The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters (37 page)

Ishibashi turned back, looking at Fuminari with dumb amazement. But he was quick to regain his composure once his brain processed what had just happened.

“Ishibashi, I owe you a favor from before, huh.”

“I don’t remember having being too hospitable.”

The man’s voice was trembling slightly, but Fuminari had to admire the man’s guts.

“
Don’t
fucking move!” Fuminari warned Renobo; she had been trying to get down from her position on top of Ishibashi. “You really don’t want to move, trust me. Wow, I didn’t think I’d get to see
both
of you here.” His voice was quieter now, but the excited tremor underneath it was more intimidating than his shouting. “Hell I’m fucking ecstatic, my viper’s ready to piss in my pants.” He was feeling uncharacteristically chatty.

“I had not expected the Shinmeikai to be even less useful than your snake,” Renobo said, starting to rock her hips again.

“Not at all, some of them actually put up a good fight. Hence our slightly later than planned arrival.”

A cool voice filtered into the room from behind Fuminari. Biku slipped into the room with the light footing of a bird, he was dressed entirely in black and wearing his usual smile--innocent like a young girl.

“So
you’re
Biku,” Renobo said, moving faster still.

“That is indeed my name.”

“Have you come here to fuck me instead of that impotent goon there?”

“If it is your wish then perhaps later, in our own time.”

Renobo responded with a shrill laugh, the laugh became a moan as her hips continued to swing. She came again. Then she glared at Fuminari, sneering.

“I’m getting off now,” she announced, slipping out of Ishibashi.

The man’s cock fell backwards, still rock hard. The two were incredible. Ishibashi had maintained his erection even as Fuminari and Biku watched on, and Renobo had just continued to fuck him; they were like a pair of nightmarish beasts in heat. Biku looked over the rest of the room, then opened his mouth to speak.

“I see you have a collection of ritual tools, but nothing from Tachikawa or Samvara.”

“They don’t teach
this
at your mountain,” Renobo snorted.

“Indeed not,” Biku agreed freely.

Renobo let herself down from the bed, moving carefully. Then she blurred into motion, moving with improbable speed. Something flashed from her right hand, it hurtled directly towards Fuminari’s head. Fuminari tipped his head to the side. The metallic flash shot by, vibrations of air registering in his ear as the object flew towards the door. The knife impaled the doorframe. Fuminari’s thick lips drew up into a cruel smile, clearly enjoying himself.

“Still got some game in you, huh!” he said.

Renobo dodged to the side. His giant frame moved in perfect synchronicity, lithe as a cat. She leapt upwards with a reptilian shout, Fuminari exhaled a sharp rush of air as she did. She crashed loudly into the ground. Fuminari had grabbed her left arm and pulled her out of the air even as she ascended. Maintaining his grip, he twisted her arm behind her. Her other hand raked up from behind, her right shoulder twisting. Fuminari made no effort to move, letting her fingernails gouge into his cheeks. But her efforts ended there; Fuminari had tightened his hold, stopping her from moving any further. From this position he reached out, under her right arm, and grabbed one of her breasts. He squeezed hard and felt the heavy swell of flesh give under his hands, tweaking her nipple between his fingers so that it hardened and pointed off in an unnatural direction. The marks on his face turned from pink to red before finally beginning to bleed. A single bead of blood trickled to his lips. He used his tongue to lap it up.

Biku and Ishibashi were still while this was happening, eyes fixed on each other in silence. Ishibashi’s stillness was not, necessarily, out of choice. He knew that Biku would pick up on even the slightest movement, attack in the same moment.

“How about the two of you put some clothes on,” Biku suggested.

“Fine,” Ishibashi muttered, getting slowly down from the bed. He began to dress from the clothes scattered on the floor.

“Should I dress you, or do you think you can do it yourself?” Fuminari drew his head close to Renobo’s, whispering the words into her ear. “Not that I mind dragging you out of here butt naked, of course.”

5

Fuminari tied Renobo’s hands behind her back and slung her over his shoulder.

Just as he was leaving the room ahead of Biku he felt a rush of energy smash into him from the corridor, an incredible whirlwind of murderous intent. The powerful attack scythed past the tip of his nose, completely eclipsing the strength of Renobo’s prior attack. Fuminari felt the blood in his veins flow backwards then freeze. His hairs stood on end becoming needles. It was the same murderous energy he had felt that night, two years ago. His frozen blood turned over, instantly boiling again as it burst through his veins in an incredible torrent. He heard glass smashing somewhere nearby. His muscles flamed, swelling until boulder-like. His instinct to fight had kicked in before his conscious mind had the chance to recognize what was happening. He felt a surge of incandescent rapture, the feeling became a violet flame that scorched through his every cell. He was bellowing at the top of his lungs. The noise was hardly human, it was the howling of a lion.

“Come for me, Hanko!”

He hurled Renobo away. He had completely forgotten about Biku and Ishibashi. Everything else faded from his mind like disappearing mist. He had transformed into a feral animal.

Biku had been behind Fuminari when he sensed the fireball-like rush of lethal energy. As Biku momentarily tensed, Ishibashi had seized on his chance. He leapt up onto the bed and threw himself against the window. He crashed through the glass and thin wooden frame, flying out of the room. Biku had been impressed to watch the man hurl himself through the window without even a moment’s hesitation, knowing the glass would smash into pieces and lacerate his skin. Biku had leapt through the Ishibashi-shaped hole in the window, his back to Fuminari as the man howled, into the darkness outside. He landed on soft grass and felt the chill air wrap itself around him. Countless shards of glass glittered on the ground around him, reflecting the light from the window. Ishibashi was nowhere to be seen.

He got away?
Biku dropped into a low crouch to assess his surroundings. There he saw a dark concentration of shadow crouching in the grass before him to the right. It began to move the very moment he dismissed it as a rock. It was growing bigger, multiplying upwards. As it continued to grow Biku sensed a rising pressure in the air, a breeze-like energy gusting into his face. The breeze grew in force. There was no way the energy was coming from Ishibashi. The breeze transformed, suddenly morphing into a lethal energy that lashed at Biku like a sharp blade. Biku pulled both hands up to cover his face, readying himself for the blow. But the force dissipated as suddenly as it had lashed out in the first place.

Biku glimpsed a diminutive figure positioned on the grass a few meters away, visible now in the transparency of the night. An old man. He was smiling at Biku through a wrinkled face, his eyes harboring a look that was almost tender. Biku, the Kujaku Myo’o, was finally face to face with the beast master Enoh.

Nineteen

The Nightmare Myo’o

1

Hosuke Kumon lay on the bed, staring at the dark ceiling above him.

The room was devoid of light. The darkness clung to the ceiling with a thickness that was constant, regardless of where Hosuke looked. Occasionally, a clump of something like human hair would flash into existence against the pitch-black, distending and contracting as it crawled through the air, spider-like, before disappearing again. Sometimes Hosuke would catch a glimpse of face-like shapes towards the center. These would shrivel under his gaze before swelling outwards to form grotesquely tumescent renditions of female genitalia from which male reproductive organs would spill out, engorged and rigidly vertical. Despite the darkness, the shapes were visible as faint shimmers of light.

That was how these apparitions, not physically present, would show themselves. They would insinuate their presence directly into Hosuke’s consciousness, revealing themselves as magnetized concentrations of energy that hung in the air. Such
haunts
had been
appearing in droves, ever since Kukai’s mummified remains had been brought to the residence. They were visible to some, equally invisible to others. And of those in the building able to perceive them, only Hosuke and Enoh could see them clearly; Geshin too, perhaps. But to anyone else the haunts were mere shadow—fleeting and sporadic.

Those that perceived a faint
something
tended to be taken by an ill-defined unease, an irritability or a subconscious urge to get away from the building. Even these people claimed to experience a friction near the room of Kukai’s internment, purporting the air to take on a humid viscosity that dragged against them like a subtle membrane. Such spectral phenomena were hardly surprising given that the
sokushinbutsu
of Kukai—the central source of Mt. Koya’s expansive energy field—was present in the building.

Hosuke was naked. Yuko lay to his left, similarly disrobed. She was curled up in the embrace of his left arm, sleeping peacefully with her head resting on his shoulder. There was a pathos to the weight. She had not told him directly, but it was easy enough to imagine the number of times the men here had subjected her to rape. She had spent her days as a device to service their lust, awaiting the cruel fate of sacrifice—as part of the ritual of a few evenings ago. But Hosuke had saved her.

Now her soft breasts pressed up against his rugged chest. They cycled with her breathing; pushing, relaxing again. Her left hand was draped over his groin, slender fingers gently touching the tip of his penis. Just moments ago she had been writhing with crazed abandonment, him inside her. Then she had curled up in his arms and fallen asleep, hand still over his groin. They had only exchanged a word or two before her soft breathing told him she was asleep.

She was perfectly at ease. Hosuke could sense it from the warmth of her body where their skin met, clearer than any words she may have uttered. She was, he realized, just another girl in her teens.

For his part, Hosuke still wondered what had compelled him to toss himself into the arms of his enemy that night. Had he done it to save Yuko’s life? Or out of curiosity for a job they—these men that had stolen Kukai—wanted him to do? It had, doubtless, been a combination of the two. Even then it had been a dangerous thing to do. Enoh could have chosen to kill him while he had been sat there, engrossed in the flames. Yet Hosuke had played his cards, even recognizing the danger, even aware of the risk involved. Yet he still found it hard to know whether the decision had been fully conscious.

Part of him had probably considered it unlikely that they would kill him while he remained useful, held out that things might be okay if they failed to dispose of him right away. At the same time it had been impossible to sit back and watch as a girl he had shared a bed with be executed in front of him. And there was his fascination, his desire to learn more about the job they wanted him for—these people that had stolen Kukai.

He had concluded that the only way to satisfy both urges was to intervene directly. The decision had felt natural, as though the response had been hardwired into him.

Now, for the time being at least, things were going as he had hoped. The problem was whether that would continue to be the case. They would most likely kill him the moment he was done with his work—Yuko too. It was hard to believe that they would be kept alive after that, especially seeing how Hanko had slaughtered Iba, one of their own. But he could worry about the future later. For now, his thoughts were focused towards a single purpose: Kukai.

He thought of the blood-crazed monster that had billowed out from Kukai’s mummified form, attacking in the moment of contact. The intense, swirling miasma. That almost tactile malevolence.

His job was to dive into Kukai’s mind to discover whether the monk was alive even now, 1,200 years after his
sokushinjobutsu—
his physical attainment of Buddhahood. If Kukai was alive, Hosuke was tasked to discover the manner of his existence. His job, as a Psyche Diver, was to track down the DNA of
sokushinjobutsu.

Both of the Psyche Divers that had made contact with Kukai’s consciousness before him had died, losing their minds in that instant. The first, Tamura, had been found unconscious outside Kukai’s burial chamber at Mt. Koya. He had finally died when Hosuke dived into his mind. Hosuke had performed the dive on the still-living man’s mind on Biku’s request; inside, he had witnessed an outlandish landscape. Tamura’s consciousness had been comprehensively obliterated, only a cavity-like emptiness remained; a void that had been full of black, insectile creatures. Ravenous, they had been alien to the topography of his mind. External intruders, like Hosuke.

Kukai.

Hosuke was grinning through the dark. He found himself smiling whenever he thought of Kukai. He felt a thrill of excitement wrap around him, he was already decided. He would dive into Kukai whether anyone wanted him to or not. There was no way he would pass on such an awesome opportunity only for it to be snapped up by some other Diver.

But how am I going to do it?

He needed to prepare. Otherwise, he would most likely suffer the same fate as the others. And he was still to determine whether Kukai was alive or not.
Not that it really mattered
. He would be happy either way, but it would weigh on his mind until he had an answer.

A few hours ago, he had taken some time to discuss ways to ascertain this with Enoh. The old man had then introduced him to someone named Katsuragi, the technician assigned to manage the Psyche Converter while Hosuke dived into Kukai. Katsuragi, it seemed, had a few ideas of his own. He had also taken an interest in Hosuke’s ideas.
“I think we’ll get some fascinating results from all this.”
The man’s eyes had flashed under his glasses, sharp and keen.

But what will they be?

Hosuke had already allowed himself to acknowledge that there was, indeed, something inside Kukai. A ferocious, murderous something had struck out from the monk the moment Hosuke’s feelers began to probe his mind; it had devoured them in an instant. Whatever it was would have come for him too, had he hesitated to sever the feelers from his mind.
Is that Kukai?
Hosuke considered it.
Is that the true form of sokushinjobutsu?
He thought of Kukai, the esoteric monk of legend.

Had he somehow attained Buddhahood and then, over the course of 1,150 years, degenerated into that creature? It had been the embodiment of an insatiable demon—pure, hunger-driven insanity. Whatever the case, if he were to dive into Kukai he would have to take it on directly. And that was only if he could manage to get in at all.
We’re all dust in the end.
Hosuke could still hear Enoh’s words, muttered hours ago under the moonlight.
Existence is fleeting
, he had said,
and so we feel compelled to seek Buddhahood and chase immortality
.

2

A few hours earlier, Hosuke had been lying in the garden, gazing at the moon from under the night sky.

He was lying underneath the very tree Enoh had leapt onto, moments before killing Yoichi Munakata. The summer grass was tall enough to half-cover him, slick with evening dew. He was barefoot, in jeans and a cotton shirt. His arms were folded behind his head, supporting it as he lay back in the undergrowth. His clothes were cold and wet from soaking up dew. Yuko was asleep to his right, clinging to his chest as it rose and fell in soft waves. His aura had melted into the space around them, become one with the energy coming from the grass and trees. His energy signature had become completely transparent. Whether learned or inbuilt from birth, the technique was something that came naturally to him now.

The tall birch tree stretched over his head, its branches webbed out in black tributaries against the faint glow of the sky—they rocked in the wind that came through the darkness. Hosuke’s nostrils flared with the tang of the grass and the scent of larch that hung around the residence. The wind was full of cold, green vegetation. Each time it picked up, the grass would shiver in resonance, causing the tips to brush against his ears. The moon was vaguely crescent-shaped, hanging in the air behind a branch, almost directly above. The wet, blue gleam secreted downwards to form a curtain over the grounds.

No one seemed to be out apart from the two of them. Hosuke wondered if this might be his chance to escape, but he felt no urge to attempt it. It was easy enough to imagine what would become of Yuko if he left without her. And they would never make it together.There were always people on guard, hidden eyes trained on them. They would have guns, and he suspected they would use them if he were discovered trying to escape. Not that he was even considering it—he would need a strong dose of luck to get Enoh and Hanko off his trail and besides, his thoughts were concentrated on the other task he faced. His task—to dive into the mind of Kukai.
Could he pull it off? What were the mechanics involved?
His mind was full of these questions. He had a number of theories, but nothing that had struck him as the answer.

A few of the theories, he thought, were worthy of following up.
How would Kurogosho react?
That was key. Hosuke knew he had to learn all he could about Kukai and the esoteric religions before the dive. He was not ready, as he was, even if the dive was possible. His subject was Kukai, the founder of Shingon Esoteric Buddhism. He would need ten days to prepare, at least. Even with the premise that Kukai was, somehow, still alive, it was almost impossible to predict what might have happened to his mental state—this man that had achieved Buddhahood over a millennia ago. Hosuke had never faced anything like it.

There was a comprehensive library inside the residence, containing works about Kukai and others Kukai had written himself. Hosuke had already scanned through the
Sango Shiiki—The Indications of the Three
Teachings
—as compiled by Kukai when he was twenty-four, in the sixteenth year of Enryaku (797AD).

The text adopts a dialectic style and compares the ideologies of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism respectively. It was completed seven years before Kukai, at the age of thirty-one, travelled to Tang China to further his studies into Esoteric Buddhism. Within it, Kukai argues that Buddhism is predominant as the superior of the three religions.

Hosuke then read through the
Hizo Hoyaku—The Secret Treasury Key
—the
Sokushinjobutsu Gi—The Principles of Attaining Living Buddhahood—
and with the
Unji Gi—The Principles of Aum.

Finally, he had looked over a number of other works written about Kukai.

Yet, if he was being honest with himself, he was still unclear about the ideas behind Esoteric Buddhism, and about Kukai himself. His research had given him a feeling for Kukai’s extraordinary genius, and for the powerful gravity of the esoteric religions, but little else. He had learnt of how the base desires of human flesh were, within the cosmology of the esoteric religions, brought into a state of fusion with an almost fanatically elaborate scientific system, mapped out by the twin mandalas of the
Kongo
and
Taizo
—the diamond and womb realms. A feat only made possible by the genius of Kukai, peerless among the religions of the world.

He had understood Kukai’s message to have been something like the following:
“Base humanity persists through all eventualities.”
In this way Kukai, and Esoteric Buddhism through him, appeared to be suggesting that Buddhahood was something attainable by anyone, and that they could retain their physical bodies throughout.

Hosuke could almost picture Kukai calling out with open arms, teaching acceptance of physical desire; of hatred, of blood, flesh, dirt—all the piss and shit of being human. Treating all of this as one with the pureness of the heart. Hosuke’s understanding remained flawed, but it felt enthralling to stare into the unknown like this.
Fascinating
. Hosuke grinned softly.