Maohden Vol. 2 (5 page)

Setsura must have gotten word from a hospital informant that such a thing had indeed happened. A patient with a most unusual ailment.

That’s why he had proceeded to Kikuicho with Azusa to a small bar. The place was swarming with cops. A bystander said that the manager of the place and her lover had been murdered the night before. Their daughter should be around, but she was nowhere to be found.

Rumors were the daughter had done the deed. Other rumors said she’d been kidnapped by a biker gang. After that, Setsura made a call and they’d proceeded to the gang’s crib in San’eicho, in the ruins of the old Shinjuku Technical High School.

That call had been to one of his informants.

In the face of Setsura’s wire-wielding martial arts, the gang members turned on each other before confessing that the girl had been sold to the organizers of the Death Match at the Shinjuku Coliseum in Shin-Okubo.

Setsura left things in East Gokencho in her hands and soared off to Shin-Okubo. The hems of his black slicker flapping like the wings of a bird, he’d disappeared into the night sky.

Leaving Azusa here, standing on the diagonal of an almost perfectly square lot between the mortuary and the convenience store in the midst of the Tohan ruins.

The way Azusa saw the situation, Setsura hadn’t said it out loud, but whatever the deal was with this Gento Roran chap, something was buried here that was damned important to the both of them. The employees of the convenience store had been tasked with digging it up.

Otherwise, no way would he have left her behind to keep an eye on things.

It was time to do a little detective work on her own. The question of what it was piqued her curiosity. She also wanted to stay in Setsura’s good graces. And was additionally intrigued by the mystery of what was going on between him and Gento.

Azusa bent over and pressed her ear to the ground. She couldn’t hear a thing. Wherever they were digging, it must be deep underground. And the earth had to go somewhere. Probably to the mortuary.

That was a lot of work and a lot of wariness. Why all the secrecy? What were they keeping secret? Azusa quickly tired of theorizing. It was time for a little breaking and entering. She got to her feet.

Something moved behind her.

She whirled around. It vanished without a sound. The night was hot and heavy and deathly quiet.

And again.

Azusa seized a small stone and flung it square at the center of the target. Whatever had been there wasn’t. The darkness flowed back undisturbed.

A foe who could manipulate its “presence” possessed a most frightening ability. An intrigued smile rose to her lips. The challenge of a good fight stirred her blood. She reached for the Smith & Wesson Model 29 tucked into the holster fastened around her hips.

She didn’t cock it. No sense in showing her cards too early. She estimated the distance between herself and the street buggy. About forty yards. The question was whether she could make it.

Her arms and legs reacted before her brain answered the question. She sprang away, weaving between the mountains of rubble. That presence appeared on her right. She glanced in that direction. There was nothing in her line of sight.

She looked down.

There he was. A small shadow on the ground. At first, she thought it was a wild dog. He was dressed in rags, long hair fluttering in the wind. Human. His hands dragged on the ground aside his feet as he galloped along like a great ape.

More than fear, Azusa felt an almost sexual thrill. Her loins trembled. A hot surge of excitement welled up from deep within her soul.

Azusa drew back the hammer. The ominous sound filled the air. She aimed the gun down at the shadow racing along next to her and pulled the trigger.

The recoil shot through her body. So did the pleasure. She pulled the trigger again. And again. Each time, the reaction bringing her closer to the verge. An indescribable biological reaction, springing from the mind of a conscious killer.

The weight on her right hand increased ever so slightly, like a breeze blowing from above. Azusa’s eyes opened wider. A figure perched on her elbow. It offered no more resistance than a feather, yet displaced the same space as a human being.

Bent over from the waist up, almost parallel to her arm, the glittering red eyes glared at Azusa a mere four inches away. Any normal person would have frantically shaken it off. Azusa didn’t move her right arm at all.

She was timing her next move as she ran.

Without any warning, her left hand flashed into action. Her forefinger and middle finger formed a V and jabbed at his face. She didn’t pull her punches. The blow would gouge his eyeballs out.

Riding on her right arm, the shadow bent backwards like a limbo dancer. Azusa
clucked
to herself. She shook her arm. The shadow didn’t move.

But something else did. The gun. She caught it with her left hand, the Model 29. Not cocking the hammer, she raised the barrel and aimed it at the shadow and pulled the trigger.

The roar and the flame and that indescribable shock.

Azusa had gotten muscle enhancing treatments in her teens. Even one-handed, the recoil of a .44 Magnum was nothing more to her than a popgun.

Behind the lenses of the enhanced-vision sunglasses, her pupils grew wider. The man swung an arc around her arm and now was hanging upside down by his feet.

The sound of gunfire echoed off into the distance. A cold and murderous light glowed in her eyes. She crouched down, sprang up a good three feet into the air and came straight down, pile-driving his head into the ground.

His body made another half turn. Azusa again jabbed her fingers into his face.

Now the shadow flipped off her arm and over her head. Not waiting for him to descend, with a blood-curdling
kiai
, she threw her right leg straight up, full extension. This time, her explosive kick merged with the black outlines of the silhouette.

But she felt no impact, sensed no resistance to the vector of her foot. It should have buried itself in his belly. But slipped off as if skidding on a sheen of oil.

With no time to deliver a second blow, Azusa leapt to the side. A long moment later, the shadow alit on his original position, as pretty as a descending bird.

“Hoh,” the shadow said. “You knocked me off my perch. You are quite the capable young lady.”

“Bring it on,” Azusa moaned. “And step on it.”

She was getting hot and bothered and already plenty wet down there. Her hot pants were getting soaked. It was starting to run down her thighs.

“Quit dicking around,” she said again. “I kill you, you kill me, it’s all good. That’s the way this game is played. After that you can fuck me silly, or whatever gets you off. For now, cut the pussyfooting around. Hit me with your best shot, else I’m gonna tear you a new one.”

He did as she requested.

He bolted straight at her. Azusa countered with a high kick, converting it to a roundhouse sweep of her foot at the last moment.

Foot met forehead. And slid off before the impact could connect.

“Shit!”

Azusa squared her stance. Now she was the one who rushed him, her hands striking at his face as he stood there unmoving. Those slender arms could have taken the fight out of a pro wrestler.

His festering face rose up, two of them, overlapping and merging into what passed as the visage of a man.

Her fists rained down, slipping off each time. She was sure she’d crushed the bridge of his nose. Her hand skidded off his cheek. Sure she’d caved his teeth into his mouth. Only brushed his chin. The man’s entire body seemed to be covered with oil.

“Let’s call it a day, Missy,” he said, not a hint of strain or exhaustion in his voice.

“Be my guest,” Azusa said with ragged breaths. Her spent body was equally in ecstasy. She could happily go to her grave like this.

The man thrust out his hands in front of him. Azusa reflexively crossed her arms to parry. An icy cold sensation pierced her wrists and shot through her bloodstream.

As she crumpled to the ground, Azusa felt her body again propelling her senses to even greater heights.

Everybody called him “Baron.” No one knew his real name. He didn’t know it himself. And yet the mention of that moniker alone would make many a man blanch and drop to his knees.

There was one who didn’t. That man had his attention now, the giant in the room. His fame equaled his own. Siegfried was the handle he went by. Siegfried was the German name of the legendary Norse god. Legend had it that, drenched in the blood of a dragon, he became immortal.

No one who saw him doubted the truth of the legend. The steel bench warped beneath his massive weight. He was ten feet tall and weighed over five hundred pounds.

There was no telling what other skills he exercised with that massive frame, but it was equally likely that he was nothing more than a big, clumsy oaf wielding a ridiculous amount of power. And indeed, there wasn’t a scar to be seen on the hands or even the head jutting from the neck of the blue, short-sleeved T-shirt.

Using that truck-like body as his chief asset, settling accounts on the field of combat without suffering a few bullet wounds and a laceration or two was hard to imagine.

The reason was simple: he killed his opponents before they could injure him.

That alone was not enough to unsettle the Baron, or the other three men in the room. They all believed in their heart of hearts that when the time came, they could consign to oblivion any foe who came at them.

The white-haired old man, the midget, the man in the suit—they all possessed powers beyond the imaginations of ordinary folk. The Baron knew this better than most.

But that wasn’t what concerned him about Siegfried.

There was something
off
about him, not like the big men he’d met before. Today was the first time they’d met. They hadn’t spent even three hours cooped up in the same room.

During those three hours, Siegfried had left the room twice. The Baron figured he had to go to the john. The first time about an hour ago. The second time thirty minutes ago. He was gone three minutes the first time, five minutes the second.

The second time Siegfried returned, something was
different
about him. The Baron couldn’t say what and he couldn’t understand why.

The one thing he
did
know was that the Siegfried who went to the john and the Siegfried who came back were different people. Though nothing about these two “Siegfrieds” appeared the slightest bit different.

His forehead jutting out from the few strands of hair like a hard-boiled egg. The slits of his eyes. And for such a large man, the thin lips. The ropey sinews and boulder-like muscles covering his immense frame.

And yet—something was different. Everybody there knew it too. Everybody kept mum. Some soul-stealing monster had taken a seat among them and nobody rang the alarm.

The Baron got to his feet and stood in front of Siegfried. “The two of us need to talk.”

He spoke in the voice of the dead, a whiff of air from a rotted sepulcher. And the smell as well.

Nobody looked at him either.

Siegfried’s narrow eyes peered down at him. Even sitting down, he was taller than the six-foot Baron. Perhaps he was a remnant of those giants spoken of in the Book of Genesis.

“This way.”

The Baron left through the locker room door. Siegfried followed after him, like a gust of wind sweeping through the room. A short ways down the corridor was the door to a workout room.

The door was locked.

The Baron slipped his forefinger between the door and the jamb. A similarly long and slender claw was attached to the unusually pale and slender digit. He slid it up the jamb to the lock. The door opened easily. The two went inside.

The room was a dojo—kenpo karate—approximately thirty feet by thirty feet with a hardwood floor. Punching bags and weight machines in the back.

The two stopped and faced each other in the middle of the room, like an adult encountering a child. Or a big man encountering a dwarf. Facing this great wall of muscle and bone, the Baron didn’t twitch an eyebrow.

“There’s something way fucked up about you,” he said.

A slight smile colored Siegfried’s otherwise rugged and expressionless face, as ineffably merry as it was ineffably evil.

“You figured it out, eh?” a cheerful, youthful voice said. “There’s no pulling the wool over your eyes.”

“Of course—” The Baron’s eyes flashed red. “Come out, come out, whoever you are.”

“Just a sec.”

Siegfried rolled up his shirt to his neck and plunged his hands into his abdomen. Even as his hands sank down to his wrists, the Baron evinced not the slightest reaction.

Not even when the front of his body unzipped in a line from his belly button to his Adam’s apple—but unaccompanied by the sound of tearing flesh. It had been severed from the start.

The giant ripped open his own belly with his own hands. And from the wound appeared—

A man clad in black, stained with blood and fat, casting off a bad odor and bearing Gento Roran’s countenance, his comeliness not dimmed in the least. Far from it. An orchid in all its sublime brilliance had just emerged from a fetid swamp.