Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 2 (9 page)

“Your opponent is very strong.” The sense of danger welled up in her voice. “You know Ryuuki, don't you? The man who locked you up in here. He attacked twice and was twice repulsed.”

The figure swayed. Silent laughter, the woman realized. “In any case, how do you wish him killed?”

“The method is up to you. As long as he ends up dead.”

“Leave it to me. So will you open the doors?”

“Later. Right now, Ryuuki is having another stab at it.”

“A waste of time.” A terrible hostility lurked in the scornful laughter. He put on a placid front. “I see. He's your baby, after all. Fine. If he falls under the heel of the enemy again, I'll awaken the fiery passions within. But what reward should I expect as I set forth?”

Saying nothing, she touched her gown with her right hand, in the center of her sternum. The fabric rent in two, sliding off her porcelain-like body and falling to her feet.

Taking several steps forward, the invisible wall between them suddenly wasn't there anymore. She settled her white body onto the man sitting in the chair, the smell of blood wafting up around them.

“What a nice perfume. You've been soaking in your pool of blood?”

“Like it?” she asked.

His answer was to grab her breasts. She bowed her back. “Hoh. The best reward of all. Let's enjoy ourselves, shall we?” As he spoke, something wet and tongue-like flicked against the woman's throat.

“Yes, yes,” she moaned, and then shouted. The wild, violent passion of the scene was such that if Ryuuki or Kikiou were watching, they'd be unlikely to tear their eyes away.

“Leave it to me. What fine breasts. I could suck them forever and never get bored. How about you take that hand away? Hey, what a mess of a face. What are you twisting away for? Just the kind of girl I love to fuck. Let me lick that fucked up face of yours. Look at me. Tastes good. Ashamed? It stings, don't it? Bitter dregs, huh?
Ha ha ha ha—
”

He roared with laughter, a ribald noise that erupted toward heaven. This was the same laughter that Shuuran and Ryuuki had heard in the corridor above.

In the midst of the dusky light—in the black and white shadows—the carnal heaving and writhing commenced, his words mingling together with her gasping, panting breath—

“Just you watch. That man is dead.”

Hot desire reduced his voice to a husky growl. He was so deep and hard inside her, their bodies so tightly welded together, that it was impossible to tell where one ended and the other began.

Setsura Aki walked casually along the dusky road.

This was the kind of summer evening when a man couldn't take ten steps before his forehead was damp with sweat. The time of day when housewives rushed about making last-minute purchases for dinner. When kids carrying talismans and water pistols filled with holy water played cops-and-robbers with the more harmless species of gremlin. When hard-working businessmen hurried home, briefcases in hand.

The everyday activities in July here in the “safe area” that brought the streets of Arakimachi to life.

Setsura showed up like a broomstick shoved between the spokes of those smooth routines. What made passersby mopping their foreheads and necks with handkerchiefs stop and gape
wasn't
the sight of a long black duster and black high-collar shirt, all completely out of season.

Rather, when it came to upsetting the ordinary routine, even wild and woolly creatures from the no-go areas in the DMZ couldn't compete with what could be called this man's heartbreaking beauty.

Usually the unapproachable man-of-mystery, clothed in a vague, indefinable air, would transform into someone friendly and approachable. But that wasn't the case here.

The cool eyes, the finely chiseled features—that a sculptor would give anything to carve in stone—and that sense of high risk. The combination impressed pedestrians with a sense of danger, while the young women watched him pass by, their cheeks blushing with undisguised desire.

Ryuuki's
qi
had put Setsura through the wringer. He felt like he had a ton of lead on his back. The fatigue filled his gut, constricted his veins. After ten yards he was out of breath.

But taking a break was out of the question. This was one time when he couldn't put off until tomorrow what had to be done right now. If anything, he had to pick up the pace. Based on what he'd understood from Mephisto alone, these were no run-of-the mill villains.

More than anything else, Mephisto had messed it up with Ryuuki and hadn't come out of it much better than himself. Add the powers of the other three into the mix—

Then there was that little incident at the hospital. The vampire lady came for him and took off without finishing the job. Setsura didn't understand what had gone down either. But seeing how she'd easily broken through all the security fail-safes in Mephisto Hospital—that the devil himself could not escape from—sent a shiver down his spine.

To make matters worse, Takako had been infected by those poisonous fangs.

He felt like his head was full of steaming muck. The bright face of that college coed was planted there like an orchid in his mind. Even granting that she'd gotten in way over her head of her own accord, she'd tasted Ryuuki's terrors at his shop and then voluntarily stuck with him all the way to the hospital, where she'd met a much worse fate.

There was no way he could just walk away from her now. It was possible that other victims like Takako were multiplying somewhere in this city at this very moment.

What made vampires so truly terrifying was their ability to reproduce so quickly in such a fashion. Once bitten, the victims became vampires as well, and then turned on their friends and family without mercy.

Demon City Shinjuku was like a cancerous cell in the body of the peaceful world. The bloody flower bloomed in the darkness, and before anybody knew it, was wafting its pollen into the air and gently coaxing open the petals in another garden. There was no way to predict what manner of annihilation awaited them.

Whenever the thought crossed his mind, the roiling impatience made his eyes glow with an ominous light and brought a thin smile to his lips. The labored stride of this young man—who alone understood the true terrors of the situation—concealed the inner strength and resolve necessary to stand against the darkness.

Approaching a row of prefab houses, he stopped in his tracks. In a crook in the road, where the main thoroughfare hung a dogleg to the right, an expected pall of silence suddenly fell.

These prefab houses were vacant. A poisonous miasma hit his nostrils.

The effects of the Devil Quake were not limited to plants and animals, but worked their way into the air and soil. The miasma that had emptied out the residential district in Arakimachi was one such result.

These changes occurred at the molecular level. The earth absorbed the phantom winds and coughed out the gasses in an unending stream. To make matters worse, it didn't happen until a year after the residences were rebuilt, and seemed to target the people living there.

Miraculously, the gasses contained no components harmful to human life. On the contrary, they proved quite effective at eradicating certain monster species. But the stinging acrid smell couldn't be filtered or treated or sealed off. In a month, everybody had moved away.

Only one man remained behind. Setsura found such half-crazed bullheadedness amusing. But he hadn't fully considered the source of such bullheadedness.

A possibly fatal blunder for a Demon City P.I.

The house he was looking for was the same as all the other prefab houses. Except that it had that particular air of being lived in. Setsura still wasn't aware that about an hour before, an old man with white hair and a white beard appeared in front of that house and slipped like a shadow into the foyer.

Several seconds later the house had swayed and shook and collapsed without a sound. Standing in the midst of the rubble, the old man dropped a small cube at his feet. Smoky liquid streamed out as if from an atomizer and enveloped the entire house and the ground it once stood on.

The box trembled like a living thing. In a twinkle it grew to the size of the house, reproducing its exterior walls as an exact duplicate, down to the location of the windows and doors and the preexisting damage to the walls.

A short while later, the old man himself appeared at the front door. He smiled a malicious smile. At the end of the walk he turned right and disappeared down the street.

After the front door closed, leaving just a hairline crack behind, a faint, honey-like odor wafted up around the house for several yards in every direction.

Setsura stopped a dozen feet from the house, the brakes applied by a sixth sense that had steered the manhunter clear of many bloody obstacles before. He didn't understand exactly why, but a fog of danger surrounded the house.

Still, he kept on going. An odor he wasn't fully conscious of drifted by his nose. His senses would have detected any lethal compounds. It didn't because the odor itself contained nothing harmful.

Like the pheromones secreted by a bitch in heat, the purpose of the scent was to attract the male, in this case to lure Setsura into the house. And unlike an alley cat, this odor possessed a kind of living beauty.

On the front porch, Setsura briefly glanced around before pressing the intercom button. Nobody answered. A knock had the same result. He put his hand on the doorknob and turned. The cold sensation he received surely came from the metal doorknob. The door easily opened.

“Hello?” Setsura called out, stepping onto the concrete pad of the
genkon
.

None of the lights were on. Because the man didn't have a phone, Setsura hadn't been able to do anything in advance other than confirm the address.

A long moment passed. A human figure emerged out of the darkness and hurried down the hallway. An old man bent over from osteoporosis, walking with clumsy, labored steps.

Something's wrong here
, a warning whispered down in the pit of Setsura's stomach.
This old man—

A face—exactly the same as in the photo Toya had emailed him—glared at him and said in a demanding voice, “What?”

Setsura nodded politely and held out a business card. “Professor Niwa?”

“Yes.”

“I wanted to ask you some questions about your field of academic expertise.”

Without a glance at the card, Professor Niwa turned around. He trudged back the way he came, his hands clasped behind his back.

“Just a minute—”

“Follow me,” the old man bluntly instructed him.

Setsura reached behind him and closed the door, and stepped up from the
genkon
.

The old man passed through the door he'd exited from a minute ago. Setsura trailed behind him. He felt an odd sensation coming up from the floor through the soles of his feet. A close look revealed nothing unusual.

Every inch of the approximately twelve-foot square, Japanese-style room with a tatami mat floor was strewn with clutter. The interior decor consisted of a musty set of living room furniture, an overhead light fixture and dust. The plaster walls were lined with a spider's web of cracks and actual spider webs.

The only thing that seemed out of place was the sweet smell. Though Setsura had noticed it by now, it was not enough to prompt him to leave.

“Please have a seat.” The old man settled into the sofa and motioned Setsura to a chair.

“Pardon me,” said Setsura, sitting down. His butt sank into the soft cushions.

“What pressing matter did you need to see me about?”

“Among your various fields of expertise, would you happen to know anything about the black art of containing and sealing one world inside another?”

“I believe so,” the professor promptly answered. “However, that is something I do not speak about. And now that you've asked, you shan't be leaving here either.”

“Oh?” Setsura flashed a thin smile.

The old man spoke in a dry, raspy whisper. “A curious Chinese gentlemen dropped by and did some remodeling. I took the opportunity to add some of my own renovations. Like this—”

He poked himself in the left eye with his index finger. The finger sank all the way in. Without so much as a twitch, he pulled it out. The eyeball between his fingers glared at Setsura. At the same time, fluid poured from the eye socket like black crude gushing from an oil well.

The sweetly acidic smell quickly filled the room. Setsura made for the door.

The faint scent of this odor was the same scent that hung around the outside of the house as well. Its composition aside, a sudden slackening in the sensation coming up through his feet brought its purpose to his attention.

It wasn't so much like concrete turning to quicksand as cold mud warming. In the next moment, Setsura had sunken through the floor up to his waist. A strange noise rang down from the ceiling. The moment he knew that something was amiss, he'd thrown out a strand of devil wire for support, looping it around the light fixture.

It wasn't the sound of the ceiling boards ripping apart. More like the sound of flesh being torn through from within.

Like a sinking ship, one half of the squirming floor heaved up while the other half plunged down. The floor moved like a storm-tossed ocean. As did the ceiling. The synthetic sheetrock turned black and silver, laced with blue and green, and stirred together like a spreading oil slick.

Setsura didn't look at either. He'd sensed this room's true nature the moment he'd detected that “off” sensation on the soles of his feet. Instead he fixed his eyes on Niwa.

The stubborn geezer had to be already dead and was up and around only as bait to lure Setsura into the trap. Now the old man reached up to his face and ripped it off. A fissure opened all the way down to his throat. A sweet, honey-like liquid erupted out of the crack.

It lashed the floor and ceiling into a frenzy of desire. Pieces of the floor peeled off in strips and whipped through the air. Blue-green snakes. Beady eyes stared coldly at Setsura. Thread-like tongues flicked from grinning mouths.