Blood and Chrysanthemums (3 page)

The photograph was of a scrapyard, rows and rows of rusting cars laid out in the bright noon sun. No shadows softened their stack lines, no grass seemed to grow between their corpses.

Rozokov looked at Ardeth, who was studying the photograph as if it held some desperately sought secret. After a moment, her mouth twisted a little and she looked at him. “What do you think?” she asked.

“Interesting,” he said and then smiled, remembering retreating to that noncommittal word in a hundred galleries and salons over the last five hundred years.

“I like it,” Ardeth announced. “I’m sure that I’m missing some important political or aesthetic point but I like it.” They moved on, pausing by the next photograph. The presence of the Banff Centre for the Fine Arts, overlooking the town from the flank of Tunnel Mountain, meant that the town had access to a surprising diversity of cultural activities. They had already been to a chamber music recital here—his choice, Rozokov acknowledged. The photography exhibit was Ardeth’s selection.

“Now this is more to my taste,” he commented. It was a black-and-white study of female nude, the light and shadow turning the flesh into a sculptural arrangement of smooth shapes.

“It figures. Philistine.”

“True enough. I am an old man. I have old-fashioned tastes.”

She laughed and tucked her arm through his. “Did you know any famous artists?”

“I met Delacroix in Paris once. One of my lovers, a wealthy Florentine widow, wished to commission Cellini to do a bust of me. I declined.” He kept his voice light and jesting, though none of the gallery’s other guests were standing near them.

“Are there any pictures of you?”

“There was a small portrait, by an artist of no particular fame. It was done before I changed. It hung in the library of my old home.” He could barely remember it now, just a faint vision of a thin, serious face over a black scholar’s gown. “I have avoided such temptations. It is not wise to leave so concrete a visual record.”

“No photographs then? Nothing from the nineteenth century, with a frock coat and mutton chop whiskers?”

“I was not even certain I could be captured on film until . . . this century,” he finished delicately, having no desire to stir in either of them the memory of the snuff films they had forced him to participate in and her to watch. “And I could hardly grow mutton chop whiskers even if I wished to adopt such a fashion.”

“For which I’m very grateful,” Ardeth said and they paused at the next photograph. A family posed in front of a large car, parked before a tidy suburban house. The photograph seemed to be old and in black-and-white, but had been coloured in bright hues by the artist. It was set in a gilded frame of handmade roughness. The frame was decorated by strange shapes. Ardeth laughed and Rozokov glanced at her.

“I made a frame like that when I was in public school.”

“What are those off shapes?”

“Elbow macaroni sprayed with gold paint. You see the things you were spared by not attending school here.”

“And the point of the photograph?”

“Ironic comment on the suburban dream, I would guess. The photograph itself looks like it’s from the 1950s, which some people persist in believing was the pinnacle of civilization.”

“The good old days,” he quoted, “I have heard the lament many times. It seems human nature to look back to some lost golden era, whether it be Greece or Rome or the 1950s.”

“Golden eras that never existed,” Ardeth pointed out.

“No. I cannot speak for Greece or Rome or even the 1950s, but I can assure you that many times I have had to hold my tongue while some self-proclaimed expert described in glowing terms a time I knew from experience was harsh, plague-ridden and violent.”

“What about the present time?”

“It is not the future that was predicted, that is true. But I am not certain that this time’s problems are any worse than those of the past. The only thing that can be said in the past’s favour is that the population was much smaller and whatever ugliness it created did not touch the rest of the world so greatly.”

“And the future?” Ardeth asked and Rozokov looked at her.

“We must do what we can to guess what will happen, for our own safety. Beyond that, I make no prophecies.” He answered the impersonal question he willed himself to hear. The fate of the world he could discuss with equanimity. Their own future was another matter entirely. He was grateful when they moved on to the next photograph, a simple image of the mountains that sparked no disturbing discussions.

As they moved, Rozokov saw Ardeth glance around at the gallery’s other visitors. He followed her gaze, taking in the scattered groups of people clustered around the room. An unusual number seemed to favour black clothing and he noted the unnatural copper colour of one woman’s hair and multiple earrings dangling from another’s earlobe. Ardeth said nothing but he felt some tension in her dissolve a little, as if she no longer feared being noticed.

As if anyone could fail to notice her, he thought, watching as she stepped closer to study the photograph before them. He knew that she had never believed herself to be attractive and that belief coloured her transformation of herself after her rebirth. She was more striking now, perhaps, with her midnight hair and alabaster skin. But when he thought of her, it was most often as she had been when they were held captive together; her long fair hair tangled and dirty, her face streaked with dust and the traces of her tears. When he had seen her clearly for the first time, in the light of his returned sanity and self-awareness, he had thought she was unutterably beautiful.

When she stepped back, he put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her, not caring at all if anyone should notice.

After they had completed their tour of the exhibition, they found the path that led back down to the town. Clouds turned the sky above them into a featureless darkness and Rozokov acknowledged that he would do no stargazing tonight. Still, there was a stack of astronomy books acquired from the local library sitting by his chair in the apartment. There were worse ways to spend the night, he thought, than reading in companionable silence.

Still, there were things to attend to before they sought the quiet of their rooms. It took more than an hour of searching to locate a lone elk, and midnight was approaching by the time they returned to the apartment.

When Rozokov looked up from his book, it was nearing four a.m. Ardeth’s chair was empty and the light in the tiny bathroom was on. He rose and went to the open doorway, leaning against the frame. She was standing before the spotted mirror, scissors in hand, trimming the fall of her bangs. She was wearing only a white T-shirt that hung to her thighs.

“I’m very glad that hair grows slowly when you’re dead,” she observed, sparing him a quick smile before returning to her contemplation of her hair. “Otherwise I’d have a serious case of blonde roots by now.” She sighed, rumpled her bangs up from their sharp, if uneven, line and looked at him again.

“You look beautiful.”

“Flatterer.” She glanced back at the mirror and then paused, seeming to focus on her reflection for a long moment.

“I bought you a present the other day,” she said abruptly. “Hang on and I’ll get it.”

She slid by him and he stepped into the bathroom to look at his own reflection in the mirror. He was rather glad the old mythology was not true; he much preferred to be able to tell how he looked even if he did not give it much thought most of the time. He considered his reflection for a moment. He was hardly the dandy he had been, one hundred and fifty years ago in Paris, but he was not the dirty, tangled-haired street person he had pretended to be in Toronto either. Still, he should perhaps trim his own grey hair, lest its length become too noticeable.

Ardeth slithered back into the space behind him and held out a bundle of black cloth. Rozokov took it and shook it out. He stared at the words printed in white in momentary bewilderment. “Do you like it? I wasn’t sure if you would, so I didn’t give it to you earlier,” she explained, worry edging her voice, and he laughed, surprised that she would be so concerned.

“Yes. ‘Dead People Are Cool.’ I do like it.” He did, despite the fact that he was surprised that she would spend some of their meager cache of money on something as frivolous as a sloganed shirt. He nearly asked her why she had bought it, but something in her bright smile left the question stillborn in his through. Perhaps it was only another kind of escape.

“Good. Now sit down and I’ll give you a trim too. You’re looking a little shaggy.”

“And I will look less so when you are done?”

“I realise it’s not my forte . . . but I’m cheap,” she pointed out, and he sat down on the edge of the bathtub and let her clip away at the hair hanging past his ears and brows. Her own T-shirt said something, he noticed. “Fear not—you only die once.” The irony of it made him shiver suddenly and wonder why she had bought it.

He put his hands on her hips and looked up at her face. The white T-shirt seemed very thin; he could see the sharp points of her nipples beneath the cloth. Her gaze shifted to meet his but her eyes were shadowed by the fall of her hair and he could not read whatever emotion lay there. She put aside the scissors and slid her fingers through his hair.

“Dead people are cool,” she whispered.

“We are, aren’t we,” he agreed softly and stood up into her kiss and her weight and the arms and legs she wrapped around him as he carried her into the bedroom, and they did their best to prove that the slogans were more than just words, that dead people did not have to fear.

That dead people were enough for them.

It was dark out.

Lisa Takara felt her neck muscles throb with sudden tension as a chill fingered her spine. After all her resolutions, all her careful planning . . . it was dark out.

The department meeting had run late, then she’d had to review some experiment results prior to tomorrow’s class and somehow the hours had gone and the night had come.

She paused at the door of the Department of Medicine building and looked out through the glass towards the parking lot. It’s all right, she told herself firmly. It’s perfectly safe out there. She could see the small knots of students moving beneath the lights of the campus.

Lisa took a deep breath and pushed through the doorway into the cool September night. Shifting her grip on her briefcase, she headed for her car on the far side of the university parking lot.

With each step, she felt herself relaxing a little. This would be like all the other times she’d made this walk in the month since she’d returned to Vancouver from Toronto. Most of those times had been in daylight, but on the few occasions she had been caught out after sunset, she had made it home safely.

It was only sensible to be cautious, she told herself. Avoiding the dark streets when she was alone, spending most of her nights at her brother’s house in the suburbs, these things were only reasonable. Other precautions had crossed her mind as well but she had rejected them. She would not give up her job, leave the city, change her name. She would not rub garlic on the sills of her windows and wear a crucifix.

She went on being sensible . . . but there was another part of her that acknowledged that all her precautions, reasonable or otherwise, would not make any difference in the end. If the
yakuza
gangsters wanted to kill her, they could do it. If the vampires wanted to destroy her, superstitious follies like garlic and crosses would not stop them.

All this because of a debt her father incurred before she had even been born. She pushed that thought away, guilty at her anger at a man who now lay in the hospital, half-paralyzed from a stroke.

You should go and see him tonight, Lisa told herself even as she admitted that by the time she reached the hospital visiting would be over. She had not been to see him in two days. Tomorrow night, she vowed. No matter what, you’ll go tomorrow night.

Somewhere behind her, she heard someone shout. She looked back over her shoulder, automatically increasing her pace along the walkway. Against the bright entrance to the Department of Medicine building, she saw silhouettes move and circle, then head off towards the student residences.

She let her breath out and smiled slightly, turning back towards the parking lot. There was her car, waiting in a half-empty row. She found her keys and hurried across the pavement.

The key was in the lock when she heard the creak of a car door behind her. Her fingers turned to ice and her throat seemed to close. Don’t look, she thought, hearing the click as the lock mechanism opened. Just don’t look.

“Dr. Takara.” It was a male voice, gruff and accented. Lisa slid her fingers under the door handle and lifted. She had to open the door and get in the car. If she didn’t turn around, she could be in the car before he could stop her.

She heard a footfall, then a black-sleeved arm came around her shoulder and a wide, brown hand flattened against the edge of the car door. “Come with me please, Dr. Takara.”

Lisa swallowed once and turned around. The man who stood behind her was neatly dressed in a black suit and white shirt. He was no taller than she was but much broader. Bodybuilder’s shoulders and a thug’s face, she thought. Beyond him, parked one space down from her car, was a long black limousine. The windows were smoky and impenetrable but the front doors were open and the driver stood on the far side of the car.

If I scream, will anyone hear me? she wondered, but did not dare look around to see if there was anyone else in the dark parking lot. Can I stall them until someone comes?

“I’m sorry,” she began, her voice sounding reedy and breathless. “You must have confused me with someone else.”

“Please come with me to the car, Dr. Takara,” the man said, as if she hadn’t spoken. His hand closed over her upper arm.

“I’m not . . .” The words died as she was pulled forward sharply. She saw the back door of the car begin to open.

The scream was at her lips when the man’s hand closed over her mouth. He was at her back, pushing her inexorably towards the dark interior of the limousine. She flailed out and caught the edge of the open door in one hand. Her foot found the bottom of the doorway then slipped away, skidding onto the pavement. Someone pried her fingers from their grip and she was thrust into the waiting shadows.

The door slammed behind her.

She found herself sprawled between the thickly upholstered seats, her knees on the carpeted floor. There was a man sitting in the centre of the back seat, his foot only inches from her outflung hand.

If you’re going to do something, she thought wildly, you’d better do it now, before the car starts. But what was there to do? She could fling herself back towards the door that she had been thrown through or gamble that she could make it past the man to the far one. The back seat of the limousine was sealed off from the front and other men might never know she had moved.

If you try to escape, perhaps they’ll shoot you, a cold voice inside her whispered. That might be the best choice you will have.

The car shuddered into life beneath her and she closed her eyes for a moment. “Dr. Takara.” She looked up. This one was a little older, she decided, and his suit looked more expensive. He had a hard-edged handsomeness she might have found attractive under other circumstances. In the dim light, she could not see his eyes. “Please make yourself more comfortable.” He lifted his hand and gestured to the seat across from him.

Lisa manoeuvred herself up onto the seat, settling as close to the door as she dared. She reached down for her purse but he was there before her. He set it and her briefcase on the far side of his own seat with a faint smile but allowed her to retrieve her car keys from the floor without interference. She put them in her pocket, remembering with absurd amusement a long-ago class in self-defence that advocated using keys as a weapon. It seemed a hopeless consolation, but she kept her fingers closed around them anyway.

A glance out the window told her they were on their way out of the university grounds.

“Don’t be afraid, Doctor. I apologize for the unorthodox approach but you seemed to be avoiding us. You never called the number that my associate, Mr. Moro, gave you.”

“I lost it.” Lisa refused to look at her purse, where the tattered business card bearing Mr. Moro’s number was folded into her wallet. All she had to do was lie. That should be simple enough. She had lied to everyone else: the Toronto police, the reporters, her father. To get out of this, she only had to stick to her story, no matter what happened.

“That explains it then. Well, there’s no damage done. You can simply tell me what you would have told him. If you’d still had his number.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Takashi Yamagata. I am Mr. Moro’s employer.” He leaned forward a little and his dark eyes met her. “Please begin at the beginning, Doctor. We have as much time as you need.”

Lisa took a deep breath and told the story again. How Mr. Moro had come to claim her services as an immunologist as repayment of her father’s old debt to the
yakuza.
How she had been delivered to the Dale estate and ended up in the hidden laboratory. How one night one of their captors had gone crazy and killed several of the other scientists, then set the house on fire, leaving her as sole survivor. She had crafted the story so carefully, basing it on as much truth as she could, and told it so often, that she almost believed it herself.

“I don’t know why you were interested in Havendale and I don’t care. I never did any research for them,” she concluded.

“In all those months, you did nothing?”

“They kept waiting for some specimens we were supposed to study but nothing ever came.”

“They never told you what the research was about?”

“Something to do with longevity, I think.” She risked another glance out the window. An anonymous stretch of road ghosted under the streetlights. When she glanced back at Yamagata, he had leaned back in his seat and his face was once more obscured.

“I would like to believe that you are telling me the truth,” he said, after a long moment.

“If you don’t believe me, check the police reports in Toronto. You can do that, I assume.”

“It has already been done. You might have been lying to the police as well.”

“Why would I lie? I didn’t owe anything to Althea Dale and her company,” Lisa pointed out, trying to sound sensible and reassuring. “I kept your organization out of the police reports, for my father’s sake. I repaid the debt as best I could.”

“Yes, your father. I understand that he’s not well.” She fought the surge of panic and pain that filled her at those words. No, he’s not well, she thought angrily. He’s dying. Let him die in peace. She licked her lips and said nothing, not trusting her voice. “Your brothers are well though. And your nephews. Perhaps if one of them were to come for a ride with us, you would tell a different story.”

“If you threaten my family, I’ll tell you any story you want to hear. But that won’t make it true. I told you the truth tonight.”

“Tell me again.”

She told the tale four more times as the limousine glided through the streets of Vancouver and quiet roads beyond the city limits. With each telling, her confidence grew. He asked her questions, slippery, repetitive questions designed to trip her into betraying herself. But they were not the truly dangerous ones she had feared. He hinted at the things she wanted to avoid but did not say their names out loud.

As she spoke, a treacherous relief began to steal into her mind. In a way, she was glad that this moment had come at last, after so many weeks of waiting for it. Perhaps this would finally be the end of the nightmare. She willed herself not to trust in that thought and continued her careful answers, refusing to let either his subtle questions or her own hopes distract her.

It was after midnight when the limousine at last drew to a halt. Lisa looked out the window and saw her car sitting alone in the centre of the university parking lot.

“Can I go now?” she asked. Yamagata leaned forward and light slipped across his face, touching the narrow black eyes.

“For now. But I think that we’ll have to speak again.” His hand reached across the space between them and caught her wrist, his fingers circling her flesh. “I’m not unreasonable, Doctor.” His grip tightened. Lisa clenched her teeth to keep herself from wincing. “I only need the truth from you, that’s all. Please don’t make things unpleasant for either of us. Or for anyone else.”

He held her wrist a moment longer, until the pressure of his fingers made her catch her breath in a painful hiss, then he released her and sat back.

The door beside her opened. “My things,” Lisa said and Yamagata smiled thinly and handed them to her. She climbed from the car with as much assurance as she could muster, pointedly ignoring the bodybuilder gangster who held the door for her.

She was halfway to her car when she looked back, hoping to see the licence number. But the limousine was already gone.

Her car door was unlocked. She slid into the driver’s seat, put the key into the ignition and set her hands on the wheel.

Yamagata wasn’t sure whether or not to believe her, that much was clear. The questions that he had not asked her were significant—either he knew much less than she had expected or he had his own secrets he was afraid of betraying.

How long can you hold out? she asked herself, distantly aware that her body was shaking, her hands clenched on the wheel. If he threatens Robert or Derek or one of the little boys . . . what will you do? What if he says the words you fear? Rozokov. Ardeth. Vampire. If he knows that much, can you lie about the rest? Can you tell him that they died in the fire and make him believe it?

Trembling, she fought the nausea that churned in her stomach. Emotions seemed to surge through her in succession, fear of Yamagata mutating into anger at her father, changing into guilt and grief and then transforming back into fear again.

After a moment, she took a long, shaky breath and forced her fingers to loosen. She would have to think about this carefully and decide the most reasonable thing to do.

But later. She would have to do that later. Right now, she could not bear to think at all.