Yashakiden: The Demon Princess Volume 4 Omnibus Edition Read online

  Needless to say, the same went for the people waiting in the room. Faces flushed, adrenaline levels surged, heartbeats raced in a frenzy. And yet the officials lined up there in their business suits didn’t feel a thing. Her beauty—like the unveiling of a secret, national treasure—benumbed and transfixed them.

  One fearless and intrepid figure stood out from the rest. Stepping forward he said, “Forgive me, but how should we address you?”

  “Call me Princess.” The sound of her voice cut through them like a sharp wind. “That is what this world calls me, and that certainly includes you.”

  No official proclamation could match such haughtiness in tone or substance, but no critical thought crossed any of their minds. They all knew that none in the world could fairly contradict her.

  “We understand.” The man bowed humbly. “Shall we proceed with the introductions?”

  “Fine.”

  “I am Takeshi Jinnai. I believe we have already met.”

  “Yes. The man who threatened me. I will not forget.”

  She smiled. Less an insinuation than the impression left by Jinnai himself. Jinnai stiffened. With a flutter of her white sleeves, the Demon Princess proceeded to a sofa at the back of the room. Takako trailed after her, standing to her right as she settled against the cushions.

  “I’ll hear what you have to say,” she said in a low voice that reverberated around her like a distant sonic boom. Nobody objected.

  Jinnai said stiffly, “But first, we would like to tell you more about us.”

  “Fine,” she said, with a frigid glance at the poobahs and bureaucrats arrayed before her. She nodded. Her sense of dignity and presence was different from the typical pol. No, it was her very existence that was different.

  Facing Princess and beginning from the right of the line of officials, Jinnai gestured and said, “Hikobe Abe, chairman of the Joint Staff Council. Next to him—”

  With each introduction, the man bowed deferentially. And although he described each man’s position, Jinnai had no idea whether Princess attached any importance to it. But he thought it better not to skip any of the customary manners and protocols.

  He came to the end of the line and the man on the far left. “Ryohei Kongodai, our prime minister. As I am sure you know, he is the chief executive of our national political system.”

  Princess shifted her gaze to the balding politician. “Kikiou would find that fact far more interesting. He’d kiss up to the lowliest politician in order to accomplish his ends.”

  Kongodai’s face twitched in annoyance. Not a few others smiled to themselves.

  “We have gathered here together to request your cooperation.”

  Jinnai kept things ceremonial. He dearly wanted to loosen his tie, but kept his hands at his sides. The tanks hovering in the hallway, their guns aimed at Takako through the walls, was their one ace up the sleeve. The heat-seeking lasers were renowned for their single-shot kills.

  “Our request is singular in nature. While under our patronage, we wish to further investigate the particularities of your life force.”

  “Where is Bey?” Princess interrupted. “Kikiou is a vulgar man who prides himself in his knowledge and nothing else. I once thought that Bey might rise to the occasion, but he was the mere ruler of a savage land stinking of shit and sweat. Do you think I would permit your soiled hands to touch my skin? Never. You have stated your case and now I will leave.”

  She casually came to her feet. Jinnai said to the graceful white figure, “Please wait. We warned you before. Outside this room, the guns are trained on that woman.”

  “Go ahead and fire.”

  Whether Jinnai caught the seductive gleam in her eyes, what he did clearly see was the mass of people pushing their way toward Takako. He couldn’t believe his eyes. At the head of the flying wedge of politicians was the chairman. Right in front of Takako was the prime minister.

  “The head of the government,” Princess sneered. “Emperor Jie of the Hsia Dynasty and Ying Zheng of the Qin Dynasty did the same, using me as a shield against the assassin’s sword. I suppose she suits the princelings of a teeny-tiny country like this. Shall we call each other’s bluffs?”

  Jinnai didn’t have the authority to make the order.

  “I’ll be going now. If you hold your lives dear, then be good boys and clear the way. I can’t have those awful machines in the corridor flitting through the air and spying on me. Because this is the kind of thing that will happen if you do—”

  The Demon Princess seized the chairman by the hair and spun his head like a top. His neck creaked and his skull did a complete three-sixty. The muscles didn’t contort, the flesh didn’t tear. Only large tears fell from his eyes. Colored red. Tears of blood.

  “A twist of the neck without killing. Can anything be more painful than that? I’ll wring one neck if one of those vehicles follows me. Two if two do. Every time I see another one, I’ll add another to the mix. No, no, send them all. The more the merrier. It’s so much fun watching you cry in living color.”

  She shrieked with laughter and started toward the exit. A large shadow darkened the doorway.

  “General Bey.”

  The Demon Princess smiled. That alone told Jinnai how she intended to manage the big man. A gentle smile.

  “And where are you going, Princess?” said Kazikli Bey. His voice creaked like a drawbridge.

  “Back to my kingdom.”

  “That is here.”

  “I will leave the management of this miserable country to you. Oh, and take care that none of the rats stowing away in your casket start gnawing on your privates.”

  “I see.” Now Bey smiled as well. A gentle smile. “But leave the girl.” By which he meant Takako.

  “What accounts for such tenaciousness? Your first bride did not strike me as that great of a catch.”

  “I have already decided. She shall become my wife. I do fancy her quite a bit. So let her be.”

  “I think not. Your maddening unreliability pisses me off. If you like this place so much, it’s all yours. We may have occasionally shared a bunk during the five hundred years of our voyage together. But I’m just not that into you.”

  “Unacceptable. What I want right now is that woman. And when it comes to you, the feeling is mutual. You may leave without another word.”

  In response to the challenge, Princess’s smile only grew broader.

  General Bey said, “Why do you care about her? Why not drain her of her blood? Kill her or make her your slave. Are you losing your memory? Didn’t you once cast her out of the sky?”

  “You want to know?”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “I did it to annoy a certain man. The one man who scorned me. I wish him to prostrate himself at my feet and plead to drink my blood. She is necessary to make it happen.”

  “Setsura Aki.” General Bey spoke the name with a true depth of feeling. A flesh and blood expression resembling a thunderstorm. It vanished a moment later. “After fighting atop that tall building, I chanced across him a second time. Why does he still live? He fell from such a height, and with a sword in his heart.”

  “I must have missed the mark,” Princess said in a voice that could freeze boiling water. And yet there were hints of a thaw at the edges.

  “I thought so too. The kid was my opponent. It seemed a blunder on your part. But perhaps not.”

  “Hoh.”

  “Then that was no blunder. You missed on purpose.”

  “What fascinating things you are saying.”

  “Princess—the woman who has lived for four thousand years and toppled countless nations—the woman who has driven tens of thousands wild with lust. Not you—”

  “Why choose her to be your wife?” she said, cutting through the stream of his speculations.

  “For the same reason as you,” General Bey said heavily. A person with sharp ears and keen mental insight might have detected in his reply the same ambiguities as in Princess’s answer. “Five hundr
ed years ago, when the Janissaries surrounded Poenari Castle, a woman threw herself from the parapets and died. The blood of the Orient flowed through her veins. This woman well resembles her.”

  Princess raised a hand to her mouth and smiled. “So Kazikli Bey, the most famous butcher in the history of the world, still pines for his wife. If your subordinates could see you now, they would turn over in their graves at the thought of ever following and dying for such a weakling.”

  “I owe nothing to the living or the dead. The woman stirs my blood. That is all. Take your leave, Princess.”

  “By brute force? Look around you. All I need to do is this and she is mine, without taking one more drop of her blood.”

  General Bey understood what Princess was talking about as soon as she spoke. She placed a finger between her breasts and drew a line down her body. The gown neatly divided in two, revealing her dazzling limbs. A bright red line welled up on her chest.

  With a low savage growl, a herd of beasts pushed past General Bey and ran toward her. The august government ministers. The cabinet secretary was among them, as was the director of the National Institutes of Science and Technology, and the director of the Defense Agency SP Division.

  With a swipe of a hand, their heads tore away from their bodies like plucked fruit. General Bey roared in despair. Takako buried her face between Princess’s breasts, her throat pulsing as she lapped up rivulets of fresh blood.

  Chapter Three

  Such a rare beauty—the girl drinking blood from between her breasts—on the one hand it transfixed the line of men standing in her presence. And on the other, caused another man to literally convulse in his boots, and rattle the room with his great dismay.

  “Bastard! Bastard! Bastard!” he sang out, as the three heads toppled to the floor.

  Princess gently held Takako’s head and smiled at him. “Who do you think I am, General? This girl now serves me. Could anything pain Setsura more? Or you?”

  The scorn was not at an end. Neither was the despair. The scene wasn’t over yet. Takako’s throat pulsed as she continued to swallow—the blood of the vampiress—in a trance.

  The cries of anguish changed. Here was the end to the despair. Now erupted the fury. Bey turned to the JDF commanders. “What are you doing? What are you looking at? You promised! Deliver this girl safely to me and I would give you the secrets of eternal life. You have ruined everything! No, I swear, this woman, I will seize her with my own hands and bring her to your autopsy room where you may dissect her to your heart’s content! In the name of Kazikli Bey!”

  He charged Princess like a lurching giant, aiming at her white throat. She didn’t move. He seized the suckling Takako by the shoulder. In turn, Princess grabbed Takako around the waist and spun her around to face him.

  The sound of breaking bones and the smell of blood. Takako smiled a complacent smile as the startled General Bey reflexively stepped back.

  Ah, the licentious grin on the face of this smart and trim college student. Drinking blood and having it drunk—what a red-stained future awaited her. Not showing the slightest pain from her broken shoulder, Takako wrapped a white hand around the general’s neck. Her lips were red and wet.

  “Are you the one who seeks me?”

  Her hand squeezed as tightly as an iron vise, clenching his neck with enough strength to choke a sumo wrestler. Not human in the least.

  General Bey gently grasped her wrist and pulled it away, as if loosening the grip of a child. “Good night,” he said, and struck her in the solar plexus. Takako fainted. A vampire fainting was a strange sight, but the blow had been delivered by one too.

  Princess quickly retreated out of reach. Takako raised her head. “Too bad, Bey.” The voice was Princess’s.

  “You fucking wench.”

  The general started running. No sound of pounding feet as he leapt into the air and landed behind Princess with a quickness that was closer to teleportation. He struck at her chest with a nukite blow, his fingertips closed together like the tip of a spear.

  A cry, and blood frothed at her lips—Takako’s lips. Startled, he drew back his bloody hand, hearing Takako and Princess’s derisive laughter.

  “Hoh. First you break your beloved’s shoulder, then stab her in the chest. What next? Have at her. She is not the perfect servant, but her body has already been endowed for that duty. Gouge out her eyes, tear out her tongue, rip off her breasts, gnaw at her privates—it’s all fine by me!”

  To toy so with the general of the dead—who made even Setsura Aki tremble—such humiliation was impossible to fathom. To take this dear girl, transform her into a vampire, give her an immortal body, and then destroy it by the general’s hands—such cruelty was even more impossible to fathom.

  “I won’t kill her. She won’t die. But she will suffer, General. Break the shoulder and pierce the chest—anyone would feel the pain. But she will not die. That is why I laugh. You must understand that as well.”

  No smile could be more evil. Or more lovely. Even the general was stilled for a moment, before his face once again clouded with wrath.

  “Release her. And I shall do you the honor of drawing and quartering you myself.”

  He spat out the hateful words as he brought his hand to his mouth. He demanded her liberation as he tasted her fresh blood. He licked his hand as a child would a spatula—this was the expression of his love.

  On one side a fairy, on the other the devil. At the mercy of the fangs of these two unworldly monsters, the entranced Takako was an indescribable amalgam of misery and lust.

  Elite soldiers like Jinnai with actual combat experience under their belts stood frozen in place by the ghastly carnage before their eyes. They were fighters to the core, who would execute their own families if so ordered. But while choking back tears.

  Even when annihilating a merciless enemy, the darkness would dam up in their souls. With every mission accomplished, it would only increase and could never be expunged. They truly believed that acknowledging its existence would stand in the final judgment as a tribute to the dead.

  And yet what they saw as these two toyed with this innocent girl was the cruel temperament of a child that delighted in breaking the arms off a doll, gouging out the glass eyes, hammering nails through the plastic chest. If the inanimate were given voice, it would surely bewail its outcast state.

  “I haven’t the time for this,” Princess said in a frigid voice. She put her arm around Takako’s waist. “I only came here to obtain hostages that would ensure my safe return. Well, whatever. Thanks to you being here, she is mine. Wrack your brains over that one, you idiot. She will never be yours. Forever. Hoh! I’ll leave it to you to untie that Gordian Knot. Do you know how?”

  “I know. And now I shall do it,” General Bey said darkly.

  “Get back! You want this girl torn limb from limb?” The rebuke hit him like a slap across the face. As if by design, Prime Minister Ryohei Kongodai tottered in front of Princess. “The leader of the nation, eh? Not much of an escort, but you will do. And if Kikiou is still alive, I’m sure he will want to see you. The two of you can discuss the fate of this little smudge of a country.”

  Kongodai led the way as Princess backed out of the room, using Takako as a shield against General Bey’s malevolent intentions. Jinnai and the others hadn’t counted on the prime minister more or less voluntarily stepping forward as a hostage. And neither did the general charge after them. Her threat to draw and quarter Takako wasn’t a bluff he could risk calling.

  Princess exited into the hall. The armored hovertanks floated there forward and rear of her position. The only person their laser cannon could vaporize right now was the prime minister.

  She looked at the hovercrafts. Each of the tortoise shell-shaped hovertanks contained three operators. The instant the pilot looked into her eyes through the periscope, a singular thought arrested all other activity in his brain.

  Princess’s lips moved. “Destroy.”

  As the disbelieving ministe
rs looked on, the hovercraft in front suddenly rammed the one behind at full speed. An indecipherable shout was drowned out by the sound of crushing steel. The hovertank in back spun around and buried itself into the wall on the right.

  “What the hell are you doing?” shouted the co-pilot and communications officer of the struck vehicle. He lurched toward the pilot just as the hovertank whirled around again, throwing him against the gunner hard enough to knock the eyes out of his head and snap the gunner’s neck.

  The pilot didn’t even look to see what was going on behind him when he switched the firing controls into the navigation unit. As if covering the retreating Princess, he fired at the hovertank still embedded into the wall with his 120 mm cannon.

  The hot ruby light bathed the heat-resistant ceramic armor in a red glow, penetrating the shell in two seconds. The fuel erupted in flames. The shell cracked like an over-boiled egg. Fire and light streamed out, growing into an expanding fireball that beat at the blast walls before scorching and battering them to pieces.

  With no place else to go, the high-pressure sheet of plasma raced down the corridors, cutting down Jinnai and the ministers like a fiery scythe and turning them into kindling. At the ends of the hallways, it smashed through the windows and lunged out into the air, roaring at the endless night like a fire-breathing dragon.

  “Well, well, well!” Somewhere the beautiful voice spoke in admiration. “Of course. I did not imagine she would enter the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Complex of her own free will.”

  “That fire is in the direction from which I am being called.” A voice filled with rust. “Do I have any choice but to go, Shuuran?”

  Holding Takako and Prime Minister Kongodai to her waist, Princess descended the stairs like she was treading water. The howls of sirens echoed all around them. No sound came from her footsteps. A good eighteen inches separated the bottom of her feet from the ground.

  Laser light penetrated the ceiling, incinerating the people running after them.