The song of a bird wafted through the window. The doctor in white looked down at Takako sleeping on the bed.
They were in a room in the Crystal Pavilion. He was lost in thought. Whatever would he do with this girl? Kikiou had told him to do nothing more in this world. That was all. Had he taken note of the changes occurring inside his own creation?
The pretend Mephisto had camped out at the Crystal Pavilion and there laid a trap for Setsura, which may have been why he returned to his old haunt. But what aroused his attention was that something within Doctor Mephisto, the intense desire to cure Takako.
With Takako there before him, Mephisto thought. His memories concerning her were implanted by Kikiou with precision.
As “Doctor Mephisto,” he was equipped with his thoughts and his medical knowledge. When poisoning Setsura, after all, there was the off chance that questions of medicine would occur, questions he should not be hard pressed to answer. His level of knowledge, in fact, equaled that of Kikiou.
“No,” the pretend Mephisto said, shaking his head. “The only treatment for these symptoms is to restore her other self. Doing that would be practically the same as making her a vampire again. But then again—”
As he quietly gazed down at her, a strange expression stole across his face, possessing a demonic air even.
“Setsura Aki exerted all his efforts to save this girl and died as a result. But did he really? Three hundred thousand degrees did not scald him. Perhaps administering an antidote might bring him back to life. That is something I can do.”
Aside from the excessive chattering to himself, this was exactly the line of thought that Doctor Mephisto’s mind would take.
“If Setsura were revived, he would escape with this girl. And all my efforts would be for naught.”
He laced his fingers together in front of his chest in obvious aggravation. Not the kind of thing the Demon Physician would ever do. Had Kikiou wanted the real Mephisto, he would have instilled in the copy those peculiarities of thought that identified the individual as a unique and moral agent.
As is, this Mephisto was limited in the extreme, showing those convincing characteristics only to Setsura. He felt the desire to monopolize Setsura. Anybody else who held similar thoughts must be expunged. That meant dealing with anybody attempting to establish any kind of relationship with Setsura.
The beautiful man glided up to Takako’s bedside, the gentleness gone from his features. The shadows from his five fingers fell onto her neck, across which crawled the pairs of teeth marks.
In a flash, the shadows grew darker and thicker, until they were overlaid by the fingers themselves.
“Wait,” came a sharp command.
The pretend Mephisto hesitated. The location of the speaker was difficult to identify at first. Then he looked directly above him.
There appeared the face of a young man. Then his shoulders, his chest, his long legs. He was wearing a dark gray three-piece suit. His leather shoes seemed attached to the ceiling. He hung there upside-down like a bat.
“You—are Yakou.”
The upside-down young man answered with two, three flaps of the wings folded across his back. “And you are a make-believe Mephisto.” The rush of wind wafted the white cape back. “Based on appearances only, the way you walk and talk, you could be his twin. But no. The real doctor would have spied my presence here from the start. Who made you?”
“Sir Kikiou,” pretend Mephisto answered at once. He assumed that Kikiou’s name would make Yakou think twice and retreat. He was wrong.
Yakou warmly smiled. “He makes you and you kill Kanan-san—two birds with one stone.”
“What?”
“Princess keeps that girl around to dangle under Setsura’s nose. And so you won’t be touching her, not while I’m around.”
“Bastard. Weren’t you thrown out of here?”
“I was certainly thrown for a loop. From a corner of that forest clear over those distant mountains. Sprained a wing, I think. But I made it back eventually. It’s just been one thing after another ever since I came here.”
The smile didn’t leave his face as a killer vibe welled up from below and pierced Yakou’s entire body.
“And here’s one more. Die in peace.”
He raised his right hand. A light flashed from the tips of his fingers and shot through Yakou’s throat. Yakou glanced down at the steel shaft of the scalpel.
“I was once known as the Elder’s grandson,” he said in a raspy voice. “If you were aware of that, you would have not even thought of killing me in such a fashion. Ah, it’s sad in a way. Make believe has its place, but not here. This is the way you throw a shuriken!”
The black streak parted the air. A white veil danced up in front of it. With a single sweep of his cape knocking the shuriken from its murderous trajectory, the pretend Mephisto leapt through the doorway and into the next room. Another jump and through that room and out the exit, landing a good ten feet from the door. A splendid physical feat, to say the least.
But he had a hand pressed against the left side of his neck. He staggered. A scarlet liquid welled up between his fingers and fell in bloody beads onto his cape.
“Once my shuriken strikes the target, it burrows in until it reaches the other side.”
The pretend Mephisto threw back his head. The shadow was perched on the roof of the Crystal Pavilion like the grim reaper.
“Doctor Mephisto would have done something about it already. But you obviously lack the means. Pray that at least after you die, you share the next world with the real Demon Physician.”
Yakou pushed out his hands in front of him. Before he could discern that this was not a shuriken-throwing motion, a streak of light reached out from Mephisto’s left hand. Halfway along the line tying the two together, it transformed into a bird of prey and launched itself at Yakou’s chest.
A strange sound from below brought that motion to a halt, the sound of a hole a foot in diameter opening in Mephisto’s white torso. Yakou batted aside the wire eagle and gazed down at the fallen Mephisto. He flapped the wings on his back and alit at his feet.
He stood there, hands on hips, and glared at him. “Can you hear me?”
The pretend Mephisto weakly opened his eyes. His life force was that remarkably strong.
“What I’d expect from any creation of Kikiou’s. Stubborn bastard. Before I go looking for everybody else, answer me this—where is Princess?”
Mephisto’s lips trembled. “I—do not—know—but—as for Setsura—”
“Hoh. Is he around here someplace?”
“Right—behind you—”
Yakou watched as his head fell back. He whirled around. The picturesquely handsome man stood in the doorway of the Crystal Pavilion. Even eyes accustomed to the sight of Doctor Mephisto’s beautiful mien in this warped world became the clouded crystallization of entranced midnight suns.