“Idiot. That is my line.”
The Sorcerer slowly drew his own sword and thrust it in front of him, while reaching out his other hand in the opposite direction to maintain his balance, the stance of a classically-trained fencer.
“Wow, you’ve got some moves on you,” Kyoya exclaimed.
An altogether different kind of energy poured from the tip of the blade. Kyoya sensed his body cooling, the Sorcerer’s figure growing darker and farther away.
“And not surprisingly,” said the Sorcerer. “There is that certain thrill in casting the world into chaos all by oneself.” His scornful voice echoed like distant thunder. “This is the Devil Sword. Seven thousand years ago, a blacksmith in ancient Egypt offered it up to the Demon Realm. Since then, it has removed the heads of tens of thousands, absorbing their blood and becoming the Devil Sword. The same sword that ended the lives of those corpses. When the malice of the murdered combines with my own magical powers, that wooden sword of yours might as well be a toothpick.”
Though even as he spoke, the face and hands of the Sorcerer glistened with sweat. The nen erupting from the tip of Asura doused him with a numbing cold shower, struggling to contain the might of the Devil Sword.
The Sorcerer couldn’t help but mutter to himself, “I should expect no less from the son of Genichiro Izayoi—the fact alone that he attempts to take us all on by himself.”
Wood and steel—the forces of nen pouring from the two swords were evenly matched. Neither of the two silhouettes moved, each astonished by the power of his opponent.
“Haa!” With a wild shout, Kyoya broke the stalemate. He closed the distance between them in a sudden burst, thrusting with lightning speed as he moved forward.
The Sorcerer barely parried with the Devil Sword. Wood and steel met, white light and ink-black darkness pouring out of the junction. In the competing manifestations of Asura and the Devil Sword, the battle between the two psychic warriors took on a physical dimension, light erasing dark, dark swallowing up light.
Retreating in the face of Kyoya’s advance, the Sorcerer swept the Devil Sword sideways, meeting Asura with a dull thud. Good clashed with evil, their leveled gazes meeting as their swords crossed, with all their might the one steeling himself against the other.
The Sorcerer was the same age as Kyoya’s father, so he must be more than sixty years old. He was proving to be amazingly strong. And yet Kyoya slowly pushed him back. The Sorcerer had also practiced yoga from a young age, but youth had advantages that age and experience couldn’t match.
“Look at this, boy.”
The Sorcerer’s eyeless eyes flashed with crimson fire that would steal the will from any person caught in its line of sight. The spirit-sucking powers of the Hell Eye, ensnaring not only the will of the mind but the will to live itself, turning an opponent into a temporary invalid.
Kyoya didn’t budge. The warm nen rising from Asura’s hilt permeated his body, turning him into a divine messenger penetrating the darkness. The demon light of the Hell Eye quickly faded, as if staring into the rays of the sun.
Keep it coming, Dad! With a combination of physical strength and personal conviction, he steadily pushed the Sorcerer back, delivering the killing blow at an angle with an inescapable quickness as he lurched off balance. And yet—
“Damn!” Kyoya looked up in astonishment.
Asura had severed only the black mantle. The Sorcerer soared ten feet above him and came to a halt—the secret art of yoga levitation. The most eminent scientists of the Federation barely comprehended the first thing about the science of anti-gravity flight, and he had made it his own.
As Kyoya ground his teeth, the Sorcerer looked down on him and laughed. But there was a rather strangled quality to his mirth. Kyoya’s attack had been that furious. The moment its force struck him and he sensed defeat, he’d made ready to run. That move saved his life.
“Luck was on your side, boy. You’ll have to die another day. Or is that all you’ve got?”
The thin figure in a black shirt and trousers slipped toward the exits. The door was right before his eyes.
“Shit! You’re not getting away!” came Kyoya’s voice, stamping his foot on the ground.
A fearsome fighter but still a child. Casting a last condescending glance, the Sorcerer turned around just as Kyoya pushed off that foot into the air.
Kyoya’s other martial art was Shorin Kenpo, the art that turned his limbs into weapons of self-defense. The flying kick was one such technique. A talented practitioner of Shorin Kenpo could jump almost five feet without a running start. Kyoya could clear more than six.
Adding a running start brought him soaring through the air right at the Sorcerer’s head. The shout was more a psychological trick to make him freeze in his tracks.
“All the misery of the people you killed—I’m giving it back to you with interest!”
Without time to deflect the blow, Asura swung in a descending arc and slammed down on his shoulders. The sound of breaking bones. The Sorcerer crashed onto the concrete from a height of ten feet.
Kyoya alighted next to him with hardly a sound, like a cat with all of its nine lives still intact.
The Sorcerer sprawled on the ground moaning. He seemed to have split his head open on contact. The black blood stained the floor. That he still held onto the Devil Sword was a credit more to sheer tenacity.
“Crap. I suppose I’d better haul him off to Section Chief Yamashina before he bleeds to death.”
He sensed the end game while still in the air. The hatred and blood lust faded away. Kyoya moved swiftly toward the Sorcerer’s prone form.
With a groaning roar, a dirty dark brown whirlwind blasted through the open door. Kyoya leapt to the side. Detecting an evil miasma in the wind, his honed reflexes reacted. He corrected his posture and made Asura ready.
A cloud of dust. Realizing its initial attack failed, it swung around. Planting itself between Kyoya and the Sorcerer, the cloud assumed a human form.
“Are you the enemy the Sorcerer speaks of?” asked Doki.
“I guess so. I’m Kyoya Izayoi. You must be one of his monster bodyguards. Fire, water or earth? If I were you, I’d hurry on back to hell. Mind your manners and I’ll maybe even chant you a sutra and send you to heaven.”
“Impudence! You’re the one who trespassed into my world.” The Sorcerer got unsteadily to his feet, his voice infused with ferocity. “You arrived just in time, Doki. This boy transformed himself into the sacrificial victim.”
“Indeed. When the contracts of the previously slain souls suddenly burst into flames, I ran straight over here. I appear to have arrived in the nick of time. Leave this in my hands and depart.”
The Sorcerer tottered down the hallway. Kyoya didn’t move as he faded out of sight. He knew that if he flicked his eyes away from the demon in front of him for even a moment, he’d be on the receiving end of a fatal blow. The battle would be settled in a flash.
Doki’s form dissolved into a mist. The brown dust whirled straight at him. His magical mud inferno. The dust surrounded Kyoya. But there was a moment before it transformed into the crushing planetary crust of earth around him. There was, after all, nowhere for him to dodge his fate this time.
A fraction of a second before the gale contacted his body, Kyoya reflexively raised Asura high overhead and sharply brought it down. Where the invisible line drawn by Asura met the encircling whirlwind, it divided in two. As Kyoya completed the swing and stood there motionless for a second, it roared past him on either side.
And fused together behind him, once again assuming human shape. Though this time, it was something other than human in appearance. Something not of this world, the true form of a disgusting demon. Kyoya spun around to meet its renewed attack.
Like a gurgling storm sewer, the death agonies reverberated through the room.
Doki’s inconceivable shape split vertically from its head down, looking like maggots spilling out of an overripe persimmon, and in a blink se
lf-annihilated. The blow from Asura had produced a line of unparalleled force rising from the nen blade. It cleaved the enemy in two, such that regeneration was impossible.
Kyoya sank to his knees. There goes one. That was Doki, and it was no walk in the park.
The nenpo necessary to face off against such formidable enemies really did demand the utmost in mental concentration.
Even removing the shackles and manacles required the equivalent to ten megatons of magical energy, according to the Sorcerer. There was no telling what concentrations of psychic energy had been expended in the effort.
Breathing heavily, Kyoya again turned his attention toward the gloom-wrapped exits. He sensed nothing of the Sorcerer’s presence. “So he scampered away, eh? I can’t stop thinking about that other girl. I’d better start looking.”
Concern strained his features. The perfect opportunity had fallen into his hands and he’d let the Sorcerer slip through his fingers. His foes wouldn’t likely let themselves be caught flat-footed the next time. They knew his limits and would come at him with new strategies. He had to ferret out the Sorcerer’s den in three days, dispatch the other two demon bodyguards, eradicate the spell, and free the president.
The darkness began to lighten in the direction of the exits. Even the morning eventually visited Demon City. Holding tightly onto Asura, Kyoya made his way down the hallway.
Part Five
The Sorcerer lay on a bed in a room in the large underground plaza that constituted his secret headquarters.
“The time has come to use that,” he said. He indicated the apparatus at the back of the room, sitting in the darkness. The silent Suiki and Kaki looked down at him. “I will die before long. You understand how to proceed?”
The two demon sprites nodded. Though the master who had summoned them was dying, they showed not the slightest emotion. The Sorcerer was a haggard frame of skin and bones. His face resembled a skull. The Hell Eye had lost its light, and the circles under his eyes were creased with dark lines.
He was already wearing a death mask. His head and right shoulder were wrapped with bandages. But what threatened to extinguish the flame of his life wasn’t so much the visible injuries delivered by Kyoya’s sword.
He had offered up his soul to the Demon Realm and taken his accursed powers as collateral. The blow delivered by Kyoya—imbued with the psychic energies of himself and his father, Genichiro—had shattered that reservoir of evil energy.
Medically speaking, his collarbone and shoulder blade were broken. However, for the Sorcerer, the unsalvageable wellspring of his being had been crushed in a death-dealing stroke.
After barely making it back to the safe house, keenly aware of his own mortality, he had called the two demons to his bedside. And though balanced now on the verge of death, not the slightest concession of defeat could be seen in his manner or his mien.
The Sorcerer sat up. “Before I die, you must deliver one more girl to the Demon Realm. Bring her here.”
Kaki disappeared into the hallway and returned with Sayaka. She’d been attacked by a two-headed dog, had tussled with gangbanger cyborgs, and been kidnapped by demons—a normal girl would have swooned at the sight of any one of these events—and yet the aura of her innocent beauty hadn’t dimmed in the least. The eyes looking down at the Sorcerer brimmed with life.
Rather, it was the Sorcerer who was startled by the presence of such grace and beauty. He’d been in the Takada no Baba hideout when Doki and Suiki had brought her here. This was the first time they’d met.
“Hoh. What a fine young woman, draped in an aura of refinement most inappropriate to this place.”
“So you are the Sorcerer Rebi Ra,” Sayaka quietly stated. “You can run but you cannot hide. Send these creatures back to the Demon Realm and remove the curse on my father.”
The expression on the Sorcerer’s face stiffened. “Your father? What is your name?”
“Sayaka.”
“Ah, but of course. President Rama’s daughter. Such idealistic sentiments do agree with you. You’re the image of your father, I hear, brought up like a nun, unsullied by the sinful world.”
“Your flatteries will avail you nothing. Undo your spells.”
“Ha. Make all the scary faces you want. I will die in any case.”
“What?”
“You know him, this boy Kyoya Izayoi? The boy knight has performed as expected, though he does owe half of his powers to his father. He did well dealing me this fatal wound.”
Surrounded by such fearsome enemies, bathed in an atmosphere of loathing and malice, Sayaka’s eyes brimmed with tears. “Then he came after all! My father—the world—may yet be saved.”
“That will never happen!” shouted the Sorcerer, a cry that would freeze blood in the veins. Sayaka quavered despite herself. It was clear to her that even hovering on the edge of his own extinction, the Sorcerer was fully convinced that his plans would eventually triumph.
His dour words continued. “I will die, but I will return, though it will take me time to walk again. Should that boy ferret us out during that time, the situation could prove dire.”
The tone of his voice changed. His eyes glided over every line of Sayaka’s body. “Are you fond of that boy? You attitude reveals all. But that could prove his Achilles’ heel. Why did you come to Shinjuku on your own? You should have left the job to him.”
Seized by a fearful premonition, Sayaka tried to retreat. The two demons on her right and left grabbed her arms.
“Please let go! Don’t make things worse for yourselves than they already are!” She squirmed and shouted but they weren’t about to set her free.
“Calm down. I’ll be sure to arrange a meeting between you and your boyfriend.”
“Do you know where Kyoya-san is right now?”
“No. You shall lead us to him.”
“I do not know where he is. Coming to this city was my own idea.”
“You do not need to know. Your shadow knows.”
“My shadow?”
“A shadow is not a simple, two-dimensional representation of the self. The shadow knows you down to your unconscious thoughts. Excuse me for seeking your help in eradicating your lover, but I will have it.”
“Stop this! Let go of me!”
The Sorcerer seized the Devil Sword leaning against the bed and hurled it at Sayaka’s shadow. With a dull thud, the accursed blade sank into the concrete in the vicinity of her throat. The steel shaft quivered back and forth. That was all he did, but Sayaka felt the stab of pain as if the sword had pierced her own flesh. She fainted dead away, the demon sprites still grasping her arms.
The Sorcerer jerked his chin. The demons nodded and dragged Sayaka a step backwards. He gazed at her feet, his lips twisting into a gruesome smile that communicated an inarticulate emotion somewhere between pain and joy.
“We can do it, steal her shadow.”
The shadow stretching a foot away from Sayaka’s feet across the bed remained entwined around the Devil Sword.
“But isn’t she meant for the altar?” asked Kaki.
The Sorcerer shook his head. “No. I have a more important role for her. Eliminating that boy would be difficult even combining the strengths of all three of us.”
“With all due respect—”
“Listen. Half of the power suffusing that wooden sword belongs to his father. Steal the sword, and he is still an untested youngster. Your powers alone would be sufficient to overcome him. We shall proceed as follows—”
As the two demons held onto Sayaka, with his dying breaths the Sorcerer laid out the details of his plan. When he was done, Suika took Sayaka away.
The Sorcerer lay back down on the bed. Kaki slowly pushed the bed toward the back of the room. The creaking of the wheels echoed hollowly through the dark world, mingling with his final words, muttered in the unconstrained bitterness and malice of his death throes.
“You watch, son of Izayoi, I will soon return.”
With that, his v
oice and his labored breaths died away. The Sorcerer expired. This should have been victory. In that moment, in America, the marks of the curse should have vanished from President Rama’s neck. The machinations of the Demon Realm should have come to a standstill.
And yet, Kaki betrayed not the slightest sign of consternation. In the gloom ahead appeared the black altar, engraved with strange and mysterious shapes. Racks full of electronic equipment were clustered around it.
Kaki parked the bed next to the altar, produced a metal card seemingly out of thin air, and inserted it into the nearby medical computer. The panel lit up and the machines sprang to life. From the surrounding speakers flowed the rhythmic patterns of synthesized speech. The incantations of the Demon Realm, sounding more like rites for the dead than conjuring up demonic spells.
A faint light oozed from the Sorcerer’s body, rising upward out of the corpse as if exorcized by the incantations. The soul of the Sorcerer, in human form. Is this what he meant by “return”? But there was no calling this soul back into the vessel.
The human-shaped soul looked at Kaki and grinned. Though it had no eyes, mouth or nose, the expression was unmistakable. It leapt onto the altar and lay down.
At the same time, the incantations ceased. Kaki retreated. Responding to instructions from the computer, several of the electronic devices positioned themselves around the altar. One was equipped with ultrasonic scalpels and suturing lasers, the others consisted of parts cabinets and industrial construction robots repurposed for micro-scale assembly work.
Every inch of them—from the scalpels to the assembly arms, from the frames down to the screws—were etched with spells. A surgical procedure combining the powers of magic and electrical engineering would surely commence next. But to what end? And what was the meaning of the confident smile that rose simultaneously to the faces of both the body and the soul?
“Breakfast,” the maître d’ and owner of the hotel announced gruffly. Without knocking, he opened the door and stepped into the room. He was holding a plastic tray in his hands and had a cheap folded map under his arm.
Demon City Shinjuku: The Complete Edition Page 9
