Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 2 (6 page)

Within this devilish hall of mirrors, a strong voice—tinged with rust—answered, “Exactly. For ordinary humans.”

All the Mephistos narrowed their eyes.

Ryuuki closed his. He extended his hand. Toward the Mephisto standing in front of the couch facing the door.

The white figure staggered. All the other “Mephistos” vanished. But the surprised gasp was Ryuuki's. His penetrator
qi
could split a boulder in two and bring down a rampaging tiger. And yet in the face of such black arts, Mephisto just stood there. At most, a small bead of sweat gathered on his forehead.

Ryuuki's attention was instead concentrated on his left hand. Four fingers remained. A strand of wire wrapped around his wrist also entwined his thumb and the rest of his pinky above the second knuckle, holding it tightly against his palm.

“The power in your hand resides in those two fingers. The more proficient the user, the more important they become.” Mephisto spoke in a subdued tone of voice.

“You haven't suddenly mastered the art of
qigong
breath control, have you?”

Mephisto shook his head. “A little. A very effective technique. But I was expecting a single and deciding coup de grâce.”

Again Ryuuki extended the arm of death. Except that it came to a halt at a forty-five degree angle with his body. The silvery wire binding his wrist to his waist wasn't there a split second before. Even he hadn't known it'd been from the time he'd first jumped out of the way, dodging the wire that split the wind like a whip.

His left hand was immobilized. And if he tore it off, he had no right hand to fall back on. But before he could act in any case, he felt a sharp pain around his waist. His body was bowed backwards.

“You might not have noticed, but the wire is wrapped around your torso. Not as cleanly as Setsura Aki could do, but enough to cut you in half.”

“Not before my penetrator
qi
gets you.” Ryuuki's face grayed and his voice pitched up half an octave. “You took that
qi
on purpose—”

“A diagnosis is impossible without a thorough knowledge of the disease,” Mephisto said, wiping his forehead. “And there is no better way of discerning the nature of a disease than by contracting it yourself. But I may have overdone it a bit.”

The cape fluttered. Ryuuki groaned and fell back against the wall. His purple lips parted and he panted like a dog.

“I'd prefer that you repent for the harm done to the people of this city in another world.”

Mephisto was about to yank back on the wire with his left hand when his body grew stiff. The loop of wire fell to the floor with a pleasant ringing sound.

“It finally took hold,” Shuuran said, her icy words filled with hatred. “The drug took that long to kick in. He really is a formidable man.”

Ryuuki dropped to the floor with a thump. Kikiou and Shuuran kept their eyes fixed on the white-shrouded doctor. Shuuran stepped toward him. This time, the Demon Physician was as helpless as a baby.

But before Kikiou's hand reached out to intercede, Mephisto came to his senses. Silence filled the white room.

“How was it?” Kikiou asked. His voice seemed to be coming from far away.

Mephisto's answer was short and to the point. “I saw.”

“And?”

“First I have to dispose of this man.” Mephisto leaned over and picked up the coil of wire.

“What is the nature of this obsession?” Kikiou wondered curiously.

Mephisto didn't answer. He settled into a stance, about to yank back with his right hand, when—

The room wavered back and forth.

“What? Now?”

Kikiou goggled. Shuuran stared in blank amazement at the ceiling. Mephisto looked out the window. The world outside was still as death. And yet they knew that everything in eyesight was coming unglued from their moorings.

The world was on the move. A sudden sense of vertigo gripped Mephisto. Everything was suddenly far away and he was sucked down into the blackness. Further and further away, Kikiou and Shuuran floated on the rumbling, seething dark.

He heard only their voices. “We must be on our way. We will meet again at some later date. We'll be looking forward to your answer then.”

The two of them remained distinct as the darkness swallowed them up, down to the lines on their faces. Simultaneously Mephisto's consciousness was engulfed by the infinite night.

“Doctor!” someone shouted close by.

Yakou was standing there. Behind him was a mountain of rubble. The rubble took on a hazy blue glow, night yielding its temporary hegemony to the day.

This place, Mephisto realized, was where he'd last stepped forward with their kingdom in his sights.

“Where were you? I've been searching high and low.” Yakou couldn't hide the disapproval in his voice.

Mephisto sank to one knee. “What's wrong?” Yakou implored. He was about to lend him his shoulder, when he sensed that this doctor was the one person who wouldn't appreciate such a gesture. He hesitated. “What happened?”

“Oh, this and that.”

Mephisto took a thin breath. He felt like warm, soft lead from the neck on down. Ryuuki's penetrator
qi
had caused him no little discomfort.

“Can you stand?”

“More or less.” Mephisto drew out his right hand from beneath his cape and looked at it. “You haven't seen a coil of wire around here somewhere?”

“Not at all.”

“What a strange world.”

Yakou's expression shifted. “Did you break into their stronghold? Where is it?”

“Here,” replied Mephisto. He directed his gaze at the nearby mountain of rubble. “I entered
there
, then through a forest, across a river, and then
here
. For all my travels, I traveled all of one foot. What a remarkable kingdom.”

He spoke in almost disinterested tones as he got to his feet. He didn't betray the slightest discomfort. Like a fountain of water flowing upward towards the sky. His eyes fell on a man collapsed against the pile of rocks behind Yakou.

“The man they were after.”

Yakou pointed at his neck. “His throat was ripped out and he was swallowing his own blood. He must have been one of their victims. Even with half his neck missing, he managed to keep on living. He put up a fight, so I put him to sleep.”

“Good job,” Mephisto answered, remembering what Shuuran had said. She'd left their hidden fortress in order to confirm his death—to clean up after herself, not out of any compassion for the human condition.

Glancing down at the man's disheveled, flaccid features, Mephisto added in a small voice, “I wonder if it'd upset anybody if I said he reminded me of Ryuuki?”

“What's that?”

“Let's go. Tonight's hunt has yielded both of us worthy trophies.”

Yakou blinked, but said nothing. The white-caped figure passed by him.
What did he see?
he couldn't help asking himself.

But as long as he was working alongside this doctor, he should expect to be whisked away without a second thought to demon-haunted places that even he, a citizen of the supernatural realms, couldn't begin to imagine or understand.

Setsura regained consciousness around two o'clock that afternoon. He groggily opened his eyes. “And I was having such a nice dream.” He sounded in his own head like an old geezer. His tongue felt like a soggy piece of cardboard.

“They say the worse off the patient, the better the dreams. How are you feeling?” Mephisto posed the kind of question expected of an attending physician.

“Sluggish. I still can't move my hands and legs.”

“You should soon be at least as functional as I am.”

“You look like crap. How many people have you malpracticed to death anyway?”

“You might want to mean that literally after this. I intend to settle things with that sparring partner of yours once and for all.”

“You met?”

“Hardly surprising, I would think,” Mephisto said in a blasé tone of voice. “Would you rather we hit it off like kindred spirits?”

“So you didn't kill him?” Setsura asked. He quickly added, “No. I don't know how many aces he's got up his sleeve, but he's not an easy man to kill. Call it a draw. You'll have to fill me in on the details. By the way, what about Miss Kanan? I have the feeling that she accompanied me here.”

“She's in the special containment ward.”

“She's
where
?” He half sat up, before collapsing back on the bed. “Man, the quality of care here has really hit the skids. I shouldn't be surprised that a visitor ends up turning into a patient.”

Mephisto ignored the dig. He pulled up an armchair and sat down next to the bed. Leaving out one particular detail, he recounted the events of the night before. It took a good thirty minutes.

During this time, Setsura made only one comment. “So
that
woman showed up here?” He asked, referring to Takako Kanan, “Is she all right?”

“Unfortunately her blood was taken. I have to ask, but how could this have happened while she was with you? Surely you could protect a single woman—even unconscious. What's going on? Don't worry. Leave her care up to me. You root out the nest of the perpetrator who drank her blood.”

Setsura didn't react or say anything until Mephisto had stopped talking.

“There's something else I must ask you as well,” Mephisto said. “How did
you
escape that woman? Your devil wire was lying in pieces all over the floor.”

“I don't remember,” Setsura said simply. He flexed his fingers beneath the blanket. “Still feels like I'm wearing a hundred pounds on each wrist. Time doesn't heal all wounds.”

“Your body temperature is eighty degrees. Your pulse is forty. Constant chills. No appetite. As I told you, the same as me.”

“Then what am I going through all this for, you quack?”

“Further recuperation is going to have to wait on new information to emerge,” Mephisto coolly declared. “More importantly, the funeral for the Elder is tonight. Do you think you will make it?”

Setsura fell silent for a second. “Him?”

“Who else? The cause of death was getting his heart torn out. Though according to Yakou, the woman was severely burned in the process. The woman who was after you reportedly had half her face burned off. The malice and bitterness has got to be miles deep and getting deeper. I saw it myself. That world of theirs is in motion. Probably because of her. I imagine she ordered it to come pick her up.”

“Hysteria can move the world. Their world may be enclosed within that ship. Where is it headed next?”

“Finding that out is your job.”

Setsura focused his bleary eyes on Mephisto's face. “What's on your mind?”

“A patient with nine lives like a cat. In any case, what about the funeral? Yakou is practically mad with fury. There will be blood. Toyama is dispatching their best men to serve as Miss Kanan's personal bodyguards.”

Setsura pressed his hands against the mattress and slowly raised the upper half of his body. Jerking his chin at the wall opposite, he said, “Stand over there.”

Only one man in Shinjuku could order Doctor Mephisto around like that. And only one man in Shinjuku whose lead Mephisto would follow. His cape appeared to melt into the white wall. The expression on his face was perfectly at peace. But the Demon Physician was no doubt delighted.

Setsura laced his fingers together and pushed out his palms. He winced and shook his head.

“Hey,” said Mephisto.

“Relax,” Setsura replied cheekily. “I may be a bit under the weather, but if my methods can't be trusted, then it'll be up to you to hold the line.”

He shook his hands, warming up. Not the slightest shadow of a doubt clouded his beautiful countenance. Though he couldn't help feeling a bit off his game here and there.

Mephisto's hands remained inside his cape. More than his hands could emerge from there. The rays of the July afternoon sun streamed through the windows like milk pouring into sluggish, warm water, further suffusing the eerie growing vibe.

Setsura abruptly stopped “warming up.” A beautiful hand emerged from Mephisto's cape. A sharp
ping
rang out. Something shattered a yard in front of Setsura and in a flash flew apart. For several seconds Setsura didn't move. Then he sighed like a student who failed his entrance exams.

“Should I send for a physical therapist?” asked Mephisto, and not at all glibly.

He'd sent his
qi
flying. Setsura's wires had neatly sliced through it. And yet the two of them looked like their dog died.

“That's the strongest
qi
you've got?” Setsura asked, massaging his shoulders.

“Yes. And you made short work of it.”

“That was my best effort. Crank it up a notch and you'd be wiping the floor with me. You should check yourself into the hospital as well. Physician, heal thyself.”

“I shall think it over.” Mephisto glanced down at his right hand. “In the meantime, has anything we've been discussing given you an inkling about where they've relocated their safe house?”

“No. But it's clear they can warp space and time. Ancient China had an amazingly advanced civilization. They packed their entire world into that little ship and sailed it here.”

“I can't say I'm familiar with the origins of that kind of technology or with the phenomena. How about yourself?”

“Ditto,” Setsura said in a tired voice. “Sounds like a self-contained universe. Having experienced it yourself, what do you think?”

Mephisto shook his head. “I don't know.”

During the Five Dynasties period at the end of the first millennium, one of the merchants who ran the public market became friends with an old apothecary. Every evening the old man vanished into a jar in his shop. The merchant wanted to see what it was like inside.