Yashakiden: The Demon Princess, Volume 2 (5 page)

“Please.”

He filled the glass to the brim with the clear, strongly aromatic liquid. Mephisto downed it in a single gulp.

“Splendid!” said the old man, with complete sincerity. “I have to sip at the stuff, and even then it burns my throat. Well, such is to be expected from a citizen of Demon City.”

“When did you learn about our little town?”

“While sequestered within the ship.”

“And how much do you know?”

“As far as you are concerned, everything.”

A single glance from Mephisto made Kikiou's meaningful expression stiffen. Mephisto said, “I believe you are mistaken.”

A bead of sweat slid down the center of Kikiou's forehead, down to the tip of his nose, where he wiped it off. “You are correct.” The old man's voice sounded like it was tangled up in his throat. “I never sweated like this before. I seem to be running hot and cold these days. As you say, I was mistaken.”

“That is fine,” Mephisto said, as if it didn't matter to him one way or the other.

Kikiou didn't reply right away. Then presently, “And how much do you know about us, Doctor?”

Mephisto didn't hesitate. “You are neither friends nor allies.” “I certainly wouldn't object to us becoming either. Otherwise there would be no purpose to our inviting you here.”

“One of you attacked my hospital. The only satisfactory penalty for such an offense is death. In this case, he who ordered it and he who did nothing to stop it share the same sin.”

“So you will slay us and be on your way?”

“Regardless of what happens henceforth, I am not interested in anything but the recuperation of my patients.”

A violent demon
qi
erupted from Kikiou's body and filled the room. “So you are resolved to defeating us no matter what?”

“That is why I am here.”

“We are the ones who invited you.”

“You were not doing me any favors.”

“Won't you listen to our side of the story? I assure you, we bear you no enmity. To be perfectly honest, the invasion of your hospital was done without knowledge of your presence there. Otherwise, such reckless action would never have been attempted.”

“All the patient gets from a doctor's regrets is death.”

“A waste of effort, you mean. But of course. You are the man I imagined you to be.”

“I shall take that as a compliment.”

“To tell the truth, what we would be proud to offer you is but a trifle. But that's why they call you the Demon City Physician. Even if it is but a trifle, why not spare a few minutes to talk it over?”

Kikiou looked quietly into Mephisto's eyes. Time passed as it had before, though of a far more severe nature.

Mephisto said, “Let's hear it then.”

Kikiou nodded. “No man can avoid a visit from the Grim Reaper. But when death comes to the door, he needn't let it in.”

“Eternal youth and eternal life is the privilege of the vampire. But in any case, I could have gathered as much from the Toyama residents. Those humans who wish to associate with them are surprisingly ill-informed about how they actually live.”

Mephisto's observation went right to the heart of the matter, the blind spot in the old legends. Those whose blood was consumed by a vampire would, after death, transform into vampires. This was an inviolable rule. But interviews with the handful of “protégés” that had joined the Toyama clans brought into focus the severe nature of the environment they had consigned themselves to.

They tasted—as mortals—the severe cold and hunger that wracked the vampire's body. But this was a cursed life that knew no end. Breathing frozen breath and enduring a kind of hunger that made them want to devour their own flesh, their lives became a never-ending act of penance.

As a consequence, desperate for warm blood, with natures more ferocious and brutal than the lords of the night, they were loathed not only by humans but by any demonic monster born of a mother. The world of the vampire was not one human beings easily accommodated themselves to.

“I understand what you are saying,” countered Kikiou. “But a studied ignorance lies at the heart of such tragedies. You are different. As far as we know, Doctor Mephisto is the only person in Demon City capable of understanding the supernatural realms with his heart as well as his mind.”

“And what manner of understanding would that constitute?”

All expression disappeared from Kikiou's face. “Then you are curious?”

“While I do not consider myself an easy man to flatter—”

“I am well aware of that. Doctor Mephisto is ordinarily moved only by what will benefit his patients.” Kikiou gestured to Shuuran, who was standing behind him. The attractive girl nodded, and left the room.

“—I have no intention of becoming one of your brood,” Mephisto continued.

“Neither does that come as a surprise. We have not frittered away the past four thousand years for nothing. We have ways of allowing
special
persons to
not
become one of our brood, while partaking of the privileges accorded those who do.”

Anticipating what effect his words would have on the handsome doctor, the smile did not vanish from Kikiou's face.

“The person who visited my hospital should be around here somewhere.”

“What?” Kikiou blurted at this incongruous statement. He gaped a bit.

“I was wondering if I could see him. I assume he is the same man who visited the ward mayor's office this afternoon with you. The most powerful wizardess in Shinjuku has been confined to a hospital bed. Would that be your doing or his?”

“That was my work alone.”

“So the man who fought us in broad daylight could only invade the ward mayor's office shrouded in darkness?”

Kikiou bowed low. “I've got to hand it to you.” At the bottom of the bow, out of Mephisto's line of sight, his lips twisted into the shape of a smile. Lifting his head he said, “You may already be familiar with the man's name, but his name is Ryuuki. What do you intend to do with him?”

“He must perish. For violating the sanctity of my hospital and acting unlawfully in the ward government building. Though, frankly, I do not care about the latter.”

“If that is the price for accepting our good faith intentions in this regard, then so be it. However, that man is the object of our mistress's affections. We could not offer him up to you on the spur of the moment. And besides—” Kikiou paused for a moment. “He happens not to be in.”

“Where is he?”

Kikiou didn't answer.

“Where did he go?” Mephisto pressed.

“He indicated that he wanted to settle things with the man who took his fingers. A
senbei
shop owner in West Shinjuku.”

“When will he return?”

“Before the break of day. By the looks of things, another hour or so.”

“I hope he makes it back in one piece.”

“You certainly have a lot of confidence in him. Is Setsura Aki that impressive a fellow?”

“Your investigations do seem to have come up a bit short.”

The old man might have taken the look that passed across Mephisto's face for a smirk, but he didn't want to think about it too hard.

A little while later, Shuuran entered the room like she was floating in on a breeze, carrying a silver platter. Neatly arranged on the platter was a porcelain jar that looked like a squat section of water pipe. A single glass tube jutted from it in the shape of a gooseneck. The end was bent into a mouthpiece.

Shuuran set the jar down in the middle of the round table and looked at Mephisto.

“Please, drink,” Kikiou urged him. “I swear that its contents were not prepared by any of us. A scholar who desired to know what
we
know without becoming one of us spent thirty years in a little hut out in the middle of nowhere devoted to its creation. After accomplishing his goal, a single mouthful was enough to drive him mad and send him to the grave. But on his deathbed, he communicated a single portion of that knowledge to his apprentice. In time, the apprentice came to the Land of the Gods—to Japan—and there had a child by a local woman. These are the origins of the legend of
Yaobikuni
.”

Yaobikuni was the priestess who ate the flesh of a mermaid and lived for eight hundred years. Who could say how many such Chinese legends and fairy tales sprang from the single seed of the single fruit of a single scholar's thirty years of effort?

“The jar and its contents are as they were back then. Aside from the portion consumed by that scholar, not a drop has evaporated. It's almost as if, for four thousand years, this secret elixir has been waiting for you.”

Kikiou pressed both hands down on the jar. When he released his hands, the jar slid across the table toward Mephisto. The most beautiful hand in the world grasped the slender neck.

In the midst of white sunlight that had never known the shade, Kikiou said in an emotional voice, “As I expected, Doctor Mephisto. I pray that it is a vintage most pleasing to your palate.”

The lips that a thousand women lusted after pressed against the narrow spout.

Just then, a gust of wind blew down the hallway, buffeting the air in the room. Kikiou turned to the one-armed man standing silently in the doorway and smiled broadly.

“Ah, just in time. We have a guest.”

“I believe you two have met,” Kikiou said. “This is Doctor Mephisto.” Having introduced the seated doctor, he asked Ryuuki, “What happened to your hand? I can't imagine you losing it to a mere weapon. As the doctor said, Setsura Aki's skills cannot be underestimated.”

Ryuuki didn't answer at once. He fixed Mephisto in his sights with eyes that glimmered like black obsidian. “Is Sir Kikiou the one who invited that man in here?”

He received no answer.

“I recall Sir Kikiou stating that he must be destroyed.”

“I did extend the invitation, but it was Shuuran who took advantage of the circumstances.”

“Really?” His eyes were like a pair of deep mineshafts.

The pretty girl nodded. “I became concerned about the man I was supposed to finish off. He should have had his throat cut, but all at once I wasn't so sure and went outside to make certain.”

“You'll be punished for that.”

“I know.” The girl paled and bowed.

Ryuuki grabbed her throat with his black arm. Not giving her time to moan, he embraced her, and pressed his lips against her white throat. Mephisto caught the brief glimmer of his sharp fangs.

“
Ahh—ahh—
”

She bowed her head back in ecstasy. Two trails of fresh blood trickled down her skin. Ryuuki's Adam's apple bobbed up and down. He was drinking her blood. The blood of his colleague.

“Losing an arm and famished to boot,” Kikiou said in a hard, cold voice. “You really blundered badly.”

Mephisto had nothing to add to that.

“You are correct.” Ryuuki shoved the waxy-pale Shuuran into a nearby chair and wiped his mouth. “The same goes for you.”

“I know.”

Mephisto quietly asked, “And how is Setsura Aki?”

Ryuuki's black eyes—that a moment before had been brimming with death—shone with a deeper sense of “humanity” than anybody else's in the room.

“A friend?” he asked.

“I fancy myself so.”

“He broke my
qi
. But still got hit by a good half of it. He should be in your hospital by now.”

“You returned at exactly the right time.” As the three vampires watched, the white figure came to his feet. “I must be on my way. But not before ridding the world of you.”

Sitting in the chair, Shuuran opened her eyes and glared at him. Crossing her line of vision, a black hand moved—almost as in slow motion—towards Mephisto's chest, pushing outwards with the palm.

The devastating
qi
that had sent Setsura Aki to the hospital and Galeen Nuvenberg to the brink of death. That
something
shot through the air, striking the glittering cape with a slanting blow and splintering apart.

At the same time, a similar force broke like a wave against his upper arm. “Oh, so you can do it too,” came Ryuuki's voice, observing a
qi
similar to his own radiating from Mephisto's hand.

“Well, monkey see, monkey do.” A small wave of sound came to life beneath the right-hand side of Doctor Mephisto's cape and circled his waist.

“That was my iron
qi
,” Ryuuki explained, planting his left foot behind him. “Next comes my penetrator
qi
. It's what brought down Setsura and that decrepit witch at the government building. That cape of yours might as well be made of tissue paper—”

He left his words hanging in the air. Ryuuki leaped to the left. A sharp sound rent the air where he had just been, like the cracking of a whip. Invisible bands of power stretched between the man landing on his feet and the man standing there stock still.

The cape fluttered, and Doctor Mephisto collapsed. A moment later it became apparent that his “body” was a wire mannequin.

“You're fast.”

The voice came from where Ryuuki had been standing. He pivoted and stretched out his left hand. The beautiful man again crumpled to the ground. And changed into a jumble of wires.

“Your technique certainly is deadly, but not if it can't hit anything.”

Ryuuki didn't turn toward the whisper directly behind him.

“If a patient of mine cannot settle down when I'm not around, I use a stand-in. It is helpful when I am late for important dates. But it is only useful for deceiving the eyes of ordinary humans.”

Imbuing a wire mannequin with the illusion of his real self wasn't much of a stretch for Doctor Mephisto. But on the battlefield it proved quite effective. Multiple Mephistos confronted them from the middle of the living room, next to the window, in the doorway. Kikiou and Shuuran looked on dumbfounded.