Blood and Chrysanthemums (6 page)

Ardeth leaned on the stair railing for a moment, staring up at the naked bulb that lit the door to the apartment.

Go on, she thought, shifting her weight from one bare, aching foot to the other. Go on up and get it over with.

She had fumbled through a dozen lies on the way home but discarded them. Why should she lie? She hadn’t done anything wrong. Not really. And it was part of her new life—if she didn’t tell him what had happened, how was she ever going to learn to deal with it?

The conclusion had seemed reasonable three blocks away. Now, poised halfway up the stairs, she wished that she had found a suitable lie. As if you could lie to him, she thought, taking another step towards the door. As if he wouldn’t be able to look at you and know the truth.

Would he be angry? She climbed another few steps. No, she decided, not angry. He would look at her in the way that tore her heart: sad, sympathetic, knowing. He would forgive her, which in its own way would hurt. When the explanations and guilt were over, nothing would have changed. She could not tell if that thought relieved or infuriated her.

She reached the top of the stairs. She took a deep breath and tried the door of the apartment.

The living room was dark, lit only by the faint glow of the moonlight through the window. Rozokov was sitting in his customary chair. She saw the grey glitter of his eyes as he turned his head to look at her.

She tried not to limp as she entered the room. The pretence fooled neither of them and he was on his feet and at her side in a blur of movement. “Ardeth, what happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Where are your shoes?”

“At the top of Tunnel Mountain, I suppose,” she answered wearily, easing herself into her chair and reaching up to switch on the light.

“Why did you . . .” he began, then stopped as she lifted one foot to her knee. The sole was criss-crossed with cuts, seeping sluggish blood. Bits of dead leaves mingled with the dirt on her skin. “I’ll get some water,” Rozokov finished, and disappeared into the little kitchen. He emerged a moment later with a pan full of steaming water and a towel. “Can you put your foot into this?”

She nodded and then forced herself to do it, grateful for the heat of the water that might have scalded anyone else. Despite her resolutions, she was guiltily grateful for the distraction her feet provided.

Finally, he was done and sat back to look up at her. “You did yourself no serious harm. Now, do you mind telling me what happened?”

“I went climbing.”

“I know that. Did you fall?”

“No, no, nothing like that. The climb was fine. I was afraid for a moment we’d get stuck, but then the moon came out again.”

“We?”

“The climber who gave me the map. He came out and found me at the cliff. We climbed it together.”

Rozokov rose suddenly, then walked over to the window. When he turned his head, the moonlight glowed behind his profile. “And at the top?”

“We were talking about taking chances, about the lure of danger. It was dark and beautiful and he wanted me.”

“Did you kill him? Is that why you ran away?”

“No, of course not. I didn’t even drink from him.”

“But you might have.”

“Yes. I might have,” she confessed softly and waited. For his anger—or his absolution. For something. She thought she saw a smile, thin as a snake, touch his mouth.

“Well, no doubt you can concoct some suitable story for your maidenly retreat. There’s no great harm done.”

“No harm . . . ? You mean, you don’t care that I almost drank from him?”

“Not as long as you were careful.”

“I wouldn’t have just drunk. I would have made love with him.”

Rozokov looked back out at the silent street. “As long as you were careful,” he repeated. Ardeth stared at him in bewilderment. It had never been said, true, but she knew one of the reasons they had restricted their feeding to elk was to be faithful to one another, to share the love they could give only with each other. And he had always warned against impersonal feeding on mortals, because it made it so easy to slip into the cruel, predatory monster that legends made vampires out to be. She couldn’t believe he would change his mind so suddenly. Unless . . . 

She was out of her chair in a moment, crossing the floor on feet that no longer felt any pain. She caught his arm. “You did it, didn’t you?”

“You were right, after all. We need more than elk blood,” he answered softly, sparing no more than a glance at her before resuming his study of the street.

Something hot and black blossomed inside her, springing from the sleeping seeds of the rage that had sustained her through her first lonely months as a vampire. It swept relentlessly over her other tangled emotions; guilt, pain, a shameful, secret relief. She clung to its diverting heat as she dragged him around to face her, her hands clenched in the fabric of his shirt. “You did it. I left a man who wanted me, who would have done anything for me, and all the time you were drinking someone’s blood. Why did you do it?”

“I wanted to.”

“That’s it? You wanted to?”

“What would you have me say? I wanted to do it. I did it.”

“Who was she?”

“It doesn’t matter. She meant nothing.”

“Yeah, that’s what men all say, isn’t it? Even vampires.”

“Yes, even vampires. That is what we are, after all. Maybe that is what has been wrong between us. We have been trying to live like something we are not.”

“Well, you’re the one who wanted to. You’re the one who made all the fine speeches about trying to find a way to live that did not make us into monsters. You’re the one who said you wanted me to love what you really are.” She kept her fingers clenched in his shirt, afraid of what she might do if she let go, afraid that she would either strike blindly at him or fall weeping into his arms or both. “You’re the one who said we could choose what we wanted to be.”

“Then I was wrong. I can be wrong, as you delighted in pointing out to me the other night,” he snarled back, reaching out to close his fingers over hers and pull her hands from him. “Perhaps the only lie I did not tell the both of us is when I said that we are solitary creatures.”

Something inside her twisted. Ardeth remembered him saying those words then walking away from her, abandoning her to the night and her new hunger. For her own good, he had said. No matter what the reasons were, he had left her to find her own way to survive, and, when she had found it in a new persona of seduction and mystery that prowled the Queen Street bars, he came back and took it all away from her again, reawakening the conscience and intellect that she had drowned in wild, reckless darkness.

Not this time, she swore to herself. You won’t walk away from
me
this time.

She let go of him, pulled her hands from his. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe that is the only truth you ever told. And now you can find out for sure.”

She stalked into the bedroom, found her bag and began to jam her meagre belongings into it. “What are you doing?” he asked from the doorway.

“Leaving.”

“Where do you think you can go?”

“Does it matter? You forget, I managed just fine without you back in Toronto.” Her hunt through the drawers revealed their cache of money; she left him half, just as she had the night of their first parting.

“You do not have to go.” For the first time, she heard something other than icy anger in his voice. She paused, torn between hope and contempt at her inability to resist even the faintest signs of a thaw in his coldness. “Have your climber. Do what you want. There is enough for both of us here.”

For a moment, she tried to imagine it. To imagine living as vampires, preying on the people of the park instead of its animals. To imaging that she could have Mark and Rozokov would not care. To imagine that he could have his mysterious lover and she would feel nothing.

But she could not.

She was on her way to the front door when he caught her arm. She felt the pressure of his will, closing over her mind, seeking to nail her feet to the floor, her heart to his command. Rage fuelled her resistance and she jerked her arm out of his grasp. When she was safely at the door, she turned, knowing she should just go, but wanting to hurt him, hoping that the angry, despairing words might wound him as much as his betrayal had wounded her.

“I believed you. I thought you knew what the meaning of this existence is, that you were so much wiser than me. But you’re not. You’re just a scared, tired old man.”

Then she was running down the outside staircase, down the street, through the town. Even though she knew with painful, aching certainty that he wasn’t following her, she did not stop to put on her shoes until she reached the highway.

Upon your leaving

I would have that stretching road
rolled and folded up

And burned to destruction—

had I but flames from heaven!

—Lady Sano

Lisa Takara heard the rustle of cloth, then her sister-in-law’s hissed whisper. She didn’t need to open her eyes to guess what happened; Paul had been squirming, unable to keep his six-year-old-boy body still for more than five minutes. And the priest had been praying for a good deal longer than five minutes . . . the numbness in her own ankles could attest to that.

She moved as discreetly as she could, easing the pressure on her knees and heels as she knelt with her family in the shrine. She knew that she was supposed to be praying too, mind if not lips echoing the Buddhist prayers for the dead, but it was hard to keep her mind on the ceremony. Still, it must be worse for Angela, whose Japanese was rudimentary at best. Of course, her sister-in-law had Paul to keep herself occupied.

She herself had only memories. She tried to focus on the good ones, the old ones. Her father’s smile as she ran to greet him in the doorway of their old suburban home, the sweets he would slip her behind her mother’s back, his proud eyes watching her during the convocation ceremonies that marked her progress through high school, university and graduate school. But at the end of each waited a more recent vision: her father in his sober suit, elderly and dignified, herself pouring tea, the visitor’s suit sleeve slipping back to reveal the tattoo winding on his forearm. Words like debt and honour and behind them, subtle threats that came and went like the dragons on Mr. Moro’s wrist.

Lisa caught herself, clenching her fists inside the sleeves of her jacket. Your father is dead and you owe it to his memory to honour him this last time. He was a good father and he loved you. No matter what happened at the end.

The cadences of the final prayers tugged her back to the ceremony again and she opened her eyes, taking the priest’s cues to guide her final bows. As her brothers rose around her, she found her feet awkwardly. The procession past the coffin was about to begin. She waited behind Robert and Derek, as each bent by the open casket and placed a flower by their father’s head.

Then it was her turn. She forced herself to look down at the still, empty face. She had heard all the polite platitudes of the mourners: he looks so lifelike, so peaceful, just like he’s sleeping. None of them were true, or were true only to those who willed them to be, who ignored the knowledge that his body was decaying even as they stood there and that his soul had long since fled. None of you know what death looks like, she wanted to scream. None of you have any idea at all.

Whispers from somewhere behind her made her realize she was still standing at the coffin. She leaned over and laid the white chrysanthemum beside the head. She opened her mouth to say goodbye but her throat froze around the words. She swallowed hard and moved away.

Outside the temple, in the sunlight of the autumn afternoon, she took a deep breath, trying to clear her head of the incense and the confusion of sorrow and anger that filled her. Someone touched her arm and she turned to find an old friend of her father offering sympathy and tears. She bowed to the woman, mouthing the words of thanks, and submerged herself back in the rituals of grief.

There was still the cremation to be seen to, then a gathering at Robert’s house, but the mourners lingered in the temple garden, reluctant somehow to move on. Lisa saw faces she recognized: friends of her parents, several of her colleagues from the university, neighbours. There were others she did not know and she found herself studying the faces carefully. Not the Caucasian ones, of course—they were safe. But the Japanese . . . she hunted the male faces as if there would be some clue there, some way she could deduce the presence of secret tattoos and underworld ties.

She felt terribly vulnerable, held by the old world the gardens and temple seemed to evoke. Since her return from Toronto, she had struggled to stay only in the world of the now, of the here. On the suburban streets of her brother’s neighbourhood, in the white sterility of the university laboratories, she had felt safe.

It hadn’t saved her, of course. But it had been two weeks since the night Takashi Yamagata had questioned her and she had not heard from him again.

Behind her, someone said her name.

She turned and saw a young woman watching her from the shadow of a tree. “Dr. Takara,” she repeated, stepping forward a little. Lisa’s feet moved before she thought about it, bringing her closer. The woman took off her sunglasses and smiled. She had a wide, friendly face framed by black hair cut in an exquisitely precise bob. Her charcoal-coloured suit was simple and discreet, the skirt a tasteful yet chic length above her knees. “Please accept my condolences on your loss.” Her English was clear and precise, but edged in an accent strong enough to tell Lisa that she was no Nisei, born and bred in Canada.

Lisa bowed automatically and saw the woman echo her action. “Thank you. Did you know my father?”

“No. But he had done business with my employer’s organization.” Lisa froze again, suddenly wanting to look around, to search the shadows and bushes for the threat she was sure was waiting, but she did not dare. Surely they wouldn’t do it here, she realized, forcing herself to think logically. Not in front of so many people. If they had wanted to question her again, there had been a thousand more opportune moments than this one. If they had wanted her dead, that night in the limousine would have ended with her body floating in Vancouver harbour.

“I’m sure he would be gratified by your kind thoughts,” she said carefully, grateful suddenly for the formalities of mourning.

“My employer would very much like to extend his sympathies to you in person.”

“We’re having a reception at my brother’s home. We would be happy to have him join us.”

“Unfortunately, he has other commitments. He would be very grateful if you could meet him this evening.” Her voice was polite but Lisa could hear the iron beneath it.

“I can’t.”

“Tomorrow then.”

“I’m afraid I’m busy.”

“Please, Dr. Takara. My employer is a very patient man but some of those who work for him are not. He wishes you to know that he understands your . . . concerns . . . and that his methods are not the same as any of his employees you may have already met. He would be happy to have you choose a place to meet, so that you might be assured of his good intentions.”

“I can’t tell him anything more than I’ve already told the other one,” Lisa said, unable to bear the careful hedging, the polite almost-truths.

“Perhaps not. But if you tell him the truth as well, then everything will be over.”

“Will it?”

“Of course. Mr. Fujiwara is a man of his word. You have nothing to fear from him.” She reached into her purse and then extended her hand to Lisa. “Here is his card. We are staying at the Pan-Pacific Hotel. My name is Akiko Kodama. You may call me and tell me where you wish to meet. Please do not be afraid, Dr. Takara.”

Then she bowed and was gone, a slim black figure disappearing down the path, heels clicking on the flagstones. Between an embossed crest of a stylized flower and a line of Japanese letters was a name: Sadamori Fujiwara.

It reminded her suddenly of the other card, the one she carried all through the nightmare in the secret laboratory. She had never called the number either . . . but that hadn’t stopped them.

She heard Derek’s voice calling her. Tucking the card into her purse, she turned back towards the funeral, willing herself to put on the face of the grieving daughter, and forget that her father’s last legacy to her was not sadness but fear.