“That’s right.”
Yakou retreated toward the window. Observing him out of the corner of his eye, Doctor Mephisto approached the gurney. He’d taken several steps when the disassembled panels reversed themselves, reassembling the casket in the blink of an eye.
“Well!” Mephisto remarked with great curiosity. His eyes narrowed. “I’ve never seen such a thing before. Is it common in your world?”
“No,” Yakou said with a thin smile. “It’s from Su Prefecture in China, a product of the Song Dynasty. It looks like it’s frightened of you, Doctor.”
“A doctor cannot truly treat a patient who doesn’t trust him. Perhaps we should change physicians.”
“I don’t think that would be good for the patient.”
“Then I must try to make myself more likable.”
Yakou wasn’t sure how to interpret this remark. It wouldn’t be an unusual statement from an ordinary doctor. But Doctor Mephisto lent it a completely different meaning. To the extent that words possessed any permanent sense or meaning, his were a tad hair-raising.
An observer familiar with Doctor Mephisto’s methods would no doubt imagine all kinds of things upon hearing him announce that he “must try” to accomplish something. And Yakou? No matter how flexible his imagination, the scene that unfolded next stretched it even further.
“That’s a good boy. I’m opening the door.”
Mephisto’s voice reverberated enchantingly in the blue examination room. A neophyte might have expected the manner of a mother pacifying a child awakened by a bad dream. Or a young man soothing a weeping lover. Or a grandparent humoring a sullen grandchild.
But no. The figure of the Demon Physician addressing the black casket instead resembled Charon, the mysterious and powerful ferryman of Hades who guided the deceased to the land of the dead.
There came a reply.
The casket trembled slightly as the black panels again rearranged themselves. A low moan began to leak out, communicating both bitterness and resentment. The panels encased the sleeping, roasted corpse. The frightened corpse. Frightened by the sweet murmurs of an incubus that would lull the wildest of animals to sleep.
“That’s a good boy. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Anyone who is ill and wishes relief is my patient.”
He touched the lid of the casket and leaned in closer, showing just a glimpse of a countenance filled with infinite compassion.
“I see. It is too bright in here. In that case—”
The room was immediately engulfed in dark blue shadows. The real surprise came next. Calm descended. The thing inside the casket was following the lead of his attending physician. This was Demon City after all.
But the man in the casket was still surely mad.
“Open up, my good patient.”
The voice of this artist further colored the already blue world. It seemed impossible, but the casket was yielding its secrets. Yakou saw the eyes of the monster lying there in the darkness light up with hope.
A white finger reached forth from the mists of Hades and touched the ravaged face. Doctor Mephisto said, “Accept me, and I will grant you what you desire.”
“Doctor Mephisto. The Demon Physician.” Yakou’s voice, trembling with admiration, faded off into the distance.
When Takako Kanan came to this city, she’d tried to master the mental self-control techniques taught by the tour guides. She absorbed the qi of the earth up through the soles of her feet and stored it in her belly, then released it like a breath through her spine. By teaching herself self-hypnotic techniques, she could keep her wits about her no matter what happened.
She wasn’t frightened of what might emerge from the shadow box. After three days in Demon City, she’d gotten used to the weirdness. And Takako had her own smarts on top of that. It wasn’t her own thoughts that made her cower and turned the blood in her veins to ice. It was the unearthly qi being cast off. The qi welled up and came at her like a wind.
The soles of her feet grew warm. The hot currents vanished around her ankles.
“My, my. What interesting skills you have.”
The voice behind her contained a curious touch of humanity. “Miss, you seem to be familiar with our circumstances. And your connection with Setsura Aki?”
“Um—” The sound squeezed out of her throat. She was keeping a remarkably good grip on herself. She felt a surge of self-confidence. But the paralysis did not lessen. “I’m the one who brought you here.”
“And why would you do such a thing?”
There was a teasing edge to his voice, a blend of sincerity and curiosity. This undoubtedly reflected the presence of a human soul. A sense of calmness grew in Takako’s breast. But she held her tongue. She knew that the owner of the voice was something other than human. To admit she’d brought him here so that Setsura could apprehend him would be as good as signing her own death sentence.
“In any case, I thank you for going to the effort. But you must be aware of our true natures?”
Contrary to her own wishes, Takako felt her eyes opening as wide as they could.
“Your silence speaks volumes. Miss, how much do you know?”
His voice was nearer now.
“N-nothing—” Her teeth chattered. “I-I don’t know anything.”
“Please calm down. I am feeling a bit peckish, but I am not so crass as to assault a young lady to whom I am so indebted. I shall leave it to others to lay claim to that pretty neck of yours.” A short pause. “You, there. Enter.”
He was addressing somebody other than her. At first, Takako thought it was the shop girl. Then she heard the door leading into the storage alcove creak open.
The light in the storage alcove still wasn’t turned on. The alcove was darker than the office, but the faint glow of the summer evening still slanted through the air. The outlines of several human shadows marked the ground there. At a glance, it was obvious from their features and clothes that these were rough men accustomed to violence.
Four of them.
“I have been observing the situation since I was awakened from my nap. What is your purpose for being here? Well, regardless, my agenda is full.”
Takako felt a ball of ice form in her stomach. She tried to turn around but couldn’t make herself look at him.
The yakuza thugs saw what she could not.
The overhead light in the office was behind him, turning his face into a silhouette. But something glittered in the middle of his forehead. His long, luxurious black hair was braided with gems and shining baubles.
To describe his height as “soaring” would be no exaggeration. The black fabric of his clearly Chinese clothing covering his resplendent frame was woven with golden threads. By the common sense of the outside world, he was entirely out of place.
But there was nothing out of place about him here. Everybody had the right to live—and dress—the way they wanted to in Demon City. Still, what was that thing glittering in the middle of his forehead?
His eyes burned, as if erupting with fiery cravings within. What he wanted right now was them.
“W-We were asked—” the one in front stammered. His lips seemed glued together. “—That girl, that box-thing she took, the owner wants it back. He let a valuable thing go for a song. We came to get it.”
The shadowed face slowly turned and looked at the storage alcove. The contours of the shadow box were slowly staining the surrounding area like a drop of India ink falling into clear water.
“What it comes down to, buddy, if you want it that bad, it’s time to ante up or get out of the game.”
The silhouette didn’t reply to the challenge. Instead he said, “Woman. Given the situation as described, is it true that you purchased it?”
“Yes,” Takako answered honestly. She knew she should have considered the consequences of dealing with that particular curio shop more carefully. But at the time, she’d earnestly suppressed the questioning voice in her head.
“So, how shall we resolve this?
Exchange it for the price paid or demand a king’s ransom?”
His inquiry was sincere. He spoke as would any businessman honestly concerned with sealing the deal, in everyday language entirely out of place with the present circumstances.
That frightened Takako more than anything. She wanted it to end already. “Do as you please. Just take it and leave.”
“That does leave me in something of a fix, it still being light out. Well, fine. As the lady said, take it and leave.”
The men hesitated, confused. Once they’d extracted the whereabouts of the item from the cab driver, their job was to extort from the customer several times the agreed-on price. To simply return with it not a penny richer would yield them no more profit than what it’d sold for.
But today’s work was already pretty much par for the course. “Got it. Sorry, no refunds. That all goes to our shipping and handling fees.”
The silhouetted face smiled broadly. The thugs pretended to ignore him and turned their attention instead to the shadow box, though with the feeling that today was really turning out not to be their day at all.
“Hey.” The yakuza who’d been doing all the talking jerked his jaw at the underlings behind him. They surrounded the shadow box and reached out in a collective bear hug.
Three grunts, and then “Shit!” filled the storage alcove. When they’d tried to lift it up, three pairs of hands sank into it instead. And whatever was inside it sent a sensation racing along their fingers, as if they had plunged their hands into a pool of water.
Not being able to lift it did not mean there was nothing there to feel.
“That is the product of five hundred shadows—cast by five hundred pregnant women in their ninth months—stitched together. A woman about to give birth is particularly sensitive to human terrors. She will go to any extreme to protect the child in her belly. That is the time when it is easiest to separate body and soul. The body and the shadow that runs after it are the most different. The women who had their shadows stolen all died, of course. Such a cruel thing to do.”
At some point, as he descended upon the storage area with leaden steps, a sorrowful note tinged the man’s voice. “This box of shadows assimilates itself to darkness. If you still have no objections, then by all means take it with you.”
“Give me a fucking break.”
The thugs at last returned to thuggish form. Purple veins stood out on their foreheads. A yakuza’s most reliable weapon was the sheer unpredictability of his crazy-ass actions once the fighting started.
For Shinjuku, the man in Chinese dress standing in front of them and the shadow box itself were hardly eye-openers. These knuckle-draggers didn’t have the slightest idea what a shadow box was or what it could be used for.
“You want a piece of us? Is that it? It’s up to you. We’ll be taking this girl with us until you figure it out.”
“The birth of violence is the death of trust and honor.” Solemn undertones echoed in the dark voice. “The nature of man is evil. But that is why this city is made for us.” A voice layered with strata upon strata of impenetrably dense sounds, as if resounding from the deepest ocean depths.
The lead thug swung his right fist, slanting upwards and connecting with the man’s solar plexus. Landing unparried, the blow would have ruptured any other man’s spleen.
Feeling a strange response in his hand, the yakuza looked down at where his fist had met the man’s body. The man hadn’t closed his eyes at the moment of impact. His massive palm was wrapped around the thug’s fist. The thug hadn’t even seen his arm move.
He tried to kick at the man’s shins but never finished the motion. His fist tightened as it collapsed under the pressure. The thug threw his head back and screamed. Bones creaked and shattered. Like twigs snapping underfoot. The screams grew louder and longer.
The broken fist twisted unrelentingly clockwise. An audible crack! and the thug’s wrist rotated a full one hundred eighty degrees. He fainted from the pain. The man thrust him out of the way.
The mouths of the remaining three twitched as if they’d each bit down on a raw lemon. They’d each crushed a capsule hidden in a false molar. The liquid drained directly into the stomach, where it was absorbed into the bloodstream faster than an injection.
The transformations began at once. Their bodies turned white, white because of the white hairs sprouting all over their bodies. The hair had the toughness and resilience of high-tension wire. It would repel a round from a handgun as easily as it would a blow from a nightstick.
Their muscles expanded and rippled like magma domes swelling out of the ground. The yakuza groaned, this time because of the pleasure of power filling their bodies. Necks and shoulders expanded like inflating inner tubes, fangs and claws exploded outwards, engorged with sinister desires.
The silhouetted face looked dispassionately upon these white apes dressed in human clothes. “What lucky creatures you are. All the more qi for me to suck out of you.”
The great ape took aim at the man’s forehead with four-inch hooked claws that could rip through an elephant’s hide.
But first the man touched his right hand to his chest. The first yakuza ape noted that there were only two fingers left on his hand.
A second later, the ape was dead. The body was sent flying out the door, along with the other two still-standing thugs, landing in the tiny garden. They didn’t spring immediately to their feet. They groaned, holding back the shadows closing in on them.
When the flying body hit them, they felt a cold wind blow through them, strangely draining their energy. It was like standing over an open grave.
The Chinese man charged through the open door to where the gloom had already transformed into an inky darkness. The yakuza grunted as the fierce qi beat against their faces like a flurry of blows from a heavyweight boxer. The giant apes were reduced to a pair of piñatas.
“I’ve got no use for beasts, even if they’re only humans pretending to be beasts. Depart.” The rebuke lashed at them like a whirlwind spinning across an empty desert.
The chemically mutated yakuza took off like they’d been bounced off a trampoline, vaulting a low fence and running away. Were it not for the sheer terror seared onto their faces, the sight would have resembled a scene from a circus.
Takako sensed him coming back into the room. She did not turn around. Though the mental shackles binding her had dissolved, she could not summon the courage to face the inhabitant of the shadow box.
She heard a moan from the yakuza collapsed in pain on the floor of the storage area. His condition only added to the swirling dark confusion and cruel foreboding that smothered her like a wet blanket. Another presence invaded that space, and then she heard him being launched through the air.
“Right now I could even indulge in the blood of a brigand.”
The meaning of his words didn’t register. Takako’s mind spun. Then came a long gaack. She didn’t want to think about what would make a human being imitate a strangled duck.
A thick knot of bile welled up in her throat. She desperately choked it down. A sharp smell arose. Then a splat like that made by a bucket of water thrown against a wall. She didn’t think about what caused it.
Ahh—somebody gasped. Then the sound of drinking. Takako felt as if hours were passing. The drinking continued.
How soon until daybreak, she wondered. Wasn’t this Demon City? What would be the best way to use a shadow box? Maybe she should take it home. Her father the archeologist would tell her to give it to a museum, or return it to the Chinese government. How to persuade him otherwise?
She noticed that the gasping had diminished. The smell stung at her nose and penetrated the air. With every breath it stained her lungs and gut.
“Woman.” He softly called out to her. He was perversely relaxed. “Get out of here.”
She didn’t know how to respond.
“Hurry. If you do not, I shall no longer contain myself. It was not worth the drinking, of course. I am not satisfied—
”
Takako’s throat constricted. She tried to speak, but nothing came out. What was this man trying to say? The dawn would soon break.
“What are you doing?” the voice urged. A strange voice, as if irritation and intoxication were battling violently with each other. “Go, now. No, stay. But go—”
She knew she must flee. She knew as well that he wasn’t stopping her. And she knew that he’d come flying at her as soon as she took a step.
Takako stood there at her wit’s end.
“A good thing you didn’t go,” he said with increasing confidence. “I thank you. If my armies had been made up of women like you, they would never have seen defeat. Come.”
Takako shook her head and stared down at her feet. The drab little office covered with tatami mats. The teacup on the table half-filled with now-cold green tea. It didn’t look like she was ever going to get that refill.
And then—and then—the air touched her back and neck. He was behind her. “You have a beautiful throat.”
At some point, the heavy, male reverberations in his voice had disappeared. The breath striking her ear lewdly trembled with hunger and desire.
Something wet trailed along the right side of her neck. Takako was seized with unbelievable disgust and joy. This is what that felt like. It was exactly as the legends promised. This was why the victim looked forward to each visitation. Why she opened the windows, took the garlands of garlic from around her neck, opened her negligee and exposed her breasts. And waited for the night to deepen.
Hurry—The masochistic impulse throbbed in the veins of her neck. “Quickly,” she said aloud.
The pressure of his lips against her neck increased. And then his moist tongue. This was her reward. Having accosted the girl’s white neck, his mouth slid along her shoulder. The sensation was like thousands of delicate daddy-longlegs feeling their way along, oozing warm oil from their bodies.
Violate me, she implored. Poison my body and my soul with your blood.
His lips returned again to where they’d begun. Takako shook with anticipation, with the all-too-human eagerness to violate human law. His tongue retreated, replaced by something hard and cold.
Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 1 Page 15
