Maohden Vol. 2 (14 page)

“Does that feel good?”

“It feels fine.”

He asked the question over and over.
Feel good?
Followed by
Feels fine
. She wasn’t lying. Didn’t matter what man the tongue belonged to, the ripe fruit responded.

Hyota was into ropes as well. “Turn around,” he commanded her.

Azusa did as she was told. Pressed her cheek against the concrete pillar, thrust out her ass. Hyota grabbed her ass. His fingers dug into her buttocks and got straight down to business, screwing his tongue into her ass, shaking his head back and forth as he attempted to burrow in.

His sheer dogged pursuit, as much as the stimulation, got Azusa hot and bothered. She tried keeping it in, but her vocal cords moved without her consent. This was a girl who knew no taboos.

Her body trembled. Her hips moved of their own accord. Entwined in the ropes, standing up while he was going down on her, her mind melted into a hot puddle.

She’d already been run ragged any number of times. First by the evil brood in the basement of the Tohan Corporation ruins. Then, after bringing her here, Hyota had gone at her again like he’d been storing it up for years.

From the back—doggy style—from the front—missionary position—polling her on her preferences each time. Hyota was thoroughly versed in the erotic arts, devouring her body in an insatiable frenzy. She couldn’t help but respond. And each time he moved on to an even more delicate part of her physique.

Ropes, her ass, hoisting her senses to ever greater heights, the sadistic assaults wrenching free every masochistic tendency lurking inside of her.

“Even untied, you will not flee,” Hyota said, finally giving her backside a rest. The words came out in a groan. He was getting himself off as well. He said, while licking her again, “You will never forget the taste of me. Nor I you. Yours is a body seldom seen in this city of sin. I won’t let go of it so easily.”

“Don’t let me go,” Azusa moaned. “Give it to me more,
more
.” Half her intent was to arouse him all the more. Half came from the core of her being. “Unleash me and I will heel. I’d never forsake someone like you. The kids around here are rank amateurs by comparison. Tie me tighter. Fuck me harder. Take away my freedom. Heap humiliation on me. It feels so much better that way.”

“I’ll lick you all over.”

“Do it, dammit.”

Hyota buried his ugly face between her peach-white cheeks.

At that moment, from somewhere else, a groan shook the air. Azusa glanced backwards. Hyota spun around and dashed off toward the back of the hallway. Azusa followed him. Hyota departed in such haste that he forgot all about her.

They came to a spacious area filled with wan light. Here Gento Roran had his sleeping chambers.

At some point, Hyota had picked up a flask. The sound grew louder. This wasn’t the voice wrenched out by ordinary pain. These were the torments of hell.

Gento was lying naked at the foot of a six-foot-high dirt mountain.

“Gento-sama!” Hyota cried out with heartrending sorrow. He wrapped his arms around Gento and rocked him back and forth. Gento didn’t awaken, his face still twisted in agony.

Hyota abandoned the effort, popped open the top off the flask and pressed the opening to his master’s mouth. A thin stream of liquid spilled from the corners of his lips. He clearly wasn’t swallowing, but Hyota persisted.

Seconds later, the stream had drained to a trickle. His Adam’s apple finally moved.

“You drank it,” Hyota said, the tension oozing out of his frame. “You should be okay, then.”

“W-what’s that?”

Recognizing Azusa’s voice above him, Hyota’s eyes flashed warily. He hadn’t noticed her approaching. “Holy water,” he said proudly. “It softens the pain.” He glanced up at Azusa. “You didn’t leave?”

“Eh, whatever. Didn’t have a reason to run. I’m not dead yet. And I have to admit, I’m curious about what you’re brewing up here. Besides—” Azusa licked her lips. “You get it, right?”

Hyota gave the rope-bound body of the voluptuous woman a long glance. Without comment, he returned his attention to Gento. This same gremlin of a man had dodged Setsura Aki’s devil wires two, three times.

Those perverse pleasures fading from her body, Azusa looked down with great interest at Gento’s pained countenance. Hyota’s holy water worked its wonders. The strain slowly left Gento’s face. His features softened. He twitched several times, then opened his eyes.

Hyota relaxed considerably. He reverently laid the young master against the slope of earth.

Gento’s lips moved. “That you, Hyota?”

“Yes.”

“I must have collapsed.”

“Yes.”

A moment of silence followed, a silence containing two sets of expectations.

“I dreamed a dream,” he blurted out, as if trapped somewhere within this beautiful
jinn
a strange clump of cells had voiced their will. Strangely
human
words.

“Two of them. Do you understand what manner of dreams were these?”

“I can well imagine.”

“How are you faring?”

Realizing that the question was directed at her, Azusa took a step back, cognizant of her improper appearance, her sense of propriety finally rising to the fore. She turned around, more a reflex. Though her buttocks were no less full and sensuous than her bound breasts.

Gento continued, “My father appeared in the first. He pointed at me and told me
I had changed
. I comprehended his meaning soon enough. I comprehend it now. I am not the man I once was.”

Hyota silently bowed his head, a sign of agreement or respect. “You took your rest in a fine house.”

“Exactly,” Gento said in a far cooler voice. Then he said, still lying down, “Hyota, let’s try working up a sweat.”

In reaction to what could be taken as an eerie order, Hyota bowed and backed away.

“Out of the way,” Gento said to Azusa, and this otherwise headstrong girl retreated at once, as if pushed to the side by cold unseeing fingers.

“This okay?”

“There is no need for you to concern yourself so,” Hyota answered in a muddled voice.

Not only his forehead, but the Inverness topcoat—of a sort once favored by Sherlock Holmes—shone with that dull wet glow. Azusa stared harder. She saw the glistening threads twine around his frame, gone in the blink of an eye.

An aura—fey and demonic—welled up between master and servant. For a moment, Azusa felt like she was observing combat among mortal enemies. She trembled.

“How do your skills fare?” asked Hyota.

“I have a ways to go,” said Gento, a cool-headed scientist evaluating the results of an experiment. “Compared to Setsura?”

“I cannot say.”

Gento’s eyes flashed. “Don’t play the fool with me.”

“I would say that the one is the mirror of the other.”

“In that case,” Gento said, a touch of humor in his voice, “everything depends on the degree of our abstention and dedication henceforth.
He
must be training himself vigorously in order to defeat you. While I watch and wait. Is that what it comes down to?”

“It is all as your father wished.”

“So there was value in hibernating for fifteen years after all.”

“There most likely was.”

“This calls for a celebration. Have you ascertained yet where Setsura lives?”

“I am still searching. However, a representative from the Shinjuku Restoration Society says they know his whereabouts.”

The organization Hyota referred to worked for the producers of the Assassin Games that Setsura and Gento had made such a mess of. The power and influence of Hyota and Gento reached even into their secretive group.

“And what did he have to say for himself?” Gento asked with genuine curiosity.

“They sent three men after him. No news yet. I had planned on telling you as soon as you awoke.”

That Hyota had not sallied forth was likely due to his thorough knowledge of Setsura’s true strengths.

“They think three dogs can defeat a tiger?” Gento spat out. “Fools. Unlikely that he’ll even be there. Can you employ the same means as this Restoration Society to find out where he is?”

“Probably.”

“Something to get to later. In my current state, there is no need to rush. This body does not understand the workings of a simultaneous attack. By the way, where is the doctor?”

“Right here.”

The answer came as if he’d been waiting there all along. With an understandable start, Gento glanced behind him. Hyota let out a little gasp. The doctor was standing in his white cape atop the mound of earth.

“We met in the infirmary of the Coliseum, but I do not believe we’ve been formally introduced. I am Mephisto.”

“Gento Roran,” Gento replied with a polite nod.

Gento was naked. A woman bound with ropes plus his dark and feral servant made for a most unusual reception party. But what had the good doctor been up to since Hyota brought him to this underground cavern?

With no further explanation, Mephisto descended the earthen mountain. “What a strange mound of dirt,” he said, bobbing his chin at the curious silhouette behind him.

Except that Gento had strung his devil wires around his resting place, high and low, such that no other living thing should’ve been able to climb it.

“It is permeated with the thoughts and memories of one particular person. It’s been a long time since I have witnessed such an energetic life force. Your father, I take it?”

Even Gento was impressed by this deduction. “How did you know?”

“I have looked into the feud between the Aki and Roran clans on my own, though I have yet to discern the reason behind the conflict. I cannot imagine another pair of pedigrees with a history as barren as yours.”

“I would rather you take that as a point of pride,” Gento corrected him. “The blood that flows through our veins shall rule the world. Perhaps that is no less true of the Aki clan. More importantly, you are close friends with Setsura Aki. Did he not bring you a most peculiar patient?”

“He did indeed. She is presently in my hospital.”

“I don’t suppose I could ask you to turn her over?”

“Not unless you wish to make enemies of us both.”

“That would be problematic,” Gento said with a slight smile. “Besides, bringing her here would do neither of us any good. Best she stay where she is. Or—”

“Or?”

“Seek out another doctor perhaps? Surely not one up to your standards, but an equally
adventurous
chap nonetheless.”

“Do whatever strikes your fancy. Is that the only reason you summoned me here?”

“An examination is all that remains.”

Mephisto nodded. “I saw for myself your amazing dead man.”

“I had hoped for such a reply. The dead can be made to walk.”

“Meeting their mutual demise in the Coliseum and gone to meet his maker, he finds himself a soulless slave? The darkness of Hades while awaiting reincarnation must be filled with such an accursed darkness.”

Gento looked past Mephisto, to something lurking there in one corner of the gloom-laden expanse. And then directed those ironic eyes back at Mephisto.

“Are you aware how I intend to use it?” he asked.

“A gladiator to send against Setsura. Fascinating.”

“I appreciate your cutting to the chase. Can you make it so?”

“Yes, but there will be conditions.”

“No need to even mention such things. I won’t put a word in edgewise. Do whatever you feel is right and proper. Anything you need, Hyota will provide. My only demand is that you bring to the fore in
him
every last ounce of
their
abilities.”

“Are you sure that is wise? Perhaps it will attack you when I am done. Or I will reveal its weaknesses to Setsura.”

Gento grinned. An enchanting smile that would make one of Odysseus’s sirens his prisoner instead. “As long as you are the man known as Doctor Mephisto, I am sure neither will be in the cards.”

Mephisto’s mouth parted in a thin smile. “I see you would make an ideal employer, but my conditions are somewhat different. First of all, my surgical fees are dear. And I do not take money in kind.”

“How fortunate, for I have no money.”

“Second, I must ascertain for myself whether you are deserving of the name Gento Roran. However, this as well falls under the purview of my qualifying evaluation.”

“I happily accept both. As for your fee, whatever your heart desires.”

Gento looked directly at Mephisto. Observing the mask of carnality that briefly shadowed his face, Azusa furrowed her brows.

“As for my qualifications, those are—”

Mephisto’s raised right hand cut him off. A tense silence fell, the meaning of which escaped the other two there, until from far away there came the sound of creaking steel.

The sound of something massive moving across steel plates. The footsteps approached, unimaginably heavy with physical weight and foreboding. Painful to hear—the long gap between each thudding step. And yet if the direction was true, it would arrive here inevitably.

By the time the human figure appeared from the depth of the shadows, Azusa was not as startled as she thought she would be.

A huge naked man ten feet tall. People that big were equally rare in Shinjuku, though their presence was hardly news to anybody. Not to mention that right before him was Gento, and he didn’t have a stitch on him.