Blood and Chrysanthemums (2 page)

The stars, wrapped in the gauzy veils of the nebula, burned through the glass. Dimitri Rozokov caught his breath and shifted his fingers slightly, adjusting the lens that brought the brilliant vision into even sharper focus. Copernicus might have sold his soul for this sight; Galileo might have recanted if they had promised him an instrument this fine. God knew, he had lost his own mortality for the promise of a knowledge less fantastic than this, for a science less full of wonder. His eyes traced the filaments of gas between the stars.

How far away was it? Reluctantly, he lifted his gaze to flip through the book resting on the table by the telescope. Seven million light years from the Earth. For a moment, his mind refused to fathom the number, struggling to fit it back into a universe discovered with Copernicus and last studied when men believed there was life on Mars and there were only eight planets in the solar system.

Seven million light years. And there were nebula upon nebula, galaxy upon galaxy beyond that, well beyond the range of this telescope, visible only from the great observatories in South America. And beyond the grasp of those lenses, ranks of stars and systems and galaxies fading away into eternity.

And the world reckoned that he was an impossible thing. Rozokov smiled and put his eyes back against the lens, then swore softly when he discovered a cloud had drifted over the view. He contemplated moving the telescope but after a glance at the sky decided that the cloud would be moving on in a few moments and settled back in the chair. Until he had seen the night sky for the first time through the telescope, he had not realized how much he had missed the stars in Toronto, where the city lights kept out all but the brightest. He had not known how much he needed them.

On clear nights, there could be a dozen people waiting to glimpse the stars, but they thinned out as midnight came and went and by the usual time of Rozokov’s arrival the observatory was often deserted. At first, the opening of the shed’s roof had made him nervous, but the inhabitants of the house seemed to be accustomed to the sound and no lights ever went on, no one ever came to join his solitary contemplation of the night. Once or twice Ardeth had come with him, but she was a child of a different scholarship, weaned on television documentaries about the big bang, and the view did not intrigue her for long.

Thinking of Ardeth, he frowned. He understood her current passion for climbing; he had engaged in his own forms of recklessness after his rebirth. She would tire of it sooner or later, no doubt, but he should not begrudge her her enthusiasms.

She had an eternity in which to experiment with anything she chose. It was when she ceased to want to change that he should become concerned.

It gave her something to do, just as this place gave him a way to occupy his time. There were other reasons she was doing it, he knew just as there were other reasons he came here. He closed his eyes, shutting out the moon. She is escaping into it, he acknowledged, just as you are escaping into the bright mystery of the stars.

A month ago, he believed that all the escapes had been made, at least for a while. A century and a half earlier, he had escaped from Paris and the fire that had destroyed his reckless vampire companion Jean-Pierre, and Roxanne, their mortal servant and sometime lover. Victorian Toronto had been his safe haven for almost thirty years when the eccentric millionaire Ambrose Dale had discovered his existence. He had escaped that threat as well, concealing himself in a specially created shelter within the walls of a warehouse. Hidden away, he induced the deep sleep that was the closest to death he could now come. A rest of twenty years had been his plan, long enough for the aging Ambrose to die. When he awoke, almost a hundred years had passed and he found himself the captive of Ambrose Dale’s descendant.

For a moment, the hands resting in his lap tensed, his fingers curling into claws. Images of his captivity seemed to flicker on the dark curves of his lowered lids. The slow swing of the bare light bulb outside his cell in the abandoned asylum, the chafe of the iron chain around his ankle, the all-encompassing pain his captors could summon with their strange device, the ultrasound. There were things they made him do, unknown rituals that seemed to be enacted in a shadow-world quite apart from the one that he inhabited. It was enough for him that their obscure rites all ended the same way—with the blood that seemed his only reality. He had escaped then as well, into the madness and hunger that ruled inside the circle of his skull.

Then Ardeth had come. Trapped by fate into the same webs that had entangled him, she had not been the first warm blood-source that had occupied the cell beside him. But she was the only one who spoke to him, told him stories in the long nights to keep her own fear at bay. She was the only one who said his name. As he drank from her wrist or the delicate curve of her inner arm, it seemed as if he drew in sanity as well as life. He recognized the obscenities in which they had forced him to participate, the draining of his victim as the climax to the secret pornographic films they made to ensure their own fortunes. He realized that he had only one chance at escape from this hell and that Ardeth was the key.

Somehow he had kept it from her until the moment that she had acknowledged that her own death was inevitable. Until she saw for herself their only means of deliverance. He gave her blood from his wrist but she had given him more: her kiss, her touch and finally, despite the bars between them, her throat.

She had returned the next night from her grave in the woods. They had both surrendered to madness then, he acknowledged. The slaughter of their captors was necessary, but neither of them thought of survival as they did what they must. They had thought only of revenge.

So another escape was made. He regained some semblance of virtue; he sent Ardeth away, knowing that the power behind their captors was seeking only him. In their separate solitudes, they walked some of the same streets. He hid in the guise of a street person and gathered knowledge of the new world into which he had awakened. Ardeth, out of her own perverse logic, her own old wounds, remade herself into the beautiful, dangerous vampire seductress of the world’s dark dreams.

At last the forces of Ambrose Dale’s business empire—Havendale—now headed by his mad descendent Althea, gathered them in again, dragging Ardeth’s sister, Sara, and her friend Mickey into the maelstrom as well. Dale planned to make laboratory specimens of them, to have her captive scientists slice the secrets of immortality from their undead bodies. We escaped that too, he reminded himself, forcing himself to remember the moments that he listened to the dying Althea try to buy both eternity and immeasurable power, to feel again the heat of her skin, the roughness of her hair as he put his hands on her head and snapped her neck.

He was more than five hundred years old. He had faced a thousand dangers in his lifetime: torture, hunger, floods, plagues, fire. He had survived them all. Surely here, in this quiet place, beneath this sky of wonders, there was nothing that he needed to escape.

Nothing external, he acknowledged. Those other questions, the ones you carry inside, the ones you divert with science and Ardeth denies with physical challenge, cannot be eluded forever.

He opened his eyes. The clouds were gone, at least for the moment. He leaned forward and found the nebula again. For tonight, its mysteries were the only ones that he was prepared to contemplate.

It was just past seven. . . . and time for the dose of caffeine he’d need to make it through till closing. Mark Frye paused by the cash register to ask Kellie if she wanted him to bring her anything, then left Domano Sports, heading for one of the five coffee shops that had sprung up in the last year. They were part of the increasing gentrification of the town that had rendered the main street almost unrecognizable as the one he had driven his battered used car along for the first time ten years ago. He would be quite happy if the Ralph Laurens and Club Monacos went back where they came from. . . . but the coffee shops could stay. Cappuccino was rapidly becoming a necessity of life, not a luxury.

It was the enduring paradox of living in a tourist town; tourists paid the bills and spoiled the ambience, profit supported his habits and led to the increasing commercialization and sometimes ugly development. Because the town was inside a national park, growth was regulated. . . . but where there was money, or even the smell of money, there was also a way. Someone could always think of reasons the town needed more hotel rooms, more golf courses, more malls. One person’s livelihood destroyed another person’s vision of the town, and which side of the line you were on often depended on whether it was your livelihood in question or not.

Something across the street caught his attention, a flash of red against the store windows, a blur of darkness where there should only have been light. Attention dragged from the irresolvable question of the future, he looked across the street and saw her. It was the woman from the climbing wall. . . . Ardeth Alexander. He matched her pace, watching her.

On the street, she stood out even more than she had at the wall.

Everything about her seemed to be black: low boots, leggings, short skirt, loose jacket. Her only concession to the prevailing fashion in Banff was a bright red polar fleece top beneath the jacket. The breeze stirred the line of her hair and a red stone flashed in her ear.

He remembered looking down into wide brown eyes.

She turned down the alleyway and headed for the door of Snow Rats, a small shop as well known for its tasteless and outrageous T-shirts as for its snowboarding and ski equipment.

He remembered the flush across her pale cheeks as she hauled herself up by one impossibly slender arm.

The smell of coffee wafted through a suddenly opened door and reminded him why he had come.

He hovered on the sidewalk, balancing the promise of coffee and a break from work and the memory of her fingers in his. Jesus, Frye, for a guy who likes risks, you sure are a coward, he mocked himself. How long has it been since you met a woman halfway as interesting as that one? The coffee will be here tomorrow. She might not be. What have you got to lose?

He ran across the road before he could answer that question.

Snow Rats was cramped and loud, metal or thrash or whatever the latest popular noise was called was pounding from the stereo. Mark eased his way in and saw her immediately, squeezed in between a rack of skis and the wall of T-shirts. She was working her way through the shirts, head bent, hair falling like shadows around her cheeks.

“Hey, Mark,” a voice hailed from his left, and he looked over to see the clerk leaning on the counter looking at him. “Steve,” he acknowledged, suddenly embarrassed, and noticed almost absently that Steve had cut his long, blond dreadlocks and acquired a pierced nose since the last time he’d seen him.

“In here checking out the competition?” Steve asked, though their stores were hardly genuine rivals. Snow Rats’ adolescent snowboarders didn’t venture into Domano’s main-street store and Domano’s well-heeled patrons tended to be looking for expensive equipment and the clothes that suggested they knew what to do with it, whether they did or not.

“Been out yet?” Mark asked, moving over to look at the rack of snowboards, Ardeth a dark blur at the edge of his vision.

“Couple of times on the snowpatch up on Norquay. You?”

“Not yet.” The bell over the door rang and two young men tumbled in, talking enthusiastically. To Mark’s relief, Steve seemed to know them and before long he was involved in showing them the latest snowboards. Mark sauntered casually back to the other side of the store and looked at the skis.

Ardeth had a T-shirt draped over her arm and was holding another up contemplatively. Mark shifted sideways a little to see the slogan: “Fear not—you can only die once.”

“Nice sentiment,” he said and she glanced up sharply, eyes narrower and harder than he remembered. “I’m Mark Frye. We met the other night at the gym.” She seemed to recognize him then and her face relaxed, eyes losing some of their wary look. Her lower lip was distractingly full and red. He tried very hard not to notice. “Words to live by?” He caught the faint ghost of a smile, a quirk of the lips that seemed both amused and bitter.

“The first part’s a reminder to myself,” she admitted. “And the second part isn’t true.” Then she was sidling by him to the cash register. Steve dragged himself away from the snowboards to take her money and shoot Mark a smirk that suggested he knew exactly what “store inventory” Mark was really interested in.

Mark managed to feign indifference as Ardeth collected her change, then moved to open the door for her and follow her out. She gave him a brief smile of thanks but didn’t seem inclined to do any more as they approached the street. Say something, say anything, you idiot, a voice inside him wailed. Before she walks away again.

Then, in a rush of desperate inspiration, it came to him. “I’ve been thinking about your proble. . . . you know, the sun allergy thing.” She paused and looked at him and he could see reluctant curiosity in her gaze. “I’m on a break from work but I’ve got a few minutes. I was just going to get a coffee. Why don’t you come with me and I’ll tell you about it.”

“All right,” she said after a long moment. “Thanks.”

Mark breath a small prayer of relief—and a larger one that whatever god protected mountaineers and fools would help him figure out an answer to her problem before their coffee got cold.

In the end, he was the only one with coffee as they settled into chairs at a corner table. And he had an answer.

“There are some climbs on the other side of Tunnel Mountain. They’re in shadows by four or five o’clock these days and dark by about seven. You could do most of them by the time it got really dark.” Stirred by sudden enthusiasm, he dug a pen out of his jacket pocket, jumped up to beg a sheet of paper from the bemused cashier and began to sketch the mountain. “This is the southwest corner here and over here’s the southeast.” His pen drew the long lump of the mountain and added a few tiny trees on top. “Here at the southwest are the Gonda routes, Le Soulier and Mark One. The Gonda Roof’s an aid route so you probably wouldn’t want to try that one right off. Over here,” his pen settled on the south-east corner, “is Gooseberry. It faces mostly east so it’ll be in shadows by mid-afternoon. It’s a little more complicated.” The other side of the page filled up with lines and scratches designating ledges and roofs, cracks and corners.

“How hard are these climbs?” Ardeth asked, leaning over to peer at the growing map.

“Mostly 5.5 to 5.7.”

“Which means?”

“Moderate.”

“As in moderate chance of killing myself?”

“As in moderately difficult, with very little chance of killing yourself if you do it properly,” he corrected her with a grin.

“And that means?”

“With the right gear. And with someone who knows what they’re doing.”

“Meaning you?” He looked up from the diagrams to meet her eyes.

“If you’d like,” he said, then found himself holding his breath waiting for her answer. Her eyes dropped back to the cryptic scratches.

“Could someone do these by moonlight?” He let out his breath and frowned, thinking back to the times he’d done the routes. The best days had been lazy, sunny mornings, when he hadn’t felt like doing anything more ambitious. He tried to transfer the memory to night and replace the backing heat of the sun with the cool light of the moon.

“It’s possible, especially with a headlamp,” he conceded. “But not recommended.”

“Could they be done solo?”

“Most of them have been done that way at one time or another. By people who know what they’re doing. In daylight,” he added, mistrusting her questions, focusing for the first time on why she might be asking them. She couldn’t be intending to solo the damn thing by moonlight? Except that sounded exactly like what she was intending to do. Christ, Mark, what have you done? If this woman ends up at the bottom of the mountain with a broken back, it’ll be your fault. He hadn’t been thinking about what she might do with the information. Christ, he hadn’t been thinking at all. . . . except about her eyes and her distracting lower lip and the fact that it had been a long time since he’d noticed those things in anyone. Was he so desperate to get laid that he was willing to risk her life?

Before he could absorb the consequences of his impulsive offer, she had folded the map into her purse. She looked at her watch. “I have to go. Thanks for telling me about the climbs.”

“Ardeth. . . . don’t do it alone. I mean it. If you want to go, call me. I don’t care if it’s noon, or four o’clock or two in the morning. Don’t go alone. Promise me.”

Her eyes flickered away and he saw her gathering herself to rise. He reached out, caught her fingers and held tight.

“Promise me.”

He felt her fingers flex beneath his, then his hand was holding only air. He caught a faint glimpse of something that looked like regret in her eyes, and she was gone.

Mark sat still, staring after her, coffee cooling forgotten on the table.

Stupid bastard, he told himself. You had to open your mouth. You had to want to impress her. You had to want her.

It’s not your fault, part of him insisted. She’s an adult, after all. She can make her own decisions. And she could have found those routes in any guidebook, from anyone. But he had told her. He had been too entranced by her interest, too eager to find some reason to talk to her.

She didn’t have any idea of the risks involved. She thought it would be like the wall, where you’d actually have to work at it to hurt yourself. On real rock, anything could happen. Real rock broke bones, shattered spines. Real rock could kill.

Maybe she wouldn’t go after all. But he didn’t believe that. There was something about her interest, her attention to his instructions, that made him certain that she would try it, sooner or later.

So it is your fault. What are you going to do about it? he challenged himself. What could he do? He didn’t know where she lived or how to get in touch with her. But maybe Sally, who worked for the town, could bend a few government rules and give him a clue. It wasn’t as if Banff was big, for god’s sake. Eventually he would run into her on the street.

If he didn’t . . .

He could always go out to the mountain to look for her. Just a quick hike around the trail to see if she was there. Yeah, he thought in self-mockery, just a quick hike of an hour or two in the middle of the night. But the idea exerted a strange appeal. One miserable trek would probably help assuage his guilt and if he found her. . . . well, she could hardly send him away when he’d done all that out of concern for her.

Of course, even if he did it—for whatever chivalrous or selfish motives—it would probably not be the night she chose, and she’d end up injured, paralyzed of worse.

Mark sighed and took a sip of coffee, barely noticing that it had gone cold. He looked out the window of the shop and, for the first time in years, prayed for rain.