Demon City Shinjuku: The Complete Edition Read online

  As Kyoya’s eyes adapted to the dark, the pale hands holding the reins took on a light of their own. The reins were looped around the bridles of the rail-thin horses, a demon species that stood there not moving, not breathing.

  He tottered a bit on purpose as he approached the carriage, like a reed being tugged back and forth in the breeze.

  “Yuko Sano?” asked the coachman, not turning to look. His voice was low and cold, devoid of humanity.

  Kyoya nodded.

  Without a sound, the door of the barouche opened and a small step descended.

  “Wait,” ordered the coachman, as Kyoya was about to step into the carriage. At some point he’d directed his attention down at him. “Your obedience is admirable, but what is that you have in your arms? You appear different from before.”

  Kyoya had assumed that the coachman would not have set eyes on Yuko before. Still, he had considered this possibility as well. He said in a teary voice, “My father’s prized wooden sword. I do not know what fate awaits me, but with this in hand, I will face it.”

  With these words, he tilted his sad face at an angle visible to the coachman. The coachman’s eyes glowed out of the black depths of the hood, but couldn’t discern any differences in the faces, identical as two peas in a pod.

  “Well, however you may pretend otherwise, human weapons mean nothing in our domain.” He cackled and reoriented his gaze forward again. He said nothing about discarding Asura. Kyoya climbed in. The barouche raced off in a gust of wind.

  As good as his night vision was, darting through the mountains of rubble, Kyoya couldn’t tell where they were going or how fast they were getting there. After twenty minutes, the barouche stopped before an impressively tall building. The characters on the facade spelled out Big Box, the name of a once-popular Shinjuku department store. Beneath the facade, the giant mural of a man running had crumpled down around his chest.

  “Go down the stairs in the lobby to the lower level.”

  “Yes, yes. You don’t have to be so bossy about it.”

  He stepped down from the carriage. The coachman shook the reins and galloped off.

  “Idiot. What’s he gonna do if I run off right now?”

  The question was soon answered. The letter on his right arm again began to exert control over his mind, urging him through the entranceway—the doors long ago destroyed—and inside the building.

  The expansive lobby was filled with piles of debris that had peeled off the walls and ceiling. Kyoya didn’t sense any living creatures there, but he soon understood that this was one of the Sorcerer’s hiding places.

  The unearthly aura about the place was different. Shuttered in darkness, the lobby was filled with voices of anguish and damnation that brought to mind the curses of vengeful ghosts writhing in a sea of blood.

  A normal human without a heightened sixth sense would still feel that chill running down the spine, and keel over as the blood fled the brain in fear. Kyoya could clearly hear the lamentations of the dead that suffused these dark quarters, welling out from the stairwells to the basement levels like desperate souls scrambling from a sinking ship.

  The murdered girls and those who came to save them, sealed up here by the power of magic. He had come to set them free.

  Ruled over by the forces of the unknown, and maintaining the pretense of being a terrified girl, Kyoya descended the stairs. At the bottom was a damp corridor. Following the letter’s “instructions,” he arrived at a big room.

  The strong smell of blood struck his nostrils.

  In better times, the room had been a cafeteria. Along the walls opposite the entrance were counters for serving food. In the middle of the room was enshrined a black altar. Next to it, three stands holding black wax candles bathed the room in a dim, flickering glow.

  Manacles and shackles hung from the wall on the right, evidence that the room also served as a torture chamber. The wall on the left showed the marks of a fresh plaster finish. The floor was stained red from blood.

  Here the anguished voices rose nearly to a scream.

  The letter propelled him toward the right-hand wall. The intent must be to secure him with the restraints. But an extra set of hands was necessary. He didn’t know if the Sorcerer himself would make an appearance, but somebody would have to show up to get the job done. At that point, the fight would begin.

  Kyoya walked over and stood with his back against the wall. In the next moment, the shackles and manacles moved of their own accord, snaking out and affixing his feet to the floor and yanking his hands over his head.

  “Ouch!”

  Despite the surprise attack and raising a throaty shriek, the enemy did not appear. His arms and legs were firmly pinioned and immobilized. A first-rate blunder on his part. Asura tumbled to the floor.

  He jerked his limbs. The chains didn’t budge. The magical forces at play were as strong as an industrial electromagnet. Kyoya bit his lip. Shit, this is dangerous.

  A cold, dark gust of wind. The candle flames wavered. A black-robed man holding a long sword strode into the room. He was tall and lean. More than his chiseled Middle Eastern features, what caught Kyoya’s attention were his crimson eyes gleaming redder and brighter than the candle flames.

  Eyes devoid of pupils. This was the “Hell Eye,” the mark of those who had sold their souls to the Demon Realm and parted permanently with their humanity.

  The Sorcerer Rebi Ra.

  It was a toss up between At last! and Bloody hell! Within three hours of entering Shinjuku, Kyoya Izayoi had met the man he was after, though he could hardly call his present situation “lucky.”

  The Sorcerer turned to where Kyoya was fastened to the wall and growled, “I’ve been waiting for you, Izayoi.”

  Kyoya gaped back at him. That the man was the Sorcerer could not be in doubt. Even the demon coachman hadn’t seen through the disguise. So when—and how—had this guy figured it out?

  With a faint smile, the Sorcerer continued. “I wouldn’t have imagined that you’d disguise yourself as a girl. The face is splendid, to be sure, but is that your doing?”

  Kyoya feigned ignorance. “What are you talking about? Where is this place? What do you plan to do with me? Let me go home.”

  He wouldn’t give himself high marks on that performance. As expected, the Sorcerer’s smile didn’t leave his face. “Enough with playing the fool. I have known your true nature since you arrived in the barouche. However you may pull the wool over the eyes of an inexperienced demon, I am not so easily deceived. You may appear a woman, but the moves make the man. The watchful eyes, the taking of each step—since you showed me the way of the sword in the Himalayas, they have not changed a bit.”

  Damn, thought Kyoya. The guy was a bit off the mark, but his cover was clearly blown. Still, being exposed so quickly didn’t sit at all well with his pride. He might as well mess with him a while longer.

  “Oh, that sounds so terrible! The Himalayas, where those abominable snowmen eat you alive? No way! Let me go home! Don’t you try anything funny, you perv! Mommy!”

  He blubbered and squirmed. The buttons of the jacket—already stretched to the limit—popped off and rained down on the floor.

  A flicker of doubt rose to the Sorcerer’s face. “The man who trained with me would not deport himself so in the hour of his death. And the frame of the body is smaller. But even a disciple would not so closely echo those movements. Ah, that explains it. You are Izayoi’s child.”

  Even with this insight, Kyoya wasn’t ready to concede. “Yes, yes, I’m Kyoko.”

  The Sorcerer laughed out loud. Just as quickly, the icy glare returned to his face. He drew closer. “Little brat. Show me your face.”

  With a swipe of his cold fingers, the mask tore away and dropped to the floor.

  “Holy crap, that’s a relief.” Kyoya grinned. “I’m better looking than my dad, huh?”

  The Sorcerer grunted in barely concealed admiration. “What I would expect from the scion of Genichiro Izayoi. Y
ou’ve got pluck, I will grant you that. Though if you knew the fate that awaited you hence, you would be begging for your life instead.”

  “Oh, scary! Before the crying fits begin, could you answer me one thing?”

  “What would that be?”

  “That Nidom thingy stuck in the president’s neck, how about you yank it out?”

  The Sorcerer said with a frigid smile, “Idiot. You think I would agree?”

  “Well, no. But I thought I might as well try reason before resorting to violence.”

  “You think you could? The way you are right now? I don’t know what powers your father left you with, but those shackles contain psychokinetic power equal to ten megatons of TNT.”

  “I guess the only way to know is to try,” he said drolly.

  Briefly arrested by the lively look in his eyes, like those of a completely different person, the Sorcerer faltered. The kid wasn’t mourning his fate or going down without a fight.

  “Then how about this,” Kyoya wisecracked. “This thing you’re trying to summon—even Master Rai doesn’t know what it really is. The last time you tried—and screwed up royally—you turned Shinjuku into this mess. The monster have a name? The Prince of Darkness? Satan?”

  Seeing the look on the Sorcerer’s face stiffen, Kyoya thought he might have struck gold. But then the Sorcerer smiled. “Ha! Satan? That’s what you fools think? The God of the Underworld breaks out of his subterranean prison and brings on the Apocalypse, like in some old-fashioned horror show?”

  The Sorcerer Rebi Ra howled with laughter. “No!” he roared at the top of his lungs. “No! To think I would attempt to beckon from the darkness of the Demon Realm such prosaic stuff of children’s fairy tales!”

  “Then what exactly?”

  To Kyoya’s insistent question, the terrifying answer emerged. “The human race knew it once already!”

  “Knew what?”

  “That which created the present human race—or rather, that which created this world.”

  The truth came out. Kyoya blanched. “God, you’re talking about God Almighty!”

  “Relax. God and the Demon Realm have been enemies since time began.”

  Then what was he babbling about? Kyoya wracked his brains. The bottomless evil of plunging the planet into despair and terror and ultimately turning it into the Demon Realm—humanity knew it once already?

  That made no sense. Then why didn’t the rest of the world look like Shinjuku?

  As if caught in a chance ray of sunlight, a thought glittered at the back of his mind, a fragment of a vaguely formed idea about how evil came into the world. But there was no way—

  “Something occur to you, boy?” said the Sorcerer, examining Kyoya’s astonished expression. “You will die here regardless. You’ll learn the truth then. After I have devoured your soul.”

  “For the right price.”

  “Ha. You do change moods fast. You could grow on me. If you weren’t Izayoi’s son, I would let you live on as my subordinate and educate you in the ways of evil.”

  “No, really, I’m adopted,” said Kyoya, as straight-faced as a college student taking an oral exam. “I’ll listen to anything you have to say. So how about you untie me? Eh, Boss?”

  The remaining contours of the Sorcerer’s eyes gleamed with loathing and murderous intent. “This is true courage or the ravings of a madman. How your father would weep to hear you now. I could not imagine the son of Genichiro Izayoi betraying his memory so. A pity.”

  The Sorcerer grasped the hilt of the sword.

  “Okay. Hold on a second. One more question. Last one, promise. How many of those lackey monster bodyguards do you have, Boss? If you’re not gonna let me become a henchman, I guess that makes them my enemies. I’ll have to take ’em out too. So, for future reference, what do you say?”

  “The damned fool still thinks he will be leaving here alive? Fine, I’ll tell you. There are three. Kaki, Suiki, Doki. Right now they are in a sanctuary elsewhere, preparing to offer another lass to the Demon Realm. We have two havens, tied to the movement of the stars.”

  “Where is it? And what kind of powers can these three wield?”

  Though while posing the question, Kyoya could not help but regret that yet another innocent girl was being offered up as a sacrifice. Come to think about it, the proprietor of the Musashi Miyamoto said that two girls went missing every month.

  He did not know then that this girl was none other than Sayaka.

  The Sorcerer did not deign to answer this last question. He pointed the sword, still in its sheath, at the wall opposite where the marks left by freshly-applied plaster were still evident.

  “Let the undead come forth.”

  Amidst the eerie cries of the deceased, a fissure ran down the wall. With a series of dull thuds, the thick layers of plaster shattered and scattered across the floor. Seeing what was behind the wall, now revealed through the gaping hole, Kyoya grimaced.

  The bodies of the dead. Not a mere corpse. Not one or two. Dozens of decomposing bodies were packed into the cavern. Standing upright, kneeling, lying on their backs, slumped against each other—all clothed in rotting garb and crawling with maggots, eyeballs dangling from their sockets, the disintegrating flesh exposing their ribs and shoulder blades.

  Weeks must have passed since their murders, and yet the stench of death was almost non-existent. In fact, their chests seemed to rise and fall, as if they were breathing. They truly were the “living dead.”

  “Surprised?” prodded the Sorcerer, surmising that the silent Kyoya was dumbfounded by the atrocious sight before his eyes. He leaned forward and whispered, “The girls who visited with us here and the remains of their parents and brothers and lovers who stupidly came to rescue them. I laid them on the altar and performed my surgeries, the dark rites necessary to continue the covenant with the Demon Realm. Just thinking about it stirs the blood, blood offered up to the Demon Realm, and together with that luxuriating heat, the sum of their souls. Every last one of them begs for death before the operation is even half-complete. Relax, I tell them. I’m all ears. But give me your soul and I will put you out of your misery with a single, benevolent thrust. They consent, and on the altar they sign the proffered parchment with their own blood. And I keep my promise.”

  Recalling atrocities committed in the past, the Sorcerer’s face twisted with ecstatic joy. Spittle flew from the corners of his mouth. Kyoya looked on with a distressed expression as the heretical monologue continued on uninterrupted.

  “Frightened? So horrified you cannot speak? And so it is. But we have not yet arrived at the end. They are definitely dead. And though dead, cannot sleep well. Because I possess their souls. Their bodies will not disintegrate as long as their contracts remain intact. Arrested in the half-living, half-decayed state you have witnessed, never returning again to the dust, they remain plastered into the wall, confined and immobilized in the cramped darkness, consigned to the torments of hell.”

  “Yeah, and what’s with that, anyway?” Kyoya asked in strangely subdued tones. “Once you got their souls, why not send ’em to the Demon Realm, posthaste?”

  “Oh, so you found your voice, did you? Fine, I’ll tell you. The cries of such tormented souls is the purest music I can imagine. Every time I hear them pleading for the release of a true death, I get simply giddy, and tell them to weep and wail some more. Besides, the greater the pain I give them, the more obedient they become to my commands. Like this!”

  The Sorcerer waved his hand as if to beckon them. The undead stood in front of the wall. There was a tapping sound like falling drops of water as the maggots tumbled from their eye sockets and plopped onto the floor.

  “I shall leave your surgery to them. It might prove a tad rougher process than becoming my apprentice. If you cannot bear it, feel free to scream and bellow like them, and offer up your soul in exchange for a speedy death. Get him!”

  At the Sorcerer’s signal, the mob of undead moved forward.

  “N
o way,” Kyoya muttered. A deep sense of anger and pathos were the reasons he’d held his tongue up till now. Sympathy for the victims and hatred for evil ignited his mind and will and channeled those emotions into energy. That power now reached its limits.

  “You cut down the innocent, those forging new paths to the future. That isn’t enough? So you torture them to death and make them accomplices to their own murders. You won’t get away with it, Rebi Ra. My name is Kyoya Izayoi, and you have made yourself my first true enemy.”

  His voice rang out loud and clear. His languid eyes blazed with a fierce light, piercing the Hell Eye. The Sorcerer instinctively covered his face with his hands and flinched. The rage soon suffused his features again.

  “Don’t be so impertinent! You can do nothing with your hands and feet constrained. Boy, what makes you think you can escape?”

  “Because I can.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “Then feast your eyes on the nenpo of Kyoya Izayoi!”

  The sound of grating metal echoed around the room. The shackles and manacles fell to the floor. Just as mysteriously, the bolts and clasps of the restraints were still engaged. Their hold had been broken by the mysterious and magical powers of nenpo.

  Fear and consternation rose plainly to the Sorcerer’s face. He roared, “Get him! Tear him to pieces!”

  The pale, soulless hands of the undead converged on Kyoya from all directions, aiming at the base of his throat. Then came a whoosh of wind.

  The Sorcerer goggled. The undead closest to Kyoya collapsed in a pile of lifeless bones and flesh. A moment later, that pile disintegrated into dust and evaporated like a desert dew.

  Bending, Kyoya had plucked Asura off the floor and in the same movement delivered the sweeping blow that released their bodies from the Sorcerer’s spell, and together with their souls sent them to sleep the sleep of the dead.

  Asura hummed through the air several more times, until not a zombie was left in the room. Kyoya settled into a sword-high stance and approached the Sorcerer. “The goal was to grab you and haul your ass back to Master Rai. Either way’s fine. One way or another—bring it on. But I gotta tell you, I’m kinda pissed right now, so I can’t guarantee your well being.”