As if arriving at a sufficiently satisfactory breakthrough, Yakou clung to the railing of the gurney, steadied his breath, and cleared his throat.
“Where is the abode of your former sire located?”
And that was how they had come to be in the limousine, racing through the Demon City night.
Under “normal” circumstances, they would have waited until morning. But because of the internal struggle aroused at the moment of “sire expropriation,” the vampire who’d originally taken the police officer’s blood might sense his own defeat and go on the lam. Hence the decision to strike at once.
There should be nothing in the Shinjuku darkness that could equal the combined forces of the Elder’s grandson and Doctor Mephisto.
Mephisto turned to him. Yakou averted his eyes. More than his beauty, the Doctor’s gaze left him feeling unsettled and abashed, an emotion he had difficulty explaining to himself. The Doctor didn’t seem to notice, and Yakou presently returned the look. Then—
“Stop the car.”
Before the command died away, the car lurched forward and back. Mephisto opened the door himself and stepped into the black world.
His white cape fluttered like a delicate flower in the breeze, like the ghostly moonflower that bloomed only at night. The wind played plaintively at his black hair. The mountains of rubble lining the shoulders of the road were a vast, white wasteland beneath the street lights.
Yakou ran over to him. They had detected something from the inside of a car going sixty miles per hour. The two of them stared into the blackness.
“You see it?” Mephisto eventually asked, apparently giving up on getting a closer look.
“Yes. A white shadow skipping along the rubble.”
“A woman.”
“I couldn’t tell. Was it?”
“Do you feel the cold?”
“Now that you mention it.” Yakou’s eyes gleamed. “And undoubtedly because of her.”
“I would dearly like to believe otherwise, but that does seem to be the case. However—”
“However?”
Under Yakou’s doubtful gaze, Mephisto said reluctantly, “A beautiful woman.”
This young man had still not plumbed all the depths of this doctor’s disposition. “You don’t say,” he replied shortly. He casually made note of the obvious. “One of them.”
“Probably. This is their time.”
“So there’d be no point in continuing the pursuit at this juncture.”
“We need to know where she is going. That should soon become clear. One way or another.”
Yakou was at a loss for words.
“Let us believe that the Elder and Setsura Aki have got our backs. Think of the night as their friend and our enemy.”
“I understand.”
“We should be on our way.”
Mephisto turned and closed his eyes. In his mind’s eye he saw the woman atop the mountains of wreckage running off into the distance. Her white dress was like a flower left behind by a fleeing lover. More than her unmarred expression of joy as she danced through the night, it was her unequaled beauty that put his own to shame.
He was not unconscious of the fact.
The car stopped ten minutes later. The rolling hills of rubble looked even more insurmountable than before. Shinanomachi Station, the place Officer Hyuuga had revealed to them. They were in front of the gates to the former Keio University Hospital campus.
The driver reported, “The infrared scanners show no signs of human activity within a half-mile radius.”
“Human activity, eh?” Mephisto muttered. “Let’s go.”
The limo silently bore these two soldiers in an army of darkness into the great expanse of the debris field. A midnight battle was about to begin.
Part 7: The Sirens Of Shinano
Chapter One
The wind came from far away. Less a wind than a current in the air. Stronger gusts opposing it immediately retreated. If the breezes shifted around and blew just as fiercely from the same quarter, they wouldn’t be the same as the first.
This fleeting, ephemeral thing would be found nowhere else.
The wind whipped unimpeded across the great expanse of land surrounding the enormous buildings. It sailed on alone, whistled through an overgrown stand of pine trees, leapt a rusted bicycle, a corroding park sign, a street light that was falling apart while it continued to shine. It swirled around a concrete wall and past steel shutters rusted shut.
It danced past an armored SUV equipped with a 20 mm machine cannon and a flame thrower. Past the guards armed with shotguns, and Magnum pistols strapped to their hips. Over the children playing in the courtyard and the couples strolling down the sidewalks that crisscrossed the park. Deeper inside the grounds.
With its final breath, the gust of wind mounted the hill and spotted its objective. It drew closer and caressed the nape of his neck.
The Elder stood with his hands locked across the small of his back. He released his hold and touched the back of his neck with one hand. Perhaps an insect had paused in flight there. He scratched the skin with the nail of his index finger.
From the crest of the hill he looked down on the world below. The windows of the apartment buildings glowed with light. The streetlamps wound around the buildings like strings of glowing pearls.
He heard the sound of a guitar and people singing. “The Windmills of Your Mind.” The youngsters in the park preferred American classics to those of their own country. This always gave the old-timers something to gripe about. But such was life.
He was standing atop “Mt. Hakone,” a tad east of the center of the Toyama municipal housing project. The highest elevation in Shinjuku.
It was more a modest hill than a mountain. During the height of summer, the fragrance of the mountain lilies grew suffocating. The pretty buds of the evening primrose swayed next to clumps of oleander. A wonderful place to take a stroll.
With its view of the gleaming outlines of the “Sunshine Building” to the north in neighboring Ikebukuro, and the skyscraper district to the southwest in the new heart of the city, the narrow platform at the top of this “mountain” did instill a sense of standing at the commanding heights.
The Elder’s long sigh was carried away by the wind. It was his job to protect all those peaceful lives going on beneath him.
“I first heard your name when I was a child.” The gnarled old voice carried far. “What do your four thousand years of wisdom have to offer me?”
“All you will know is the meaning of death.” There was a touch of smugness in her answer. And a kind of elegance. The white shadow stood behind the Elder. “The last thing the living ever learn is that nothing lasts forever.”
“Then I must thank you.” The Elder slowly turned around. “Death—the true end of life—is a wonderful thing.”
The white shadow smiled, as if to empathize.
“How should I address you?” the Elder asked politely.
He wasn’t being forward. It was an earnest expression of respect for this lovely woman who had lived at least another lifetime longer than him.
“My name is whatever you wish it to be.”
“Then, according to the old legends, I call you Princess.”
“That is a good name.”
Stirred by the wind, her hair stroked her alabaster features. She wore no decorations in her hair. Her luxuriant black tresses hung freely down to her waist.
“For what purpose have you come here?”
“I do not know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Do you think some purpose guided me through the last four thousand years? But if compelled to articulate one—there is life in this city. And vice. Swirling whirlpools of hatreds and curses. That is all that comes to mind. Though I venture Kikiou would say differently.”
“I know. Based on his actions thus far, his purpose is the subjugation of this city. Except that the best-laid plans are made to be broken. I wonder why that is?”
“Are you referring to what happened in Chang’an? Or to those two cities adjacent to the Dead Sea? Kikiou’s desires do not always agree with mine. I wish to live free. Sleep when I wish. Drink when I wish. Sing when I wish. Apparently that is not enough to satisfy him.”
“Can’t you live here forever in peace?” the Elder asked, the same way a loving mother might speak to her dear, sickly child. “There are two hundred of our compatriots here.”
“Live here as I wish, I should have said,” Princess scoffed. “To drink from whoever I want, whenever I want, without giving the likes of you a second thought.”
The Elder’s shoulders slumped. But his narrow eyes gleamed with a fierce light. “Why have you visited us this evening?”
“Our original intent was to see you this afternoon with Kikiou and another of my retainers. But an obstacle reared its head right at the beginning. Kikiou suffered a setback and the other is presently incommunicado. There are frightening things afoot in this city. So I have come here. Think of me as the ambassador of Kikiou’s intentions.”
“Remarkable. And I thought the two of you did not see eye to eye.”
“I told him to suit himself.”
Princess grinned. The tips of her fangs peeked out from the corners of her rosy red lips. Even they were strikingly attractive. To look at her hands was to desire being struck by them. To look at her feet was to desire being trampled by them. And her white teeth—to desire them to plunge deeply into the heart. Such were the arousing charms of her strangely bewitching beauty.
“There’s one more thing I wish to ask you,” the Elder said. “What do you intend to do after sending this senior citizen to his grave?”
“I don’t really know. But Kikiou intends to exterminate all of your kind.”
“I have no intention of offering up my life to you.”
“Oh, I have heard that said so many times before.”
Princess quickly closed the distance between them. The platform atop Mt. Hakone was only ten feet square. She could reach out and touch the Elder. She looked at him and he looked back. As if the living dead should wear burial shrouds even while on the field of battle, she was dressed in a white cheongsam and he in a white suit.
The skin of both of them glowed the color of blood.
“Impressive.” Princess blinked once. “But fall into the spell of my eyes and you would die in ecstasy. A pity otherwise.”
“The one hundred thousand souls of Hsia on one hand, the one hundred twenty thousand of Yin on the other. And here I stand protecting my two hundred. I’m not dead yet.”
“It is always our fate to die and leave behind an empty grave.”
“True without a doubt,” the Elder heartily agreed, stepping forward, his right hand thrusting outwards in a nukite karate strike, with only the thumb bent inward.
An onlooker would have observed no tension in the blow. What kind of sorcery was contained within it became evident as his hand touched the supple rise of her breast and immediately sank all the way down to the wrist.
Princess closed her eyes. A sublime expression tinged with pain, that might even resemble prayer.
The Elder felt her whole weight down the length of his arm. “I don’t imagine you are pleased that the end of four thousand years should come in a place like this. But rest well. I am sure to join you at some future date.”
He withdrew his hand. Not a single drop of blood fell. Not a single slit or tear marred the fabric of her clothing. The white figure collapsed like a falling flower.
“Your funeral services should be held in accordance with the land of your birth. But I have no idea what age and what era you were born in.” He spoke in a tired voice, almost as if expecting a reply.
“Neither do I.”
The Elder’s eyes flew open. The white face was staring up at him. A red light shone in her eyes.
“Don’t move,” she softly commanded. “Just stand there.” She effortlessly rose to her feet. An intoxicating scent filled the air. “I do not bleed because of any skill of yours. Killing a woman who has lived for four thousand years could never be so simple as that. I expected more from you. Come.”
She gracefully raised her right hand, and beckoned in such a manner that the molecules of air must have been aroused by her caressing touch. Like a marionette dangling from the beguiling and beautiful threads, the white-suited man aimlessly stepped toward her.
A white hand clasped him by the shoulders. Princess sweetly smiled. A second later, the smile froze on her face. The Elder’s eyes also cast off a blood-red light.
“As I expected. The man Kikiou should have dispatched first possesses the same eyes as mine. Except that I will not let you go.”
With that, she easily hoisted him above her head. Struggle as he might, she held onto his shoulder with a hand as strong as iron.
“Crush your head and you would resurrect yourself regardless. But what about this—?”
The grisly sound of tearing flesh and bone drowned out her words as she yanked the Elder’s left arm out of its socket. A fountain of blood splashed onto her feet, staining her shoes and the hem of her white cheongsam. She flung the arm away, not wanting to be hindered by the bloody thing.
She reached out again with her lissome left arm. Towards his chest. Like he had only moments before, she buried her hand in his body, down to the wrist, tearing through the muscle, wrenching apart the tendons.
The Elder watched silently. The light in his eyes only began to waver as her fingers clamped around his heart.
“Even you will have a difficult time of it with your heart ripped out of your chest. When dispatching our kind, this method is as good as a stake.”
Probably because of the spouting blood, the Elder’s features were quickly turning a pale shade of green. Princess stared at him long and hard. She trembled with joy. As the word “heart” left her mouth, she withdrew her hand with a single, uninterrupted motion.
Though the gesture was the same as the Elder’s, her right hand was cruelly coated in red like a long scarlet glove, the still-beating heart clutched in her fingers.
She released her hold on his body. The Elder tumbled hollowly to the concrete pad. His heart—that timekeeper of life—was already stilled. But still his voice could be heard.
“Splendidly done. But you will regret coming to this city.”
Princess’s eyes blazed again. When she leaned over the Elder, something wrapped tightly around her hand—the aorta, pulmonary veins, and carotid artery of the heart she had ripped out of his chest.
“Bastard!” she cursed, raising her right fist.
Just then the blood vessels released a gush of fresh, red blood. The aorta spouted like a fire hose. This was not ordinary blood. A scream—a sound unlike any heard before by mortal ears—burst from her mouth. She jerked back her beautiful head. But purple smoke was already erupting from her skin.
Seeing through her designs, the Elder had stored up this demon blood in his heart. That was what had drained the color from his features.
“That pretty face of yours will never heal,” he said with his final breath, words suffused with a great sense of satisfaction. “According to my inquiries, your pride will not allow you to openly parade through this city. And so I do not die in vain. The rest I leave to my grandson—and to—his two—colleagues—”
The Elder’s voice trailed off. It did not resume.
“My face—my face—” she moaned in sorrow and horror. She heard voices and racing footsteps approaching behind her.
“Elder-sama!”
“W-Who the hell are you?”
“What’s with her face? That heart she’s holding—what did you do to him? Bitch!”
The men shouting at her were dressed in ordinary street clothes. They weren’t the guards who patrolled during the day. During the night, they weren’t needed. Because these men were here.
Their eyes glowed. Fangs sprang into their open mouths. She was only one woman, but they did not atta
ck her all at once. Because there was no way that one woman could have done that to the Elder. The gruesome nature of the death overwhelmed them, like there was a wall around her.
Princess pressed her hand against her face. “Leave me,” she said, turning her back to them. “You all were going to be next. But there are more pressing things I must tend to now. I’ll just have to ask you to wait patiently until I return.”
“Say what? Murdering scum!”
“The Elder hasn’t been his usual self of late. It must have been this whore’s fault all along!”
There were four of them. They’d likely been patrolling the foot of Mt. Hakone and had felt the touch of a strange and cold breeze that didn’t belong. Further infuriated by the woman turning her back to them, one of them reached forward and grabbed her shining black hair.
She shook her head. The tresses of her hair sliced through his fingers, dropping them to the ground like stubby white worms.
“Shit!” the men shouted, more in shock than fear.
Strands of her hair whipped at their wide eyes, letting loose a spray of blood. Blinded, they groped aimlessly with their hands. With a soft series of thuds, Princess’s hands flicked as quickly as snapping whips, sending the blood and flesh flying.
The white tornado whirled through the men, cutting them down like stalks of grain before the scythe. It descended straight down the “mountain,” decapitating the stands of crocus and turning the lilies into chaff. Residents who’d also detected a strange thing in the air and came running were cut down by the swirling gale. Screams gushed from windpipes along with geysers of blood.
Pandemonium engulfed the grounds.
The taxi racing along Meiji Dori saw a raised hand at the side of the road and screeched to a halt.
“Need a ride?” the driver called out.
The back door popped open. He wasn’t concerned about who the passenger might turn out to be. A heavy sheet of airtight, bulletproof glass separated the driver from the back seat. The man who’d invented it and had equipped the two thousand taxis operating in Shinjuku was a hero to the drivers. It’d made the inventor an overnight millionaire to boot.
Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 1 Page 17
