The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters (22 page)

Even if he could get free of the ropes, there was no way he could break through the iron door. And even supposing it was possible, such a feat would take hours. The gunmen would be on him before it gave.
Why didn’t I fight harder?
He had been presented with a chance, the knife hidden in his pocket. That was the move he should have made, back at Ishibashi’s house, in the sights of the three gunmen. He felt sick with self-reproach. Now they had taken his knife and he only had his body as a weapon. The only reason he was still alive was because they wanted to know more about him and why he was so interested in Panshigaru.

He knew he would be tortured. There was no chance these kind of people would want a civilized discussion. If he confessed he would be killed on the spot. If he refused, he would either die from continued torture or they would give up on him; either way he was dead. Enoh had said someone called Kurogosho would be arriving the next day...no, it was already after midnight--Kurogosho would arrive before the day was out. Fuminari’s torture would begin after they met. His mind conjured up the image of someone cutting through his penis, forcing the chunks of meat into his mouth.

“Shit!” Fuminari shouted. He wrenched his mouth tight and began to shake his huge frame. The cut where Renobo had bitten down on his lips re-opened. He flicked his tongue over it and tasted warm, salty blood. He spat it to the floor, mixed with phlegm.

Panshigaru.
Fuminari had nothing on it. Ryoko had talked about them just that morning, after his fingers and tongue had brought her time and again to climax. She told him that Munakata had brought up the subject the last time they had met:
“Have you heard of an organization called ‘Panshigaru’?”
Ryoko had told him that she hadn’t. Munakata had given her a furtive smile; it was only natural she hadn’t, it was best that way. She had asked him about the organization afterwards, but Munakata had said nothing else. Then she had told Fuminari of the L.L.S., the pamphlet that had gone missing from her room, and of Akio Ishibashi.

Fuminari wanted to wring his own neck for having come so far only to walk blindly into a trap. In the beginning, Fuminari had no interest in learning about the L.L.S. or about Panshigaru. His motivation had been limited to putting an end to the abomination that had deprived him of his fingers.

But if the people that had captured him were somehow linked to the beast, they would only need to see the three-fingered hand under his gloves and they would know who he was. They would put two and two together, kill him there and then. Knowing the secret of his fingers would be enough, they would probably kill him without even bothering to torture him for information. Fuminari groaned. He felt blackened, charred under a flame of burning regret.

Just then, through the darkness, he heard a slight noise. The sound of a key being inserted into the door’s lock. The iron door opened, someone came in. Fuminari’s nostrils reacted to the scent; strong, female. With it, the stifling odor of blood--lots of it. The light came on. The bitch Renobo stood directly before him, her lips formed a thin, bewitching smile. She was in a white gown, belt draped loosely around the swell of her buttocks. The front of the gown hung open to one side to expose a pale breast, the apparent source of the female stench. A smooth leg was visible through the slit of the dress below the belt. There was something staggering about the woman’s brazen sexuality. Her appearance alone would have been enough to overload any teenager with a hunger for women and an overabundance of lust.

She was holding a white vessel in one hand while the other played underneath the gown around her chest, openly massaging the breast underneath. The sight of her hand rising and falling under the gown was vastly more erotic than seeing it bare. Her lips were a bloody red. She brought the vessel in her left hand to her mouth and lavishly supped at the liquid inside, washing it down her pale throat. Some trickled over the edges of the vessel, staining her gown red. It was blood; Renobo was drinking someone’s blood. She strode closer and leant over him until her obscene features were inches away. She opened her red lips and laughed, blowing her breath over him. The fishy stench of blood was overpowering.

“Want to try some?” Renobo spilled some of the thick blood from the vessel over his face. The blood was cold. His face stained red, became demonic. “Should I let you in on what happened of Munakata?”

Fuminari glared, saying nothing. Renobo let out a high-pitched laugh and gulped down the remaining blood from the vessel before holding it out for him to see. Fuminari noticed that the rim was not perfectly round. Instead, it followed an unsettlingly sinister curve.

“This is him,” she said. “What you’re looking at now,
this
is Munakata. This is a
kapala
, cut from the man’s skull.” She let out a horrific, screeching howl. Fuminari felt the tiny blood-soaked hairs on his flesh stand on end.

Renobo slipped the belt from her gown, still holding the kapala in her left hand. It fell to the ground, exposing everything underneath. She had absolutely nothing on. Her nipples were erect like red berries. He saw the blackness of her groin and the open petals of flesh underneath. Still standing directly in front of Fuminari, Renobo opened her legs wide and thrust her hips forward.

“Take a good look. You can see, right? I’m dripping wet.”

Renobo used a pale finger from her right hand to part the red flesh before slipping it inside. She began to massage herself, working her fingers slowly. Within moments her hand was soaked, glistening with viscous liquid. “It’s just like you said, I’m always thinking of what men like to ram in here. Of letting them have their way with me until they’ve had their fill.” She squirmed and coiled like an albino snake, drunk on her own flesh. Her skin was abnormally white. Flawlessly white, like a dark cave-dwelling invertebrate that had never seen the light of day.

Her fingers picked up speed as her groaning increased in volume. She poured the remaining blood from the
kapala
over her groin and her fingers flicked with a renewed vigor. Both her groin and her fingers were stained red from the blood. She lowered the
kapala
to the floor and reached down between Fuminari’s legs, her other hand continuing to massage herself; she undid the zip on his trousers, her white hand plunging into his jeans. Fuminari let out a groan. The movement was almost unbearably carnal.

There are two types of sexual allure -- that which is learned and that which is present from birth. Renobo’s was clearly of the latter class. Her particular flavor of sexual abandon was congenital, fundamental to her flesh and blood.

Fuminari’s lips contorted as he groaned again, swallowing air. He shook his hips in an effort to free himself, but there was nothing he could do. He cried out, humiliated. He could feel the sensations, but his penis stayed limp. His forehead had become slick with sweat. He was getting turned on, despite remaining as soft as ever between his legs. His limp cock ejaculated copiously over Renobo’s hand. Her hand came to a halt. At the same time, she paused the movement of the hand between her own legs.

“Well well!” Renobo gave him a blood-curdling smile, bringing her face up to meet his own; she glared into his eyes. “What’s wrong with it?” She reached down to his still soft cock and shook it with her hand. Fuminari turned away, grinding his teeth loudly. “Hmmm.” Renobo’s crimson tongue snaked over her lips. “Your proud little viper is no good for pounding cunt after all.”

Fuminari howled in shame. Renobo let go of him and waved her hand in front of his eyes for him to see. Her fingers were covered with his semen. He had responded to her stimulation and ejaculated, even without an erection. Renobo’s blood-red tongue slithered over her fingers, lapping up the white liquid. She rubbed the remainder over Fuminari’s face, bursting into a sudden, high-pitched laugh.

“I see, I see.” She glared into his eyes, then laughed again. She recovered her belt and the
kapala
from the floor, then turned out the light and left the room, closing the door behind her.

The laughter rang in Fuminari’s ears long after he heard the quiet click of the lock in the darkness.

6

It was roughly an hour later when Fuminari heard the sound of the lock again.

He heard the door being opened, slowly this time, and sensed someone enter the room. Again, he smelled the scent of a woman, but different from Renobo earlier. The woman held her breath, as though terrified of making a sound.

“Who’s there?” Fuminari asked, keeping his voice quiet.

The woman said nothing. There was a nervous perspiration in the darkness. She made no attempt to turn on the lights. The woman marshaled a few breaths in the dark then moved closer behind him, hesitant. She placed something metallic, cold, between his fingers. He immediately recognized it as a knife.

“What the...” Fuminari whispered, his voice tight.

“Use this, get out of here,” the woman whispered back, even quieter than Fuminari. There was something odd about the voice; it was accompanied by a rasping noise, a scraping of air. “Take the stairs outside the door, I left a window open to the right. Use it. Steer clear of Panshigaru in the future.” She said nothing more, leaving the room as quietly as she had entered. There was no sound of the door being locked.

Was it a trap?
That was Fuminari’s first thought. But he would not allow himself to hesitate. This was his only option.

7

A window had been left open at the end of an L-shaped corridor

Outside, Fuminari could see the expansive grounds of the residence, only dimly visible in the moonlight. There was a wall ten meters away, two meters or so meters high. He knew then that the building he was in was sizable. He also knew that if he jumped from the window, he would make a sound on the grass when he landed, possibly loud enough for that old man, Enoh, to pick up on. Still, it was possible; he could jump down, make a run for the wall and vault clean over it.

But who was she?
His thoughts returned to the woman.
Why help me?
He could worry about that later. He hardened his resolve and reached out to the window. It was a little too narrow to let his huge frame out easily. He heard footsteps from the darkness to the right. Someone was walking his way from the other side of the corridor--a single pair of footsteps, and close enough that he would be discovered before he could get clean of the window. Fuminari’s decision was instantaneous; he concealed his frame against the corridor’s edge. As long as it wasn’t Enoh, he knew he could dispose of whoever it was before they could even make a sound. The footsteps were too clumsy for Enoh. Whoever it was held a torch, the beam directed towards the floor near the turn in the corridor. The footsteps drew nearer, then came to a sudden stop. They had noticed the open window. Footsteps again, the shape of a man came into view next to the window. The man was looking at the window, standing now with his back towards Fuminari. Fuminari moved stealthily behind him before wrapping a thick arm around the man’s neck, tensing with explosive power. At the same time, he grabbed the torch with his other hand; the last thing he wanted was for the man to drop it. The man’s legs hung suspended as Fuminari lifted him into the air while he crushed the man’s neck. The sound of his feet shuffling on the floor would probably be enough to alert Enoh.

“Make a sound and I’ll snap your neck,” Fuminari whispered into the man’s ear, flexing his muscles against his neck; the man would hear the bones in his chin and neck groan under the stress. “I’m sure you can tell I’m serious,” Fuminari said. The man could hardly struggle as it was, let alone make a noise. He was fighting just to breathe, eyes wide open, almost popping out of their sockets. “Tell me about Kurogosho. Where is he, what’s he doing?” As he whispered, Fuminari released his hold by a fraction.

The man sucked air into his throat. “P...preparing for the ritual.” He swallowed loudly, continuing to gasp for air.

Fuminari flexed his arm, preventing him from doing so. “A ritual...” Images resurfaced, seen in the mountains two years ago, men and women engaged in an obscene, mass orgy. And he saw the monster.

“A ritual...on the 3rd August.”

Before he could realize, Fuminari had relaxed his grip around the man’s neck. The man screamed at the top of his voice. Fuminari cursed and tensed the muscles of his right arm. The man’s neck snapped with a dry crack. His body flapped three times, like a dying fish, before falling limp. Fuminari cast the body aside and squeezed his huge frame through the window before leaping out to the grounds below. He sensed a bustling, people stirred inside the building. He charged across the grass, heading straight for the enclosing wall. He vaulted clean over it and found himself in the middle of woods. He ducked into the cover of the undergrowth and briefly extended his awareness to scan his surroundings.
“He escaped!”
He could hear shouting inside the estate. He was about to charge deeper into the woods when something made him freeze. Someone was there, in the darkness just ahead of him.

“Who’s there?” He flicked on the torch he had grabbed from the man, directing the beam towards the shadows before him. The beam revealed two men. One with messy hair, the other...somehow feminine with stunning features. He was looking at Hosuke Kumon and Biku.

Twelve

Heruka’s Mandala

1

Senkichi Fuminari leapt to one side having already switched off the torch in the previous instant.

He crouched low in the grass and made to conceal his presence. His huge frame blended impressively into the darkness. He felt his body tense; he ground his back teeth together. He bit down hard, attempting to control the instinct to fight that had welled up inside him. Senkichi Fuminari was a wild beast that had just escaped its cage.

The two men he had stumbled upon just moments earlier had scattered to either side, extinguishing all signs of their presence with the same speed he had shown. But as they had done so, Fuminari marked the locations of the sounds they had made. They were just a few meters ahead, one to the left, the other to his right, both using the undergrowth for cover. Their reactions had been impressive. Fuminari was sure they were aware of his own position, just as he was of theirs.
Are they the enemy?
Fuminari asked the question as he lay in the dark, keeping still.

It was clear that there was nothing ordinary about them. He had no idea of the location of the residence, but he knew that no regular person would have business skulking around such woods in the dead of night. And then there was the way they responded to him; instantaneous, only possible with a mastery of martial arts. The commotion inside the wall was growing in intensity. This was no time for idling around. “Who’s there?” Fuminari called again, keeping his voice low.

There was no response. Not that he had expected anyone dim-witted enough to volunteer their name just because he asked. Fuminari reached down with his right hand, gently sliding his knife from the belt around his waist.

“The din back there about someone having escaped, that’s you?”

A man’s voice called out suddenly, from the darkness ahead. The tone was perfectly relaxed, as though he had asked the question while smoking a cigarette in a cafe.

“Yeah,” Fuminari answered, knife in hand.

“If so, then we have no fight with you. Probably.”

“I know a guy that was killed for his money by someone who said they were on his side.”

“Aha.”

“I killed him.”

“I see,” the voice returned from the darkness, still completely at ease. It was somehow out of place.

“Okay so you’re not with the enemy, show me some proof,” Fuminari said.

“Proof?”

“You’d have a torch, right? A lighter if not. Turn it on and stand up, point it at yourselves. Together.” There was no chance they would comply. Absolutely none, Fuminari thought. They would have no idea if this stranger might be planning to attack them through the dark. He just wanted to see how they reacted to his request, gauge the response. When the response came, it was the opposite of what he expected.

“Sure, okay.”

The response was relaxed to the point of being anticlimactic. Fuminari heard someone chuckle faintly, just as he saw a gigantic black shadow rear heavily upwards. He had revealed himself with utter indifference, lacking any sense of wary. Fuminari was dumbfounded, he had never expected anyone crazy enough to reveal themselves at the request of a potentially hostile opponent.

“And the other one?” Fuminari asked.

“Little choice but to play along, I see.”

He saw a slender figure rise a few meters to the left of the big guy.

“Your lights?” Fuminari lodged the blade between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. It was the only knife he had. He intended to make short work of whomever was first to turn on their torch. Then he would make a break for it. He should be able to handle the other if he was alone. There was little time left, the people beyond the wall would be on them soon. He had to hurry.

He had no real expectation that the men before him would just turn on their lights at his behest. He readied himself to throw the torch; he would use the distraction to run, or to move in and take them out with the knife. In the case of the latter he would direct the knife at one of them and charge the other, slamming him into the ground as the first reacted. The decision would be made the moment they reacted to the torch.

Faint moonlight trickled over the ground beneath the canopy of trees. The stench of the undergrowth tickled Fuminari’s nose each time he drew in the dark night air. He had been here before...been a shadow in the dark turf, knife in hand.

Memories of that night came flooding back. The night he had killed Muto and Kawaguchi of the Kokushigun and stolen the hundred million yen they had originally taken from Towa Bank. The night Fuminari and Kumiko had witnessed a group of people performing an outlandish ritual in the Tanzawa mountains, and of his clash with a monstrous beast-like creature. He had lain in wait, set a trap for the creature hunting them; he had made use of shadow, holding a knife in concealment. He had hurled the blade with all his might, but the monster had caught it mid-flight, sent it back at him. Fuminari felt a dull pain throb over his left hand, ghosts of the missing flesh of the fingers the beast had torn off and eaten. His forehead was slick with viscous sweat.

A light came on in front of the larger shadow, a lighter flame. He saw a man’s face in the dark, his hair was long and in such a mess it was almost funny. In the same moment, Fuminari sent the knife flying in a beeline towards the man, Hosuke Kumon’s, head. The thin metallic flash burnished through the dark leaving a silver comet trail in its wake. The flame vanished with a sharp mineral click. Fuminari was already running, his back to the two men.

He felt a powerful rush of hostile energy whip into the back of his head like a silk chord--a hissing of leaves from the branches above him. Fuminari pitched forwards, falling instinctively into a roll. He felt a burst of air scythe through the space directly behind his head in a razor whip. The force was enough to make his flesh crawl. Fuminari rolled back to his feet in a single, fluid motion. A shadow landed on the grass before him, readying to attack. It was the second man to have stood up, the slender one. Fuminari launched his right leg, thick as a log, sideways towards the man charging at him. The dark form ducked into the grass, coalescing into the darkness. Fuminari roared as his leg buzzed through thin air, overshooting the man. The attack could have torn a hole in the darkness itself. A direct hit would pulverize bone.

“You seem hellbent on being unfriendly,” the slender form spoke from the undergrowth. It was Biku.

“That’s a schoolboy error, turning on the light like that.”

“We did tell you we’re not with them.”

“Fuck that! If that last attack had got me in the head I’d be a fucking corpse right now.”

“I could say the same of yours.”

“Huh.” Fuminari straightened up and spat on the ground.

“You’re very suspicious,” Biku said, maintaining his crouch.

“I trust only the dead, they don’t lie. It’s a policy I have, never make an agreement with the living.” Fuminari curved his thick lips into a daring smile.

As he did Hosuke Kumon appeared, walking over the grass towards them. “Wow, you’re a veritable giant!” He cooed with admiration, twirling something in his right hand as he came to stand next to the still-crouching form of Biku. The man’s guard was completely down, if Fuminari were to attack him like that, he would not stand a chance. Fuminari saw that the object in his hand was the knife he had thrown. Its tip was buried in the man’s lighter. Hosuke flicked the lighter on. There was a faint pop as the orange flame flickered into existence. It was still working, despite being impaled by a knife.

Hosuke’s oddball features were thrown into relief by the flame, they were not handsome. He had a pug nose and his lips were thick-set. If anything, he fell on the side of ugly. But that did not mean he lacked charm. He was unwieldy, but Fuminari could tell there was something about the way he looked that drew people in. And the pug nose suited him perfectly. It was like a form of magnetism, something hardwired from birth. He was shrouded in a mysterious aura, something akin to warmth. At first he resembled a physical laborer, the type that hung around construction site canteens. He was dressed in a pair of dirt-encrusted jeans and a cotton shirt. His muscles were big, like he was built from solid rubble. He was watching Fuminari with eyes that somehow resembled the night-air itself, even as they reflected the lighter’s flame. Biku appeared to his side, his form gaining clarity nearer the dim light produced by the flame.

“Are you a fucking woman?” Fuminari blurted. But he knew Biku was a man the moment the words left his mouth. Biku’s crimson lips parted in a slight, but evocative grin. The expression contained traces of innocence, like that of a young girl on the cusp of realizing her womanhood. His hair fell over his forehead in gentle waves. It was hardly surprising that Fuminari had momentarily confused him for a woman.

“If I was, would you have considered raping me?” Biku spoke with a surprisingly powerful, male voice. He was completely covered in tight-fitting black cloth. His frame was slight in comparison to Hosuke’s, but there was no sense of frailty to it. Fuminari knew that tough sinews of spring-like muscle were coiled within his outwardly feminine frame. Otherwise, it would have been impossible for him to have attacked Fuminari as he just had. Biku slid one foot gracefully forward, the motion perfectly fluid.

Fuminari felt a powerful, blast-heated energy stir inside him. He made no attempt to conceal the force as it broadcast from his frame. His size was extraordinary. He was two meters tall, weighing in at over 145 kilograms. He was in black trousers and a moss-green t-shirt. If Hosuke had been cut from smooth, natural stone, Fuminari was a roughly-hacked at boulder. His muscles gave the impression that someone had stuffed his t-shirt with oversized rubble. His shoulders were as wide as his chest was deep. The cloth of the t-shirt covering his upper arms looked tight enough to rip if he flexed even slightly. Above the muscular swell of his shoulders was a thick neck, above that, a rock-hard jaw. Like Hosuke, his lips were thick, but his frame was overall more balanced. He could put on a charming smile, attracting more than just a few women. But he lacked what Hosuke had in warmth. His face was a mask of lethal darkness.
Never make an agreement with the living
. His face was proof enough that he meant it.

“When you came running, I thought it was that monster again,” Hosuke said, keeping his eyes on Fuminari’s enormous profile. Fuminari was a good couple of times his size.

“Monster?” Fuminari’s face looked suddenly demonic. In his mind, he had just seen the gigantic, half-human abomination that tore off his fingers.

“Yeah. They call it Hanko apparently,” Hosuke added lightly, as though reminiscing on an old friend. As he did, there was a sudden sense of people bearing down on them through the dark.

“Shit,” Fuminari cursed.
They’re coming.
He would be lost if he had to face them from his current position. Especially if Enoh was among them.

“So, what’s your move?” Hosuke smiled, apparently enjoying himself. He seemed to think nothing more of their predicament than he would a game of tag. The men from the compound had scattered to either side after crossing the threshold of the woods. They heard footsteps, two people closing in on them with incredible speed.
“There he is!”
One must have seen the light from Hosuke’s lighter.

“A truce, then.”

With the words, Hosuke flipped the lighter off. Fuminari’s last glimpse of Hosuke as his face melted into the darkness was of the man grinning. Fuminari kicked off the ground in the same moment, accelerating directly towards the incoming men. His huge frame moved with animal velocity. His right fist flew out, followed by his left leg. A sound of impacting flesh and crunching bone echoed through the night. Neither of the men had made a sound, only that of their bodies crumpling heavily to the grass. Fuminari had used the blade of his hand to effortlessly crush the neck of the first while launching a kick into the jaw of the other, sending the man flying backwards through the air as his lower teeth pierced his mouth. Fuminari was moving before they hit the floor. “We run, now!” he hissed. Biku and Hosuke were already in motion, speeding like wind through the dark.

2

The Koshu Road.

A single passenger car made its way down Route 20, heading for Shinjuku. The car’s headlights tore sharp lines through the night. There were hardly any cars passing from the opposite direction. Dawn was less than two hours away as they quickly approached the moment when it would be closer to morning than it was to night. Biku was behind the wheel. Biku was behind the wheel, Hosuke was in the passenger seat next to him, while Fuminari was in the rear, glaring forwards with a heavy scowl.

“Miwa Ishibashi?” he said. His arms were folded together, cramped despite having the back of the car to himself. He had just discovered that the building he had been held in was Miwa Ishibashi’s Hachioji residence.

“That’s right,” the answer came from the driver, Biku.

“And who the hell is she?”

“We would be happy to tell you, but not until we know more about who
you
are. You may not be our enemy, Fuminari, but that doesn’t mean you’re our friend either.”