Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 5 Omnibus Edition Read online

  Author’s Bio

  Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in 1949 in the city of Choshi in Chiba Prefecture. He graduated from Aoyama University. His auspicious debut came in 1982 with the publication of Demon City Shinjuku.

  In 1985, the classic Makaikou was published in three volumes, elevating him to the ranks of bestselling authors. Since then, his supernatural thrillers have sold over 6.5 million copies, and this explosive enthusiasm shows no sign of stopping.

  Now, after three years of work, Hideyuki Kikuchi has poured his heart and soul into the conclusion of this epic series.

  Yashakiden: The Demon Princess Vol. 5 Omnibus Edition

  Yashakiden:The Demon Princess vol.5 - Yashakiden 4 (c) Hideyuki Kikuchi 1997. Originally published in Japan in 2007 by SHODENSHA Publishing Co.,LTD. English translation copyright (c) 2012 by DIGITAL MANGA, Inc. All other material (c) 2012 by DIGITAL MANGA, Inc. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders. Any likeness of characters, places, and situations featured in this publication to actual persons (living or deceased), events, places, and situations are purely coincidental. All characters depicted in sexually explicit scenes in this publication are at least the age of consent or older. The DMP logo is (tm) of DIGITAL MANGA, Inc.

  Written by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  Illustrated by Jun Suemi

  English Translation by Eugene Woodbury.

  English Edition Published by:

  DIGITAL MANGA PUBLISHING

  A division of DIGITAL MANGA, Inc.

  1487 W 178th Street, Suite 300

  Gardena, CA 90248

  USA

  www.dmpbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available Upon Request

  First Edition: Feb 2012

  ISBN-13: 978-1-56970-198-0

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed in Canada

  Main Characters

  Setsura Aki

  The manager and owner of a Demon City senbei shop and P.I. agency. A handsome man with magical powers literally at his fingertips, he fights his enemies with strands of sub-micron thin “devil wire.”

  Mephisto

  It is rumored that the “Demon City Physician,” as beautiful as he is feared, can bring even the dead back to life.

  Princess

  A gorgeous Chinese vampire who has wandered the world for four thousand years in search of a safe refuge for herself and her followers.

  Kikiou

  Princess’s principal retainer, this mysterious old warlock desires to subjugate all of Demon City Shinjuku.

  Shuuran

  A vampire and servant of Princess, she can fashion killer vampire dolls from her own blood—and was herself killed by the Doll Girl.

  Ryuuki

  This vampire general from ancient China plays the mesmerizing ghost koto Silent Night and has a powerful qi at his command.

  Takako Kanan

  A college student specializing in ancient Chinese history, she is swept into supernatural conflict because of her obsession with the mysterious “Daji” from the Hsia Dynasty.

  Yakou

  A vampire who lives in Demon City’s Toyama housing project, he is the grandson of the Elder, who was defeated and killed by Princess.

  Tonbeau Nuvenberg

  One very fat witch, and currently a resident of Demon City’s Magic Town, she’s the younger sister of the Czech Republic’s greatest wizardess, Galeen Nuvenberg.

  The Doll Girl

  Together with an obnoxious raven, the surprisingly powerful Doll Girl serves the witch Galeen Nuvenberg.

  Mayor Kajiwara

  The mayor of Demon City Shinjuku, he’s pulling out all the stops to keep things from getting any weirder than they already are.

  The Story So Far

  The immortal vampire known as Princess is quickly turning Demon City Shinjuku into a vampire metropolis. Setsura infiltrates her manor house alone and is met by the puppet paramours and picture soldiers of Princess’s servant, the powerful warlock Kikiou. He is saved in the nick of time by the wizardess Galeen Nuvenberg, but only at the cost of her own life.

  Meanwhile, fearing a vampire apocalypse, the Japanese government plans to hit Shinjuku with a nuclear bomb supplied by the U.S. military. Except that in a befitting irony, Prime Minister Kongodai himself has become one of Princess’s slaves. In order to retrieve the missile abort codes from him and save Shinjuku, Setsura must once again face off against Princess, this time on her home ground.

  Part One: Monster Playground

  Chapter One

  Princess ended her pronouncement. A sly smile stole across her face.

  “What’s she talking about?”

  “Who the hell is this bitch?”

  Submachine guns glittered in the hands of the bodyguards. The weapons had ten-inch barrels and bores that were only an eighth of an inch, but they could empty a magazine of seventy rounds in 3.5 seconds, delivering a hail of armor-piercing rounds that guaranteed instant death. The safeties were off.

  “Stop!” Prime Minister Kongodai barked. As the bodyguards reacted in amazement, he continued, “No shooting! This person is my—patron.”

  “Oh, how sweet,” Setsura said, which only further confused the guards.

  “But—sir—”

  “No means no! Put away your weapons!”

  The barrels of the guns bobbed up and down, reflecting the consternation of the men carrying them.

  Princess turned around. “Let’s be on our way.”

  She strode into the mist like a phantom. Setsura and Takako came next. Kongodai followed up the rear.

  The guards ran after him and grabbed him by the arms. They were both over six feet tall, weighed over a hundred and eighty pounds and were experts in hand-to-hand fighting. Either of them could take out a two-hundred-fifty-pound sumo wrester in a full-bore roid rage.

  And yet the paunchy prime minister, half a head shorter, dragged them along without slowing, calmly following the beautiful silhouette in front of him. They redoubled their efforts and shouted in his ears to halt, but he didn’t slow his pace.

  The other two guards positioned themselves in front and in back of him. One pushed against his chest, the other wrapped his arms around his legs. Despite their best efforts, the prime minister shook himself free and kept going, his vacant eyes burning with unabashed puppy dog love—the one thing his bodyguards took no notice of.

  “He’s not stopping.”

  “Sir, you can ask for my resignation later!”

  The guard in front made a fist and drove it into his belly with all his might. The hand sank into his stomach down to the wrist. It should have knocked the breath clean out of him. The prime minister did not so much as hiccup.

  “Get his legs!” cried the one on the left.

  Setsura and the Princess had already faded into the fog.

  “No! That’s the prime minister!”

  Ignoring the warning, the guard who’d first grabbed him from the left aimed his gun downward. The rest leapt backwards as the muzzle spit fire. The depleted uranium rounds tore the prime minister’s knees to shreds. Shards of fabric and flesh flew like confetti.

  The needle-like cartridges showered onto the ground, clattering and pinging around them. In front of their amazed eyes, the bloody legs kept walking as if nothing was out of the ordinary. The man’s slight frame had faded to a dusky shadow when the bodyguards finally came to their senses and chased after him.

  Like marionettes pulled along by invisible strings.

/>   The mist burned away. Setsura found himself standing under a bright sun. They had entered Princess’s kingdom. He looked around. Princess and Takako were in front of him. Beyond them extended a row of squat, flat buildings.

  The old and crumbling blanched bricks of adobe houses. Their decrepit state was clear at a glance, even without seeing the cracks in the walls and the holes in the roofs. Some dusty Chinese village from a time long past. A slight breeze stirred Setsura’s hair.

  “Kongodai and his retainers are somewhere in that village. You have seven hours to find them.”

  A thin smile rose to Princess’s lips as she spoke, though Setsura had turned his face towards the ruins. His shadowed features, as if distilled out of the night, were a befitting addition to the darkness of the town. On this field flooded with light, he shone like a statue carved by wind and lightning.

  For a moment, Princess couldn’t tear her eyes away.

  “Where is this?” he asked, taking note of the river and the surrounding mountains.

  “The remains of a village occupied long before the Hsia Dynasty. No humans live there now. In their place are strange and curious creatures. You’d better hurry up and find the prime minister and the rest of them before they become their next meal. I’ll wait beneath that pine tree. When you return, our little game will be over. If you wish to save Shinjuku, if you truly value the lives of your compatriots—those seven hours will fly by in a flash.”

  Her pearl-like lips bent at a cruel angle. “But remain here and you and Takako may rest easy. Put off this silly saving-the-world business and become my slave. If you do—”

  “Well, I’m off then,” Setsura said, stretching his limbs. A vein pulsed slowly on Princess’s forehead. “Look after Kanan-san for me.”

  “No, she’s going with you.”

  “She’ll kind of get in the way.”

  “All the more reason to. Be sure she doesn’t stray from your side for an instant. There’s nothing the current residents of that village like more than the smell of a soft, pliant woman.”

  Setsura sensed it too. Until this moment, nothingness had ruled over these ruins. But now, here and there, squirming signs of danger arose and were growing louder. By himself, he could have improvised a suitable response. But together with Takako—half turned into a vampire and lusting after his blood—getting a hold of Kongodai while fending off the inhabitants of this place would prove chancy at best.

  “So that’s a definite no?”

  “You’d better get going.”

  “What a miserly little minx.”

  She stared back at him. She, who had watched over four thousand years of Chinese history and the rise and fall of kingdoms long before that, had borne every insult the human language could concoct—except for that concatenation of words.

  Miserly. Stunned, her mind worked through the meanings. Her face, like a pale peach, flushed with anger. Drawing and quartering him right then and there would not begin to satisfy her.

  But with Takako Kanan by his side, he strolled along the road to the ruins as if he’d just wished her a good day. In no way did he look like a man bearing the fate of the world upon his shoulders.

  “You’ll be back, Setsura Aki.” Princess didn’t speak, but her movements communicated every thought. “You will live. You will fight for Demon City and the refuse who live there. You will lose everything and come back here precisely at noon. Without the prime minister. Holding onto nothing but the darkness of everlasting despair. That is what you will bow down to. You will return to me seeking your final salvation.”

  Princess screamed with laughter. The wind blew, carrying grit and sand into the air. Touched by the sound of her voice, it fell back to the earth like rain, as if it too wished to flee the presence of such merciless glee.

  Setsura stopped at the earthworks surrounding the town. At the time, the builders of this defensive perimeter—three feet high, a foot thick and plastered with clay—must have viewed it as quite an accomplishment.

  Passing through a gate—all that was left were the round oak timbers—Setsura entered the village. Yellow dirt scurried past his feet like a fleeing animal.

  “Searching for people is my specialty,” he said to himself.

  He cast out his devil wires—from hands that the world’s most accomplished sculptor would wish to spring to life and like Pygmalion receive his kiss. The slightest movement of that shadow-like white fist, and the titanium wire sprang out as a sword, an auger, as eyes or ears or infinitely long fingers.

  Invisible to the wind, glimmering now and then under the sun like gossamer as it prowled the empty streets and houses. No one on God’s green earth could hide from this beautiful seeker.

  A sharp pain radiated back through the tips of his fingers. In a flash, Setsura discarded the thread and switched to another. He didn’t cast it out, but examined his fingers. Red drops beaded on the skin. On this young man’s fair flesh, even blood budded like a flower.

  “Grabbed, bitten, yanked without being cut by my threads—that woman said this was a wild and woolly world she did not enter blithely. Seems she was telling the truth.”

  Setsura raised his fingers to his lips, stopping just short. Casting a disagreeable glance at the beads of blood, he retrieved a handkerchief with his left hand and wiped them off.

  “Please,” said a gasping voice.

  Setsura turned around and frowned. Takako stood there in a blouse and jeans, bathed in the white light. Her skin was the texture of wax. Only her lips were red.

  Another gasp. Her upper lip curled back of its own accord, exposing the white teeth and gums. Her tongue peeked out, as if pushing aside the long fangs.

  “Please.” A trembling hand reached toward his chest. “Please. Your fingers—what a pleasant aroma.”

  “Sorry, you’ll have to take a rain check.”

  As he spoke, her arms dropped back down again as if bound together. An invisible strand of steel slackened at times, stiffened at times, and kept Takako entranced. Otherwise, in her current state, hungering for blood, he could not have brought her along.

  “Please, pretty please,” she pleaded, grinding her teeth in thirst and hunger. In her half-demon state the seductiveness of that expression, of her writhing body, was beyond description.

  “I suppose there’s an upside to your being here. But no matter how I look at things, you’re going to be a handful. What do I do with you?” For the young senbei shop owner, who seemed to have been born with that languid look on his face, this was an understatement to say the least. “Leave you here, or hide you someplace?”

  Except there was no telling what was lurking in this village. Should she be cornered by one of the monsters, the fate of even a half-vampire would be the same as any frail young woman.

  He had no choice but to take her along for the ride.

  The two of them wandered down the streets of the village. That unearthly sense rained down on them—from the dark alleys between the houses, from the shadows behind the fences, from the rooftops—of being watched by many eyes.

  Setsura cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed in a loud voice, “Hey, Mr. Prime Minister! You around here somewhere?”

  The aura of the beasts watching and waiting swept through the village like a whirlwind, suffused with tense loathing and mindless murder. Even Princess and Kikiou would have been taken aback by its intensity.

  As far as Setsura was concerned, this was the logical thing to do. The genial young man possessed a state of mind a world removed from the usual fears and stresses of humanity at large. But more than that was the ability to not care a whit what anybody else thought about him.

  Having been brought to a place like this against their will by Princess, the prime minister and his bodyguards should surely want to escape as soon as possible. Setsura was confident they wouldn’t have cause to avoid him. Making as much noise as possible was the fastest way to reach them.

  His devil wires weren’t working. He strained his ears.<
br />
  An answer came: the report of a gun. From the northeast. Nothing else. A single, clear shot.

  “That was quick.”

  With a carefree smile he wrapped an arm around Takako and soared onto the roof of a nearby house. No sooner had he landed but one of the remaining tiles jarred loose. It sailed into the air, suddenly reversed course, and returned to its original position.

  Yelling was one thing, allowing a tile to uselessly fall quite another. That was the way his mind worked. As if sensing something, he cast a suspicious glance at where the tile lay. Seeing nothing amiss, he directed his gaze elsewhere.

  Beyond the houses—all rising to about the same elevation—the horizon was filled with forests and hills. Human figures appeared and disappeared among the woods and rises. They were coming this way.

  “Found you.”

  Setsura tapped Takako in the solar plexus. Picking out a tree in the thick curtain of green surrounding the town, he flung a devil wire around one limb.

  Chapter Two

  Not just the four bodyguards, but Prime Minister Kongodai as well was gripped by a state of high anxiety.

  Disappearing into the fog while being manipulated by Princess was one thing. But when the skies cleared, Princess was nowhere to be seen. All around them were verdant hills and forests.

  Coming to his senses, he cried out, “Where the hell are we?”

  None of his bodyguards had a clue either. Before being engulfed in the mists, it’d been a dark summer night, the darkest hours before dawn. Now the bright sunlight pouring down stung their eyes. The sheer improbability of their surroundings sent cold chills down their backs.

  Squad leader Sejika said, “In any case, let’s make our way back to civilization. Hey, Kume, climb up that hill and take a look around.”

  Kume darted up the rise. He pointed and called back, “Houses not far off!”

  “Sounds like a stroke of good luck.” Without waiting for Kume to rejoin them, Sejika ordered them forward. He loaded a magazine of five 20 mm missiles into his gun. The weapon weighed about three pounds and gave him a ton of confidence.