Having confirmed that nothing was moving on the blackened slope, he turned around. And froze.
Kyoya and the boy Tarta were standing on a rock less than ten feet away. “You said no radioactivity, right?”
Kyoya grinned, and that told Valen he wasn’t imagining things.
“He was your big brother and all, and you went ahead and did it. That’s the knights of Marduk for you, I guess. No sparing the rod and all.”
Kyoya’s smile vanished as he settled into fighting mode. Valen reached with his left hand for the spear in the saddle. No sooner had he released it from its holder and brought it around to bear than Kyoya was right in his face.
Asura swept down, halting mere fractions of an inch before striking the horse’s neck. In that moment, Valen soared into the air.
While flying upwards, he threw the lance downwards. Kyoya repelled it at the last second, but lost his balance and wavered back and forth on the boulder.
This was the opportunity Valen was waiting for. Switching positions in midair, he drew a short sword from his waist and plunged down on Kyoya.
Shit! was Kyoya’s only thought. He didn’t have time to straighten and meet the attack head on. His next reaction was anything but a thought-through strategy. It was the instinctual response of a tested warrior.
He cast aside all his collected strength and conscious thought and fell to the boulder. A tenth of a second later, the blade at the end of Valen’s lance swept through the air in exactly the place Kyoya’s neck had been.
The shockwave of Kyoya’s shout reached Valen’s ears the same time Asura shot up to connect with his midsection. Valen flew into the air and tumbled into the bottom of a ravine a good distance from the promontory like a human-shaped stone.
“Damn and blast!”
Kyoya sprang to his feet. He hadn’t meant to throw him that far. A purely instinctual muscular response. He ran to the edge of the cliff, but Valen had already disappeared from view.
“So that’s that for those two, and after surviving two thousand years. Idiots.”
He said it sadly, a shadow eclipsing his features. But soon returned to the matter at hand.
“If they’re on that level, then I’ve trained myself to the point where I think I can make an even fight on my hand. But their big brother’s waiting there, and that monster in the mask. Badasses both. Time to take ten and then finish the job.”
A strange atmosphere shrouded Shinjuku. On the surface, it manifested itself in wanton violence and criminality. A martial arts master hopped up on steroids was arrested after attacking total strangers on the street and delivering bone-crushing karate chops to their necks. Street gangs packing laser heat burst into banks and murdered everybody inside.
Giant eagles carried away small children and gathered in the skyscraper district in West Shinjuku. The mayor requested airborne countermeasures from the Ministry of Defense.
Day by day, the collective sense of unease grew stronger—that deeper down, behind it all, lurked an altogether unique, powerful and positively hair-raising phenomenon.
Something was different, something was somehow different. Something humans should not know. Something inherent in Shinjuku itself was welling up and drifting down the streets and thoroughfares, getting under the skin of pedestrians, unsettling their states of mind, causing them to do things they never would have otherwise.
Something that even the most zealous residents of Shinjuku couldn’t be expected to understand. They became no less captives of the weirdness than the regular tourists.
The substance of the abnormalities began to express itself in the most mundane everyday activities.
A bruised and battered man was carted off to the hospital after repeatedly trying to leave the apartment where he’d lived for years—without opening the door.
A woman walking down the stairs from her condo suddenly forgot how to walk down a flight of stairs and squatted there, unmoving, until the EMTs carted her away.
A boy grew so afraid of his own bed that he broke through the ceiling and crammed the fearful thing into the attic and slept soundly on the tatami.
A man who, key in hand, wrenched his finger sticking it into the lock and trying to open the door.
A girl hit by a car when she thought she was walking forward and instead went backwards.
These were but minor manifestations of the abnormal vibe gripping the city. Neither humans nor animals paid attention to its true dreadfulness. Their attention was directed to the heavy death toll caused by the most recent Devil Quake, and to the rampaging criminals taking advantage of the chaos.
Reading the ancient manuscript, Doctor Mephisto raised his head and turned toward the door. He’d left the door open, and now the frame contained the silhouette of the lord of the castle, King Nebuchadnezzar II.
“All this studying is bad for you.”
Mephisto nodded in the direction of the voice. “In fact, these books and documents are most fascinating. The day was gone before I knew it.”
The number of books filling this space—as large as the lobby of a luxury hotel—would have to be counted in the millions. Not only tomes written in dead languages, but rows of worn and tattered items woven from papyrus as well.
“What are you perusing?” The mask scanned the title of the manuscript and exclaimed softly.
“Your book,” Doctor Mephisto answered coolly.
“Where did you find it? I wrote it so long ago I had forgotten about it myself.”
“I was wandering about the stacks when it all but jumped out at me, as if begging me to read it.”
“Really.”
“I do understand at last,” Mephisto said, looking at the masked lord with bright eyes. Deep within the endless black eyes was a glimmer of gold.
“What?”
“Your purpose for this city.”
“Oh?” The mask answered shortly.
“You said you didn’t build this palace to console your mountain-bred wife, and that is the case. But of course. The reason you chose Shinjuku. The battlefield Rama-san wandered through in her memories makes sense in this light. Love is strong indeed, but this is madness.”
“Have you never loved another person, Doctor?” the mask asked in a hoarse voice.
“Well.”
“I have loved but once. The result is what stands before you now. And yet I have no objections.”
“A submission to fate is not always for the best.” Mephisto spoke in an unusually gentle voice, the voice he normally used when examining a patient. “And how fares your wife?” he asked, changing the subject.
The amount of time the spirit body of Semiramis tarried in the world—distinct and apart from Sayaka’s physical being—was slowly but inexorably growing, as was her ability to choose the time and the place. The product of the strange medicines and machines this palace produced.
It spoke as well to the trials of Sayaka’s spirit and soul in the face of total annihilation.
Knowing that, what was Mephisto up to? He was up to nothing. The Demon Physician did not interfere with the mask’s actions, but only stood by and watched. When the mask was not present, he chatted with Sayaka or strolled the grounds of the palace and listened to the songs of the birds fluttering about.
Now and then, a beautiful woman other than Sayaka appeared alongside him, an android dispatched by the mask, or another woman.
“What do you intend to do, Doctor?” the mask asked.
“Do?”
“Knowing the purpose of this palace and my intentions, as a doctor residing in Shinjuku, you must be considering countering actions and strategies.”
“That all depends on her.”
“Depends on her how?”
“It was Semiramis who invited me here, and undoubtedly her desire that you leave me to my own devices. I am doing nothing more here than waiting.”
“And who told you such things?”
“Who?”
“These past several days, the gremlins have
made reports of you and Semiramis engaging in intimate conversations.”
“Oh, something a little bird told me. Our conversations have consisted of ordinary chit-chat.”
“And that settles that, you suppose? What else?” The mask gently took Mephisto’s hand in his own. “So beautiful, enough even to dazzle the eyes of a man. Any woman would be all the more bewitched. I have heard that half the visitors to your hospital are lovesick over you. And of those admitted, the greater number refuse to leave after they’ve been cured. Because of your sinful presence.”
He gazed down at Mephisto’s hand. The Demon Physician’s eyes narrowed. In a flash, the slender pale hand. In a flash, the hand turned ashen gray.
“What do you think of my power of thought? A psychic power taught me by a wizard from Cappadocia while immersing myself in those same pure waters as my wife. It seems the times have left you behind, Doctor. Your heart will soon be the same as your hand, Doctor Faustus.”
“I guess it cannot be helped.” As he spoke, the dead color vanished from Mephisto’s hand.
The mask jumped backward, chanting something under his breath, and forming a curious shape with his hands. Wind roared, blasting Mephisto up into the air. Contact with the wall—any hard surface—would turn his internal organs to jelly.
The wind suddenly ceased. Mephisto landed silently on the floor. The mask looked at him amazed. No, the wind was still blowing. And yet it disturbed Mephisto not at all. He seemed to be absorbing the air into his body.
Mephisto unfurled his cape. The inside of the cape was black as well. Stars glittered in the depths of its folds. The universe resided inside his cape.
Supported by the two beautiful white hands, the hems of the rectangle of fabric fluttered around the dark void in which twinkled the light of ten billion stars. The mask’s magical wind was drawn into its infinite depths.
Just as abruptly, the universe closed in on itself as Mephisto drew the cape across his chest. At the last moment, a hand jutted out, grasping a silver ring of light.
“In appreciation for that cool breeze, I will put on my own show for you. Behold Doctor Mephisto’s wirework.”
He raised his hand, and was clearly going to swing it down over the mask. But didn’t complete the motion. Another hand, whiter than his own, gently reached out to stop his.
“Semiramis.”
She smiled at the sound of her husband’s voice. “Oh, stop it. You’re both important to me. Getting into a fight here does more harm than any good.”
“The lady of the house.”
Doctor Mephisto reverentially bowed his head and took the hand holding his wrist and brought it to his lips.
“Whenever I look at it, this always strikes me as a lovely room,” Semiramis said, gazing about with moist eyes. “The odor of ancient books, of mildew and silverfish. Coming here takes me back to the old country.” She turned her attention to the mask, standing there as if at attention. “I have something to say to the good doctor. Doctor Faustus. We should like the room to ourselves.”
“Fine,” the mask said, though his ready assent was laden with ominous tones.
After he left, the woman stood directly in front of Mephisto and looked into his beautiful and mysterious face with seductive eyes.
“Your husband seems upset.”
“Oh, he’s always like that, concerned about me. We’ve lost a good many retainers because of it.”
“There was something you wished to ask me?”
“Don’t be so distant. You haven’t thanked me for pointing out that book to you.”
“But of course.”
“Why do you think I did so?”
“I wouldn’t presume to say,” Mephisto answered brusquely. Aside from her being another man’s wife, it was as if her very essence aroused in him a deep and abiding feeling of aversion toward her.
“I have been waiting to meet you for such a long time.”
“My, my.”
She softly stroked his cheek. “Loathsome man. Disguised as an old wizard, you sealed me inside the body of that young girl. How many times have I resolved to return the favor? And now I have at last set eyes upon you.”
Her fingers drew an arc across his skin, the force sufficient to raise five streaks of red. Mephisto’s blood. The streams trickled down to the line of his jaw. Oozing sensuality, she brought her mouth up to the dripping blood.
When she pulled away, her lips were redder than the scarlet skin. “I’ll kill you some day. Or right away. In the most awful and feared way this world has to offer. You dreadful man.”
Her dainty chin jerked up, seized by Mephisto’s hand. “Can you? Can the Queen of Death kill the Demon Physician?”
Mephisto’s gaze and voice engulfed the beautiful woman like smoldering amber. She shut her enraptured eyes. Her lips trembled. She took a breath. Mephisto’s mouth covered hers.
She moaned. A moment later, Mephisto was alone again in the old library, his arms forming an incomplete circle, as if wrapped around an invisible person.
“You invited me here to kill me, Semiramis?” he whispered to the empty air. “I accepted knowing you would try. Ha, so we could love each other in all our mutual hatreds. Alas, we were never the kind who would lie awake at night enjoying a little night music.”
Mephisto’s voice drifted away into the distance.
Part Seven: The Mountain Peaks of God
I
A beautiful moon hung in the night sky.
Kyoya opened his eyes. He was sitting on the rock, legs crossed in the lotus position. The discipline and training required to amass spiritual power was entering, as planned, its final stretch.
Up till now, unbelievable things had occurred around him. Hungry wolves had crept onto the promontory and prowled around, growling in their throats and sniffing the air. And yet they didn’t once dare bite.
It was like Kyoya didn’t exist there. Or rather, that his presence meant more to them than the trees or the stones. Gnashing their teeth, they left and went elsewhere to fill their bellies.
From time to time, when Kyoya climbed down from the rock and strode around the promontory, he noticed he was walking through the boulders. A mind cleared of all mundane thoughts can quench fire. When Nobunaga Oda attacked Keirin Temple in the province of Ka, this was the incantation chanted by the monks perched on the gates as he attempted to burn them alive.
Though in this case, even the rocks began to fade at his touch. Such was the result of spiritual training in the ultimate mountain aesthetic of the Himalayas, and absorbing the energy of the universe pouring down.
Of course, he came down from the rock to exercise his kenpo.
There was a graveyard next to a village at the foot of the mountain, haunted by the usual evil spirits and residual ghosts, or restligeists. Kyoya purified them all. They thanked him and left. At one time he would have simply vanquished them. That alone was evidence of an increase in spiritual strength.
But it still wasn’t enough.
In order to counter the masked lord’s secret ability to send his own psychic energy back at him, Kyoya had no choice in these three final days but to shoot for the top in one fell swoop.
There’d be no taking it easy. Not to mention, according to the newspaper Tarta had brought, the weird goings-on in Demon City. Even Chief Yamashina had gone to check it out. Things were growing stranger and stranger and there was still no word from Mephisto. Similar messages were coming into the bureau on a daily basis.
In any case, only Kyoya’s character could have brought him this far. His cells had activated in a flash as they absorbed the energy filling the universe. For over two weeks, he hadn’t drunk a drop of water.
This energy of the universe was suffused with the pure powers of creation. If anybody else—witch, warlock, psychic warrior—whose psychic powers were not matched to its nature, the result would be instant death.
In that sense, there could be no one more perfectly attuned than Kyoya.
Now he
opened his eyes. Oddly enough, a color approaching fear rose to his face. He quietly turned precisely in the direction of Tokyo.
“This feeling—” he muttered. “Today is the day.” He bit his lip. “But how do I return?”
He heard footsteps. Not along the ridgeline. From the ravine below, traveling up the gentle slope. A single pair of footsteps in the snow.
Kyoya waited silently. He knew who he was waiting for. The strength of the approaching spirit raised goose bumps on his skin. A concentrated lump of malice.
The figure that soon appeared behind the stone pedestal was covered in armor and carrying a long lance under his arm. It was Valen. Valen’s ghost carried about him a fierce and evil power that buffeted him.
“I’ve come to renew our contest,” said the voice of the ghost.
“Let’s have at it, then,” Kyoya answered without hesitation. Saving hate-crazed souls was the province of nenpo as well.
He descended from the stone table and settled into a fighting stance. Nothing fancy. He wasn’t showing off. The normal en garde position.
Valen said nothing. He let the lance speak for him. Kyoya batted it away, and felt a cold chill run through him, the violent manifestation of Valen’s malice. Slipping through the garden of strange stones, Kyoya pivoted to his right.
The lance pulverized the boulder and arced through the air. Kyoya parried it left and closed the gap between them in a flash. Valen pulled back the lance. Drawing him in, perhaps. The parry had left Kyoya’s right hand numb.
A stone Buddha stood between him and Valen. That was when he heard a strange voice. He heard it because of his now heightened senses.
Kyoya-san, come quickly. Sayaka’s voice. Those words crystallized in his being. He took off at full speed. I’m coming, Sayaka-chan.
When he’d cleared the row of stone columns, the enchanted lance came at him. Asura sprang out. The tip of the lance flew into the air. The sword swept down from above his head and struck Valen’s neck straight on.
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