Maohden Vol. 2 (18 page)

The influence of the Master invited a kind of emotional corruption that manifested itself in their ragged clothing and unkempt appearance. And yet the women still fussed with their looks, revealing a latitude in their mental processes that persisted beyond this “principal occupation” of theirs.

Two hours after leaving Kotomi, in a corner of the dimly-lit building where time seemed to lose track of itself, Setsura stopped in front of a soaring gray steel door. Stenciled on the door was the number 13.

A sign above the door glowed red. The illuminated white letters flashed, “On Air.” The meaning was clear: the Master was in and the Master was watching.

Setsura shot a strand of devil wire inside. He didn’t detect the Master there either. He’d cast thousands of threads around the building, recording the presence of every living thing, except the Master. There were places apparently where even his devil wires couldn’t steal in.

Setsura put his hand on the door. Some of the Master’s enraptured followers were within. Knowing that, he turned the knob. The door was locked, but there was a keyhole into which he could send his devil wires. His fingers moved with the dexterity of a brain surgeon.

His fingers could sense and command the movements of the threads up to a mile away, or as far into the distance as they could stretch without breaking.

Bathed in special electromagnetic waves and manipulated at the microcellular level, the titanium devil wires transmitted the movements of Setsura’s fingers at nearly the speed of light. It was said that once entwined, as long as the unbroken filaments of the threads continued to unspool, there was no place an enemy could run, no place he could hide, to escape their grasp.

In Shinjuku, when Setsura’s fingers moved, the head of a foe living in a castle in the stratosphere would drop off without a sound.

Right now those wires honed in on the deadbolt inside the lock. Setsura flexed his fingers. Like a tenacious snake with an indomitable will the wires slithered in, tightened around and severed it, as easily as a hot knife through warm butter.

With his back against the wall, Setsura reached out and gave the knob a firm push. The heavy door swung open with no more resistance than a rice paper screen.

Followed by a burst of flame, sticky and oily like napalm. The ball of fire spilled through the door into the hallway, struck the wall opposite, and spread out in both directions. The inferno continued for another three seconds before dying away.

Setsura darted in like a gust of black wind. Two SDF rangers with flame throwers were after him. The last line of defense guarding the Master’s bedroom.

The two incandescent streams focused on a single point, lighting up Setsura’s slicker. The orange lump splashed off the fabric and charred the floor and walls. The smell of jellied gasoline filled the air.

A follow-up attack never came. The tops of their heads split in half. They slumped to the floor.

Setsura’s slicker flapped as he spun around, not an ember sticking to him. Five men stood there cradling Model 89 assault rifles, but doing nothing with them. Because their trigger fingers couldn’t move.

Setsura looked elsewhere. Before the Devil Quake, the immense, twenty-five-thousand square foot studio was home to Asia’s most popular music show. A gaping crack ran down the middle of the floor. On the other side of the crack was a mountain of odds and ends and debris.

The stage lights and battens, television cameras aside, here was the mind of a fanatical collector at work—

Monitors, televisions, sound mixers, refrigerators, audio equipment, cupboards, coffee tables and sofas, automatic weapons, quiz show prizes like motor boats, bikes and computers. Even a taxicab.

Setsura focused his gaze on the midst of all this junk. Sitting at the foot of the mountain was a long, rectangular wooden box. The box was nine feet long, four and a half feet wide, and three feet high. In the center of the intricately carved lid was the golden head of a goat, entwined with a magical mandrake root.

This particular coat of arms was an unmistakable mark of evil. But Setsura wasn’t as interested in the crest as the creepy object enshrined in the very center.

Eye sockets that looked like portals to hell, the pale translucent skin—sublimely beautiful in its own way—that lent it the appearance of wax sculpture. The lips pressed together in a straight line were rotting away, revealing teeth clenched in enmity and hatred.

On the other hand, the sparse mat of greasy hair glowed with an almost living light.

This was the head of an old man. And the person who placed it there fifteen years before was the owner of the head itself. Gento Roran’s father. The wooden box was a casket that the “evil brood” had excavated from its resting place in the Tohan ruins. Inside that casket the devil’s son had grown to adulthood.

“There it is, Gento,” murmured Setsura, what that
other
genie, Gento Roran, called his “abode.”

Perhaps so as not to obstruct the actions of the enthralled bodyguards, the devilish coat of arms sat there wearing a spooky smile, wrapped in the curtain of dim light descending from the ceiling.

With a derisive glance at the bodyguards, frozen there in place, Setsura sauntered up to the fissure. It was a good fifteen feet across. He raised his right hand. Without so much as a hop, he stepped toward the gap.

An infinite Hades reached down beneath him as Setsura strolled across. With footsteps as firm as if treading on solid earth, the genie arrived at the other side. He walked up to the casket and stopped.

The head had been looking to the right. Now it stared straight ahead with its eyeless eyes. After considering it for a minute, Setsura put his hand on the lid. The electronic lock wasn’t latched.

Whatever the active protective and preservative measures, the wood clearly had not aged in the least. Setsura applied more force. Something flashed across the top of the casket. He jerked back as a red line welled up on the back of his hand.

He looked at the head. Wherever the soul of Byori Roran rested, he surely would have been satisfied to know that he’d drawn blood from Setsura Aki. This was a head driven on by fierce and abiding feelings of hatred.

Setsura slightly shifted his right hand. The devil wire sent forth should have split Byori’s head down the center. But not a scratch showed on its skin.

The deep-rooted sense of conviction to guard this casket shielded Byori’s head from any and all assaults, Gento and Hyota being the only exceptions to that rule. Which must have been why Hyota had to be there when the evil brood brought it out.

“Three hundred sixty degrees of defense, eh?” Setsura observed.

There was no way in. There was no underestimating this opponent, an unrivaled foe. But whatever strategy he might have been formulating, his slightly narrowed eyes opened wider—

Something rose up from the depths of the fissure behind him. Spheres that resembled globes of blue-white fire. Two of them, each a foot in diameter.

Approaching the edge of the fissure, the light from above illuminated a triangular snout. There was no describing it in terms of primary colors. Countless contours ran along the slippery, shining surface, each segment glittering with its own eerie aura.

The glowing globes were eyes. The men on the other side of the fissure quaked in their boots. Bound by Setsura’s devil wires, the slightest movement would have aroused the torments of hell, but such was the fear they must have felt.

Setsura didn’t move. He only looked—at the creature’s shadow engulfing him, the casket, and Byori’s head.

It was already a dozen feet over them. The red tongue flicked out like a cracking whip. The tongue was a good six feet long, making the head at least nine. The entirety of its length, still hiding in the fissure, surely reached at least a hundred and twenty feet.

A small snake had escaped from the Ichigaya Genomic Research Center and eventually became this monster, the “Master” of Fuji TV.

Its head hovered there in the air, waiting for Setsura to turn around. Any human who sensed its presence was petrified in place, unable to attack or retreat. And the second they turned around and met its gaze, they lost what was left of their own will.

In exchange for their sanity, the terror was expunged. Some were chosen to be its guardians. No need to mention what became of those who were not, except that this was an eat or be eaten world.

Hence the people of Kawadacho lived in fear. They knew the heavy sound of that great thing softly slithering through the streets at midnight, those twin orbs glowing like a pair of headlights. Not a single other predatory beast remained in Kawadacho, not a two-headed dog or poisonous frog.

The Master waited.

Setsura didn’t move.

Uncertainty welled up inside the Master. This living thing was quite different from what it had dealt with before. The shadow contracted and then surged forward with a roar. No sooner had the rank warm breath struck his neck but Setsura soared into the air.

A sound like a hammer striking steel shook the soles of his feet. The serpent had more than its two pairs of fangs. Its mouth was lined with teeth like a shark, each sharp and hard enough to pierce steel.

Looping a devil wire around one of the lighting rails in the ceiling, Setsura cast out another with his right hand. Humming like a taut piano wire, a red line circumscribed the giant serpent’s head. But it dug only a few inches into the scales before being thrown back.

Similar sounds rang out from separate spots with the same result. The snake’s skin possessed a remarkable elasticity.

Uncoiling with a burst of air, its scales flashing all the colors of the rainbow, the serpent soared upwards. The tongue sprang out at Setsura from its fiery red mouth. Setsura closed his eyes. Fall into the serpent’s spell and it would be game over.

The devil wire shot into that gaping maw instead. And rebounded. The giant serpent shut its mouth.

The senses and intelligence of this indomitable creature were as sharp as its fangs.

Setsura released the wire attached to the overhead lighting rail. Above his head came the harsh click of fangs snapping together.

He plunged down towards that bottomless ravine, the wind whipping at the tails of his slicker. A hot wind bathed the top of his head, the breath of the giant serpent coming hard after him.

The serpent made its den at the bottom of the fissure.

A fall to his doom seemed inevitable—until his hair slanted away to the left. The serpent’s head plunged past the point he’d been a split-second before.

And sprang back.

Traced across the snout were two red lines, the tightropes Setsura had used to cross the fissure. Peering down on him from above, those two angry eyes glowed with a fierce and terrible light.

Landing on the ground, Setsura staggered and sank to his knees. Even if he wasn’t looking into the eyes of the serpent, the demonic miasmas filling its gaze attacked his body like a paralyzing gas. He rose to his feet and whirled around, Gento’s casket to his back.

The ghastly light engulfed him, the serpent having descended rapidly to the ground. Setsura managed to retain hold of his conscious mind. The pain penetrating his body just barely preserved the freedom of his nervous system.

Measuring the movement of the air and the presence of the demonic serpent—add to that his own intuition—and Setsura leapt sideways.

A second later, the serpent’s huge head collided with the casket. It drew back, Byori’s head attached to its throat. The waxy skull of the tenacious wizard sworn to protect the casket set to devouring the flesh that had repelled even Setsura’s devil wires.

The serpent sprang away. Deep within the fissure, the blackness undulated, the lashing of its torso and tail as Byori Roran chewed into the shuddering organs. It had already bored a foot-wide hole in the head. Dark red blood spilled out, bathing the head and raising clouds of white smoke.

The serpent’s acidic blood could dissolve almost anything. The skull’s few remaining strands of hair sloughed off, followed by the waxy skin. But it couldn’t melt away that implacable will.

Spitting out a chunk of snake meat, the skull hurtled itself at the serpent’s head. An unearthly shriek shook the studio walls as the skull chomped into the serpent’s left eyeball.

The rest of the serpent’s outrageously long body bounded up from the fissure, now exposing the entirety of its length. With a hissing roar, the creature lashed out with its tail, the blow sending its precious mound of treasure flying.

Thrown like a toy car, the taxi cab struck the stage at the back of the studio, smashed through the white veneer paneling and hit the floor with tremendous force. Gasoline spread out like a stain from the ruptured tank.

The serpent coiled the tail around its and Byori’s head and squeezed as if wringing out a wet rag. The cracking sound of breaking bone echoed around the studio. The tail let go. A flattened, smashed, ugly thing tumbled to the floor.

Smeared with the poisonous blood, the floor coughed up white smoke. Fanned by the serpent’s tail, the clouds swirled around the studio. Small bugs and insects hiding in the nooks and crannies above dropped down from the ceiling, painting garish splatters of color on the ground.