Blood and Chrysanthemums by Nancy Baker Page B

well. I am sadly out of practice at spontaneous poetry.”
    “What language was that?” Lisa asked, all the time knowing the answer.
    “Japanese. The Japanese of my youth,” he answered and took off his sunglasses. There were lines around his eyes, crinkling skin that looked as translucent as rice paper. As she stared into the black depths of his stare, she thought of another pair of eyes, smoke-grey and as old as dying stars. The eyes of a vampire.
    “You see.” The soft voice drew her back to the reality of the hotel bar. “I need nothing from the vampire you met in the Dale laboratory.”
    “You could have made me tell you. Any time you wanted, you could have made me tell you,” she whispered.
    “Of course. But I am an old man and long past the stage where I take pleasure in frightening young women. Now perhaps we should pay the waiter and go someplace more private for the rest of this conversation.”
    She nodded dully, still stunned, and watched while he signalled the waiter and left payment and a generous tip on the table. When he rose, she realized with a start how short he was, barely over five feet tall. Sitting across from her, the dark weight of his presence had been overwhelming. She felt a mad impulse to laugh, but then he held out his hand to her and the urge died. She slid out of the booth without touching him. He didn’t seem offended, merely let his hand drop and led the way out of the bar and into the hotel lobby.
    They didn’t speak while the elevator carried them to his suite. Inside, she glanced around the living room, looking for Akiko, but saw no sign of the young woman. “She is not here,” Fujiwara said.
    “Is she . . . ?” Lisa began, then stopped, remembering the woman walking away through the sunlit garden.
    “No. She is as mortal as you. Please sit down.” He gestured politely to the long couch but there was an air of command about his movement and the sound of one long accustomed to being obeyed in his voice. She sat and felt the first tremor of fear when he settled beside her, instead of in one of the deep armchairs. “Now tell me what truly happened at Havendale.”
    She did, the words coming haltingly at first, then tumbling in a wild rush. For the first time, she told the true end of the story: the kidnapping of Sara Alexander, Ardeth’s surrender, and the arrival of Rozokov and Mickey to rescue them both, her choice to help the vampires escape, her decision to flee alone before the fire started. She was surprised to discover how little the
yakuza
really knew. Fujiwara had never heard of Ardeth—it was only Rozokov they had seen, in the snuff films.
    “How do you know they did not all die in the fire?” Fujiwara asked, when she was done.
    “I know Ardeth’s sister, Sara, didn’t. She’s in a rock band in Toronto and I’ve seen ads for them playing out here. If she didn’t, I don’t think the others did.”
    “And you told the police and Mr. Yamagata none of this?”
    “How could I? They’d either think I was crazy or it would all start over again. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life creating monsters in a secret
yakuza
laboratory.”
    “I do not think Mr. Yamagata had that in mind,” Fujiwara admitted. “And I think, perhaps, that my kind were not the worst monsters in your story.”
    “No,” Lisa acknowledged. “Dimitri Rozokov should have killed me for knowing what he and Ardeth were. He let me live. I owed him for that. And now that you know the truth, what do you intend to do with it?”
    “It has been many years since I have seen one of my blood,” he said softly. “Call it an old man’s sentimentality.”
    “What about My Yamagata?”
    “He won’t trouble you again.” The calm confidence in his voice made her laugh bitterly. Like a father promising a child that there are no monsters in the closet, she thought, and wondered if his promise was worth as much as her father’s had been. “I could do more, if you wish.” She