Blood and Chrysanthemums Read Online Free
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.
Chapter 3
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
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.
Chapter 3
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