—while the Demon Princess took everything they had to give her without so much as a peep, bathed in the bawdy bodily fluids, her loins glistening, the tentacles of lust erupting all around her like the silk of a black widow spider, consuming the souls of her mates before consuming them.
At this rate, they would desiccate and turn into mummies and die. And even dead, would continue to sexually service her.
With more wordless cries and intolerable groans, the men next in line spent themselves.
Setsura’s thoughts lit up with the spark of a possibility. However immortal a body Princess might possess, perhaps at the center she yet preserved a core of very human attributes. Experiencing the heights of pleasure also implied the ability to feel the depths of pain.
He flung out his devil wires. They sprang back as if repelled by an unseen force. The men indulging themselves with her had covered her pale body from foot to toe.
Without a second to spare, Setsura pulled them back and sent them flying behind him. This time came a response like thunder.
Before the lifeless faces could turn as one, the white beast roared. A white tiger more than ten feet long—there could be no more appropriate stage for the legendary beast to make its appearance.
“So you finally showed up.” Princess sat up, pushing the enervated men aside. “Seems you have finally found your master. And in pursuit of such wonderful prey. Setsura, does the sight of me start anything burning?”
She seemed to have been aware of his presence from the start.
“Hard to say.”
“Then I will set you on fire myself.” She gestured to him. “Come here.”
The law enforcement personnel turned their faces to him, faces brimming with dissatisfaction and suspicion, more faces and more faces. Abruptly, several of them twisted and distorted, became black undifferentiated masses, and collapsed in front of their stunned colleagues, spouting blood like fountains of black ink.
Flinging the torn-off faces at their feet, Princess declared in a high and mighty voice, “No one shall be dissatisfied with me!” As if the petrified shadows indeed satisfied her, she turned her own exquisite face to Setsura. “So, come. Before you turn into that tiger’s next meal.”
The tiger howled softly.
“You keep your claws to yourself for now.” Her expression shifted. The tiger’s whimpering didn’t change. “What did you do?”
By you, she meant Setsura.
“Oh, nothing,” he said with a shrug. “Well, maybe I hobbled it a bit.”
“You cut that poor Ko’s legs?” Her eyes widened a tad. “Now that it’s wounded, the little pussy won’t listen to what I have to say.” A speck of ghastliness flashed in her troubled eyes. “This should be fun. Setsura, can you slay a giant? Or else—”
“Share your bed? How do you tell a tiger who won’t obey to keep its distance?”
“I have my ways. The only other option is to become Ko’s dinner. I want to see that, your handsome face chewed to bits by that monster’s fangs.” Princess licked her lips. She missed a spot of saliva that trickled from the corner of her mouth. She wiped it off with the back of her hand. “That would make for a splendid show. I’m giving you your last chance. Come here.”
“Maybe not.”
“Idiot!”
“We’ve rescued Kanan-san and captured her alter-ego. What’s holding either of us back from a good fight?”
The truth mingled with a lie. Princess paused and considered her next words. “Hoh. I’ll just kill everything and everyone, the tiger included.”
The tiger probably understood that. It growled and pranced forward. A splendid and elegant sight. Except its forelegs were missing.
Showering blood in the wind, the tiger pounced on a spot several yards short of where Setsura had been, while Setsura made a much bigger leap backwards.
A tongue of fire chased after him. That a creature of legend could spit fire was to be expected. This fire, however, blanketed the pile of brick and cinderblock Setsura was hiding behind and melted it away. The temperature must exceed fifty-thousand degrees. The bricks erupted in incandescent flames.
A plume of white smoke traveled along the wall and suddenly vanished into a gap, the mouth of a drainage pipe.
If its fire couldn’t follow, what would the tiger do? It moved. Planting its front legs, severed at the knees, it crouched and sprang forward off its hind legs.
The slimy gore squirmed beneath its feet. Its eyes burned with pain and loathing, but its tenaciousness was implacable. The awkward steps yielded to the glassy smooth movements of a wild beast.
The pace became a sprint as it closed on the drainage pipe. Those final steps brought it across the deadly tripwires with an ease only two people there could appreciate.
Peering into the pipe, the tiger shook its head from side to side. The devil wires cut through the air, rebounded, sought its torso.
The tiger defeated the effort with a quick retreat, opened its mouth and roared. Setsura plastered himself against the ceiling. The shaft of fire shot past only inches away.
Princess’s laugh mingled with the hot currents. “Ko is a fast learner. Not the kind of predator that’s caught in the same trap twice. These magical beasts always dodge the second strike. Your wires won’t get through. Will you be roasted there? Eaten there? Come to me, or don’t. Let’s see you make another death-defying escape.”
“Aw, shut up,” Setsura mumbled, scurrying like a spider deeper down the pipe. Any surface, the air itself, was scalding to the touch.
The tiger tried to climb into the pipe.
A wild cry came at that moment. The tiger turned and looked back. A stream of blood shot up. And then another. Three, four, five, six. One by one, the Demon Princess twisted off the heads of these law enforcement personnel. Grabbing some by the hair and ripping them off like the head off a doll, slicing through the necks of others with a slash of her hand, resulting in a splash or spray of blood.
In the midst of the slaughter, accompanied by the symphony of screams from their death throes echoed the unbridled shouts of Princess’s maniacal laughter.