Blood and Chrysanthemums

by Nancy Baker

  “Do what, Takashi?”

  “Make me like you.” Yamagata felt as if another barrier inside himself fell away with the words. In all his months of careful plotting, of secret scheming, he had never said them out loud. He saw the fire spark in the foreign vampire’s eyes as he leaned forward and heard the faint indrawn breath from the woman against the wall.

  “Takashi . . .” The oyabun’s voice was quiet, compelling. “I promised you my empire. I did not promise you my curse.”

  “A curse.” Yamagata laughed humourlessly. “If it is a curse, surely it’s my duty to share it with you. But you cannot make me believe that your centuries have been painful for you. You are not a coward. If your life was cursed, you would have ended it years ago.”

  “Do not make judgments on things about which you know nothing,” Dimitri Rozokov said softly and Yamagata looked at him.

  “I know more about it than you would guess. But tell me, have you ever done what my oyabun has done? Taken a boy and raised him, given him a place of honour, made him believe you trusted him? Made him believe he was like a son to ensure he obeyed you and then took away the one inheritance he wanted?”

  “No,” the vampire answered after a long moment and Yamagata’s heart hammered with the sudden hope that this stranger his oyabun valued could be enlisted to take his side. “I have never allowed any mortal close enough to me to believe that.” Hope turned to confusion. The words seemed to deny that he could be persuaded but the sad tone suggested otherwise.

  “I regret if I ever led you to believe I would leave you anything but my mortal empire,” Fujiwara said. “It was not my intention.”

  “Wasn’t it?” Yamagata asked and, after a moment, he saw the vampire’s head bow.

  “Perhaps . . . once I had allowed you to know what I was . . . I pretended I did not know what you hoped. I let you believe it.”

  “Because it made me obedient. And trustworthy.”

  “I am not a fool,” Fujiwara countered with a touch of asperity. “I required obedience and loyalty. But I would not have let you know anything at all if I did not believe you had those virtues already. Takashi, I am leaving you an organization worth millions. I am leaving you my respect and my regards. Be content.”

  “What does it matter to you if I become like you? Do you suppose I will do something foolish to expose the fact that we exist? Do you think I am so unworthy?”

  “No. In all my years, there have been only two people I thought of transforming. One of them was a woman I loved deeply. You are the other, the only other in a thousand years. There was a time I longed for a son as much as you long to be one. Perhaps that desire made me misjudge what I could do. But I have thought long about this. No matter how much my life has mattered to me, I am an unnatural creature. I am disharmony and danger. You know how I live. I exist through trickery and lies. I protect myself by preying on society and by exploiting the honour of men like you. I will not perpetuate this curse. I will certainly not perpetuate it by cursing you, my son.”

  Yamagata looked at the implacable face and narrow, unreadable eyes. He had gained nothing by his outbursts, by the painful revelations of his true feelings. All the things that he admired in Fujiwara conspired to deny him. If the old man was resolved, he would not allow him to break his own vow. Even the love the old vampire felt for him, which should have been one of his most powerful arguments, now kept him from his goal. Still, he tried again. A simple plea this time, without anger or accusation. “Father . . . I ask you . . .”

  “No. I will not do it. Do not ask me again.” Fujiwara sat back in his chair, shoulders squared, back straight. Yamagata knew there was only one question left to ask. There was no room left for subterfuge or cunning. If he could not get the answer he needed, here in this room, he would never have it. If he failed here, he would have to abandon his dream. If they believed he pursued it, neither of the vampires would ever allow him this close to them again.

  “Do you forbid it?”

  For a moment, there was silence. Yamagata saw Rozokov glance at Fujiwara, but the oyabun’s gaze did not move. At last, Fujiwara shook his head. Yamagata looked at Rozokov.

  “I have been searching for you for a long time. You know what I want. Will you do it?”

  In the silence, Yamagata felt his heart pounding. He has not refused you outright, he told himself. He can be persuaded if it is done properly.

  “Why should I?” the foreign vampire asked at last, his voice betraying neither sympathy nor anger.

  “Why shouldn’t you? I am no threat to you. Even my oyabun admits I’m worthy of it. You only have to change me and I will be gone from this country forever. I won’t ask anything else of you, ever.”

  “Ever is a very long time. And I repeat, why should I?”

  “I’m a wealthy man. Name your price and I’ll pay it.”

  “I have only changed one other person. I think that is more than sufficient for me. I am sorry, Mr. Yamagata.”

  “You haven’t thought about it. Please, let’s go somewhere private and talk about it. . . .” Yamagata began desperately. If he could get Rozokov away from Fujiwara, surely he could convince him. What difference did it make to the gaijin vampire anyway?

  “I am sorry. . . .”

  A feminine voice sounded suddenly, the words lost in the overlap of his plea and the vampire’s refusal. Yamagata looked about in confusion. The dark-haired woman had moved away from the wall and into the firelight. “I said I’ll do it.”

  “Ardeth!” The shock in Rozokov’s voice confused Yamagata.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, truly looking at her for the first time. Not pretty, not soft, he thought with automatic evaluation, but something else. Something more.

  “I mean if you want to become a vampire, I’ll make you one.”

  “You?” he asked in bewilderment. Her laugh was a brief, bitter bark. Yamagata saw the firelight turn her eyes into sparks and embers. He caught his breath.

  “Who do you think is his other creation?” she asked mockingly. “Well, do you want to do it or not?”

  “Ardeth, you can’t . . .”

  Yamagata watched her swing around as Rozokov rose. “Why not? Do you think you can decide for both of us? Do you forbid me?” There was derision in her voice but underneath it, he heard a pain that seemed strangely familiar. He had only to wonder what had put it there, then she was standing in front of him, her hands on her hips. With terrible fascination, he looked up the length of her body. She was all in black. Against it, the narrow oval of her face and the long column of her throat seemed shockingly white. Images flashed through his mind, a tangle of childhood tales of demons and adult icons of pornography.

  She held out her hand.

  At the door, she looked at him. “Do you have a knife?”

  Chapter 36

  There were bedrooms on the upper floor of the lodge. Ardeth opened a door at random and looked into the deserted darkness. This would do as well as any, she supposed. From the corner of her eye, she saw Yamagata reach for the light switch. Her fingers caught his wrist. His skin was chilly from his expedition outside to obtain a knife from one of his men.

  He resisted automatically and she saw him frown as he realized that her grip was too strong to let him move. After a moment, his muscles relaxed and she released him.

  She closed the door and went to the window, pulling aside the dark curtains. The moon hovered above the trees and she leaned for a moment into the pale silver light. In stories and fairy tales, the moon is always female, she thought, tied to blood and tides and the dark urges of the soul. If it’s true, then she should understand what I’m doing. She should bless it.

  She turned back from the window. Yamagata was standing by the door, beyond the touch of the dappled moonlight, but she could still see him clearly enough. He was handsome, in a strange stony fashion. The sharp cheekbones and wide jaw gave the planes of his fa
ce a sculpted look. His hair was cut very short, almost shaven. In the darkness, she could not see the faint lines that webbed his eyes and the corners of his mouth. He was older than she was, she guessed, but not by more than a decade. He had a face that suited a gangster, she thought, but might just as easily suit the priest of a Zen temple.

  A sense of power swept over her and she shivered with the exhilarating and guilty thrill of the knowledge that she was in complete control. It had been a long time, too long, since she had felt like this.

  This would be her revenge, the most perfect payback that she could have found. She had given up Mark while Rozokov broke all their vows in an anonymous, empty feeding. Her own feeding in Toronto had been just as empty, wrapped in drunken dreams and need. But Yamagata . . . Yamagata was anything but anonymous. Yamagata had a face and a name, she thought with a smile. A face and a name that would be there for eternity, to remind Rozokov that he could not abandon her, could not order her.

  For eternity . . . For a moment, the thought chilled her. She knew nothing about Yamagata beyond what had happened between him and Fujiwara in the room downstairs. He was a dangerous man, he would be a dangerous vampire. Maybe even dangerous to her.

  It was too late for second thoughts, she knew. Besides, Fujiwara had thought he was worthy of being changed. Yamagata had said that he would go away, back to Japan, after the change. He was no threat to her at all.

  She looked at him. He would not give up his blood unknowing. He would not have to be made to forget what she took from him. He wanted what she could give. He had already shown that he would do anything to get it. Anything at all.

  “Take off your clothes,” she said softly. Emotions moved across the rectangular face in faint signs: anger in the twitch of a lip, surprise in the drawn brows, desire in the narrowed eyes.

  “Is that how it is usually done?”

  “That’s how I’m doing it. Take it or leave it.”

  After a moment, he shrugged and began to obey her. His movements were studied and slow. He draped his jacket carefully over the back of a chair, laid his pants and shirt neatly across the seat. His body was taut and muscular, flat-bellied and smooth. Ardeth caught her breath in surprise as he moved into the moonlight. There were tattoos across his shoulders and upper arms, along his hips and buttocks. They seemed to glow, a brocade tapestry of colour and pattern that shifted as he moved. Her fingers suddenly itched to touch them, to follow the lines of ink across his tawny skin.

  Yamagata stood looking at her, seeming as self-possessed as he had fully dressed. Ardeth stepped closer and put her hand on his chest, just between the bottom sweep of the tattoo and the circle of his nipple. Beneath her palm, she could feel his heart thudding, betraying all the emotion he would not show in his face or stance.

  She smiled and let her fingers slid up, ivory lines crossing into the dark pattern of the tattoo. The skin felt no different there, she realized with surprise. “And now?” he asked. His voice was level but his flesh was burning under her hand.

  “You’re sorry it’s me, aren’t you? You wish it was Fujiwara.” His face turned, seeking the shadow.

  “You are not Fujiwara,” he said at last, which was no real answer at all. Ardeth felt a flash of sympathy, even pity for him. He had wanted Fujiwara to initiate him, as a father might bring his son into manhood through some solemn tribal ritual. Instead he was alone with a woman who had turned all his expectations into useless speculation and left him with no guide, even imagined, to follow. A woman who was using him for her own revenge. We both have dark urges, she thought, but mine are darker than you know.

  “No. But that has some advantages.” She leaned closer, her hand moving behind his neck. He kept his face turned away and she bent her head to put her lips against the pulse in his throat. She felt his muscles tighten and she laughed. “Don’t worry. It won’t happen yet.”

  “What will?”

  “You know,” she whispered as she felt another muscle tense and pulse against her thigh. “You know how this part goes.” Yamagata stood still for another moment then moved. One arm wrapped around her body and pulled her hard against him, the other caught her hair and held her mouth still for a kiss that almost bruised. The deliberate violence of it left her momentarily breathless.

  There were no other words between them as her clothes were scattered on the floor, as they found the bed. As if he had finally sensed the progression this unexpected initiation must take, Yamagata paid court to her, performing the ritual of worship with hands and mouth. He did it well enough that thoughts of Mark and Rozokov and vengeance slid away beneath the tides of pleasure.

  At last, Ardeth pulled his mouth from hers and whispered, “Get the knife.” He retrieved the switchblade from his suit and returned to kneel in front of her as she sat on the edge of the bed. He opened the blade with ritual precision and handed it to her.

  Ardeth looked at the silver spike gleaming in her hand. She knew that it would do her no permanent damage, would not even hurt for long. Still, something inside her cringed, begging her to back out now while she still could.

  She took a quick breath and set the blade against the skin above the curve of her breast. A short stroke and it was done. She felt nothing at first, then the beginnings of the sharp, burning sting. She glanced down and saw the line of blood etched across her skin like a crude tattoo. She looked at Yamagata, who was staring at the wound in fearful fascination.

  When she opened her arms, he knelt up into her embrace and put his lips over the bloody gash. Sliding her fingers through the short, stiff brush of hair, feeling the curves of his skull beneath her palms, she closed her eyes.

  Ardeth felt the suction as he drew the blood into his mouth. She hadn’t experienced anything like it since the nights in the asylum when Rozokov had drunk from her wrist, her inner arm, and, the last time, her throat. For once, the memory did not bring her pain. For a few long, delirious moments, she felt nothing but pleasure, an expansive, generous bliss that smoothed away past scars and soothed the ragged edges of her unhappiness.

  Yamagata made a soft sound in the back of his throat and his hands shifted, tightening on her waist. Ardeth felt her own hungers surge inside her again. It seemed like a long time since she had fed. He clenched her fingers in Yamagata’s hair and pulled his mouth away from her skin. He opened his eyes and stared up at her, dazed, until she kissed the blood from his lips.

  The bed creaked beneath them as she drew him up onto the cool expanse of the coverlet and tumbled him to lie beneath her. She paid him back for the pleasure he had given her and indulged her own desires, tracing the paths of the tattoos across his skin, trying to see if the red tasted different from the green, the blue from the black.

  When she lowered herself onto him, she realized she had missed this too, this penetration that fed its own set of hungers. For a while, the satisfaction of that need was so sweet it made her forget all the others.

  The beat of his heart under her hand brought her back. She could feel the heat of the blood moving beneath his skin. The scent of it drew her down, led her mouth to the vein waiting beneath the curve of his jaw.

  Then his blood was on her tongue and sliding its intoxicating way down her throat.

  Yamagata groaned. His hands clenched on her shoulders, trying to push her away even as his hips rose to keep them joined together. Ardeth crouched over him, eyes closed, mouth pressed to the sweet spring of his throat. This time she didn’t have to stop, she realized with a wild thrill, this time she could just keep on until she had taken it all.

  Something struck her throat, stunning her for a moment. Sparks scattered in front of her eyes and when they cleared, she was sprawled backwards on the bed. Yamagata was pressed against the headboard, hand still formed in the sharp spade of readiness for a martial arts blow.

  He hit me, she thought in disbelief, her hand going to her neck. The sharp gleam of the knife flashed through her mind as she dr
ew her fingers away and stared at them, expecting to see blood. They were unstained. He hadn’t used the knife then, just his hand.

  She looked back at Yamagata’s flushed, sweat-streaked face. There was no mask now, no composed structure of forbidding cheekbones and expressionless mouth. There was fear painted there, and desperation, and regret.

  I wonder what’s painted on mine? Ardeth wondered. If I could see myself, would I know what I feel? Because I don’t have any idea.

  Yamagata’s hand lost its rigid shape and reached for her. “Forgive me. I panicked. I forgot. . . . Forgive me and finish. I won’t forget again.”

  As if we could finish, she thought with absurd humour, noticing that his erection was gone. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and took a long, shaky breath, realizing suddenly that her hungers, both of them, had died. “If you really wanted it, you wouldn’t have panicked,” she said slowly. “It’s over.”

  He caught her arm as she swung her feet onto the floor. “No. I want it. I want it. You must do it.” She started to shake her head but he pulled her back down onto the bed and kissed her desperately, his hands moving with harsh fervour over her body.

  Something flickered inside her, a ghost of desire and need, then faded away. She extricated herself from his embrace and stood up. “No.” She stepped away and bent down to retrieve her shirt.

  “Please. I beg you.” His voice was anguished and, when she looked up, she saw him kneeling on the floor beside the bed. He bent his head. “I beg you.” There was such despair in the words that she felt sorry for him, almost went to comfort him, drawn as if it was not just physical intimacy they had shared. She caught herself after a single step.

  “No.” She forced the chill into her voice, because she knew suddenly that was what he needed. Not comfort, no pity, but a will stronger than his own, to impose a truth he was not able to face. “If you’d wanted it, you wouldn’t have fought. I know. Because I didn’t fight.”