Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 3 Omnibus Edition Page 15

  What the—? He suppressed the instinct to scream. The door handle turned into a cobra and flicked its red tongue at him. He let go like it was a red-hot iron.

  The snake’s eyes glittered and turned back into a door handle.

  “That’s a good boy,” the grandma in the wheelchair said with a bright smile. “I didn’t think a little sleight of hand would work on a natural clairvoyant. Went all out on that one.”

  “You try anything funny, Grandma, and you’ll find yourself six feet under. Or are you plenty satisfied already with your three score and ten?” The Clairvoyant raised his ACR to his hip in a threatening manner. “You an ally of Setsura Aki? I have a few questions for you, too. But I’m in a hurry right now. Maybe later.”

  “Take care, now,” the old woman said as the Clairvoyant slid into the driver’s seat and started up the engine.

  A dull thud and the engine screamed. The car rocked back and forth. The Clairvoyant noticed the world beyond the windshield changing. The wall and the road were lifting up.

  By the time he realized that he was sinking into the ground and tried to open the door, the asphalt was level with the bottom of the door. Too frightened to scream, he leapt out head-first and tumbled onto the sidewalk as a crunching sound reached his ears.

  The car disappeared into the sudden sinkhole, leaving only the open door behind, torn from the frame. Three seconds later the car was completely swallowed up by the earth. The roof was briefly visible, and then it too vanished.

  The surface of the asphalt returned to its normal state, with all the original cracks and stains exactly as they were. A scraping noise. The car door had toppled over onto the pavement.

  The Clairvoyant stayed on his knees and brought his rifle to his shoulder and aimed it at the strange trio. “Who the fuck are you guys?”

  The old woman said brightly, “Manners, manners. Why don’t you introduce yourself first?”

  The next moment, a small hole appeared between her eyebrows. The mach four flechette punched through her skull and out the back like a nail gun through tissue paper, and sailed off toward some distant, unknown target.

  It was a 1.5x42mm projectile with a carbon steel jacket that flew with the characteristics of a dart. The shot ran flat at 600 meters, yet produced negligible recoil, making it the preeminent round in its class. Under demanding battle conditions, the mechanism compensated for shooter fatigue and firing errors.

  The impact knocked the grandma’s head against the back of the wheelchair. Not letting her out of his sights, the Clairvoyant pointed the rifle at the girl standing next to her.

  But a strange thought made him hesitate. There was something “hard” and “solid” about the pretty young lass.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the grandma smiling. “You just missed the medulla oblongata. Why not give it another shot?”

  Before being assigned to Demon City, Operational Detachment F soldiers were drilled to take the simplest, most effective measures first when dealing with the citizens of the city.

  The Clairvoyant took an incendiary grenade from his chest, pulled the pin and tossed it at the feet of the trio. A clunk and the grenade rolled up to the feet of the girl.

  The Clairvoyant jumped backwards. The fire from the incendiary grenade would engulf a good five-yard radius.

  An achingly slender white hand reached out and picked up the rough gray lump. The Clairvoyant broke out in a cold sweat.

  “Look, Grandmother,” she said in a voice like a bell. “The man dropped something.”

  The wrinkled old face nodded. “Well, you’d better return it.”

  “Yes.”

  The afternoon breeze fluttering the hem of her light purple dress, the doll-like girl respectfully held out the murderous weapon with both hands as the soldier scurried backwards.

  “Stay where you are!” the retreating Clairvoyant ordered. His knees shook. He was only now beginning to grasp the true nature of his opponents—and that Demon City was home to every kind of being imaginable.

  “What are you running away for?” the girl asked, tilting her head to the side. “Is your heart so small? Like this raven’s? You don’t mind throwing things at people, but object when they are returned?”

  The Clairvoyant pulled the trigger. His frenzied state notwithstanding, his aim was true. Except that no bullet emerged. He heard the pop of the primer igniting, but it was like the casing had leaked and the powder was wet. What the girl did next set his hair on end. She stood in front of the rifle and peered curiously down the barrel.

  He shrieked, turned and ran. Behind him, the old woman said, “Enough of the hijinks. Time to get down to business.”

  He felt a weight on his shoulders. “You just can’t see where you’re going,” said a voice like a strumming harp. White fingers laced themselves together beneath his chin. The hands of the girl hovering over his head. The hands turned. Bones broke with a creak and snap.

  The Clairvoyant heard the sound. The next thing he knew he was looking at the raven and the old woman. His vision had revolved 180 degrees. Nothing hurt, but his whole body was as stiff as a board.

  “Let’s go.”

  His body moved according to the command. But whether that meant moving forwards or backwards—the head of the psychic’s body faced the grandma. The rest was pointing the other way. So the rest of him glided in reverse like he was moonwalking.

  “What shall we do, Grandmother?” asked the girl. Straddling the man’s shoulders, her unladylike stance was a curious contrast with her dainty countenance.

  “Look.”

  The girl’s eyes followed the direction of the old woman’s dry twig of a finger. “Oh, my,” she exclaimed.

  Something bright and shining was spilling over the top of the wall. The surface was like a glimmering feather. The midday sun made it sparkle like inlaid gold. The wave of light dammed up by the wall was breaking through the levee, like a work of abstract art singing praises to freedom.

  “That is—?”

  “Setsura Aki’s devil wire.”

  “But of course.”

  “And yet, a dream.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Take me there.” The old woman indicated a point along the wall.

  “Do you know what you are going to do?”

  “Anyone that would deign to ask Galeen Nuvenberg such a question must be in need of adjustments elsewhere as well. Perhaps your big toe is sticking out a bit too far?”

  “Please forgive me.” Perched on the man’s shoulders, the girl gracefully bowed her head.

  “Onward.”

  The order was issued to the Clairvoyant. Like an old servant at the beck and call of his master, he turned the wheelchair around, the golden-haired girl riding on his shoulders, only his head facing forward, the rest of him pointing the other way.

  When they arrived at the wall, the wave spilling over the top had reached halfway down the side. And just how would this rare specimen of a witch counter these overflowing threads of death?

  The old woman lined up with her right side tight to the wall and drew up her sleeves. Her arms were so skinny as to make a person wince in sympathy. A tangled mat of veins ran across the surface and the skin was blotchy and stained. It really did look as if rebar had been embedded in the flesh to provide support.

  Her long black fingernails were tidy and manicured, suggesting materials devised of some unknown chemistry.

  And yet this was all that stood against the destruction of the world?

  The Czech Republic’s most accomplished witch pressed the palm of her hand tightly against the wall and began to chant an incantation deep in her throat.

  Barely a second later, a change was born within the devil wires slipping down the wall. The coiling, curling ends stalled and came to a halt six feet above the ground.

  Galeen Nuvenberg’s spell continued. She raised her left hand.

  “Grandmother.” The girl’s hard face seemed clouded with concern. “Performing
such sorcery in your infirmed state—”

  A bright drop of sweat appeared on the old woman’s forehead. Her incantations were no longer audible, but emerged only as murmurings from her lungs and larynx.

  The Clairvoyant saw that her upheld hand was drawing in the silver light. If the devil wires born from the beautiful manhunter’s back was part of the big clam’s dreams, then what nightmare must this extraordinary witch be seeing?

  The wave covering the wall merged together into the form of a writhing python. The end changed into the tip of an auger and rammed through Galeen Nuvenberg’s left hand.

  The thing disgorging the dream and the thing drawing it in—the battle to the death between them was beginning.

  The wind roared. A black cloud grew from a single dot in the heavens like India ink spilled into water, blanking out the sun. Lightning arced across the heavens, lighting up the old witch’s face like a majestic marble statue.

  Demon City was said to be at the forefront of the study of vampires—those demons that suck the lifeblood out of humans. A large part of the scholarship was thanks to the cooperation of the Toyama clans. However, despite all the data gathered, among the questions that remained unresolved was what went on during the time a vampire slept.

  Generally speaking, they slept at “night.” But was the time of “night” relative or absolute? Supposing it was absolute, when it came to vampires, the time most necessary to sleep would be from sunup to sundown. In many cases, they feared the light of day and so preferred the dark.

  But shaded from the sunlight, did vampires prowl about in houses sucking the blood of the residents?

  Here was where the relative concept of “sleep” arose.

  The world’s most complete set of vampire studies—the Toyama Vampire White Papers—today constitute the Vampire Archives at the National Museum of Romania. According to this research, as high as 99 percent of all vampires retired at dawn and woke at sunset.

  However, because of the many individual methods for sensing light, this could be many hours after sunrise, or several hours before the last rays had vanished.

  Vampires could operate fully in twilight, and did not appear to possess a strict circadian rhythm or an internal clock that operated according to the presence or absence of daylight.

  For all vampires everywhere, the bottom line was whatever it took to stay alive. And if that meant the middle of the night, then so be it. The prosaic truth was that vampires were creatures of the night because they couldn’t operate fully in the light of day.

  Though seeing that they were loath to appear even on overcast days, the sleep of the vampire was in any case very deep. The heartbeat fell to once in ten minutes. The breath wouldn’t fog a mirror held in front of the mouth. Drop red meat into a casket and most would doze right through it.

  For the vampire, this was a time of fatal vulnerability, when an interloper with malicious intent could bring their existence to a sudden close without them noticing until it was too late.

  As a consequence, as the legends of these creatures of the night spread across the globe, a plethora of countermeasures were spawned in response.

  Rudimentary measures such as having hungry wolves and poisonous snakes and spiders guarding a casket were already known across Eastern Europe. A tendency for poison-spouting mannequins and trip line-triggered crossbows was common in parts of Western Europe and China.

  More recently, the materials out of which caskets—and the structures housing them—were made were proceeding apace with the technology of the times. But there was no such thing as a perfect defense.

  As a case in point, in the Toyama housing project—in response to an invader or of their own free will—only the Elder and his grandson Yakou could wake themselves up, no matter how deep the sleep.

  And there was one other as well.

  Chapter Two

  Chan’s appearance at the library was entirely by chance.

  Transformed by the madness of the mollusk, his body continued in its strange mutations. The amalgam of angles and curves—of squarish and spherical projections—clothed in military fatigues emerged from the swirling nebulae of shooting stars that surrounded him.

  Perhaps because of enemies he’d encountered on his way to the library, a tortured cry issued forth from one face of the polygon, from what seemed to be the bizarrely colored inside of his mouth.

  The dream that had become Chan—the Chan that had become the dream—paused at the first floor main entrance of the library to scan its surroundings. Inside the hall was drenched in green. Thick carpets of moss piled high on the floor and covered the walls, making it into a completely different world.

  Odd odors drifted in the air—but undoubtedly fresh. The oxygen generated by the moss was fermented from the sun and the haunted air of Shinjuku.

  A naked woman was lying in the center of the hall. Takako Kanan.

  The night before last, Yakou and Princess had battled each other in the middle of the air. The conclusion of that conflict saw Takako cast down to the earth.

  The mystery was how she had survived. Her pale skin was covered with abrasions and bruises, gaping wounds as if inflicted by the edge of a sword. Her bountiful breasts and lower torso were similarly covered with blood.

  Despite his murderous state of mind, the thing that was once Chan was overcome by curiosity.

  One of the shooting stars whirling around him broke orbit and flew in between her legs. The naked body quivered in an erotic and enticing manner. And yet it aroused no obvious emotional reaction in the current Chan.

  The tangle of spheres and wheels of varying sizes that constituted his legs nevertheless dragged him closer, likely a product of the dreaming clam’s instinctual response.

  Takako’s body changed into a starry sky. She became the dream as well. Perhaps this was the way the mad mollusk communicated. The human cosmos dimmed. A dark cloud obstructed the sunlight streaming through the window.

  A creaking sound rang out next to the woman’s body. Not the result of Chan’s movements—it was the sound of a hinge. The lid of the luxurious casket next to her was opening. The person inside was arrayed in dazzling dress in no way inferior to the casket’s exterior decor.

  The Carpathian stood up. He had a graceful face with fierce eyes like inlaid gems. Those eyes examined the strange interloper. “What are you?” he demanded, in a voice like the roar of a lion. Even the moss seemed to tremble in fear.

  The thing that was Chan reluctantly turned his attention to the speaker. There was no telling what bodily organ he used, but he “saw” him. And then shifted his attention back to Takako.

  “All means of access to this casket are strung with threads I borrowed from a certain man. The threads will cut through any thing regardless of its shape, living or dead. What are you, a phantasm?”

  Chan ignored him—the vampire that feared no one but Princess. General Bey hadn’t figured out why yet. He growled very much like a wild animal and leapt from the casket.

  He grabbed the “neck” protruding from the collar of Chan’s military fatigues. His hand closed effortlessly into a fist. “Oh,” he groaned. “A dream. I don’t know whose dream, but I doubt it is a person with good pedigree. And drawing this girl into it—insolence piles upon insolence. A dream it may be, but you are still responsible.”

  Ruby red light spilled from the general’s eyes. But no matter how powerful this prince of death was, he couldn’t turn his own self into a dream on a whim.

  He didn’t counterattack. He reached with his right hand into the tunic of his jacket. “When nightmares become a battlefield, a magician who once entertained at Matthias Castle in Budapest taught me this trick. Even I can’t fight a dream. But I can wake you from yours.”

  He turned to the invader leaning over Takako’s body and thrust out his fist while opening his hand. The thick palm contained a gleaming golden flute. It was no more than four inches long. He brought it to his mouth and blew with great strength.

  T
he thing that was once Chan—still wearing military fatigues—pressed its hand-like objects into Takako’s chest. The stars rising out of her body sprung white tails and sank into the floor. The cosmos began to move.

  This change was perhaps a reflection of the clam’s deranged world. The clam was at its wit’s end, and faced with the general standing there holding the flute, the universes of the soldier and the woman turned as if to flee.

  That action came to a halt as they were passing through the door. The thing that was once Chan in a flash regained its original shape. As did Takako.

  A dazzling gust of wind tore the two apart. Chan’s head and torso and legs tumbled to the concrete floor like slabs of butcher’s meat. Again assuming human form, his body met the mortal fate awaiting it.

  A horrific howl came from the direction of the door. The gust of wind that had thrust back Takako had restored General Bey to his true form. He was the one who had cried out. And for good reason. His face and chest and legs were crisscrossed with dozens of fine red lines.

  The protective mesh he’d woven from Setsura’s devil wires cut him as he was thrown out the door. The general roared. The cry of the wounded magical beast echoed back from the forest like thunder.

  “Setsura Aki!” General Bey gathered his ragged breath. Minutes later he muttered, “How much longer must I suffer the spells of that beautiful genie?”

  He got to his feet. Standing there like a cracked statue, he looked down at the naked, white body of the sleeping Takako.

  “She wandered home, this very pretty prey. Losing it so easily would render my long-awaited release from Princess’s prison for naught. Every night from this night forth, I shall fill my plate. The plate that is my appetite.”

  A ferocious self-satisfied smile creased his lips. The general pounced to the left. With a sound like a broken violin string, the devil wire sliced through the air and sailed back at least ten yards to the copse of trees behind him.

  And disappeared into the hand of the stunning man in black. “Well done,” said the smiling Setsura Aki.