It was three o’clock in the morning when the doctor got back to the examination room.
This was the time of day when the night made its futile last stand against the impending dawn. A time of day beyond the command of ordinary mortals. The ravenous, twin-headed dogs vanished from the streets, as did the patrol cars of the commando police.
Only once, five minutes before, near the precincts of Hanazono Shrine, had the doctor raised his head toward the sky. “This night is not the night of the falcon.”
The beauty of his face as he muttered those words was fairer than that of any fairy princess, who would think herself more akin to the frog in its pond by comparison.
His gaze soon returned to the road ahead, his cape fluttering out behind him.
✦ ✦ ✦
The room was dark. Entering any of the other exam rooms, a sensor would switch on the lights automatically. But here the doctor’s own will ruled over all. In any case, he was a man more suited to the dark than the light.
He sat in a hard chair in front of the desk. A low voice welled up behind him. “I still don’t know where you live. You are a man with strange tastes.”
The doctor didn’t turn around. “Home is where the heart is, isn’t that what people say? More importantly, you seem to have run off with the grand prize.”
“I’ve been waiting for you.”
With a flick of his right index finger, light sent the dark fleeing. The doctor turned around. He had two patients. A girl wrapped in an ink-black slicker lying on the examination table, and the young man in black sitting in the chair next to her. A face that suffered nothing in comparison to the doctor’s own visage.
Setsura Aki.
“You caused quite a commotion,” Doctor Mephisto scolded his night visitor. “The spectators rioted. The remaining security guards fanned the flames. Four died. The sponsors will offer up someone’s head on a platter to atone for the fiasco. Literally.”
“I figured if you were there, all would be well,” Setsura said indifferently. Perhaps because he was still him, his whole being seemed sheathed in icy steel. “You bring the dead back to life, even when they don’t want to. That’s why you are the Demon Physician. It’d be no different if he showed up at your door.”
“I suppose so.” A faraway look came to Mephisto’s eyes.
“He fled with the giant’s corpse and the head of the kenpo master. Add yourself to the mix and what follows isn’t that hard to imagine. The question is how you will proceed?”
The question being whether he would take Gento up on his proposal.
“I am the Demon Physician,” Mephisto answered clearly and plainly. With that, any further discussion on the matter was dispensed with.
“The girl’s name is Mayumi.” Setsura shifted his gaze to the girl lying on the table, drawing slow and even breaths.
“How do you know that?”
“I called your office, asked if you were seeing any patients presenting with particularly peculiar symptoms.”
“And you got a ready answer?”
Setsura nodded. “They are a well-disciplined bunch.”
“They need to be more disciplined about divulging the contents of a patient’s records. Ah, well. Their standing orders are to go to any lengths to meet your needs. So when will you act similarly out of consideration for my needs?”
His eyes sparkled with a devilish, even lascivious light.
Setsura said with a wry smile, “Have you learned anything more about this girl’s condition? Seems she sends every man she sleeps with straight to Heaven. And not in a good way.”
Mephisto shook his head. Not a speck of that lascivious light was left in those black pupils. “I’ve made use of every resource I have at my disposal and have still come up empty. Nothing unusual shows up in her DNA.”
“Anything in her family tree?”
“I haven’t discovered any abnormalities going back two generations. No more data is available from before then.”
“If the Demon Physician can’t figure it out, I’ll have to settle for a Voodoo Doctor. Any thoughts about what is going to happen to her next?”
Mephisto shook his head. That alone was enough to dash his hopes. “Is she the seal?” Mephisto asked, turning his attention to the examination table.
“Ignorance is bliss in my case,” Setsura said bluntly.
“I guess I’ll have to ask Gento.”
“Be my guest. She’s all yours.”
“That is fine with me. I’ll make sure she doesn’t end up Gento’s.”
Not exactly a logical exchange, whether qualified as normal discourse between the two of them, or normal discourse for Demon City. In either case, neither of them appeared the slightest bit suspicious of the other.
“I’ll stop by on a daily basis. Sorry to have to insist, but keep up the investigation.”
“That I will.”
“Help yourself to my bank account to cover the costs.”
“How generous of you. Running a senbei shop must be a more profitable enterprise than I imagined.”
“Give it a rest.” Setsura got to his feet.
“Don’t forget your coat. I have a blanket handy.”
He plucked up the black slicker and followed Setsura, casting it across his shoulders as he reached the door.
“If you wouldn’t mind.”
“Mind what?”
Mephisto’s hands rested on the shoulders of the visitor. His face drew close to the nape of his neck.
Perhaps no one on earth could imagine such a look of wanton intoxication on such a graceful countenance. The beauty of both of them upset the common sense of the world.
“Hey,” said Setsura, slapping Mephisto’s right hand with his left. Though it might have looked more like the one lay atop the other.
Mephisto’s smile rose to his lips like a pair of rose petals. “What a heartless man you are. Is there not someplace in that you of yours that would be taken by some part of me?”
“I am only taken by the fact that you are taken by me.”
Setsura continued on his way, leaving Mephisto’s hand, the affectionate turn of his fingers, suspended there in the air.
The door opened and closed. The sudden draft buffeted Mephisto’s pale face. The dusky shadows were beginning to fade, the night in its final throes.
“So little time to woo one’s dearly beloved.”
The Demon Physician gazed forlornly out the gray window, before turning to the computer display of the refrigerator containing the body parts he’d retrieved from the Coliseum.