“I know. That miserable coward and traitor.”
“What? In order to destroy the object of his envy, the highest-minded man will become a quisling and a devil. He believes I’m attached to you. It’s tearing him apart with jealousy. If I don’t put a halt to it, he’ll even team up with Kikiou. How do you think you would fare against their combined forces, Setsura?”
“I wouldn’t tell you if I knew,” Setsura said. A stranger would see him grasping at straws. Anyone who knew him even a little bit would have to wonder whether he was bluffing or not.
Princess seemed to place herself with the former. With a belittling smile she said, “Fine. Then everything begins tonight.”
“You were apparently born with the sole purpose of messing with me. But once you’ve turned Kanan-san into a vampire and cast me into that sea of despair, then what?”
“Oh, hardly,” the Demon Princess said with a grave shake of her head. “Despair hardly begins to describe the true meaning of the word. If Takako becomes the woman she is meant to be, you will surely raise an even higher standard of revolt against me. And it will amount to nothing. I wish you to surrender to me of your own accord. I will accept nothing less.”
Setsura had nothing to say to that.
“That beautiful face clouded by suffering and sadness and anger, you will kneel before me and say: Princess, please make me one of your servants. That is the epitome of my ideal.” She glared at him. “What do you find so funny?”
Setsura couldn’t suppress the smile rising to his lips, nor could he keep his shoulders from shaking. “You really do have one twisted personality, lady.” He started to laugh. “Why not just kneel and say Amen! You’re still living in the Hsia Dynasty or the Shang Dynasty or whatever. Who’s going to kneel to you? Nobody in this world is that gullible. Take a trip outside and ask any office lady and see what happens. Man, you’re clueless.”
“I don’t know who these office ladies are, but that is what I came here for. Everyone in this world will subjugate themselves to me and do what I say. Just watch and see, Setsura. I’ll give you three nights.”
“Hey, whatever yanks your chain.”
“That goes without saying. You’d better get out of the way. The movers are coming.”
As she spoke, a troop of men stood outside the door. The Demon Princess disappeared somewhere else while the men with the pallid skin hoisted up Takako and the bed altogether and escorted Setsura from the manor house to a villa in a green meadow thirty minutes away by foot.
In contrast to the manor house, the villa was white, trim and elegant. The servants, dressed in blue-green uniforms, were assembled like a platoon of soldiers. Soon after being placed in a room decorated to a baroque excess, Takako woke up.
She looked at Setsura, her eyes uncolored by madness. She reached out her hand. Setsura took it. It was very cold. Vampire blood coursed through her veins. When the last touch of remaining warmth died away, so would her breathing.
“Your hand is warm,” she said. She had circles under her eyes like streaks of dust. The sunlight poured undimmed through the window. Setsura brushed his hand against her pale cheeks. “I was once like this too, with life flowing through me.”
She brought the hand to her mouth. Setsura tried to pull back, but couldn’t budge her grip. The back of his hand touched her lips. Setsura looked down impassively as she trailed her lips across his skin in a state more deeply enraptured than love. Then the lips pulled back.
The tips of her fangs dented the epidermis. In another breath, blood would surely pour from the torn flesh.
The moment of peril stretched out. Takako did nothing. Setsura softly slipped his hand from between her rigid fingers. The pain from the devil wire wrapped around her hand had caused her fingers to relax a few fractions of an inch.
“What a bother,” Setsura said, raking his fingers through his hair. “Yes, let’s consider what it means to be surrounded by enemies on all sides. Now and then that quack doctor hits the nail on the head.”
“Release me, Setsura-san,” said Takako, tears welling up in her gentle eyes.
“Sorry,” said Setsura, touching her pale cheek.
“It hurts. A lot. Why do you torture me? Everything hurts so bad.”
“You’re ill. Mephisto is going to cure you.”
“I hate that doctor. He looks at you with such strange eyes. Please, don’t let him touch me.”
“It’s okay,” Setsura said cheerfully. “You’re going to be all right.”
“A bunch of sex maniacs!” Takako’s voice and appearance abruptly shifted. She ground her teeth and struggled against the devil wires. “That pervert doctor and Yakou and even Princess—they’ve all got you in their crosshairs! Get over here where I can reach you!”
“I’m going to have to take—” a rain check, he started to say. He glanced up. The candles wavered. “An earthquake?”
The swaying died away. The room grew still. Setsura recalled that something similar had occurred once before—after splitting the Demon Princess vertically in two. He’d felt the earth move, lost consciousness, and had woken up in Shinjuku.
Though that had been more a warp in the air, Setsura’s senses told him that this earthquake shared very similar properties with it. This world was built on a more fragile foundation than previously imagined.
When the shaking stopped, Kikiou drew his brows in consternation. “Damn. I thought they were out of sight and in a safe place. I’m getting old.”
He got up from the chair and worked the two hands on the workbench back and forth. The joints purred and flexed smoothly. Several small shapes straddling the steel frame fell shrieking onto the table.
“Sorry, sorry. I forgot.” The old man—otherwise suffused with more pride even than Princess—apologized to the strangely small figures.
One was bearing a human-sized pair of pliers, another carried a screwdriver on its shoulders. The other hundred or so must have already returned to their roost in the toolbox.
Knowing that Kikiou’s damaged parts were repaired and installed by these little people might come as a simple surprise, or like the lone alchemist of old, prompt a smile at the sheer wastefulness of the effort.
“I should be able to carry on without any interference here, but it looks like the outside world is no less a magical realm than this one. The madness may arise once again. This driving need to rid ourselves of Setsura is allowing gaps to open in my defenses.”
Grumbling as if to reassure himself, the warlock cast a wary sideways glance. Nobody was there. “That you, Yakou?”
“Exactly,” came the quick reply.
“You come to kill me?”
“Exactly,” he repeated in a matter-of-fact voice. Yakou continued, “Or so I would like to claim. But Princess still thinks you’re worth keeping around. So let’s call this a bit of intimidation.”
“A bit of intimidation?” His lips twisted beneath his white beard in mirth and anger. “The young are indeed frightening. Something truly alarming appears before their eyes and they see and understand nothing. So, what are you here to intimidate me about?”
“Keep your hands off Setsura. He is mine to kill.”
“Then you should have taken care of matters when he first came to our world. How is that working out for you? Not only did he get the drop on you, but clipped your wings to boot. One wonders how you live with the shame.”
“That was too bad.” From the ceiling came the confident sound of flapping wings.
“Doctor Mephisto’s handiwork? The physician treats an enemy as he would a friend. At times like this, such ethics can be a bother. Does Princess know you are here?”
“Don’t worry. I am here of my own volition. Princess has not been whispering in my ear.”
“In that case, she wouldn’t be upset at whatever happens.”
Kikiou’s black hand reached for the edge of the desk. The tip of the pincers struck a particular part. White spheres jutted out from the ceiling and walls. A m
oment later a colorless, odorless power filled the room, a silent explosion of qi that would instantly kill anything it touched.
The black mass dropped from the ceiling. It definitely sported large wings. A black hole was gouged out of the floor where Kikiou had been standing a second before. He jumped clear of it just before the eruption of death.
Looking at the body on the floor, “Even a killer qi won’t kill a vampire. Should I stake him before he recuperates?”
Motors hummed as he approached the prone form. Raising a foot, he flipped the body over. He drew his white brows.
“Don’t move,” came a voice from above his head.
Kikiou froze. “A dummy?”
“See for yourself.”
As soon as the pincer touched Yakou’s body, it turned into a paper doll a few inches long. A thought occurred to Kikiou. “An origami ghost. Well, it’s always darkest beneath the lighthouse.”
“The old man knows everything there is to know about Chinese conjuration, but this time I used qi.” The force of which could scatter Kikiou’s body to the four winds.
“Go right ahead, but only after explaining how you avoided my killer qi.”
“Have you forgotten my lineage?”
“Ah, yes. Before London, you spent four thousand years in China. You would have learned how to defend against a killer qi.”
“Your qi is not pure, but contains a lot of manmade elements. That makes it all the easier to deflect.”
“And how about Setsura Aki’s devil wires?” Silence. Kikiou didn’t miss that moment of uncertainty. “The wires are threads of titanium. Even I can sever them. But that is not enough to kill him. The hand that wields them must be dealt with. And made all the worse by the ally he now has on his side—namely, Princess’s affection.”
More silence.
“I am but a mere sorcerer. Think of me as an artisan divorced from human sentiment. But an old man like me has no problem comprehending your state of mind right now. What do you think a trained mental health professional would say? The symptoms have all along pointed to a debilitating jealousy.”
In the face of the murderous emotions radiating from the ceiling, Kikiou shrugged, or would have if he had shoulders, but instead ducked his head a few inches into his torso.
“Good heavens. Princess is certainly in a cruel mood. Knowing your feelings and yet flirting with Setsura in front of your face. Oh, please. Don’t get mad at me. You should be directing all those energies at another target.”
“Setsura—Aki—” he said, his voice filled with dark shadows.
“Is that the name? If you can say it, you can say what needs to be done about it. Who is your enemy? Me? Obviously. But compared to him, we oppose each other out of honor and duty. When it comes to him, such true loathing can only come from a rival in love. What do you say? Shall we join forces?”
He asked the question with a purposeful jeer.
“Or you cannot? You cannot oppose Princess? In that case, you will never be anything but a servant for the rest of your life. And for you that means eternity.”
“I will not do anything counter to her wishes.”
“She has her whimsies and her moods,” Kikiou said with unexpected clarity. “She will not countenance being defied and yet she hates the toady. These are qualities not even I can abide. But an exception has now stepped forth. Hoh, a man my age feels the pangs of envy stirring within. Yakou, do you take her at her word?”
“Princess’s word?”
“To make him her servant.”
“So she should, if she so desires.”
Kikiou solemnly intoned, “The servant and the lover are not the same thing, Yakou. You are not loved. But Setsura—whom she regales and torments—he is. That is the way her mind works.”
“So this all comes down to Setsura.”
“It does indeed.” Kikiou nodded. “That is all I have to say. I have told you what I want. If you cannot accept it, then loose your qi on me. If you possess any pride as the Elder’s grandson, and pride at all as the second Elder, then bravely beat those wings, and then make your plans and resolve to execute them.”
The great warlock finished his proposal. A long silence followed. And then came the sound of a great bird circling down from the ceiling.
Chapter Three
Ten minutes after four in the afternoon, a human hippo entered the heavily air-conditioned suite. The occupants looked on in amazement.
“There a girl named Yuriko here?” the hippo wanted to know. “If so, send her out.”
The hippo—no, a fat lady with a bright red scarf around her cheeks—transfixed the “Trendy Miss” date club employees with her overpowering presence. Her eyes glided from the forty-somethings wearing too much makeup to the barely twenty-somethings and finally settled on a girl in the corner stuffing her mouth with shaved ice.
“You there. Come here.”
The rest of them did nothing to slow the steps of the lumbering cow but scattered to either side. Aside from her ample physical presence, she projected an earthy vibe about her that was something quite apart from the norm even here.
Yuriko stood there holding a plastic container and spoon. Tonbeau Nuvenberg grabbed her wrist with her mitt-like hand and dragged her toward the door.
“Just a sec, grandma.”
Stunned like all the rest by this lightning raid, the man handling the phones came to his senses and positioned himself in front of them.
“What?”
“You just can’t burst in here and march right back out again. Who are you? What’s your business with this girl?”
“I’m her guidance counselor.”
“You?” The man gave her a large frame a long look.
“You got a problem with that?”
“No problem at all. I got a problem with people acting funny. Where do you think you are? Nobody’s gonna cut you a break in this city just because you’re a woman.”
The man’s shrill voice took on a threatening tone. On closer look, he sported false eyelashes and rouge-covered cheeks.
“Out of the way, you freaking tranny!” Tonbeau thundered.
“I warned you!” he said, settling into a fighting stance. He probably worked out at a boxing gym. He grunted and threw a right jab into the center of Tonbeau’s chest. Then gaped as his fist sunk in between her breasts, like sinking into wet cement.
Tonbeau shook her upper body. Her breasts let go, sending him sailing head-first into the wall.
When the shaking stopped and the room settled down, Yuriko and the fat lady were gone.
Down in the front lobby, Yuriko finally found her voice. “What do you want with me?” She could see no good coming of following this fatso anywhere. Her own powers of premonition were kicking in.
“You swiped a package in Takada no Baba.”
“That’s news to me.”
That answer was followed by a tap to her abdomen. Excruciating pain shot through her nerves. Her muscles cramped. She couldn’t breathe. Her vision dimmed.
“Another one of those could kill you. You want to go to the same place as that vagrant?”
Yuriko spilled the beans. The package was in the apartment near Okubo Station she shared with her boyfriend. It was a five minute walk from the date club suite.
Tonbeau hauled the girl along to make sure. The boyfriend wasn’t home. Neither was the package.
“What happened to it?”
Pinned down like a butterfly to a board with a look that could belong to no ordinary fat lady, Yuriko gasped, “San-chan took it. Probably because I said it must be worth something. He knows someone.”
“What kind of someone?”
“An information broker. Not a big mover and shaker, but someone who knows everybody. At a time like this, that’s probably who he’d try to hook up with.”
“Think back. Try and pull any cheap tricks and—” Tonbeau thumped her on the sternum.
“I don’t know!” Yuriko wailed. But she did know her boyfriend, S
anji Hisakane, would be getting home around seven that night.
The sun was setting when the door opened. Blurry eyes focused on Yuriko, sitting in the middle of the six-tatami mat room.
“San-chan,” Yuriko said in a tearful voice.
“What?”
“Where’s the package?”
“Oh, that,” Sanji said in even tones. “I sold it. For good money. Look—”
Yuriko stared in blank amazement at the bundle of a hundred ten-thousand yen bills he tossed at her feet. That wooden box had transformed into a million yen.
“Wow, San-chan. Like, wow.”
“It’s all yours.”
“What?”
Yuriko raised her head to find her lover’s face right in front of her nose. “It’s all yours. There’s something else I want from you.”
“From me?”
“Your blood.” The fat silhouette emerged from the kitchen nook. Sanji bared his fangs, retreating. She jabbed a finger in his face. “You got turned into a vampire,” Tonbeau said, her words stabbing like a knife.
Compared to the weeping fit when her big sister got killed, here was the cool courage of a completely different person.
“Maybe it happened along the way here, but answer my question and I will send you on to that other world.”
Sanji growled like a wild beast. Fangs peeked out from the corners of his upturned lips.
“Answer me,” Tonbeau ordered him.
Sanji charged at her. No matter how powerful the witch, she was unlikely to conquer a vampire in a competition of raw strength. But in some strange test of the laws of physics, they slammed together like two top-ranked sumo wrestlers colliding head-on.
Muscle and fat banged against each other with a resounding thud. All well and good, but what happened next was even harder to imagine. Sanji tried to straighten himself and pull away. The witch hugged her arms around his back and pressed her lips against his, like a sucker fish against the vampire’s mouth, fangs and all.
A scream gurgled from between the two pairs of lips. It belonged to Sanji. Yuriko watched aghast. Her lover might as well be locked in the embrace of a sex-starved cougar who’d found herself the perfect young gigolo.
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