Mephisto called Setsura early the next morning. “Get over here,” he said bluntly. “There’s something I have to show you.”
“The only thing I want to see right now is a good shipment of medium-grain rice,” Setsura shot back with equal brusqueness.
“You’re a funny man.”
“Much appreciated.”
“But get your butt over here.”
“Wages at that hospital of yours causing employee relations problems? Count me out as a strikebreaker.”
“Your occupational skills are of no use to me.” Word by word, the unwavering tone of Mephisto’s voice ate away at the will of his listener. Such was to be expected of the Demon Physician. “I’m more interested in your moonlighting expertise.”
“I have a policy of not accepting jobs from you. Not after what happened the last time.”
“That was—” Mephisto didn’t finish the sentence. The story was too painful to start dredging up the details. “I thought you were over that.”
“I’m carrying it with me to the grave. Now, if you wouldn’t mind—”
Setsura waited to hear the long sigh on the other end of the line, before unceremoniously hanging up.
✦ ✦ ✦
Nevertheless, he arrived at the hospital twenty minutes later. A nurse was waiting for him in the lobby. She gave him the room number: B401. The first room on the fourth basement level.
“Huh,” said Setsura. The special containment ward for hardcore cases. “What’s the patient in for?”
“Doctor Mephisto said it was for your eyes only.”
“Bastard. No, sorry.”
He nodded, and wended his way through the lobby—already packed with patients—to the elevators. He descended nonstop to the fourth underground level. When the elevator doors opened, he was welcomed by a sterile white hallway lit in cold, artificial light.
Hidden from view, every advanced model of sensor, ultrasound paralyzer guns, and lasers made escape impossible.
Some of the patients confined in the underground levels of Mephisto Hospital could take apart an M1 Abrams tank with their bare hands. The walls and floor were reinforced enough to withstand a direct hit from a small nuclear bomb.
Setsura greeted the nurses and guards manning the station in front of the elevators. He stood in front of the door to room B401. The door opened from the inside. It was three times thicker than an ordinary hospital room door. If necessary, it could be electrically charged or emit debilitating gas.
The room itself was quite ordinary. A bed and a spare amount of furniture. Perfectly quiet. On the bed was a young woman in a hospital gown. Setsura leaned back against the door. All he could tell about her was that she was very thin.
Standing at the head of the bed, Mephisto greeted Setsura with a small smile. Any patient Doctor Mephisto was treating himself must be handled with all due caution.
“What’s up?” Setsura asked, looking again at the woman’s emaciated back.
“A police patrol picked her up this morning. Since then she’s progressed to a point where nothing seems to be getting through at all. It’s not an act.”
“Post-traumatic shock, you mean?”
“Not just that.”
“You called me first thing in the morning just to string me along?”
Mephisto ignored the retort. “Watch this.”
He motioned with his right hand. Light from the ceiling fell vertically onto her head. Despite being on the fourth basement level, it was a shaft of natural sunlight. The woman got up and frailly moved to the left and then sat down on the bed, outside the halo of light.
Setsura asked, “Who is she?”
“Hisako Tokoyoda, according to the I.D. in her handbag. Twenty-seven. She’s a singer. We met last night.”
“You’re branching out.”
Mephisto cleared his throat. “I accepted an invitation. The next morning, she turns up like this. Though something just as strange happened before that.”
“Really.”
Mephisto went on to describe what had taken place at the nightclub. Setsura listened without interruption, and then told him about Fifth Street turning into a river, and the ship that sailed past on it.
“Ah. And this girl. Her body must somehow be tuned to their psychic frequency, like a sympathetic vibration. Where do you think they came from?”
“Beyond Shinjuku,” was Setsura’s immediate response.
Mephisto smiled thinly. “And that would be—there?”
Setsura’s reply came in the form of a pained look in his eyes. Mephisto nodded. He approached the bed and put his hands on the woman’s shoulders, turning her to face Setsura.
Hisako Tokoyoda’s face looked like she’d been worked over by a headshrinker, skin stretched tightly around a bleached skull. Blank eyes stared out from sunken sockets. Setsura saw what Mephisto wanted him to see. A pair of fangs protruded from between her waxy lips. On her neck was an ominous pair of scars, like a brand left behind by a hot iron.
“A vampire,” said Mephisto, calmly delivering his prognosis.
“A vampire.” Setsura blandly repeated.
Neither alarm nor surprise showed on the face of this young owner of a long-established Shinjuku business concern. In this city, such words were hardly unexpected. After all, this was Demon City.
“Have our friends in the Toyama housing project broken their pact?”
Mephisto didn’t respond with a yes or no. He stood in front of the woman and thrust his right hand toward her drooping, skeletal head. Her listless black eyes reflected the color of gold. A cross.
At some point, Mephisto had palmed a small crucifix. But she didn’t recoil in the slightest, living proof that repudiated the legend. Mephisto briefly pressed the crucifix against her forehead. Not a mark was left on the woman’s parchment-like skin.
Setsura observed casually, “Display a cross and she doesn’t recoil in fear. Touch the skin and it doesn’t burn. The vampire that bit this woman was certainly not of Western origins. Some of the Toyama residents are made-in-Japan vampires. It’s possible that one of them got tired of the artificial stuff and took a little stroll. I should poke around and see what turns up.”
Mephisto returned his right hand to the inside of his cape and slowly turned to Setsura. Then, with the same hand he swept up the cape, like a gunfighter flicking back the slicker from his holster. A thin, long glitter of light like a crescent moon. Setsura didn’t have time to retreat before Mephisto plunged the elegant blade into his heart.
The handsome senbei shop owner grimaced.
Mephisto’s arm and the knife did not slacken in their speed, slashing arcs like a swinging pendulum through his body. The moving outlines of the hand and blade disappeared into a blur.
“Damn. Did it again,” Mephisto said in a steely voice, replacing his right hand inside his cape. “That happens down here on the fourth level sometimes. I attribute it to the qi of the patients. Are you hurt anywhere?”
“I think my heart stopped when you started poking me.” Setsura touched the place where the psychic knife had stabbed him. He held up his left palm for Mephisto to see.
Seeing the faint gleam of blood drops on the skin, the Demon Physician sighed heavily.
“Yeah, like deep down you haven’t always wanted to do that. Well, no harm, no foul, so I won’t hold it against you. Still, this is one freaking spooky hospital you’ve got.”
“I’m grateful to you for grasping that fact. And I’m grateful you didn’t garrote me with those filaments of yours. Just to be careful, I should examine your chest later.”
“I’ll take a rain check. Bake senbei too long and the difference between the ideal and the real gets a bit too obvious. So what did you have on your mind?”
“Do you think the scars on this young woman’s neck are a result of the hypothetical you suggested?”
“Not really,” Setsura readily admitted, withdrawing his previous remarks. “Considering the tight leash they keep on everybody over there, I can’t see them breaking the pact come hell or high water. I’m leaning more towards the gang of four I saw the other day.”
“Why didn’t you just say so in the first place?” Mephisto wondered aloud.