Free Blood and Chrysanthemums by Nancy Baker Page A

summer. It’ll be positively boring after your stint in the city.”
    “A little boredom I can handle, believe me.”
    The man laughed and checked his watch. “Well, I’ve got rounds. You coming in?”
    “No. I think I’ll sit out here for a few minutes. The air might clear my head.”
    After the man disappeared back into the building, Leigh shifted herself to sit on top of the picnic table along one edge of the patio, her feet propped up on the bench. After a moment, she glanced around with contrived casualness, then dug into her pocket. Rozokov saw a match flare in her hand then resolve into the dim glow of a cigarette tip, glowing like a distant star. Almost unwillingly, he found himself studying her.
    Her hair was brown, bound into an untidy knot at the back of her head. Her face was full of bony angles, giving her a look of sharp strength that was now edged with weariness. Her hunched posture hid a body that was like her face, thin and strong. She took a slow drag on the cigarette and blew smoke at the cloud-shrouded moon.
    The blood must be on her hospital clothing, Rozokov guessed. Or else the constant proximity to it had caused it to permeate her very skin, lending her a sweet perfume only detectable by those for whom it was life itself.
    You should go now, he told himself. The night is waiting. There are elk beyond the town lights. They are enough.
    He was lying, just as surely as Ardeth had. He remembered her angry accusations, the answers he did not have. He did not know which he hated more—her questions or his own indecisiveness. She seemed to have forgotten that
she
was the child of this century, not he. She relied on him for solutions as if she had no knowledge of her own, as if she had conveniently suspended the intellect and skills which she possessed.
    Perhaps he should act. Perhaps that would break the spell of inertia which seemed to have overcome him. He would make a decision, as Ardeth had urged him. If it was not the sort she had anticipated . . . well, that was hardly his fault.
    It did not take an eternity to break most oaths. Especially the one that had never been spoken.
    He backed away a step, rested his back against the tree trunk that was waiting there and reached out with his mind.
    Leigh lowered her head, cocked it slightly. Slowly, her body unfolded, slipping from the table and moving across the patio, the cigarette dropping forgotten from her fingers. Rozokov saw her mouth open then close over whatever words she had intended.
    The brush rustled around her. Twigs snapped beneath her feet. As she saw him, her eyes widened. He saw the fear there but his gaze quelled it, lulled it within a grey haze. She moved past him and stopped at the fence.
    Close to her, the scent of other blood that had drawn him was drowned out by the heat of her own. He put his hands on her shoulders and felt them tense and tremble.
    “Who are you?” she whispered, her voice vague and dreamy.
    “No one. A dream. A nightmare.”
    “I have to go. . . .”
    “Not yet.” One hand tangled in the knot of her hair to pull her head back and to the side. The other slid down her body, over her breasts, to wrap her waist and pull her tight against him. He thought that he could feel her heart, hammering within its cage of flesh and bone. “You have sworn to preserve life,” he said softly against her ear. “Preserve mine.”
    She made a soft sound when his teeth found her vein and she reached out to hold the fence, steadying herself. He pushed her harder against it, holding her still even as her hips moved against his. His hands closed over hers, wrapping hard around the wire.
    When he was done, he whispered the rituals of forgetfulness against her ear and let her go. He saw her sag against the fence for a moment, and the first tendrils of remorse worked their way through the sweet haze her blood had left. Rozokov took her hand. Her fingers were long and thin, scored now with the marks of the wire fencing. He