by Aja James
*** *** *** ***
Ryu could feel her eyes on him even from across the pristine campus lawn.
He knew exactly where Dr. Monroe was at all times, having implanted a tracking and listening device in her iPhone the same morning he downloaded her computer files.
He was angry with himself that one part of him still wished for her to come to him, as he knew she contemplated doing, while the other part wished her far, far away.
No matter, he had other business to attend to. Good that she took the decision to push her away out of his hands this time.
Ryu climbed two levels up in a small brick building where a semi-retired professor in Japanese history made his part-time office.
Daisuke Habaru was one of the foremost scholars in the Sengoku period or Age of Civil War in Japan from the mid fourteen hundreds to the beginning of the seventeenth century. Ryu even knew his forefathers personally. Love of history and scholarly study ran in the family.
“I’m not open to visitors!” came the gruff dismissal when he knocked softly on the professor’s door.
Ryu entered anyway and bowed in greeting. “I have a particularly unique puzzle I was hoping you could help me solve, Sensei.”
An old, wiry, dark-skinned man with bushy eyebrows that spouted every which way regarded his visitor through narrowed eyes behind thick spectacles.
After a lengthy silence, the professor said, “You look familiar.”
Ryu stepped farther into the room and took off his sunglasses.
A shocked indrawn breath. Then—
“You better sit down.”
Ryu sat on an uncomfortable wooden chair across an ancient oak desk from Daisuke.
The old professor probably purposely put a rack of a chair there to torture unsuspecting students or other faculty when they came to disturb his peace. No one sitting in that chair would want to sit in it for long, and it was the only seat, besides the professor’s own luxurious leather recliner, in the room.
“You could pass for a first-year post-grad,” Daisuke grunted, eyeing Ryu up and down. “How old are you now? Five hundred? Six hundred?”
“Give or take.”
The professor hmphed.
“And look at me, not even pushing seventy and feeling a hundred.”
“You should cut back on the sake and smoking,” Ryu advised.
“What’s the point of living if you can’t indulge?” Daisuke shot back, taking out a bamboo Kiseru, or Japanese smoking pipe, from his middle desk drawer, filling it with finely shredded tobacco and lighting it up.
Ryu said nothing, simply waiting for the professor’s curiosity to catch up with him. He was very good at waiting.
“So what do you have for me,” Daisuke finally inquired through a ring of smoke.
Ryu handed him a photocopy of the news article Inanna had given him, describing the archeological find that featured a photo of the porcelain vase with her father’s writing on it.
“Do you recognize the vase?” Ryu asked.
The professor nodded slowly. “Not the writing though. That’s not in any language I’ve ever seen.”
It was ancient Akkadian, but Daisuke didn’t need to know that.
“Do you know where the vase comes from?”
Daisuke took a deep breath and leaned back in his recliner. After a few moments of thoughtful puffing on his pipe, he said, “Many of the Inari shrines in the outskirts of the City used those back in the day to store rice as an offering to the Inari Ōkami.”
He speared Ryu with a knowing look.
“Is this a test of some sort? You should know that better than I.”
Ryu pointed to the vase in the picture. “Can this one be traced to a specific shrine?”
Daisuke took the copy and placed it flat on his desk, taking out a magnifier from the same middle drawer and peered closely.
After some muttering under his breath, more puffs of smoke and a rigorous scratch to his scalp, raising the thick, wire-like hair on his head to stand out haphazardly, the professor finally looked back at Ryu.
“I think you know which shrine this belongs to.”
Ryu held his breath. “Are you absolutely certain?”
Daisuke tapped his finger on the corner of the vase. “See here? That mark signifies where each vase is delivered to by the potter. There are many different sizes, shapes and quality of vases at these shrines. It’s hard to keep track of them if you don’t make a note. This one belonged to the Mamiana shrine.”
Ryu held the professor’s piercing gaze while his lungs seized in his chest.
“Your old home, vampire.”
*** *** *** ***
Ava sat on a large flat rock beside a wooden arbor that abutted Sanshiro Pond, one of the most beautiful and secluded spots in Tokyo University.
She needed a break from work.
She’d been distracted all afternoon because of a certain someone, so distracted that she had all but knocked Tōshirō down as he was coming out of the high-security corridor where all of the hazardous chemicals and compounds were kept. He had been rather preoccupied himself, and flustered too, for he didn’t bow to her as he usually did when they ran into each other.
Ava had wondered briefly how Tōshirō had such high security clearance and she didn’t. Thus far on the project team, he had been the least vocal, keeping mainly to himself, more of an assistant than a lead. More often than not, he and Shinji Abarai could be seen together, huddled deep in conversation. They were working with Nanao Ise on a separate sub team, true, but Ava didn’t understand or appreciate the secretiveness. Even Sōsuke wasn’t always kept abreast of what they were working on.
Ideas ought to be shared. More brains were always better than one. Maybe they could have helped accelerate progress by working more cohesively as a full team.
Ava was never invited to participate in their discussions.
Night had fully descended. The skies were clear and full of stars. There were no city lights from skyscrapers to compete with them here.
Ava watched the twinkles play hide and seek behind the spring foliage of a variety of flowering trees that decorated the campus as if nature had painted it with a whimsical brush rather than planned by meticulous architects and landscapers.
She crossed her ankles and leaned back on the rock, staring appreciatively at the serene mirror of water dotted with lily pads and giant pink and white blossoms.
“You should not be out here alone at night.”
The deep, resonant voice with an almost vibrating husky undertone sent pleasurable shivers down Ava’s spine.
She couldn’t hear that voice without envisioning one specific male on the verge of orgasm. What did he sound like in the throes of passion if this was his normal speaking voice? It boggled the mind.
At least, it boggled Ava’s mind.
She didn’t turn around to ascertain who it was. No other voice sounded like his. Lord help the female race if there were duplicates of his vocal chords running around.
“Why? Are you planning to accost me?”
If only he would!
He continued standing a few feet behind her, probably leaning against the posts of the arbor.
“Didn’t you see the flyers around campus for a missing PhD student?”
Yes, she had. She couldn’t miss them, they were everywhere.
She didn’t remember the name, but she recalled the lighthearted expression on the young man’s face in the photograph on the flyer.
He’d been reported missing for a couple of days. Ava had asked her colleagues to translate some of the Japanese conversations had in hushed tones around her in the break rooms. Sōsuke explained that there was speculation the missing male might end up like the dismembered bodies that were recently reported in the news.
Ava didn’t think the incidences were linked, but crime was not rampant in Tokyo, so the recent events were anomalies that were often talked about in the same breath.
“You don’t want to be the next victim,
” her torment and her fantasy pressed from behind her. “You should head home before dark and stay in your hotel.”
“Why are you out all by yourself, then?” Ava challenged, though she knew to compare the two of them was to compare a Bumble Bee to a… deadly bird of prey?
Hmm. She’d have to mull over that one. He did look a bit like a bird sometimes. Those sharp, glinting eyes. But no, he still reminded her most of an Arabian stallion.
And with that mental image, Ava’s internal oven went from preheat to broil.
“I can take care of myself,” came his response, said with the tone of are-you-kidding-me.
Ava craned her neck enough to look briefly behind her.
Yup. Even clad in professional attire he looked like danger incarnate.
Lethal. Primordial.
She didn’t know why she ever thought he reminded her of a spoiled heir.
“Well, I’m not in any danger with you here, am I?” Ava said, “You can take care of both of us.”
“Maybe it’s me you should be most afraid of,” he returned so softly she almost didn’t hear.
Ava eyed him again. “Are you a serial killer? It’s been on my mind, I have to say. You seem to follow me around, I bump into you everywhere.” Never mind that she wished and prayed and begged in her mind for him to appear.
“If you are, a killer that is, you certainly like to dawdle.”
He regarded her for long moments, then sighed, sounding weary.
“Go home, Dr. Monroe.”
Ava turned back to look out into the pond.
“Go to bed. Go home,” she tried to mimic his deep voice. “Are you offering to provide escort?”
All she could hear was deep, exasperated breathing as if his patience was hanging by a thread.
Good, glad she could get under his skin. Though not in the same way he got under hers.
And why did he have to call her Dr. Monroe like they were strangers? Who’d never kissed the bejesus out of each other a few nights ago? As if she hadn’t squeezed his ass like she owned it and clutched his spectacular erection in her hot little hands?
For waaaayyy too short a time than she would have liked.
“I don’t even know you,” Ava grouched when he remained silent. “Why should I listen to you?”
Another lengthy pause. Then:
“What do you want to know?”
“Are you planning to stand all the way back there while we converse?” Ava asked. It was kind of hard to have a dialogue with someone she couldn’t see eye to eye.
“I like it here.”
She scrunched her nose.
“Afraid I might kiss you again?” she taunted.
Yes, he was afraid of her. He was afraid of what he felt when he was near her. What he felt for her.
Whatever mood she was in this night, it was wreaking havoc on Ryu’s peace of mind. She seemed determined to challenge him, provoke some kind of reaction out of him. He needed to realign her thoughts on something safer.
He came to sit on the grass next to her rock, long legs spread apart, elbows on his knees, hands clasped casually between them.
It was a studied façade of relaxation and nonchalance.
“Tell me about your day,” he requested, changing topics. “Has your project been going well?”
Ava was torn between wanting to pursue her questioning of him—she was extremely curious to know something of him besides his name his physicality—and her desire to share her work with someone who seemed really interested, who also seemed to understand.
She decided to come back to her interrogation later. And maybe also to give him a break. She’d been a little testy just now.
“It’s going really well,” she began, pulling her knees up and hugging them to her body with her arms, settling in comfortably for their chat.
“The team has made a lot of progress even before I arrived. We’re split into two sub teams, one focused on transplant science and the other on genetic engineering. Sōsuke and I were able to isolate a special gene in a one-in-a-million sample. We call it Evergreen. The gene that is, not the sample, since we don’t really know where it came from. It’s only been identified as Specimen B2603-7.”
Ryu didn’t like the way his jaw automatically clenched when she mentioned her colleague’s name.
“Why Evergreen?”
Trust him to ask all the interesting questions.
Ava really warmed up to her subject now. “We believe the gene triggers rapid regeneration in cells and tissue and even bone, including the most difficult and complex tissues.”
Ryu nodded, indicating that he was tracking.
Ava could feel her excitement rise as she spoke. “Now, most living organisms can regenerate in some capacity or other. It’s how we heal, after all. The issue is that we don’t regenerate fast enough to heal severe wounds or fight debilitating diseases. And we can’t regenerate as fast as, or faster than, the rate at which we age. But what we’ve found in Specimen B2603-7 is that not only can the original cells heal themselves at an incredible speed under some of the most adverse conditions, the chromosomes can be successfully spliced with human genes.”
At this point Ava was wide-eyed with animation, gesturing with her hands and arms like an orchestra conductor. She had turned to fully face him, and breathing more rapidly.
“That is indeed remarkable,” Ryu said quietly, holding her gaze. “The most recent advancements I’ve read on this subject only relate to planaria.”
Ava couldn’t believe it. “You read about tube worms? About the science of regeneration?”
Ryu shrugged. “It’s a fascinating subject.”
Oh, she was in love. Love, love, love. He was just too good to be true!
“But I get ahead of myself,” she said out loud, even as she said it to herself for another reason altogether. “After the splicing with human genes, the combination held for only a short while before becoming unstable. I don’t know how to describe it, but the nucleotides of Evergreen seemed to eat the sequences it bonded to in its host.”
He seemed to consider this.
“So the specimen you’re using isn’t compatible with human genes.”
Ava shook her head. “It’s very close though. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It could be mistaken for a human chromosome it’s so similar, more so than all the other primates we’re related to. But somehow it’s not. If anything, it looks like a… a mutated human chromosome, which is why Evergreen is one-in-a-million, if not a billion.”
She took a deep breath and shook her head again. “I really wish I could meet whoever or whatever the sample came from and see for myself the effects of having those genes. But I’m told that information is classified beyond my clearance level. Genomics Tech provided the sample.”
Ryu would bet that her specimen was either vampire or Pure. She didn’t even realize that she’d already met someone with those kinds of genes.
Him.
“I have an idea though that just might work,” Ava said so softly he almost didn’t hear. “But it hinges on getting something I don’t even know exists.”
“What?”
“Stem cells from an embryo with the same mutation.”
The darkness hid Ryu’s concentrated frown.
“But before the mutation even happens, you know?” she continued, thinking out loud. “Stem cells that are capable of the mutation with the right triggers but whose genetic blueprint is still malleable.”
“So that it has a higher chance of integrating with the host cell,” Ryu finished her train of thought.
Ava looked at him in amazement. Holy crap! He made sense of her ramblings!
It was a total turn on.
“But I don’t know where we’d ever get that kind of specimen,” Ava said, trying not to get too optimistic and shouting eureeka! after striking fool’s gold. “So it’s a very long shot.”
Ryu regarded her intently for long moments.
“What are you trying to achie
ve with this research?”
She blinked. Wasn’t it obvious? “We’ve had this conversation before, haven’t we? To cure debilitating diseases. To heal severe or near fatal injuries. To save lives.”
“Right,” he said quietly, “you don’t believe in survival of the fittest.”
“Do you?” she ventured. “I’ve never asked you that.”
He was still again. She realized that he was a naturally thoughtful person. He always took her questions and comments seriously and gave them due consideration.
“I believe that if someone was stronger than others, it is his duty to share his strength, to protect the weak. Never to take advantage. No one has more right to survival than anyone else.”
And that was when Ava fell head over heels in love.
“Tell me you’re not a serial killer,” she said rather nonsensically.
He narrowed his eyes, sensing the shift in her mood as much as reacting to her uncanny query.
If the definition of serial killer was someone who killed repeatedly, then Ryu would like to take the Fifth.
“What do you think?” he tossed back.
“I’m afraid I don’t care,” was her immediate reply.
Ryu inhaled deeply and exhaled long and hard, as if fortifying himself against some challenging odds.
“It’s getting late,” he finally said after staring at her for a good two minutes. “I’ll take you back to your hotel.”
“On your motorcycle?” She sounded rather enthusiastic at the prospect.
Ryu shook his head as a half-smile tipped his lips in the dark.
“Admire it, do you?”
“Not as much as the rider though,” she shot back with a happy, open-faced grin and looked him up and down. “The black leather is hotter, but this’ll do too. It’s what lies beneath the threads that counts.”
Ryu got up and held out his hand for her, hiding his answering grin. There was no seduction in her words, just simple appreciation.
An open book, was Ava Monroe. Innocent. Affectionate. Full of pleasure. Full of life.
The ride back to her hotel was too quick in Ava’s opinion, but on the other hand, she loved the speed and mastery with which he drove.