Maohden Vol. 1 (20 page)

When it came to following the rules, the Munakata Brothers were old school all the way.

How would they come at him from behind? Setsura stood there silently. His hand hung by his side. Thousands of devil wires spilled from his sleeves. With a keenness of touch on a par with his eyesight, he felt what they found as they crept along the ground.

The wind blew at ten feet a second. There was nothing dangerous in the dust and sand. Nothing lurked behind the
torii
gates or was hiding in the bushes. Nobody at all was on the grounds, except Mina.

Setsura strolled over to where she was lying face down, gasping for breath. Stepping onto the grounds of the shrine, he sensed no signs of life from the strand of devil wire wrapped around the neck of the big man.

His foe must have fled.

Next to the corpse, Mina looked up at him with a faint smile. “I really did intend to get away, but before I could get to the bridge—”

Setsura undid the buttons of his slicker, but Mina held out her hand. “I’m fine as is,” she said, getting to her feet on her own. The hickeys and teeth marks covering her skin flashed in the dusty sunlight. “The day I need a helping hand is the day I retire.”

Making no attempt to cover up, she started walking. Setsura was halfway between the big man’s body and his secretary. He started after her, leaving the body on the ground behind him, when a gust of wind struck his back.

Setsura turned in a graceful spin. His back was now to Mina.

His secretary’s face transfigured in that second. Her brows hiked up, her eyes grew wide and wild, forming the mien of a demoness. Her arms reached for Setsura’s neck, and then stopped in midair, as if restrained by unseen hands.

Setsura didn’t move. The quiet eyes of the
senbei
shop owner were drawn to the body on the ground.

The naked woman frozen in the act of leaping at him—the young man dressed in black in this sultry season—the lifeless corpse—all bathed in the milky sunlight and colored by the yellow dust.

For a long moment, this surreal scene arrested the flow of time itself.

“What do you say?” Setsura asked the headless man lying on the ground. The look in his eyes and the tone of his voice were such that he could just as well be addressing a friend. “Won’t you come out and play? You’re just going to leave me like this? I don’t much care to leave empty handed myself. That was a good move, making me turn my back to you by getting my own secretary to attack me. But I have eyes everywhere. Well? I can’t imagine it’ll reflect well on your reputation if you don’t at least give it the old college try. To say nothing of your employer.”

The dust swirled around the dead face. When it cleared a second later, it was another creature entirely. The corpse aroused itself with remarkable force and charged at Setsura in a swirl of wind.

Setsura stepped to the side like a matador as the big man stampeded past him. At the same time, his body parted vertically and then horizontally. This time, Setsura paid no attention to the mist of the blood and the scattering body parts. Rather, he focused on the small shadow springing up from inside it.

A human being no bigger than a three or four year old. Drenched by the big man’s bodily fluids, metallic luster glimmered inside the little hand.

Large black wings wrapped around Setsura, the hems and tails of the slicker. Accompanied by the bark of the automatic handgun, the ejected shell casings glittered in the sunlight as the bullets pockmarked the fabric.

Trailing a thin line of blue gun smoke, a dwarf with the face of an adult landed on the ground a dozen feet away.

“But of course. The Munakata Brothers finally reveal themselves.”

The low voice drifted out from the shadow of the slicker. The dwarf’s eyes widened with surprise. There could be nowhere to hide from the impact of the silenced 9 mm armor piercing rounds that could punch through two inches of steel. Even a flesh wound should kill, when the explosive tips would fragment into thousands of shards.

Setsura said, his voice as cool as a winter’s night, “The brothers—a small thing in a big, human-shaped package. I’ll treasure the holes in my coat as souvenirs of our encounter.”

By the time he had folded those black wings around him, the dwarf standing there had been drawn and quartered, the severed body parts strewn across the dusty earth.

“I could undo the spell myself, but Mephisto’s the specialist in that department. I suppose it’s about time I sent you on a paid vacation.”

So spoke the genie in tones any listener would find more than a tad hair-raising as he tossed Mina over his shoulder, the demonic visage still etched on her face by the hypnotic spell.

“Hey, mister, you need a ride?” rang out a woman’s voice.

From beyond the
torii
gates, at the foot of the stone steps, came the heavy rumble of an engine. A car with tires the size of steel drums bounded up the steps. The windshield wrapped around the driver’s seat and the passenger’s compartment, while the eight cylinder engine was exposed. Pipes coiled like thick snakes down from the manifold and along the frame to the bull horn exhaust stack in the rear, belching clouds of purple smoke.

Excepting the driver’s seat, the chassis itself hung lower than the tops of the tires. This was a “street legal” off-road buggy all the rage these days.

The engine roaring, it came to a stop alongside Setsura. The sheet metal door opened and a pair of shapely tanned thighs swung out, followed by the splendid physique of a young woman with short-cut hair and thin wrap-around sunglasses.

She stood in front of Setsura, blocking the wind. She was wearing blue hot pants. A bikini top the same color tightly contained her ample breasts. The kind of outfit that made a man want to rip it off.

The wardrobe aside, the eyes hidden behind the dark lenses and the way she carried herself said she was something other than a regular member of society.

“Even in Shinjuku, toss a naked girl into a taxi and the next stop will probably be the cops.” She looked up at Setsura, not a little entranced by his visage. “You can count on me, though.”

“What, you just happened to pass by?” Setsura said, showing no interest as he walked away. “You’ve been watching the whole time.”

“You knew? But you never looked my way.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got eyes everywhere,” he said, the temperament of the
senbei
shop owner returning.

“Hold on,” she said with more urgency. “You’re Setsura Aki, right?”

Setsura stopped and turned around. “How do you know my name?”

“I’m looking for my brother. Hey, perfect timing, us crossing paths like this. He came here to get an interview with you. You’ve met him, right?”

“Who are you talking about?”

“Sasaki. Freelances for
Historical World
. I’m his little sister. Name’s Azusa.”

“Sasaki-san,” Setsura repeated to himself. “I met him in Shinjuku Gardens the other night. We talked for half an hour or so. That’s all.”

The
senbei
shop owner wasn’t eager to be the bearer of bad news. The girl was too young to learn about death the hard way.

But she didn’t think so. “You mean, he’s dead?”

“Well—”

“Fine,” Azusa said. He couldn’t tell from her expression if she was sad or relieved. “My brother had no business getting involved in whatever business you’re in. And certainly not in this city. He did have a lead or two. You interested?”

“Maybe later,” Setsura said coolly, and started walking again.

He’d descended from the grounds of the shrine when the rumble of the engine pulled up next to him again.

“Hey, want a ride?”

“I don’t have the fare,” he said, not turning around. The occasional passerby apparently saw nothing unusual about a man walking with a naked woman flung across his shoulder.

“I’m not a cabbie. Just wanted to find out about my brother and sell a little intel.”

Her voice trailed a step behind Setsura, awfully chipper for having just learned of her brother’s death. A strange girl.

Setsura raised his left hand. A taxi approached the curb. The engine of the street buggy snarled, jabbing its nose menacingly at the taxi. Behind the windshield, the cabbie snarled back and yanked hard on the steering wheel.

The brakes squealed and the cab stopped by the sidewalk ahead of them. The door swung violently open and the barrel-chested cabbie leaned out and bared his yellow teeth. “You crazy, lady? Quit poaching my turf!”

As if waiting for this moment, the buggy’s door swung up and down. “Put a sock in it, fatso!” she shot back. “You blind or something? Get yourself a pair of glasses! No easy mark for you here. What, you looking for a little corrective surgery or something?”

She growled out that last challenge with an unnerving calmness that only pissed off the cabbie all the more.

“I’m gonna wring that bitch’s neck.” His sleeve rolled up, showing his bulging bicep, he cracked his knuckles as he strode towards her.

“Bring it on, bub.”

It was hard to tell whether the cabbie stopped before her voice reached him or the report from the gun did. The heavy crack of the large-caliber revolver was followed by flying chunks of asphalt.

The cabbie yelped, and amidst the spouting flame and booming echoes did a crazy little dance there on the spot.

The noise suddenly ceased. The smoking muzzle of the gun drew a bead on the center of the sweating man’s ugly face. The gun was a .44 Magnum Smith & Wesson Model 29. Weighing almost three pounds, the average man would need both hands to hold it level. Azusa was using one hand and it wasn’t trembling in the slightest.

The first assumption was that she was on some sort of roids. In any case, a girl who’d pull a .44 Magnum to ward off a bit of harmless road rage had a personality profile way out of the norm.

“One shot left.” Azusa licked her lips and flashed a bright smile. “Wring away. If you feel lucky. I’m a lousy shot, you know. My, my, my, I was aiming at your heart the whole time. Who knows where the next one will land?”

From the rock-hard steadiness of her arm, probably right between the eyes.

The cabbie backed away slowly, holding up one hand as a sign of surrender. He tried to return her look with an equal one of nonchalance, but still looked scared shitless. The sweat turned his shirt into a sheet of sticky cellophane covering his chubby chest and paunchy belly.

He backed into the door of his cab, and then with a speed that belied his flabby frame, ducked into the car and started the engine before the door had closed behind him.

Two engines kicked into gear. The taxi had turned into the center of the street when the buggy rear-ended it. Setsura watched with blank surprise as the taxi slid sideways onto the sidewalk and into a telephone pole.

If a car could saunter along with a self-satisfied grin, that’s what the buggy was doing as it pulled up next to Setsura. “Well, it looks like the taxi can’t make it. How about a ride?”

Taking in both the girl’s pretty face, unmarred by even a speck of guilt or evil, and the cabbie crawling out of the wrecked car, Setsura Aki shrugged and nodded.

Mayumi sensed the door opening. Turn around and she could see who was coming through the door. But she lacked the energy to do so.

She was in a room in a big warehouse. Though it dated back to before the Devil Quake, it didn’t appear to have suffered much structural damage. The high ceilings and walls were spackled with filling compound that covered up the cracks.

An oily smell hung in the air. Not so much from it being stored somewhere but rather from having soaked into the joists and beams.

Mayumi’s hands were handcuffed behind her, and the handcuffs were attached to a ring around a steel post with another pair of handcuffs. She saw no way of easily freeing herself, and was not in the mood to try.

The late afternoon light streaking through the window next to her painted long shadows on the concrete floor. Through the window and walls came the sound of footsteps and voices of men. Bad men. They were men, and that made them bad. That simple equation was all Mayumi needed to know.

She’d been snatched off Okubo Avenue the night before by this biker gang and violated in every orifice. The three of them had spent their wads and were probably off partying happy as clams.

A grating noise chased away the falling darkness. The steel shutters across the fifty-foot wide bay doors rolled up. Shadows like ghosts approached her through the slash of sunlight and solidified into the shapes of men.

The underboss of the gang that had kidnapped her along with several of his men, plus four others wearing dark suits.

One of the suits was a fat man in his fifties, but carrying the kind of fat that lent his presence additional psychological and not just physical weight. The rest, in their thirties, formed a line behind him. From the crisp line of the fat man’s suit, he was the only one not packing heat.

The men formed a half-arc around Mayumi. The fat man, obviously the godfather of the bunch, said to the biker gang underboss, “This is the girl, eh?”

“Yeah,” he answered, bowing repeatedly and subserviently. The balance of power was clear to anybody’s eyes. “I couldn’t hardly believe it myself. Three of our guys bit the dust in thirty seconds flat.”