Blood and Chrysanthemums (12 page)

Queen Street was quieter than the last time she had been here, when the summer heat had opened the windows of the street-side restaurants and the people lingered in the steamy air. Now they walked with more purpose, hands in pockets, shoulders hunched, as if they could feel the first breath of winter in the breeze.

Ardeth drifted through the crowds on the sidewalk, just as she had done so many nights before. She had donned her hunting clothes: short black skirt, loose black jacket. She was not really hungry, not yet, but, once she had decided to come back here, there was no other way to dress.

The sound of acoustic guitar floated to her from ahead on the sidewalk. A small group of people had paused to watch two musicians play and sing. Ardeth hovered on the edge of the circle for a moment, watching. They weren’t bad. Not as good as Sara, of course, but not bad. One of them was even rather attractive, with the beginnings of a dark scruffy beard and blue eyes that crinkled when he smiled. Even the musicians seemed to have acknowledged the coming winter, she thought, noticing the bright woollen fingerless gloves on his hands.

A shudder of
déjà vu
swept through her suddenly. She had been here before, had stood on the edge of the crowd and watched two men play and sing. One of those men was now dead, killed when the lassitude she had left in him after drinking his blood had pitched him into the path of a speeding car. The other man was now her sister’s lover.

Shivering, Ardeth turned away and continued down the street. Don’t think about that, she told herself savagely. Don’t think about the fact that Mickey doesn’t like you, has never really forgiven you for Rick’s death. It was Sara he risked his life to save, not you.

The street was too full of memories: the corner where she had met her first victim as he was panhandling, the place where Mickey and Rick had played. She forced the images away. She had been happy here, in a way. There had to be places that held no bad memories, place where she had taken pleasure in her rebirth.

There was a burst of laughter from behind her, then she was engulfed in a wave of black. A group of young men and women surged by her, their dark clothes, white faces and dyed hair proclaiming their destination.

She could go there too, she realized. The place they sought held no painful memories, only the promise of shelter and satisfaction in the crowded darkness.

She followed them down the side street, down the flight of stairs that led to the basement club. As the door opened, the thunderous music wrapped around her and pulled her into the funeral gloom. The club was red, smoky haze, lit by crimson lights and candelabra. Everywhere she looked, there were pale face, red mouths, black heads. It was like being surrounded by mirrors.

She had come here several times during the summer of her rebirth. It had been a perfect place to hide and the perfect place to hunt.

Where better to hide than a club full of people who looked even more exotic than she did? Where better to hunt than a crowd of people who wanted to meet vampires . . . or be them?

Ardeth let the music draw her out onto the dance floor. It loosened her spine with its snaky rhythms and blotted out her memories with the rumble of guitars. She closed her eyes and allowed the world to recede into dark smoky space.

When she opened them, there was a young man dancing beside her. He had a spiky crown of bleached hair with skin nearly as white. Rings glinted in his ears, through his nose, in his lip. When he looked at her, she saw that his eyes were like her own, a soft brown that somehow didn’t match his stark image.

She smiled a little and his lips echoed the motion. Two confused, contradictory thoughts flickered through her mind. I wonder what else he has pierced? I wonder if he can be as young as he looks?

It would be so easy. Easier than the boy in the frat house. She had only to let a hint of what she was show through and he would go with her into some sheltering alley. He would welcome her with open arms and, if she let him remember the truth of the experience, come back looking for her.

Then it would be easy to do it again. And again. She looked around the room at the dark mass of people reflected in the mirror. Perhaps this could be her life once more. Perhaps here she could find a place where she belonged.

The music slowed slightly, shifted to a subtly, sensuous rhythm. The boy moving at her side smiled and, at the answering flicker of her eyes, moved closer. He looked as if he wanted to speak to her, but the music was still too loud for that. Ardeth was grateful for the noise, for the anonymous crush of the bodies brushing around them. When he put his hand on her shoulder and leaned closer, shouting something, she shook her head and smiled. Her hips touched his.

He didn’t try to speak again, just let the music melt their bodies closer into the smoky heat. Ardeth felt his hands stroke the line of her spine then drift up to brush the nape of her neck hidden beneath the fall of her hair. She closed her eyes and put her head against his shoulder. His throat was inches from her mouth. Easy, she thought dreamily, watching the slow turn of the skeleton earring that dangled from his ear. It would be so easy. Just a simple movement and I could be feeding, here on the dance floor. Just that one simple movement and I could stay here forever in this sweet dream.

Except that none of it would be real, she realized with icy clarity. All the pale faces and black lined eyes did not reflect her as she had thought with such blind narcissism. It was simply that she had remade herself in the image that they worshipped. They wanted their vampires beautiful and dangerous, exotic and otherworldly. They wanted the tragic aristocrat, the fallen angel, the irresistible sexual force.

Face it, Ardeth thought bitterly, that’s what you wanted too. Oh, it was more than that with you and Dimitri, but that was there was well. You wanted him to be that image and you made yourself over to embody it. And when neither of you could live up to it, when the reality of love and need and straightforward mechanics of night-to-night existence got too much for you, you ran away.
Both
of us ran away, she reminded herself harshly. And he went first.

The boy who held her turned his head and smiled again. For the first time, she noticed his eyeteeth had been filed to sharp points.

A wave of nausea swept over her. The ceiling seemed suddenly too low, too close. The white faces hung around her in the darkness, their painted lips sneering. Disgust, at them, at herself, churned her throat. She pulled away from the boy’s arms and fled from the dance floor, stumbling through the press of people and forcing her way back out into the clean, chilly air.

She leaned for a moment on the wall outside the door, breathing hard. Even this had been tainted now. She could never go back without seeing its falseness and the mocking image of a fictional life she could never lead. Rozokov, let me go, she thought, her anger warping and twisting as it sought a reason or a target. If I could just stop thinking about you, I’d be fine. She forced herself to stand and start walking again, moving blindly back to Queen Street and the dubious shelter of the crowd.

At last, she found herself outside The Gold Rush, staring at Sara’s picture, gazing back at her from the publicity photos. Black Sun was playing inside, or would be in a while. She could go in and watch . . . except that someone might remember her face from Sara’s poster campaign to find her lost sister. Would it matter? She asked herself. You are planning to come back. Why not now?

She didn’t have an answer to that, but still she put on her sunglasses before she went inside to ask Sara. They had agreed on a code, just in case. “Just tell her Chris Lee was by,” Ardeth said, trying hard not to smile at the name Sara had chosen. “If she’s got a minute, I’ll meet her out back.”

The doorman agreed to send the message backstage and Ardeth went around the back door, waiting in the narrow alley until the door opened. The painful
déjà vu
came again. She remembered Mickey stepping out into the alley and telling them that Sara had been kidnapped and the price of her return was her surrender.

But it was Sara herself this time, dressed in torn jeans and band T-shirt, her hair a copper corona around her face. “What are you doing in this neck of the woods? I thought you were returning to the old Ardeth?”

“Just looking around. Maybe I’ll return to the not-so-old Ardeth instead.” The uneasiness in Sara’s voice had sparked a sharpness in her own and there was an uncomfortable silence.

“You going to come in and catch the set?” Sara asked at last. “We’re doing your song—‘Gone Missing.’”

“You still sing that?” Ardeth asked, remembering the last time she had seen Sara play. She had stood in the audience, listening to the lament for a lost sister, her heart torn between anger that her sister had somehow laid claim on her disappearance and sorrow at the realization that Sara missed her, grieved for her.

“Of course. It’ll be on the record when we do one. Didn’t you like it?”

“It’s a good song. Even I could tell that. But I’m not missing anymore.”

“Yes, you are, Ardy,” Sara said softly. “We both know that my big sister is never coming back.”

“Sara . . .” She wanted to go on. She wanted to cry out, I’m here, can’t you see me? Can’t you feel me? But the words would not shape themselves.

“You can still make it to the airport,” her sister repeated. “Akiko said they wouldn’t take off until midnight. I double-checked. It’s only ten now.”

“Why would I want to go back there?”

“Why do you want to stay?” Sara countered. “You’re miserable here.”

“I am not. Things are just taking longer than I thought.”

“Things are taking longer because it isn’t going to work.”

“Sara . . .” The echoes of her own thoughts in her sister’s words turned her voice waspish. She turned her head away, staring at the dark depth of the alley.

“How come you haven’t gone back to school?”

“I’ve been checking things out. I can’t just . . .”

“Yes, you can. If you want to, if you really want to, you can. Face it, Ardeth. You don’t care about public transportation in the 1890s or whatever that stupid Ph.D. topic was, do you?”

“It’s not whether I care about it or not.”

“Yes, it is. Do you care or not?”

“No,” Ardeth admitted after a moment.

“Can you imagine finishing it? Getting a job at the university? Teaching night school?” Sara demanded.

She opened her mouth to reply, to tell her about the plans she had made, the future she had envisioned. But all that surfaced in her mind was a television silently running teenage fantasies as she crouched over a warm, male body. She shook her head slowly.

“Or hanging out here on Queen Street, chasing street kids and vampire wannabes again?” Ardeth thought of the nightclub, the boy’s filled teeth and shook her head again. “That’s not your life any more, Ardy. I’m sorry but it’s not.”

“Then what is?”

“I don’t know. But whatever it is, you won’t find it here. The real world, your real life—they’re back in Banff, with him.”

“I can’t go back, Sara.” She forced the words out past the sudden pain in her throat.

“No,” Sara said softly, moving to lean against the wall beside her. “You can’t go back.”

That’s not what I meant, Ardeth wanted to say, to shout, but there was no way to do it with Sara so close, with her sister’s arm against hers. She closed her eyes and thought about walking back into the tiny apartment, Rozokov looking up from his chair and his book . . . What would happen then? Would his eyes turn cold, his voice to iron as he ordered her away again? Would he kiss her and love her and say her name in the way that made all the barriers inside her mind melts away? Even if he did, would it make any difference in the end?

And if she stayed here . . . could she make herself believe in the fictional future she had spun for herself? Could she make do with the reality of furtive midnight feedings on strangers to whom she was no more than an odd, sickeningly erotic dream? Could she go back and live out a thousand written and celluloid fantasies again?

For a moment, despair swamped her. There seemed to be no path that didn’t promise pain. Then an echo whispered inside her: “He is very old and wishes to meet those of his own kind.”

He is very old, she thought suddenly. Maybe Dimitri is wrong. Maybe we don’t have to be solitary creatures. Maybe somewhere there are vampires who have figured out how to be together. If there is another way to live, if there’s something neither Dimitri nor I can see, maybe Sadamori Fujiwara knows it.

And if he doesn’t? Can I bear to go through this again? Can I bear to hope this other vampire has an answer and then discover that he doesn’t?

Can I bear to stay here and always wonder?

She opened her eyes and looked at her sister. “You just want the apartment back,” she said. For a moment, Sara looked stricken, face flushed with guilt, then she seemed to see resolution in Ardeth’s eyes and she grinned.

“Damn straight.”

THE TALE OF TAMAKATSURA

I was seventeen when my uncle returned from the provinces.

I did not know that my father had taken in his unknown half-brother until several days after his arrival, for I was not living at home, but at the court as lady-in-waiting to the young crown prince’s consort, Princess Masahime.

My father sent me a note to tell me of his brother’s arrival and of the death of his father, the grandfather I had never seen. One of the servants brought it to me as my lady and her entourage took the air on one of the palace’s verandas, carefully screened by bamboo lattice.

The princess was reading and asked me what news had come.

“My father sends me news, my lady. His father, who served in the north, has died and his half-brother has arrived in Heian-kyo.”

“From the provinces?” Yugao, one of the other ladies, asked. “What is your father planning to do with such a man? Surely he will not introduce him at court.”

“I do not know. I suppose it will depend on what my uncle is like.” I looked at the scroll again but saw no clues in my father’s writing. As I rolled it away, I resolved to say sutras for my grandfather, for surely the soul of a man murdered by bandits would need prayers for safe passage out of this world. If his vengeful ghost remained, no doubt it would be the bandits it would pursue, but ghosts were not known for their reasonableness, so it was best to take no chances. That lesson I knew well.

“Not like that dreadful Yugiri, I hope,” Koi said, and I recalled the armoured figure of the general striding through the hallways of the palace, his hat askew, his face dark with beard. Koi flirted with him from behind the safety of her screen then privately laughed at his clumsy poetry and rough writing. The scene that had ensued when she rejected him had been the scandal of the court for at least a day, until the next scandal. Koi still spat at his name but I felt secretly sorry for him. It was not his fault he had not been born with court manners . . . or that he had the misfortune to become infatuated with Koi.

“Perhaps he will be a gentleman,” I ventured and Koi pursed her tiny red lips.

“Tamakatsura has always been an optimist,” Yugao added, with the faintest trace of malice, “despite the tragedies of her life.”

“I have had no tragedies,” I countered, “I grieve for the death of my betrothed but cannot be but grateful that it gave me the chance to serve my lady.” I bowed a little and saw Masahime smile. It was flattery, in part, and she knew it. But we had been friends for many years before her marriage to the prince and I was not displeased to be at the court with her. And, in truth, I was not above flattery if it would make her smile, for her mood had been strained and unhappy. She was nearing the birth of her first child, a child who might one day be emperor, and the burden of it was great for her.

“I heard another tale of Tachibana no Kyoji’s ghost.” Masahime looked at Yugao sharply but the other lady continued. “Tamakatsura does not mind, do you?”

“Not for myself,” I answered truthfully, or nearly so. “But I think it is ill-omened to discuss such things so close to our lady’s time. Tell me later, if you wish.” And so the subject was closed, at least for the time, and I was spared another story of my betrothed’s wraith wandering through the palace grounds.

The object of his return was never spelled out, but I knew that some people believed it was me his ghost sought. There were some who thought I should have pined away after his untimely passage. Even my father seemed to believe so . . . for at least that would have relieved him of concern over how the gossip would affect our family and his chances of ever seeing me safely wed. There were times when I had felt the same, as ashamed as if I had somehow caused the fatal illness that befell Kyoji and doubly shamed for the pain his death caused my father and our house.

But I had not loved Kyoji . . . and could not seem to pine away for him, not matter how I tried.

“Speaking of bandits,” put in Yugao and for a moment we all tried to recall when we had been, “I heard from one of the ladies of the mother of the new priestess of Ise that their mansion was broken into last week.”

“Was it bandits or monks?” Koi asked, for Yugao’s brother was a monk in service at Mount Hiei. Yugao always denied that he would participate in the raids the armed brothers sometimes made on the city . . . but there was many a noble son among their ranks.

“Bandits,” Yugao replied firmly, not rising to Koi’s bait for once.

“Was anyone hurt?” Masahime asked.

“Only a servant or two, I believe. The robbers set fire to one of the storehouses but it was extinguished in time. The family was unharmed, though they lost three chests of silk and many bags of rice.”

“The minister of the army had promised to put a stop to the raids. I heard him swear it to the emperor in audience the other day,” the princess said, as if to reassure us.

The minister of the army was always promising to put a stop to it, I thought privately. Whether he ever would was another thing altogether.

“As long as it does not mean more barbarians like Yugiri at court,” Koi said spitefully. “Generals do not belong in court, where they do not know how to behave. They belong out . . . generalling . . . or whatever it is they do.”

“Enough of such dreary talk,” I put in, seeing Masahime wince as the child stirred inside her. “Lady Fujitsubo’s moon-viewing is tonight. My lady, if you still wish to attend, we should prepare.” So, duly distracted by thoughts of silks and gifts and delicacies, we let the talk of ghosts and bandits drift away like clouds before a spring wind.

The moon-viewing party was held at the Plum Pavilion, the home of Lady Fujitsubo daughter of the ex-empress Sadako. She had invited the ladies of the court, flirtatiously declining to invite the gentlemen, who nonetheless had elected to have their own gathering at Wisteria Court, which shared the gardens of the Plum Pavilion. The lamps from their veranda glowed through the thin veil of trees and male laughter floated to us on the perfumed air, but, since they were not with us, we had no need of screens and so sat in the open air and watched the full moon rise.

There was much rice and wine and more poetry, none of it so impressive that I am troubled to record it. Servants came and went, with scrolls for one lady or another, sent from the gentleman on the far porch. Their poetry was read aloud and then dissected, along with their calligraphy and choice of paper; with a wicked humour that no doubt would have appalled them if they could have heard it. Replies were composed and returned. Some of it was play, the simple flirtation that gave spice to life. Some of it was desire and would end in consummation in the dark rooms of the palace. And some sad lines were lines of love, which would end in pain and loss. Love always did.

Even I received a tribute or two. I guessed who had sent them and declined their invitations with careful words. My reputation was tainted enough as it was, haunted by Kyoji’s ghost, and I dared not risk it further. And in truth I was not tempted by the men whose poems flattered me, for I knew the words meant nothing and were only rituals they enacted to obtain what they briefly desired.

It neared the Hour of the Rat and the gathering showed no signs of disbanding. The Princess Masahime had left some time earlier, attended by Yugao, but I used her welfare as my excuse to bid goodnight to my hostess.

I knew that I should go straightaway to my chambers in the palace, for the night could hold dangers; the ghostly one of my betrothed, the more concrete one of robbers and bandits. But the spring air was so fresh, the moon still so bright and dazzling that I could not bear to return to the quiet darkness of my rooms. So I took one of the well-used paths that led to one of the palace’s ponds, picking my way by the moon’s gleam and hoping that I did not tear the sleeve of my best kimono on the bushes.

At the end of the path, a small jetty had been constructed and I walked out on it, the wooden soles of my sandals sounding very loud in the stillness of the night. I was no more than a short walk from the Plum Pavilion, but, as its veranda faced inward, I heard only a faint whisper of laughter on the breeze. I rested my hands on the railing and looked up at the moon, just beginning to shroud herself in the palest of veils.

And then I knew that I was not alone.

To my surprise, my mind was suddenly very clear, despite my fright. There would be no use in crying out, for I did not think I would be heard, any more than I could hear the moon-viewing party. There was nowhere to run, except into the water. I did not know whether I could drown rather than face dishonour but I resolved to try, if it became necessary.

I turned around slowly, lifting my hand to let my long sleeves veil my face a little.

A man stood at the end of the jetty. I did not know him, thought I could see that his clothes were of the latest courtly style. His face looked very white in the moonlight, his eyes two dark coals that seemed touched with red, as if still holding a core of fire, waiting only for a spark to ignite them.

“Forgive me, my lady.” His voice was quiet, with an old-fashioned accent. “I did not mean to startle you. Do not let me disturb you.” Fine words all . . . but he did not move. I took a step forward but it did not shame him into moving back.

“I was returning from the Plum Pavilion . . . I am expected at the palace.” I took another cautious step.

“I am a stranger here but still, this does not seem to be the way to the palace.” There was amusement in his voice. “But do not let me interrupt you. No doubt you are waiting for someone to escort you.”

“No,” I said before I thought to lie. Better he believed me to be on an assignation than alone, but now it was too late.

“No? So none of the gracious acceptances I heard tonight were yours, then?”

“If you attended the moon-viewing as you seem to claim, you would know that.”

“Perhaps.” His wooden sandals clicked on the jetty and I felt the railing at my back. “But declined invitations are seldom shared and, as I said, I am a stranger here. I do not know whose private viewing I have so rudely interrupted.”

“I am lady-in-waiting to the Princess Masahime.” He was close enough now that I could see his black brows arch a little. In the moonlight, his powdered face seemed to be another moon, glowing and mysterious.

“Do you know the Lady Tamakatsura?” The question made me tremble and look at him harder, to see if he bore any of the signs of a supernatural creature, fearing for one moment that he was my betrothed’s spirit, strangely changed. But he seemed real enough, perilously real.

“Yes,” I breathed at last. “I know her. Why do you ask?”

“I am curious, that is all. I am acquainted with her father.”

“You say you are a stranger here. Is this your first visit to the capital?” I asked, in the secret and unworthy hope that I could wield my own birth as Koi did, as a weapon against the world.

“Not my first. But the first in many years.”

“And do you find it changed?” He looked back then, towards the place the palace lay, behind the dark spires of the trees. After a long moment, he spoke softly.

The plum trees bloom

and the snow is melting away

The cherry blossoms wait

to reflect the moon

The wind blows in the pines

And there is autumn in it.

“Do you find it so sad?” I asked, for there was sorrow in the grave beauty of the poem.

“Yes. The sadness of the blossom just before it falls, the moment just before you see the decay of the bloom.”

“This is Heian-kyo. This is the court of the emperor. How can you say that it is said, that it will fall?”

“Because it will, my lady. The seeds of its downfall have already been planted and grown to ripeness in the world outside these walls. I will not bore you with the details of rice fortunes and falling taxation and unrest and the armies of the Minamoto and Taira growing outside your door. I can only tell you that all things that live must die,” he said bitterly, “or change. Change will come to the city of tranquility and peace.”

“It is true that the city is not as it was,” I conceded. “There are thieves and killers even inside the palace grounds. Houses of the great families have burned or fallen into disrepair from failing fortunes. But surely these are temporary trials.”

“All things must change, my lady,” he repeated softly. “Or die. All blossoms fall, in the end.”

I shivered at the strange sadness in his voice and tried to counter it with lightness in my own. “If you are a soothsayer, my lord, you are a dreary one.”

“True enough. Dreary words for courtship.”

“Is this courtship, my lord?” I asked, though my mouth went dry and I was aware of the black water whispering beneath my feet.

“No. It is not courtship,” he said, his voice low but in no way soft. His hand reached up to grasp mine, which I still held up to my face. He brushed aside the silk of my sleeves and his fingers touched my wrist. I wanted to flee, to throw myself past him along the jetty or fling myself over the rail into the waiting water, but I could not move.

The stranger lifted my wrist to his lips and kissed it. His touch was chill; lips and tongue like cool silk, teeth like icy needles. My body shivered and trembled as if with cold but inside of me something melted and burned. I did not scream. I did not flee.