Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 2 (23 page)

While knowing it was all a facade, the scene opening up before their eyes was the reality, and Demon City and the lives they lived there were the illusion.

Stone steps came up on their right. They climbed the stairs and entered a grove of trees.

“What do you think?” Yakou asked, in a manner suggestive of a man out for a relaxing stroll.

Yuen said, “This seems to be derived from the memories of an actual experience. It's blocked the inputs from our physical senses.”

Zhang agreed. “And reality won't return until it is destroyed. It's also connected to our subjective experience. Yakou-sama, that oak tree there on the left, how would it react to a
shuriken
?”

Three hands reached out. Three dagger-like
shuriken
cut through the air and with a burning sound buried themselves into the trunk of the tree. Moonlight glinted off the steel shafts.

Yuen gaped. Each dagger had a completely different effect. Yuen's sank in half way. Zhang's buried itself completely. Yakou's passed through it like it wasn't even there and shot through several trees behind it.

Zhang grinned slyly at his partner. “Yeah, it's not easy shedding the conviction that reality is only what you see with your eyes.”

Yuen shrugged.

The magical forces alive in this park disturbed the cognitive powers of even these three supernatural men. A normal person wouldn't doubt the “reality” for a second, and the park would respond in kind.

“As long as we are with Yakou-sama, at least the blind won't be leading the blind. We are not likely to see what he sees. But where might the enemy's hiding place be located?”

“I don't know,” Yakou said shortly. “This grove of trees? Or probably another one entirely. Doctor Mephisto says that their lair is filled with light, with a view of green forests and mountain ranges. What he means by all that is a mystery to me as well.”

“They came here on a ship, did they not?” Zhang asked.

“Yes. Aki-san witnessed it personally.”

“A street in Demon City turning into a river must have been an illusion. As would be their kingdom.”

“A safe assumption, but I find it hard to believe that the Doctor would be captivated by exactly the same hallucination as ourselves. Somewhere in this city should be found a brimming lake and a magnificent estate in an eternal world.”

For a short while, the men soaked up the moonlight. Then they started forward again. A feeling gripped their chests. They were vampires, as were their enemies. Both sides sought a place of safe refuge. And each side must eliminate the other.

After twenty minutes they came to a place overlooking an expansive lawn. They weren't the only midnight strollers. Sitting on the grass and under the trees and on the benches were pairs of men and women listening to the whisperings of the summer wind.

Yakou stopped and asked, “Can you see that too?”

“Yes.”

“Definitely.”

“Let's give the
shuriken
another try. Pick your own targets.” The odd proposition came from Yakou. Perhaps taking note of them, some of the people turned their quiet eyes on them. Yakou gazed back.

One in a circle of young people on the lawn stood up, strumming a guitar. The unmistakable sound of the guitar drifted toward them like smoke from a campfire. The guitar player separated from the group and approached them. He must have been the leader, for the rest of the group got up and tagged after him.

Yakou said, “That's no guitar player.”

“I know,” the other two agreed.

The group was now close enough that they could make out the smiles on their faces. Again came the sound of the guitar. Responding to that signal, the young people opened their arms as if to welcome the three of them.

Two daggers sliced through the night air. The string snapped. A small hole appeared in the neck of the guitar. Two daggers, one hole. Such dazzling skill seemed to kill the cheerful mood. The surrounding panorama grew faint and hazy.

In a flash, Yuen and Zhang felt the return of their five senses. They were struck by a completely different sensation. It would have driven an ordinary person mad.

Surrounding them were the creations of some insane god. One directly in front of them resembled a giant crab, carapace almost ten feet across. The waving pincers could slice and dice a half-dozen human beings in seconds flat.

The carapace was densely studded with horn-like protuberances. The legs supporting the huge frame were less those of a crustacean and more those of a large feline animal like a lion or tiger.

The creatures serving the giant crab were equally strange, globes six feet in diameter whose “faces” were so furrowed and wrinkled that their entire bodies resembled a ball of inch-thick yarn.

Two red eyeballs jutted out from the middle of the crab's carapace. The one on the left oozed oily black fluid. This was the creature that had aroused the hallucinations Yuen and Zhang had seen.

The peaceful park was already a memory. The pristine sidewalks were caked with moss. A carpet of strange, dirty weeds painted the lawn in a nauseating color that the cool moonlight couldn't disguise.

The pincers loomed over them. The claws fastened around Yakou's head and torso. But instead of slicing him in two, the steely blades flew apart at the joints. As if careful aim had been taken, the shattered claws buried themselves into the globes flanking the giant crab.

Yakou didn't run. The remaining pincer lashed out with a renewed groan. He didn't block it, but matched the movement and dodged out of the way, the palm of his left hand sliding along the claw.

The direction of the claw changed, also a surprise to the crab. The sharpened tips stabbed directly into the crab's soft underbelly, guided by Yakou's left hand.

The crab toppled over with a freakish scream. A pale writhing mass eclipsed Yakou's view—the tentacles shooting out from the living globes on either side of him. White smoke erupted where the tentacles came in contact with the ground.

The fleshy body of the giant crab dissolved and decomposed from the unimaginably strong acid.

Yakou said to his two subordinates, “Let's get out of here.” He sprinted into the forest on the right.

He could sense the tentacles coming after them. Yuen and Zhang were behind him. He glanced over his shoulder. The two of them bounded right and left. The tentacles pursued them. A strategy to guarantee Yakou's escape.

A glint of light. The good six feet of the tentacle aimed at Yuen's back tore away and impaled itself into an elm tree with a burst of white smoke.

Yakou directed his attention at Zhang. The tentacle was drawing back, split vertically down the middle. The acid dripping into the stream turned the water into billowing gas that concealed the retreating enemy.

“You okay?”

“Yes,” said Yuen, running up to him.

“And Zhang?” Emotion flickered across his stern features.

“Here.”

The calm, quiet voice came from beyond the stand of trees, lower down. They ran over. The slope turned into a steep cliff-like embankment. Zhang was standing in a thicket about six feet down, looking at the slope behind him.

“What?” There was expectation in Yakou's voice.

“That tentacle—it may have done us a surprising favor.” He pointed at the mound of earth.

Yakou jumped down. He understood as soon as he landed. A hole was gouged into the side of the embankment. His instincts told him that it was something much more than a mere cave.

It was a gate that just might lead them to the kingdom of those troublesome vampires.

The three men stood silently in front of the cave—the mouth partially obscured by green grass—like the dead waiting on the shores of the River Styx.

Yakou went first. Yuen after him. Zhang brought up the rear. The moonlight glittered briefly and then was gone. Even here in the infamous DMZ—the most dangerous place in Shinjuku—they were phantoms in the dark.

Cool drops struck their cheeks and necks, the dew shaking off the ground. The cave seemed a natural formation. The roots hanging from the ceiling and squirming around their feet seemed proof of the fact.

Their footsteps glided along. The roots blocking them sprang out of the way before touching them. Or rather, were cut away, leaving only the cleanly severed ends. After all, that's why they were here. Not only to capture and detain. Not just to kill. But to exterminate.

The change was sudden and drastic. Yuen and Zhang shouted and jumped back into the darkness.

The sky above was filled with light.

“Don't panic. That sun isn't real.”

“Yeah.” They'd already figured that out.

“I wonder if
they
see this same dream,” Yakou mused to himself.

The path meandered toward a forest off in the distance. Above and beyond the line of the trees—so densely arrayed they looked shrouded in mist—soared an enormous rusty brown wall. And beyond the wall, the blue-green mountains. Their objective surely lay in the direction of that wall.

“Let's go,” said Yakou.

Three sets of footsteps left their depressions in the ground. They arrived at the foot of the ramparts two hours later. The sun hadn't moved in the sky. The rustling wind and the sound of singing birds hadn't changed either.

An ordinary afternoon.

Having become Daji's slave, perhaps the Shang Dynasty's Emperor Zhou had also lived in this false, eternal daytime, rubbing his red and swollen eyes and coveting sleep.

“Yakou-sama, there seems to be a gate here.”

The path ran along the wall until it was sucked into a cavern-like entrance beneath a soaring arch. It was wide enough to admit a brigade of cavalry fifty horses wide, and was secured by a rusted red iron gate.

Yakou went up to the gate. He peeled off a strip of rusted metal and crushed it between his fingers. With a sharp sting, it crumbled into powder and drifted to the ground.

“Though this is a fabricated world, time wears away at it. And yet life here could hardly be called life.”

“That would seem to be the case. I doubt it would open at the asking. Shall we jump over?” He looked up at the top of the gate.

A screeching sound like giant claws scraping on a blackboard pounded at their eardrums.

“Look—the gate—”

“It's opening. What's that noise—”

A thread-like fissure ran down the middle of the rust-caked iron gates. It widened to the width of a narrow stream and finally stopped.

Yakou said to the men on either side of him, “Did that damage your ears?”

“Apparently.”

Yuen and Zhang nodded. Thin lines of red ran down their necks. The groaning of the gates was some sort of acoustic weapon designed to drive any cavalry attacking the gate mad. It had ruptured the eardrums of these two elites. They responded to Yakou's question by reading his lips.

Whatever had projected that weapon at them was not physically there. Only its disembodied will stubbornly existed within these walls.

The gap in the gate was just wide enough for them to enter three abreast. No more, no less.

“Let's stick together.”

“Got it.”

They passed through the gate single file.

The world inside the gate was a heaven and an earth unto itself. The ground was densely planted with trees and plants and shrubs. Fig trees and dandelions and patrinia and Chinese bellflower bloomed with wild abandon around the arbors and along the banks of the brimming primeval lakes, in complete disregard to the season.

Hearing the flapping of wings, they looked up to see gorgeous phoenix birds flying through the air. Their eyes were drawn to the magnificent manor house rising eerily above the dense carpet of greenery.

“Unbelievable,” Zhang muttered. “This must be a different dimension. If it was part of our world, it would be filled with gloom. Beings who thrive on darkness should not be surrounded by so much light.”

“What do you think, Yakou-sama?”