Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 5 Omnibus Edition

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

In the multicolored kaleidoscope, a golden point of light flared up. And disappeared. One after the other, sparkling dots of light were absorbed into her body.

  The Demon Princess raised her hand to her mouth and made a fist. Pursing her lips, she unfurled her fingers. Propelled by her breath, the peach blossoms wound around the trajectory of Yakou’s qi cannon and covered his face.

  Yakou reeled back with a moan, his eyelids white, his eyes sealed by the blinders of white petals.

  “If you cannot destroy me, you cannot remove that. So, Yakou, what do you think of your veil of darkness now?”

  “I think this.”

  Princess hadn’t expected that answer or his subsequent flight into the air. His face rendered expressionless, the winged figure rose elegantly above her and flitted off toward the far spring meadows.

  “Bastard.”

  In contrast to her execrations, with movements that did not disturb at all the flow of her dance up till then, Princess waved her hands. The sleeve of her gown sprang into the air like a flying fish and chased after him. Oblivious to the streamers hot on his heels, from the air Yakou thrust down his hands at a point below him.

  “I found what I’m looking for, Princess.”

  What had he seen with his unseeing eyes? What he had probably already sensed in the midst of the battle, using those senses that both he and Princess shared as creatures of the night.

  Black splinter fragments erupted from the undergrowth as the multicolored band wrapped around his body. He heard the bones of his body breaking. Plunging abruptly toward the ground, what he felt was not pain. An intoxicating sensation coursed through the marrow of his bones and raced through his veins.

  He could die like this. At that moment, the immortal young man longed for death.

  Princess’s voice echoed in his ears from far away. “Emperor Zhou and Emperor Jie died the same way, the pain piercing their flesh and bones turning into tears of ecstasy. You are the Elder’s grandson. The least I can do is indulge you no differently than I would a king. You should taste the bitter fruits of an undying body all over again.”

  Yakou was already writhing on the ground. The sunlight shone down on the trampled grass. He watched the demonic fairy floating though the spring dancing her eerie dance. The grass danced, the blood danced. Broken bones pierced his chest and viscera.

  “How fare your heart and lungs? Ah, stabbed through and through. But your bones won’t kill you. The closer you get to death, the greater the pleasure you will feel. The dance is over. What do you say I assist you in these throes of bliss?”

  She licked her lips, stopped dancing, and walked over to stand next to Yakou. With a lewd glance at his crotch, she knelt down. The mere touch of her hand drew from Yakou a low moan. The waves of unbearable pleasure pushed him inexorably toward climax. He did not right now possess the force of will to resist.

  Using her forefinger like a stiletto, she slit his slacks in two. As if released from impatient seclusion, his member sprang toward the sky.

  “Though I can’t so easily destroy you, I can drive you mad. Yakou, you will thank your stars for the time you stay sane.”

  This woman, whose beauty like her evil knew no end, and yet might easily be mistaken for a heavenly nymph, wrapped her red lips around his aroused manhood.

  Yakou twisted his body but he could not resist. His body could only move reflexively to the stimulus. She went down on him hard, and he came in her mouth. However pleasurable the sensation might be, all emotion vanished from his pale face. As if the wellspring of that pleasure itself had taken form within him, his vacant eyes froze in their sockets.

  She pulled her moist mouth away and swallowed. Her throat quivered. “Once more,” she exulted. “Once more and Setsura becomes mine and you go out of your mind. Well then, who gets to go first? Who gets to watch? Of course, let’s start with you.”

  Once again she lowered her debauched lips to him.

  A sudden disturbance marred the quiet stillness of the spring day. With a start she spun around. A bright red line circumscribed her neck. Her head slid to the side. She raised an arm and returned it to its rightful place.

  “You’ve woken up, Setsura?” Her indescribable voice carried on a fitful breeze toward the dark silhouette who stood beneath the distant peach tree. “No—you are—different. But the same Setsura. The man who once divided me in two.”

  “You have met me, Princess,” he said, his countenance as cool and pale as the peach blossoms dancing and twirling before his eyes.

  Part Seventeen: The Funeral Bell

  Chapter One

  The two silhouettes stood on the sun-drenched spring field like twin columns of white and black smoke. A hundred and fifty feet separated them. In another place and time, the tension between them might have suggested that they’d be rushing into each other’s embrace at any moment.

  And yet tying these two “lovers” together was not a cord of yearning and affection, but the remorseless lash of death.

  “Takako’s other half cast aside the you that quenched my thirst. You, though, are different. How did you escape my spell?”

  “Well, now.” Only Setsura’s mouth moved. “Because the one you bit was not me.”

  “The man who is me but not me. A man is who he is, but you are not. No matter who you are, your fate remains the same. Come.”

  Without the slightest trepidation, Princess raised her right hand and beckoned to him. A moment later, those fingers popped off her hand and dropped to the ground.

  “Hoh. So that’s how you want to do it?”

  She bent over and plucked up the digits with her left hand. With a single touch, the fingers attached to their stumps and flexed as they should, not a scar left behind.

  “But it won’t do you any good.”

  The Demon Princess grinned, showing her white teeth. But then she again cast down her eyes. Red lines welled up. The fingers again dropped off. The stubs showing again, Princess pressed her palm against the side of her neck. Blood oozed from around her hand.

  “That’s right,” Princess said, a smile in her voice. “You cut me once before. Now you have done it again. That is unforgiveable. You alone I will send to hell.”

  A flood of blood gushed from her neck as she spoke, staining the sunlight red, the blood red tide closing out the heavens and the earth.

  A few moments later, a single presence fluttered within that world.

  “Hoh!”

  Accompanying the surprised exclamation, the bloody mist cleared away like a raised curtain. Princess stood alone on the green field, as if embossed by the sunlight pouring down. In her hand was the jet-black slicker.

  “He ran away.”

  She glanced around her, and then down at her gown, dripping with blood. He had not only fixed her attention on the slicker like showing a red cape to a bull, but had succeeded in fleeing with Yakou as well.

  “Setsura, you cut me not once but twice, and then deceived my very eyes. You cannot hide from me. You have received my third kiss. No matter where you go, I will be there with you.”

  Her white hand gripped the black coat. Like it had been left soaking in water, red blood squeezed out of her hand and rained onto the grass.

  Strange shadows crawled along every street and avenue. Above the heads of these creatures, who now claimed hegemony over the day, a shadow darker than the night flitted through the sky, beautiful and bewitching, and set down where the Oume Road changed to Yasukuni Avenue.

  The shadow set down beneath the central Shinjuku overpass.

  It seemed less intentional than on purpose. The shadow didn’t rise immediately to his feet, but rested there on one knee. Still bearing Yakou on his back, Setsura let out a long breath.

  That breath was mingled with blood, but not from his mouth. His hands and face were speckled with a myriad of red dots—from the mist that had erupted around him. The greater amount, though, welled up from the pores of his skin.

  In the boat sitting in front of the Keio P
laza Hotel lobby, Princess was wringing out his coat.

  “That’s what four thousand—no, add in the legendary dynasties and make it six thousand—years of Chinese history will get you. She sure doesn’t make it easy.”

  He came unsteadily to his feet like a marionette whose strings had been cut. Blood dripped from his face like sweat. His pale and waxy countenance suggested he hardly had that much left inside him.

  He looked back at the skyscrapers behind him and said, “She’s definitely coming. We’ve hardened the defenses, but getting back to Mephisto Hospital will be no walk in the park.”

  This was no casual recollection about navigating the city at night. On the streets around them, the ruby pearls of red light inexorably pressed through the darkness.

  As the bird flew, it was less than two hundred yards from the intersection beneath the Shinjuku overpass to Mephisto Hospital. No two ways about it, that was going to be a very long two hundred yards.

  “You’re not one of us.” From among the assembled throng, at least a hundred strong, came a woman’s derisive voice. “So give us your blood.”

  “Now.”

  “I’m so damned thirsty I could die.”

  Setsura jumped over his head. He wrapped a strand of devil wire around a guardrail on the overpass and swung past the band of vampires. Landing on Yasukuni Avenue a dozen feet behind them, he looked around.

  “She’s here.”

  More of Shinjuku’s citizens ran like nimble beasts towards them. Setsura turned his attention toward the overpass as Princess came sailing above it.

  She landed not ten feet behind him. “I thought you would have already made your escape.” Her voice rang out though the night like a silver bell. “Still playing your little tricks.”

  She reached her hand to her white throat and sharply pulled it away. An invisible wire tore from within the white flesh. Not just one. Her whole body glittered in the moonlight as she cast off the thousands of wires biting into her body.

  It was a long way from here to there, Setsura had said. But simply getting here Princess turned her body into a human porcupine, minced and mangled, enduring the pains of hell. All inflicted by the defensive web of titanium wires Setsura had strewn across the roadway.

  “Get back!”

  As soon as she took another step, several of the vampires looking on rushed at her. Without saying a word, Princess parted the air with a slash of her hand. The headless torsos crashed together before her while the soaring heads stared into each other’s eyes.

  “Fools! Why are you—”

  Her lips twisted in derision. More men and women charged her from the rear. These were the vampires that had surrounded Setsura on the intersection below. No sooner had she beheaded them but another throng converged, a wall of Shinjuku’s citizens forming around her.

  “Setsura—damn you—-”

  The Demon Princess had already discerned between action and intent. From the reactions of the people pressing toward her, they were not obstructing her path of their own free will, but at Setsura’s bidding.

  She tried to jump free. Hands grabbed at her hair, her shoulders, her gown.

  Princess drank blood and made men her slaves. Setsura bound them with his devil wires, manipulating not only their bodies but their decaying nervous systems that could make a dead man walk, transforming the hordes of servants she had brought forth into his staunchest allies.

  Observing Setsura staggering away beyond the wave of inhumanity engulfing her, Princess rose up in a rage. She twirled her body like a twister, with a sound like the darkness itself tearing apart. Her gorgeous body rose high into the air.

  Setsura and Yakou had reached the Mermaid game center. As far as Princess was concerned, practically a hand’s breadth away. She fixed her eyes upon them, like an eagle casting a pitying downward glance at some small stupid creature crawling along the ground. And was about to swoop in for the kill when a pair of black wings flapped across her face.

  With a speed and dexterity no normal person could hope to achieve, she evaded the stabbing beaks and crushed them and tossed them aside.

  For a brief moment, the black wings and cawing beaks obscured her sight. From before it became Demon City, Shinjuku had been home to droves of the big, spooky, garbage-feeding crows. Their numbers had hardly diminished since, and their natures had grown all the more bold and frenzied.

  Moreover, when they set out hunting before the light of dawn, pedestrians, vagrants, ghosts and goblins of all sorts hid while these black-winged air corps ruled the sky.

  A while back, the ward government had investigated the natures of these birds by sacrificing a bull to their ravenous appetites. Left on Yasukuni Avenue as the darkness closed in, the half-ton animal was pecked apart, devoured down to its entrails in less than thirty seconds, leaving only a pile of bones behind.

  That they were now blocking Princess’s pursuit of Setsura must be sheer coincidence. However, knowing their traits and idiosyncrasies as he did, he couldn’t help believing that this time they’d stepped in to pitch-hit for him.

  Though their time at bat was short.

  A red glow glimmered inside the swirl of black feathers. Princess’s eyes. As soon as that light burned into the eyes of the crows, they whirled about and plummeted at Setsura. Dispatching all of them with his devil wires would be no easy task.

  But at the last moment the crows dove instead into the surface of the road, raising a gory splash of feathers and black blood.

  Setsura stopped and looked at his savior, standing in front of the Shinseido Music Emporium.

  Princess alit on the ground a few seconds later. Recognizing the man who had caused the obstruction, she grinned. “Ah, of course. So it seems we are tied together by those invisible threads, eh Ryuuki?”

  Standing next to the hauntingly smiling Kikiou, the stouthearted statue of a man silently fixed his eyes on Setsura.

  Chapter Two

  “What are you up to, Kikiou?” the Demon Princess said, shifting her gaze away from Setsura. Her voice might even be described as gentle, which made it all the more menacing.

  “In fact, I have been spending considerable time constructing a means of linking us back together.”

  The great warlock, though, appeared a little worried. After activating the Akashic Records in the Nuvenberg house, he had made his escape with Ryuuki. And then on an outdoor television screen, he’d caught news of the boat showing up and had run over as quickly as possible.

  They broke through the Seal of the Yellow Emperor using Ryuuki’s qi to get to the device. It was a miracle they’d been able to pull it off without the doll girl being any the wiser.

  “Huh. So you’re the one who destroyed our world.” Her icy glare pierced him like knives. “Well, whatever. Given a thousand years, ten thousand years, you can make as many as you want. Let’s get down to the business at hand. You got here just in time. I am granting you the opportunity to turn away from your apostasy and reclaim your fidelity. Ryuuki, seize Setsura and kill the man on his back.”

  “Understood.” Kikiou nodded. He turned to Ryuuki and said, “Princess has spoken. The only reason you could have come this far is because you still desire to return to the service of one’s master. Now you must put it on display.”

  Ryuuki didn’t react in the slightest. Several long seconds of silence passed. Then unexpectedly he said, “Setsura, are you going to release him?”

  “No.”

  Though enemies before and behind him blocked the way, not a quaver of fear sounded in the word, despite a sense of the fatigue clearly being there.

  “Why not? I have not been instructed to kill you. Discard him and run away and you will likely return home safe and sound.”

  “Would you?”

  Ryuuki fell silent. Then answered with a thin smile, “I thought you would say that. Be on your way.”

  Next to him, Kikiou looked on disbelievingly, struck speechless at such a blatant display of betrayal. “You—You—You will
disobey Princess?”

  “I believe he just did,” said Princess, closing her eyes as if she couldn’t care less. “So what will you do, Kikiou?”

  Setsura had already set off. He’d gotten ten yards and made a left at the intersection. Mephisto Hospital was only a stone’s throw ahead.

  “Princess, you can school Ryuuki afterwards. I will deal with Setsura now.”

  Kikiou reared back and took aim with his qi cannon. As if materializing out of nowhere, the red-eyed throng froze on the spot. They had felt that demonic vibe beyond human ken, with no idea what would happen next.

  The wave warped the air and ran after Setsura—and suddenly disappeared. At the same time, the old man was torn from his left shoulder to his right waist.

  Setsura’s devil wire. But how had he negated the effect of Kikiou’s attack?

  “Ryuuki—Ryuuki—you traitor!” Kikiou hissed, looking and sounding like an ill-mannered ogre.

  General Ryuuki had interposed himself between Setsura and Kikiou and Princess, as if protecting him.

  “Explain yourself, Ryuuki,” Princess quietly said.

  “At a certain time, in a certain place, I learned the joy of coming to the rescue of another. That is your answer.”

  He seemed to tower above them, the ghost koto Silent Night strapped to his back.

  An eerie light filled Princess’s eyes. “What an adorable answer. I’ve thought that perhaps since I saved your life at the border of the wastelands once I might hear you say the same thing. But it was not immediately forthcoming, General Ryuuki.”

  “Please forgive me, Princess.”

  “No, I don’t think I will. Look, Setsura has turned the corner. If he gets into Mephisto Hospital, I won’t easily get him out again. That is all on you. It’s been a long and winding road, Ryuuki.”

  For all the sentiment in the words, there was no emotion in her voice. She strode up to Ryuuki. No less amazed by her casual manner, Kikiou was about to jump back.

  General Ryuuki stood there like a statue, his face no more revealing his thoughts than a piece of stone. The Demon Princess stopped in front of him and reached out, her left arm parallel to the ground.