operational Detachment F was supposedly the extermination of vampires in Shinjuku. Then why run off with General Bey’s casket? Probably to lure out the other Chinese vampires. But the mayor’s intuition said other motives might be at play. For example, the Ministry of Defense wanting a closer look at General Bey’s legendary power.

  As a dyed-in-the-wool pol, Kajiwara knew where the bodies were buried in every agency and ministry. Starting with the Welfare Ministry’s informal contacts with the Toyama residents, back-channel efforts—public and private—to reduce the threat posed by Shinjuku were almost too numerous to mention.

  General Bey’s “talents” far exceeded those of the Toyama bunch. He would hardly be surprised if every division commander in Japan’s SDF wanted a piece of him.

  Kajiwara made a note on a memo pad. He called his secretary and told her to have the computer analysts draw up predictions for all related phenomena.

  Once the data was entered, the results were ready in three minutes. Kajiwara’s eyes lingered over the thick printout. “So it’s Toyama, eh?” he said with a sigh.

  That morning, a large number of delivery trucks arrived from outside the ward.

  However autonomous it might fancy itself, Shinjuku was still a part of the greater Tokyo metropolitan area. A few notable exceptions aside, this was a free trade zone, with few restrictions on what went in or came out. And this morning saw an excess of at least fifty four-ton trucks.

  Only one deviated from the normal route. The vehicle from Tono Transport was not in the best condition, and its engine seemed on the verge of shaking itself apart. But it did its job well enough to carry its freight.

  After passing through the Waseda Gate, it continued down Meiji Avenue to the Toyama housing project. The men who got out were dressed in camouflage military fatigues. Nobody would be surprised to see Self-Defense Force personnel in this city. Or a media crew carrying video equipment and a laser transmitter following behind them.

  The first one to take note was the guard manning the high voltage barricade. Leveling his shotgun, he called out, “What do you want?”

  “Film crew,” said the middle-aged man wearing a baseball cap. He presented a business card. “Special effects team from Keiho Studios. We’ve been in contact with your director. You should have gotten the memo.”

  “When was that?” the guard asked, his eyes narrowing.

  “Two days ago.”

  The guard lowered his shotgun level with the man’s chest. “The director’s been out of the office for a while now. You’re gonna have to come up with a better lie than that to get in here.”

  The guard’s finger was on the trigger, but the middle-aged man was faster. He pressed a switch in his right hand. The business card exploded like a large firecracker, blowing a sizable hole in the guard’s chest and throwing him backwards onto the ground. The rest of the guards were quickly dispatched with flechette rounds from air guns no louder than loud claps.

  “How’s it going?” the middle-aged man asked.

  The man perched on the barricade threw the cut-off switch and held up his thumb. “All clear.”

  A laser knife burned away the lock. The men in camouflage stole into the concrete plaza. The film crew began assembling a crane platform.

  “Camera ready.”

  “Are the lights okay?”

  “Where’re the tapes? I need the tapes.”

  The lively voices of the film crew faded away behind them. The SDF soldiers crept toward the quarters where citizens of this city slept. Twenty of the best that Special Forces had to offer. Death on two feet.

  “Four squads, five men each,” the commander ordered. “Sweep each floor and keep me apprised of the situation. Stay in constant contact.”

  “A squad, roger.”

  “B squad, roger.”

  “C squad, roger.”

  “D squad, roger.”

  The commander pointed at the nearest building and was about to start off at a slow jog when he felt a dull rumble through the soles of his combat boots. A second later, a roaring sound. The soldiers turned just in time to see the film equipment and crew fly into the air.

  “Hands in the air.”

  The order came from a second-story window of the building they were about to enter. A man with a broad forehead. A former Shinjuku highway patrolman by the name of Tateoka. He was wearing a riot helmet and was holding a mike. From the windows to his left and right jutted the barrels of automatic rifles with 35 mm grenade launchers.

  One soldier made a run for the cover of an oak tree off to the right. The report of a submachine gun was followed by puffs of dirt drawing a ring around him. The man toppled over.

  “When it comes to hitting the target, you SDF guys got nothing on us,” Tateoka boasted in a throaty voice.

  The Special Forces soldiers froze in place. They were seconds away from being painted across the walls. They’d had the drop on them from the start.

  “Got you covered from that building over there too. More than enough RPGs to take you all out. Don’t take us for a bunch of lazy-ass beat cops like you’re used to. You didn’t give the guards there any warning either.”

  “I got no problem with surrendering,” said the commander. “But tell me one thing.”

  “About the people who live here?”

  “Yeah. Where’d you move them?”

  “You can’t communicate with the outside, you know. We’re jamming all of your com frequencies.”

  “I figured. Not arguing with you on that point. So now that you got us, what do you intend to do with us?”

  “For starters, lodge a formal complaint with the Ministry of Defense,” Tateoka said in a threatening manner.

  That was the mayor’s idea. Say, in exchange for the prisoner swap, toss a little defense budget pork in their direction. And maybe a little help in rounding up the victims of vampire attacks.

  “They inside there?” the commander asked again. “I don’t know who clued you onto us. But moving two hundred caskets is no mean feat.”

  “Sure isn’t. But what do you say we arrest you and take this conversation someplace else? We’d like to hear what your business was with them in the first place.”

  Tateoka laughed to himself. A strange conversation, if he said so himself. The thing trapped didn’t know what he was doing there, and the trapper didn’t know why he’d set the snare. All he’d been told was to take a breather from tracking down vampire victims and head out here with his men.

  “Well, hearing that’s enough to take a load off my mind.” The commander grinned. “Now!”

  His men were ready. White smoke billowed from beneath their feet. A smokescreen. The chemicals catalyzed in the air and quickly o
bscured them. From within the cloud come the flash of firearms and the bark of guns. The bullets tore into the roof and walls.

  “Fire!” Tateoka shouted, in rather jovial tones.

  The automatic weapons and 35 mm grenades rained down from both sides, shredding the clumps of smoke into frenzied cotton balls. From here and there in the shuddering haze came screams and explosions, but fewer than Tateoka would have expected.

  From the windows on his right came tortured yells. Bodies toppled to the ground.

  “Bastard—”

  Tateoka rechanneled all his irritation toward the vampires at his foes in the white cloud. He pressed the trigger and held it down.

  As soon as the commander started his run for the building, he felt a red-hot poker stab from the left side of his neck down into his abdomen. Shit, he said to himself. No flesh wound, that.

  The current mission objective—exterminating the Toyama vampires—was completely fucked. The last laugh would be his, but it was hardly one to put in the win column. He could hear his colleagues falling all around him in the smoke. These Shinjuku cops deserved to be taken seriously.

  “That was one crazy ass demand this General Bey chap made. Well, guys, I’ll leave the rest up to you, wherever you are.”

  He reached into the right-hand pocket of his fatigues. The switch was there. He hadn’t wanted to use it, but—he pressed it with all his might.

  A white ball of light engulfed the west entrance of the Toyama housing project. In a flash, its circumference drew into its rainbow-colored maw the grounds of the housing project and the neighboring houses.

  In what would later be known as the “Toyama District Nuclear Incident,” the accusation by the ward government was that a Special Forces unit of the SDF had smuggled the active components of a tactical nuclear weapon into Shinjuku inside their bodies.

  The Ministry of Defense never formally denied the charge.