Setsura spent the next three days spinning his wheels and getting nowhere.
The mayor and the chief of police urged that the boat in front of the Keio Plaza Hotel be incinerated. Doctor Mephisto managed to exert enough caution and warning for them to call it off.
The chief dispatched scouting parties to investigate the boat. Carrying stakes and peaches, heavily armed officers crept inside but found only what any sailor would expect to see in an old and decrepit vessel.
Where had Kikiou and the Demon Princess gone? And Takako?
Impatient concern darkened Setsura’s fine features. During that time, rumors of a woman fitting Princess’s description reached his ears only once.
A vagrant looking for a place to bed down near the Keio Plaza Hotel one night had seen the shining outlines of a beautiful woman on the roof, her long black hair and the hem of her shimmering gown fluttering in the wind. She was shedding flower petals of light. The vagrant couldn’t take his eyes off of her.
What was she up to?
She was gazing down at the city, the vagrant said. That was all. No emotion of any sort rose to her beautiful face.
“Ain’t making any of this up,” the vagrant insisted. “The only thing I got going for me is these eyes. I can see anything in the dark. I didn’t see no anger or sadness or resentment or nothing. An expression like that, the exact opposite of beauty. Never seen anything like her in my life, but I got it, you know? Staring down at the city like an angel sitting up there in Heaven checking out us mortals. Feeling nothing. Just looking, like she ain’t felt no happiness and no grief since the day she was born.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Princess got back in touch the night of the third day.
Setsura was lying on his bed when the call came from Mephisto over the hospital’s internal line, directing him to the front hallway. It was three in the morning.
Seeing the line of pale faces covered with the glass from the lobby doors, Setsura stopped in his tracks. Faces that must have been shoved through the glass until it shattered, more faces torn by the shards, other faces unscathed—and the eyes of all of them burning with a red flame, tongues licking over chattering fangs.
The same creatures of the night as the Toyama vampires, but a completely different species.
Spotting the hospital director standing in the center of the hallway, Setsura said, “What’s up, Doc?”
“They say they have something to say to you.”
“Listen to me.”
Setsura whirled around.
“Takako and everything else I leave to you.”
Setsura turned and saw. Pressed against the windows, their lips moving, they were speaking Princess’s words.
“Tonight, soon, come alone to the roof of the Keio Plaza Hotel. You and nobody else.”
“I figured as much,” Setsura said to Mephisto. “I’ll be going then. Send me the bill.”
“You think you can pull this off by yourself?”
The silver platter of the moon hovered above the heads of these creatures of the night.
“I’ll think of something,” Setsura answered airily.
“I figured you would say that.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that even you respond to a vampiric transformation no differently than any other normal human being.”
Mephisto raised his hand and brushed it across his forehead and thrust his finger toward Setsura. Perched on the ball of his finger was a single drop of blood pierced by a single strand of hair.
The expression on Setsura’s face abruptly changed. A dark shadow crossed his face, the product of an insatiable hunger.
“Close your mouth.”
Responding to Mephisto’s command, Setsura covered his mouth with his left hand. He couldn’t hide the red light pouring from his eyes.
“It figures,” Mephisto said, like a mathematician demonstrating the proof for a difficult equation. He pointed towards the lobby. “Get going. The darkness tonight is particularly deep. The night is your world now.”
Setsura headed for the door. As he left the building, the creatures waiting outside parted to the left and right, forming a clear path before him. Not just because Princess willed. There was in their eyes a strange kind of affection.
They were comrades in arms. Blood brothers. You are and will always be one of us.
He turned right onto Yasukuni Avenue. The night dwellers flocked there as if to watch a parade going by.
Returning the way he’d escaped three days before, Setsura thought about where Princess might be secluding herself, but couldn’t come up with any new ideas.
The other Takako had vanished from the Nuvenberg house as well. Kikiou had probably liberated her when he fled with Ryuuki. That she hadn’t gone on a killing rampage since was strange and a bit unsettling.
Passing beneath the Shinjuku overpass, he heard someone singing a sad melody. By the time he entered the ruins of the bus terminal at the west entrance of Shinjuku Station, it stopped. A warbling, reed-like voice rose up in its place, but that too soon vanished. Perhaps the sound of someone weeping.
He finally arrived at the boat. The ground moved beneath his feet. Without looking, he knew it was flowing water. The lighting poured out of the vessel here and there as if preparing to leave port.
“Where are you going?” a voice behind him called out.
He turned around. There was a man dressed in a tuxedo and a bow tie. Setsura could only imagine he worked at a hotel somewhere. Around him were many others, their red eyes glowing in the dark.
“I’m going up,” Setsura said with a jerk of his chin.
The man seized his shoulders, as if gripped by fear. “You are going to see the sire?”
Setsura set off without answering.
“She is a very frightening person. You won’t return. Neither you nor us.”
The voice chased after him. Setsura stopped in front of the lobby doors. Glancing up, the rising stone facade was absorbed into the night sky. He didn’t crouch or jump, but shot up and landed on top of the lobby and walked over to the vertical facade of the hotel.
A strange thing happened as soon as his toes touched the stone. Without falling over, the black clad figure stepped onto the side of the building. Standing perpendicular to it, he strode upwards as if walking along a road. The scene was enough to suggest that, struck by his commanding presence, gravity itself had become confused about which direction it should flow.
Arriving six hundred feet above the ground, Setsura vaulted over the railing and landed on the roof.
The surface was riven with cracks. The night wind wafted through the rubble. In the center of this desolate scene lay a naked woman on the ground.
Setsura ran over to her and called out her name. She didn’t move. Her skin was unusually cold, though she continued to draw in thin breaths. She had not completely become a vampire.
He stood up and looked around him. “So here I am. Now what?”
The night wind sang out in answer, a single pluck of a string that brought Setsura to one knee.
“Like the legend of Rip Van Winkle—or in your case, Urashima Taro—shall I put you to sleep before the second act begins?”
The question came from the top of the stairwell leading up to the roof.
The Demon Princess stood there, Silent Night in her arms, her long black hair and gown fluttering in the breeze. The gown was slit all the way to the hips. Her thighs shone like polished porcelain in the moonlight.
“For three days you have anguished over her fate. It’s written all over your face.” She smiled a bewitching smile. Her glowing face was more like the moon high overhead.