The Psyche Diver Trilogy: Demon Hunters (4 page)

So this is how I die,
he thought. Fuminari was unafraid of death. He had killed enough people in his life to know there was nothing to be afraid of, but at this moment, he could not bear to die.

Why?
he thought in passing.
Because this fucker’s still alive.
The answer presented itself as his life ebbed away.

The idea that this monstrosity would live, chewing on his fingers, while he would die, was unbearable. He released the knife. It held fast, still impaled in the creature. The hilt was somewhere near Fuminari’s hip. He wrapped his arms, his hand missing its fingers, around the thing’s back. A half-smile flashed across his features even as he grimaced with agony. He summoned all his remaining strength, even his love, and brought the beast into his embrace. The knife pushed deeper, far deeper into the creature’s abdomen. The creature howled with pain. Suddenly, the intense pressure of its hold relaxed and Fuminari was able to stagger free. A cool breeze rushed upward from his feet.
A good wind.

The sound of water. A half moon in the sky. The creature towered before him. It attacked. Fuminari leaped up into the blackness of the night.

Two

Bewitching Biku

1

Mt. Koya. Two in the morning.

Jichiei lay in the monks’ quarters near the Hall of Lanterns. As he dreamt, he heard a scream in the distance. It was horrific. He had not heard it inasmuch as it seemed to have originated directly inside his skull, as though the raw fear it contained had been transmitted into his mind instead of through physical vibrations. The backwash stroked at his consciousness, chillingly real.

Jichiei woke. He opened his eyes and saw only darkness. He was sweating, a cloying, cold sweat. His skin had broken out in bumps. The ghost of the scream hung in the air as an unholy stench, like the wake of some unseen demon. Jichiei took deep, measured breaths lying with his eyes wide open. A thick darkness cloaked the space between his bed and the tall ceiling.

He listened for any sounds, but the oppressive silence was only punctuated by the soft rapping of rain. Jichiei focused on the sound, and gradually the tension in his pores started to fade; he felt the cold sweat begin to warm. Darkness flowed into his open pupils, wrapping itself around his insides.
Am I imagining things?
If so, the scream had originated somewhere inside him.
I’m exhausted,
he thought.

Jichiei had always been highly sensitive, but years of training at the temple had sharpened his senses to the point of a fine glass needle. He sat up. The shadow of the shoji hovered as a pale-white glow in the darkness before him. He could hear the regular breathing of Seicho still fast asleep across the room.
I am jealous of this man
, he thought. Seicho had a temple. He had a guaranteed position to return to after finishing his training. Jichiei had no such place.

“To become a monk you need certain qualities,” Geshin’s words from five years ago, when Jichiei was new to the mountain. Geshin had shown extraordinary ability. Even then, despite being only around 30 years old, he had already attained a high-ranking position within the order
.
It was as though his body released a constant flow of energy, like an aura. He had been the only monk at Mt. Koya with whom Jichiei had forged a close bond.
Maybe I just lack whatever quality it was that he spoke of,
Jichiei mulled over the idea.

And now, Geshin had left the mountain. Jichiei did not know his reasons for leaving. There had been rumors, of course, that he had been banished after breaking some taboo, or that he had lost his mind and there had been nothing for it but take him away. He did not know what the truth was. He sighed as though releasing the darkness that had accumulated inside him.

That was when he heard the sound. It had not been his imagination. A heavy, booming sound like two boulders colliding. It came from above, from the direction of the Hall of Lanterns. Everything became silent.

Jichiei slowly got to his feet and stepped outside. The fog was thick. Heavy drops of moisture hung stagnant in the air, almost large enough to be rain. The pattering had been droplets of condensed fog dripping from the temple eaves. He was unable to see anything through the mist. It filtered the gleam of the lanterns in the distance, turning the lights into shining halos of milky-white phosphorescence. His breath was visible; it was June, but this was the mountains 900 meters above sea level. Over the course of a year, the temperature at Mt. Koya averaged five degrees below that of the outside world.

Jichiei set out, tracing along a dark path of dampened stone. A forest of ancient, thousand-year old cedars lined the sides of the cobbled path leading to the inner sanctuary. Between the trees were dense collections of stone monuments, huddled together. Each was a grave, there were close to 100 thousand in total. A number of the gravestones had been fashioned into five-story pagodas, some as high as ten meters. They towered like huge stone monoliths.

It was a magnificent gathering; there were graves of the Heian nobility, of the feudal lords Uesugi, Takeda and Tokugawa from the Warring States, even nameless peasants had graves here. The weight of distinct layers of history was stacked one on top of the other. The whole area of necropolis encompassing the massively ancient trees emanated a powerful, humid energy--a Psychic Barrier.

Beyond the Hall of Lanterns was the inner sanctuary, the resting place of Kukai. The mausoleum had become his home after he attained Buddhahood over 1200 years ago. Kukai, the man also known as Kobo Daishi, was the founder of the Shingon Sect; his charisma transcended mere legend, reaching almost mythical status.

Jichiei stood on the verge of the Mimeyo Bridge, beyond was a flight of stone steps. The Hall of Lanterns was at the top. His night robes had grown heavy with moisture absorbed from the fog. Since coming outside, he had been fighting an unpleasant sensation of weightlessness. It was not fear, more like he had been cast naked into the energy that had accumulated in the air around him. Something was disturbing the area’s delicate balance. There was something foreign--a sense of magnetism that lightly hugged his skin. The layers of energy were in flux. Jichiei was certain that the changes originated from the energy field’s center, from Kukai’s shrine.
Should I call someone?

No, I need to find out what’s happened first.

Jichiei clasped his hands together in prayer and stepped onto the bridge. There was a sudden rustling in the darkness, the sound of people running through the woods behind the shrine. Jichiei broke into a sprint. He was halfway up the stone steps to Lantern Hall when he heard something shuffle in the darkness above the top of the trees. Something crashed onto the steps before him--a dark, nebulous lump. Jichiei skidded to a halt, pitching forward as he took in the fallen object. It flinched. It was large and spindly, like an oversize bug antenna. It was alive, but its arms and legs were too long to be human. Jichiei was unable to see much in the darkness, but the thing was clearly aberrant, as though something once normal had been purposefully twisted into this form; a misshapen, human-sized black spider.

It started to move, its motion like that of an arthropod. It stood before him, a physical embodiment of anxiety, lust, horror, and all the muddy dregs of human consciousness; the deep-seated, slumbering source of nightmares. A ghostly pair of eyes glared out from the center of the black mass, trained on him. Jichiei felt his hairs prickle. It took flight, flowing elegantly upward. Jichiei screamed at the top of his voice. The creature leaped over his head and Jichiei’s scream died. His neck had been wrenched to a grotesque angle. His body collapsed onto the stone steps.

By the time the other monks rushed to his side, he had already stopped convulsing. He lay face up, mouth frozen in a silent scream, eyes staring at the sky. His head hung parallel to his shoulders, broken.

2

It was a puzzling room.

The layout was atypical, neither Japanese nor Western in style. The space was shrouded in deep curtains of darkness. A peculiar scent drifted through the air, faint, almost not there at all. It was
Kokujinko,
the incense used by the Shingon sect during the Rite of Kongobu. Inhaled through the nose, it felt like it would dissolve the human body into darkness from the inside.

The fragrance that extends to the corners of a thousand worlds, greater in value than the riches of three thousand realms. Such is the heart that aspires to Buddhahood.

It was the incense mentioned in the Kegon Sutra.

The ceiling, floors and walls of the room were unified black. There was a faint light, but it was absorbed into the pervasive blackness of the room, isolated in the darkness. The light burned in a small votive dish on top of a black metallic stand that had been set up on the floor toward one of the walls over a jet-black rug. The equipment was reserved for ritual use. The room had no other furnishings. The single light served to deepen the darkness of the rest of the space.

An illustration adorned the wall nearest the flame: an image of a Bodhisattva, it had been outlined exclusively in gold. A golden peacock’s wings were spread wide, spanning the distance from one wall to the other. Its tail feathers overflowed onto the ceiling; the Bodhisattva was positioned on a lotus leaf, which towered behind its back.

It was a single-headed image of Myo’o. The deity was depicted with four arms, each holding a single object: a lotus flower in bloom, a fruit from the Bijapuraka plant, the fruit of happiness, and a peacock’s feather. Its face was slender and feminine, eyes half-closed. Its mouth was slightly parted in a coquettish smile. It was known as the Kujaku Myo’o, one of Buddhism’s guardian deities. Its outline glowed hazily as it floated in the darkness, giving the impression of being rendered in fluorescent paint. The half opened eyes of the Kujaku Myo’o focused on the center of the room where a couple lay intertwined on top of a black rug. Their pale skin reflected the soft candlelight; their flesh was stark white, even in the yellowish light. They appeared to be suspended in the darkness of space. Presiding over them was the golden glowing image of Kujaku Myo’o.

The woman was on top and the man. She had her back to him leaning forward with her face buried in his crotch. Her head jerked furiously between the man’s slightly raised thighs. She looked young, her face was almost childlike--more a young girl than a woman. She looked 16, maybe 17 years old, no more than 20. Her youth was apparent from her closed eyelids and the soft hair on her cheeks, but the way she held herself was in contrast to her outwardly girlish looks: her legs were spread open, exposed before the man’s face, weak light or not.

Her eyebrows knotted into a frown. She seemed to be in pain as she eagerly worked her mouth. Even frowning, though, she was unnervingly beautiful. There was sophistication even in the midst of her audacity. The frown bolstered that image.

The man lay almost completely still as though the girl was attending to him, but that was not the case. If anything, the man was working her into a frenzy. Her intense focus on the object in her mouth was an attempt to fight the ever stronger surges of pleasure. Each time the tip of his penis touched her throat she made a delicate, groaning sound, and each time the noise was stifled by the object packed into her mouth. Of course, the groan was not from pain, rather a natural way of responding to the pleasure her body experienced.

Finally, the girl pulled away unable to take it any longer. She wrapped her slender fingers around the base of his erection, now exposed to the candlelight, and laid her head on the man’s thigh with half-opened lips directly across from the thing in her hands. His cock towered before her red, cherubic mouth. It was huge, so much so that it was hard to imagine that the young girl had managed to fit it between her lips.

She let the man carry her weight, buttocks tensed, shivering slightly. She arched her back, rubbing her abdomen into the man’s chest. The man began to change their position. Now the woman was on her back, legs splayed, and the man was on his knees between them. Candlelight trickled over his features as he leaned forward. He was shockingly beautiful, enough to make the hairs of any observer stand on end. His beauty was such that he could be mistaken for a woman; only the protuberance between his legs suggested otherwise. His skin was even paler than the girl--still lying with her legs open before him--more lustrous, finer, there was no comparison. Locks of black, wavy hair fell over his pale forehead. His nose was genteel, lips crimson. They formed a faint smile. There was something in the expression that seemed to reflect that of the Kujaku Myo’o watching from the wall behind them.

The man was young, perhaps too young to be called a man, more a boy. His features suggested he was still in his teens, a few years older than the girl, 18 or 19 at most, but there was a mysteriousness surrounding him beyond his apparent age. Outwardly, he was the picture of youth, but there was something that unmistakably suggested experience, opposite to how the girl in front of him maintained her youthfulness. Maybe it was the subtle grin of his crimson lips.

His dark eyes glistened as he took in the center of her parted legs. The pink lips of the girl’s sex were exposed under the dim light, glistening endearingly--moist, soft, parted. Her breasts had flattened as she lay on her back making her chest appear like a boy’s except for the upward pointing, hardened nipples. The young man’s white teeth were visible through his slightly open mouth.

He leaned in and slowly, almost respectfully, penetrated her. The girl began to moan immediately. She clutched hold of his buttocks and pushed her hips up, rubbing against him as she started to tremble. She came repeatedly. The young man matched the rhythm of her convulsions as he thrust into her, leveraging his surprisingly powerful rear as though counting the number of times she climaxed. Bands of lean muscle flexed as he began to thrust harder as though delivering punishment. Her moaning rose in pitch until she was gasping for air, no longer able to moan. She began to pant in sharp bursts as though spouting fire from her open mouth. She stopped. The young man stopped with her. Occasional convulsions gently rippled through her body as she lay under him. The man’s features were unchanged, betraying nothing of how the insides of her vagina felt clenched around him.