“Her mother asked me to find her. I will bring her back.”
“What if I slit her throat as we speak? No, no, you know I could never do anything like that.”
“No, you couldn’t.” Hard to say at this point whether that complacent smile was for real or was an act.
“What an awful man. The lengths you go to, to toy with me. Come to the manor house.”
“Where in the manor house?”
“The front door will suffice. Wait there.”
“I’d prefer to see proof of life first.”
A moment passed. “Fine. Here.”
Something like a red mist fell out of the sky without a sound and spread out at Setsura’s feet.
“The proof is in the pudding. Or the blood. Hers. There will be but a drop left before I drain her dry. A smidgen. You’d better hurry, Setsura. The rule of blood awaits.”
The haunting echoes of the voice reverberated around him and rose up toward the heavens and was drawn into the blue sky. Setsura looked down at the blood staining the green grass and earth red.
“She ain’t kidding.” A note of tension crept into his languid voice. “Well, I’m sure that put all our minds at ease. I’d better go.”
As he set off, he didn’t appear any different from before.
When he arrived at the foyer of the manor house, the door opened on its own accord and welcomed the young man in. Without scanning the great hallway inside, his eyes alit on the woman standing in the center like a blossoming white flower.
“Where is Takako-san?”
“Relax.”
“Not hardly likely,” Setsura sulked.
Hardly surprising, Princess smiled all the more broadly. “So what were you thinking on your way here?”
Setsura grew more sullen. “This and that.”
“About that girl?”
“I suppose.”
“Oh, stop lying. You weren’t thinking about anything. Your face will freeze like that.”
“Can we get down to business here?” Setsura said with unusual force. “I’m here to get Takako. Where is she?”
“You think I’ll tell you?”
“I have my ways, if that’s what it takes.”
Not the kind of thing he was ever wont to say, but he was clearly at the end of his rope.
“Isn’t it all so much water off a duck’s back to you?” Princess countered with an equally strange severity.
“What is?”
“Everything.” Princess fastened her eyes on the young man in black. “Your burden, perhaps, your ball and chain. Everything that binds you to this world. Money, power, fame, women—you couldn’t give a damn about all of that.”
“You’re not my shrink or my guidance counselor. I’m a businessman. Every day I have to balance the books and keep my eye on the markets.”
“You definitely are a senbei shop owner.”
The look in Setsura’s eyes said this woman had a habit of remembering useless facts at inconvenient times.
“But you’re the sort of man who could toss it all away at a moment’s notice and scamper off to greener fields. Dealing in such prosaic goods hardly suits you. You should spend your days lying on the grass watching the clouds go by.”
“You’re not the person I would turn to for life planning.” Though there wasn’t that sharp an edge to the criticism, suggested she was not that far off the mark. “Whether I watch the clouds go by or bake senbei, it’s got nothing to do with you. Relieved of these burdens, then what?”
“Look at the world. Go when and where you wish without a by-your-leave to anybody.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
The unaffected answer prompted a wry smile from Princess. “You like this wretched city so much?”
“What are you asking a question like that for?” Setsura said. An understandable response.
Princess laughed airily. “No reason. Let’s go see Takako.”
Feigning an utter lack of interest in him, she proceeded toward the inner door and then down a gaudily baroque hallway.
Setsura said, “Hey, don’t you think there’s something strange about this world?”
“You noticed?”
“Yeah.”
“Kikiou worked his fingers to the bone making it, but the facade is wearing thin. If you were wondering what would happen if you threw this world down the connecting link without breaking it, well, now you know. You end up with this.”
“They all went to meet their maker, huh? What are you going to do about it.”
“Kikiou is a very busy man,” Princess said, obviously delighted. “It won’t be much longer until that man puts his greatest plans into motion. How long do you think it will take until Shinjuku becomes fit for only insects?
“You don’t know?”
“I couldn’t care less. Any city inundated by the likes of them I don’t care to catch a whiff of.”
Setsura didn’t concern himself with how Princess felt about her own victims, but this surprised him.
“That old geezer plans on extending the reach of Shinjuku’s vampires to the outside world? No matter how many fellow co-conspirators you might make for yourselves, the people out there aren’t so stupid. They’ll take steps soon enough. Count on vampire eradication becoming an international effort. And every night when they going hunting for prey that isn’t there en masse? Who’s going to play the Pied Piper? You’ve got a pretty chancy situation on your hands here. Does Kikiou know what’s really in your heart?”
“I couldn’t care less about that either.”
“So them’s the breaks, eh? And yet despite not caring, you’ve done all that to Shinjuku.”
“That’s what not giving a damn means.”
“There is that too.”
Princess threw back her head and laughed, showing her white throat.
“What’s so funny?”
“How could I not laugh? Your personality lives up to everything I expected of you. It’s good having a man like you around. Come to think of it, Demon City might be worth keeping around as well.”
“You know—” Setsura stopped and glared at her.
“What?” said Princess, turning her smiling face to him, like a big sister teasing an ornery little brother.
“If you really don’t give a damn, then how about you just up and leave? You coming here is all water under the bridge, but nobody’s going to hold it against you if you leave, so what’s stopping you?”
“I just may do that.”
The Demon Princess gave Setsura a strange look. Setsura said nothing. A frightening glow filled her eyes. “Come along. See the completely changed woman and tear your heart out.”
For the next several minutes, it was as if a demonic miasma had assumed female form, strolling down the hallway.
Setsura found himself in front of a familiar black door. Princess’s bedroom. She went in first. Takako was lying on the same luxurious bed as before.
“Let me ask you this—the real thing?
“See for yourself,” Princess scoffed.
Setsura brushed past her and approached the bed. Based on appearances, this was definitely Takako. The skin revealed by the thin blue nightgown was bluer than blue, almost electric white. He felt for her pulse. It was there, faintly. She had not become a vampire in toto.
He raised her up in his arms. She was as soft as before, and as cold as ice.
“Taking her with you? That’s not why I brought you here.”
Princess raised her right hand in a suggestive manner. A pale arm wrapped around Setsura’s neck like a snake. The sensation couldn’t help but arouse from this usually laidback man a startled response.
“Aki-san.”
Her voice and breath caressed his face. Her eyes glowed red. Her breath smelled of the fresh earth of a grave. Setsura reflexively tried to free himself. Takako’s thin arms proved as immovable as rebar.
“Aki-san. No, Setsura-san. What did you come here for? Did you come here to save me?”
“I came here to save you,” Setsura quietly answered, neither flustered nor afraid.
“Thank you. But there is nowhere else I wish to go. I’m so tired and cold. Warm me.”
“Well, here I am,” Setsura said. His next words were the last thing anyone would have expected. “Go right ahead.”
He held her in an embrace, as if to nuzzle her cheek.
“No!”
Princess’s cry rang out like a silver bell. Takako pulled back from Setsura, or rather, was torn from his side. Takako struggled, but Princess easily held her at bay with a single hand and stared in the face of her own victim. She had not exhibited such loathing even when the Elder scalded her face.
“No. You shall not take Setsura’s blood. That is—” She interrupted herself with a fierce look of anguish. “Setsura! Why would you allow her to—?”
“Why not?”
“You must flee from her. She must pursue you. You must not bind her hand and foot with your wires and take her out of here. No, you cannot. You must run hither and yon in your attempts to escape while she chases you, while I quench my thirst with her blood. If you do not wish her to become my servant, then kneel and plead. Or beg that I take your blood instead. But instead you bare your throat to her? What are you thinking? No matter. The fun I had in mind is all for naught now. Let us cut to the chase, Setsura.”
The Demon Princess hadn’t finished speaking before a red line bisected her face from the top of her head to her chin. She smiled. As if intimidated by the expression itself, the line disappeared.
She pressed her coral-red lips to the blue veins running down Takako’s exposed neck. Takako arched her head back. An enraptured glow suffused her countenance. An ecstatic gasp escaped her lips.
There was nothing Setsura could do, and Princess knew it as she removed her lips from Takako’s throat. Two threads of blood connected the corners of her mouth with Takako’s skin. Her crimson lips all the redder, the blood dripping from her fangs painted brilliant flowers on her white robe.
Standing there holding Takako’s enervated body in her arms, they created a living sculpture as sublime as it was savage, the Demon Princess in all her glory.
The heroes of old who marched off to pillage and slaughter would have frozen in their tracks at such a sight, struck not by the horror but sheer beauty.
Even the genie in black stood there transfixed, like an artist intoxicated by a glimpse of heaven.
“Just once more,” Princess breathed. Her eyes sparkled. “Take her blood once more and she becomes mine. When that happens, there is nothing you and your friends can do to save her. Does that sit well with you, Setsura? Can you stand there and wait for me to kiss her neck again? Or will you bow and beg? The hour of decision will be delayed no more.”
Princess’s words hummed with a song of victory. Setsura’s answer could speak of nothing but defeat. She focused her blood-red eyes upon his resplendent face, not allowing a speck of his suffering to escape her attention.
Setsura said in a casual and unaffected manner, with not even the twitch of an eyebrow, “I don’t think so.”
“What?”
“Ask you for a favor? Not a chance. And drinking Takako’s blood? That’s out, too.”
“Idiot,” Princess spat out. “What are you prattling on about? Are you aware of the position you are in?”
“Yeah. And I’ve got an offer for you.”
“One you think I would accept?”
“Sure.”
He nodded with complete confidence. The murderous intent in her eyes wavered. There was a human being on this planet that could render her speechless, if only for a moment.
“Release Takako. And in exchange—”
“You’re going to say you’ll offer me your blood instead?”
Setsura didn’t answer for a minute. Then he fixed Princess in his gaze and said, “Bingo.”
Now Princess held her tongue. And then an indescribable expression rose to her face of inhuman beauty. “What schemes do you have up your sleeve?” purred her bloody lips. “No, it doesn’t matter. The time has come when you will voluntarily cast yourself into my embrace. Any final words, Setsura?”
“Nothing springs to mind,” Setsura said.
His blunt impassive answer made up Princess’s mind. Takako crumpled to the ground like a melting waxwork. Princess moved to the bed. She licked the blood from around her mouth and said, “Come to me, Setsura.”
Her white arms reached out to his shadowed visage.
Part Sixteen: Winds of Destruction
Chapter One
Three days had passed since Setsura had been sucked inside Tonbeau’s body. In that short span of time, several significant events were unfolding in the world outside Shinjuku.
Fifty terrorists planning an attack on a solar energy research facility in Europe set out from the Middle East.
A nuclear reactor under construction in Mozambique melted down, exposing a thousand people to deadly amounts of radiation.
The world’s first semi-permanent deep-sea oceanic research center was established over a mile down the Marianas Trench off the Philippine Islands, but disagreements over leadership issues fueled an ongoing secret feud between Japan, France and the United States.
Unexpected wildfires scorched twenty-five thousand acres of old-growth forest in Quebec province in Canada and had not yet been extinguished. The cause was traced to a malfunctioning ranging laser on a British reconnaissance satellite. The Canadian government claimed it was deliberate, in retaliation for the denial of fishing rights off the coast of Newfoundland. The dispute was ongoing.
In Tokyo, a thief stole into the official residence of the prime minister, released canisters of laughing gas, and with the personnel debilitated by the chemically-induced mirth, left behind a letter that only said, “Borrowed it.”
What had been borrowed left the prime minister and the cabinet of the ruling party trembling with fear. The SDF explosives recovery team was immediately mobilized.
And meanwhile, in Shinjuku—
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard anything back?” asked Tonbeau Nuvenberg, during her daily visit to the hospital.
From a corner of the gloomy Resurrection Room came the answer, “Unfortunately, no,” said the Doctor, his strangely beautiful voice more haunted than usual.
“The mayor had me in for a chat today. He says hello. After this incident is tidied up, he’s going to recommend that I be granted official certification as a witch. Hey, consider the possibilities! Open chain of Czech-style divination shops and cash in on all those idiot tourists!”
The fat lady did a little dance.
“How is General Ryuuki faring?” Mephisto asked.
Rare for him to inquire about somebody not in his care. Ryuuki was his vampiric sire, something Tonbeau was still in the dark about, though she probably wouldn’t care deeply one way or another if she knew. Finding out that his blood had been taken by a vampire had panicked her for about five minutes.
She was highly—perhaps horrifyingly—adaptable. It was doubtful at this point if she had any idea what “tidying up” this “incident” would actually involve.
“Aw, gentle as a little puppy. The doll girl has taken a liking to him. She waits on him hand and foot.”
“In that case, it would appear that Princess has not been in contact with him.”
“No surprise there, what with the way she’s been jonesing after Setsura.”
“That woman is the epitome of whimsy. So that might not necessarily be the case.”
“Naw,” Tonbeau said with great confidence. “He’s out of the frying pan and into the fire. She’s also the epitome of a little lust bunny. Things must be getting very sticky for Setsura about now.”
Usually a woman with an apparently poor grasp for the meaning and effect of her words, she interrupted herself at that poin
t. “Man, it’s cold in here,” she said, hugging her shoulders.
“You’d best get on home and look after Ryuuki like a hawk,” softly advised the voice in the darkness. “He cannot refuse a command from Princess. When that happens, the doll girl could not handle him on her own.”
“True, true. I’d better be on my way.”
As if she’d come here only to boast of her good fortunes, the witch turned herself around, like a dump trunk in a narrow alley. Keeping Princess’s retainers on a tight leash would go a long way to “tidying up” this incident.
She stopped and look back. “By the way, what are you up to, Mephisto? The receptionist tells me she hasn’t seen hide nor hair of you for the past three days. How’s that vampire transformation going for you?”
“I am fashioning a certain something.”
Tonbeau felt the hairs inexplicably stand up on the back of her neck. “What?”
“You will see soon enough.”
“Yeah, but I’d rather find out now,” Tonbeau said, turning all the way around.
“Now is not the right time to make any announcements.”
“Not the right answer.” The witch rolled up her sleeves, exposing her hamhock-sized arms, the product of washing and cleaning and assorted heavy lifting. “No lover of mine can remain silent on such a subject. Out with it. Or I’ll start making a nuisance of myself around here.”
“Who is whose lover here?”
“You are.”
Tonbeau answered in a tone of voice that suggested all was according to the will of God. She jabbed her hands through the blue darkness. An invisible miasma spilled from her crooked fingers tracing a whirlpool in the air.
The opposing reaction was—silence. “Hah!” Tonbeau waved her hands.
The flash of lightning cast a purple glow across the azure gloom. The bright, jagged bolts coursed again and again through the blue arch, acquainting the darkness with the unknown light.
“All right, then. I will tell you.”
The fat lady said with a complacent smile, “See? There’s no need to resort to violence as long as we all understand each other.”
“Come this way.”
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