Free Maohden Vol. 2 by Hideyuki Kikuchi Page B

construction workers behind him. “Well, a man’s gotta do—”
    With a nonchalant look on his face, as if he’d wandered here from parts unknown with no grasp of the gravity of the situation, he touched his right wrist with his left hand. The teeth marks left by Yamada’s head still marred the skin.
    “Probably shouldn’t rely on this. The left will have to do.”
    He yawned and stretched and rolled his neck. Pulling these all-nighters was getting to him. He heard a shrill screech and the flapping of feathers. A pair of wings turned through the air directly over his head at the height of the three-story New Isetan department store, lazily tracing a circle in the sky three dozen yards up in the air.
    A brown raptor with a wingspan of ten feet. The long, narrow, hooked beak was plainly that of a bird, but this avian species was not only the product of natural selection but of genetic experimentation gone mad.
    The fine fur covering the body supported by those wings, down to its stubby legs, resembled that of a wet rat. The black pearl eyes on either side of its small head gazed down at the beasts below with a cruel hunger and loathing.
    Loathing . The creatures in this city did not stalk their prey merely to fill their bellies, but to quench their hatred and anger. Nothing less could be expected from the forces of nature here in Demon City.
    There was no need to rush. Let the two-headed dogs tear the flesh apart and lap up the blood and there would be more than enough left over. The bodies of these flying things might be rats, but their instincts were all bird.
    Perhaps recognizing the cries and howls echoing between the air and ground, creatures that were a cross between a leech and a frog poked their heads out from the manholes, from behind the stone gates of Hanazono Shrine, mewing and squeaking.
    The construction workers kept on working.
    The light of dawn was still a long ways off here on Yasukuni Avenue. But the faces of the charging beasts were plain as day. Bloodshot eyes burned like hot coals, fangs jutted from snarling mouths like railroad spikes. Twice the normal number per body. They had smelled human prey. There was no going back now.
    The heads suddenly flew into the air. And not only those of the dog in the lead. As the ones behind caught up with the ones in front and sprinted through the same space, their heads went flying as well.
    The dogs bounded towards Setsura, headless bodies spraying blood. He waved his arms in annoyance, as if batting away a swarm of flies. The thrashing corpses thumped to the earth.
    A fish going under the sashimi cook’s knife and then swimming away with only the head and skeleton remaining would be no stranger a sight than these headless dogs.
    Setsura Aki had performed no lesser handiwork with his wires.
    Spouting fountains of blood, the dogs continued their blind advance on Setsura and the construction workers, before slumping futilely to the pavement. On the verge of colliding with Setsura and the others, there came a sound like grinding steel, as the severed heads gnashed their teeth.
    It was hard to say whether the instincts of these creatures or Setsura’s skills at dismembering them was more horrifying.
    Thirty two-headed dogs lay on the ground, their blood staining the asphalt. The construction workers continued their work on the altar as if nothing had happened.
    Setsura looked up at the sky. With a great stir of wings, the black shadows descended upon the dismembered bodies below them and sprang upwards again. The twitching corpses disappeared one after the other.
    But even for these huge rulers of the sky, the six-foot-long animals proved too much to handle. Their wings beat the air. They opened their mouths and let go of their spoils. The mutated inheritance of their rat-like legs meant these birds of prey had to rely on their beaks.
    Unaccustomed to the situation, some drove their beaks into the asphalt, producing a shower of blue sparks. When the blood-crazed