Thirst No. 2 (12 page)

I am talking too fast for Paula. "Is this the reason you took me to this hospital?"

"Yes. They thought you were going to the local one. But they know you've given birth to a baby somewhere in this city. They're clever—they'll check all the hospitals in the city to see where you're registered. Eventually they'll locate you."

"You spoke of a young woman. Who is the other person?"

I am stricken with grief. "My boyfriend."

"Ray?"

"Yes. But he's not the Ray I once knew." I lower my head. "I can't talk about him now. It is the girl who's the danger—she's only twenty. Her name is Kalika. Please believe me when I tell you there is literally no one who can stop her when she sets her mind on something."

"But how can she be so powerful?" Paula protests.

I stare at her. "She was just born that way. You see, she wasn't born under normal circumstances. Like your son, there's a mystery surrounding her birth, her conception even."

"Tell me about it."

"I can't. You wouldn't believe me if I did."

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"But I would. You believed me."

"Only because I have gone through strange times in my life. But Kalika transcends anything I've ever encountered. Her psyche
burns
through all obstacles. She could be on her way here now. I swear to you, if she gets here before you get away, your child will die."

Paula doesn't protest. She is strangely silent. "I was warned," she says.

It is my turn to be stunned. "Who warned you?"

"It came in a dream."

"But you said you didn't remember any of your dreams."

"I remember this one. I was standing on a wide field and this old man with white hair and a crooked grin walked up to me and said something that didn't make sense. Until right now."

"What was it?" I ask.

"He said, 'Herod was an evil king who didn't get what he wanted. But he knew where the danger lay.' Then the old man paused and asked me, 'Do you know where the danger lies, Paula?'" She stops and looks once more at her child, we both look at him. "It was an odd dream."

"Yes." My heart is heavy with anxiety. "Will you leave?”

Paula nods. "Yes. I trust you. But why can't I tell you where I'm going?"

"This girl, this Kalika—I fear she could rip the information from my mind."

Paula cringes. "But I must have a way to get hold of you."

"I will give you a special number. You call it a month from now and leave your name and number. But don't tell me where you are. Wait until you talk to me—until you are certain it is me—to tell me that. That is very important."

Paula is worried for me. "Are you in danger?"

I lean back and momentarily dose my eyes. My greatest task is still before me and I am exhausted. If only I had my old powers, If —the most annoying word in the English language.

But what if I was powerful again?

Powerful as a vampire?

Seymour would not have to die, nor would I.

But my daughter would die. Perhaps.

"Don't worry, I have a protector," I tell Paula. "This wonderful man I once met—he promised to protect me if I did what he said. And he was someone capable of keeping his promises."

Of course I don't tell her that I have disobeyed Krishna many times.

Arturo's alchemy of transformation works by having the substance of what one wishes to become vibrate at a high level in one's aura. To become human, I took Seymour's blood and placed it—above my head—in a clear vial the sun shone through while I lay on a

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) copper plate surrounded by specially arranged magnets and crystals. Only Arturo knew how to use these tools fully. The New Age is still centuries behind his knowledge. The proponents of New Age mysticism hold quartz crystals or amethysts and relax some, but Arturo could use these minerals to attain enlightenment, or even immortality. His only weakness was that he strove for immortality with a vampire for a girlfriend. He was a priest and erroneously thought I could give him the equivalent of the blood of Jesus.

His blasphemy was his sin, and his eventual ruin. He tried to use me, betrayed me. But he is dead now and I mourn him.

To become a vampire again, I need a source of vampire blood.

I lied to Seymour, naturally. There is one possible source—Yaksha. Yet I have sunk Yaksha's body in the sea and will never be able to locate it, not without the powers of a vampire. Still, there is one other possible source of his blood, besides that in his body.

Eddie Fender kept Yaksha captive in an ice-cream truck for several weeks, kept him cold and weak. It was from this very ice-cream truck that I eventually rescued Yaksha, who had no legs and hardly any lower torso. He bled in that truck and his blood must still be there, frozen and preserved.

But that truck was parked on the street in the vicinity of a warehouse I burned down to kill Eddie and his crew of vampires. That was approximately two months ago. The chances that the truck will still be there are slim. The police will almost certainly have confiscated it, towed it off to some forsaken lot. Yet I hurry to the dirty street in the poor part of town on the off chance that I can uncover a bloody Popsicle. Desperate people do desperate things.

And the ice truck is still there. Wow.

A homeless man with white hair and a grimy face sits in his rags near the driver's door. He has a shopping cart loaded with aluminum cans and blankets that look as if they were woven during the Depression. He is thin and bent but he looks up at me with bright eyes as I approach. He sits on the curb, nursing a small carton of milk. I immediately reach for my money. It is his lucky night. I will give him a hundred and tell him to hit the road. But something in his voice gives me reason to pause. His greeting is peculiar.

"You look very nice tonight," he says. "But I know you're in a hurry."

I stand above him and glance around. There is no one visible, but it is the middle of the night and this ghetto is a wonderful place to get raped or killed. Last time I was here I had to rough up a couple of cops. They thought I was a hooker, and one of them wanted to arrest me. I study the homeless man.

"How do you know I'm in a hurry?" I ask.

He grins and his smile is much brighter than I would have anticipated. Bright like his eyes even though he is covered in dirt.

"I know a few things," he says. "You want this truck I suppose. I've been guarding it for you."

I laugh softly. "I appreciate that. I have a horrible craving for an ice-cream bar right now."

He nods. "The refrigerator unit still works. I've kept it serviced."

I'm impressed. "You're handy with tools?"

"I have fixed a thing or two in my day." He offers me his hand. "Please help me up. My bones are old and sore, and I have been waiting here for you for such a long time."

I help him—I don't mind a little dirt. "How long have you been here?"

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He brushes himself off, but ends up making a worse mess of his torn clothes. He blinks at my question as if I have confused him, although he does not smell of alcohol. He finishes his carton of milk and sets the empty container in his shopping cart.

"I don't rightly know," he says finally. "I think I've been here since you were last here."

I pause, feeling an odd sensation coursing through my body. But I dismiss it. I have too much on my mind to waste precious minutes with an old man in the middle of the night.

"I haven't been here in a couple of months," I say, reaching in my pocket. "Look, can I give you ..."

"Then I must have been here that long," he interrupts. "I knew you'd come back."

I stop with my hand wrapped around a few twenties. "I don't know what you're talking about," I say quietly.

He grins a crooked grin. "I don't need your money." He turns and shuttles up the street.

"You do what you have to do. No one can blame you for not trying hard."

I stare at him as he fades into the night.

Such a strange old guy. He left his shopping cart behind.

I wonder what his name was.

The rear compartment of the truck is locked, but I break it with a loose brick. Actually, I could have sworn that I broke the lock the last time I entered it. The interior is ice cold as I squeeze inside, a flashlight in my hand.

Just inside the door is a puddle of frozen blood.

I slip a nail under it and pull up the whole red wafer at once. Shining my flashlight through the frosted glass, I feel a surge of tremendous power. I hold in my hands immortality, and I feel as if Krishna saved this blood just so I'd find it. Back in my own car, I break the ice into small pieces and let them melt in a stainless-steel thermos.

Now I must return to Las Vegas. If it were not the middle of the night, I would fly, but driving it will have to be—at least four hours of pushing the speed limit. Also, I have to worry that Arturo's house is being watched by government agents. From reading the papers, I know the dust has not settled from the nuclear explosion in the desert. They must think I am dead, but will not assume that I am. There is an important difference.

The rays of the sun will power my transformation. What is crucial is that I have most of the day to complete the transformation back to becoming a vampire, if it is possible. There is a chance I will end up like Ralphe, a bloodthirsty ghoul. But I have no choice except to risk the alchemist's ancient experiment. To give up my hard-sought humanity will be bitter, yet I have to admit a part of me craves my old power. It will be nice to confront my daughter one on one and not tremble in my shoes.

Yet I intend to tremble, especially if I am a vampire.

She will not know until too late who it is she faces.

The drive to Las Vegas is more pleasant than I anticipated. There is something about roaring along a dark empty road that relaxes me. Keeping an eye out for police, I set the cruise control at an even eighty. It seems only a short while before the horizon begins to glow with the polluted lake of colored neon that is the gambling capital of the world. I will

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) roll the red dice today, I think, and pray for a successful combination of DNA. The eastern sky is already warm with light. The sun will rise soon.

I park a block down the street from Arturo's house and scan the area for FBI agents, cops, or army personnel. But the place appears quiet, forgotten in the fallout of the incinerated army base. Slipping over Arturo's back fence, I am through an open window and into the house in less than a minute. An eight-and-a-half-by-eleven photograph stands in a cheap frame on the kitchen table—Arturo and me, taken one night while we were out on the Strip together. When I believed he was a down-on-his-luck government employee and he thought I was a sucker. The picture gives me reason to pause. I pick it up and study Arturo's features. They remind me so much of someone I know.

"You are Kalika's father," I whisper, stunned.

Everything makes sense in an instant. Vampires are sterile, with one another, with human partners. But Arturo was neither a vampire nor a human. He was a hybrid, forged in the Middle Ages, a combination of the two, and I slept with him in a Las Vegas hotel room just before he betrayed me to the government. I was pregnant from before the transformation. In other words, I was still a vampire when Kalika was conceived. Yet she is partially human, and that no doubt explains her lack of sensitivity to the sun. She is the result of a queer toss of the genetic dice, and perhaps that's what it took for a soul of her dark origin to incarnate on earth.

And I assumed Ray was her father.

I'm aware of him at my back even before he speaks.

"I'm surprised you didn't guess earlier," he says.

I turn, still holding the photograph. Ray remains hidden in the shadows, appropriately enough. It is not just Kalika's birth that I suddenly understand. But my new insights, which are not entirely clear to me yet, are ill-defined ghosts that refuse to enter the living body of logical reason. Despair and denial engulf me.

I feel as if I stand in a steaming graveyard with a tombstone at my back. The death date of the corpse is carved in the future, the name scribbled in blood that will never dry. I know the truth but refuse to look at it.

And there is a mirror on this tombstone.

Covered with a faint film of black dust.

"You could have told me," I say.

"I could only tell you what you wanted to hear."

The weakness of grief spreads through my limbs. Ray has become a travesty to me, someone I cannot bear to look at, yet I don't want him to go away. He is all I have left.

The graveyard in my mind is littered with hidden mines. I fear that if I move or speak to him, one might explode and toss a skeleton in my lap.

"How did you get here?" I ask.

"You brought me here."

"Does Kalika know I'm here?"

"I don't think so. But she might ."

"You didn't tell her?"

"No."

Putting down the photograph, I take a moment to collect myself. My imagined graveyard falls away beneath me as the tombstone collapses. Yet I am forced to remain standing in

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) this house where Arturo once lived.

"Can I ask you a question?" I say finally.

He remains in the shadows. "Don't ask anything you don't want answered."

"But I do want answers."

He shakes his head. "Few really want the complete truth. It doesn't matter if you're a vampire or a human. The truth is overrated, and too often painful." He adds, "Let it be, Sita."

There is emotion in my voice. "I need to know just one thing."

"No," he warns me. "Don't do this to yourself."

"Just one little thing. I understand how you found me in Las Vegas. You explained that and it made sense to me, but you never explained how you picked up my trail again in Los Angeles. While I was driving here, you should have been in the basement in this house, changing back into a human."

"It was dark that night," he says.

His answer confuses me. "It's dark every night."

"It would have been dark in the basement."

The confusion passes. "You need the sun to power the alchemy."

"Yes."

"You must still be a vampire?"

"No."

"You must have followed us to L.A.?"

"No."

"Who are you? What did Eddie's blood do to you?"

"Nothing. Eddie's blood never touched me."

"But you said—"

"I lied," he interrupts. "You asked me to lie to you. You do not want the truth. You swear to yourself that you do but you swear at the altar of false gods. Let it be, Sita. We can leave this place together. It can be as it once was between us, if you will just let it. It is all up to you."

"You are not ready to hear."

"When will I be ready to hear?'

"Soon."

"You know this?"

"I know many things, Mother."

"Why is it all up to me?" I ask. "You're as responsible for what happened to us as I am."

"No."

"Stop saying no! Stop saying yes! Explain yourself!"

He is a long time answering. "What do you want me to say?"

I place my hands on the sides of my head. "Just tell me who you are. Why you are not like the old Ray. How you found me in the coffee shop." I feel so weak. "Why you knocked at my door."

"When did I knock at your door?"

"Here." I point. "You knocked at that door right there. You said it was you."

"When did I knock at your door?" he repeats.

Of course I have not answered his question. He is asking about time, and I am talking

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) about place. I have to force my next words into the air where they can be heard and understood.

"You appeared right after I changed into a human," I say.

"Yes."

"You're saying that's a remarkable coincidence."

"I am saying you should stop now."

I nod to myself, speak to myself. "You are saying the two events are related; the transformation and your reappearance. That you only reentered my life because I had become human."

"Close."

I pause. "What am I missing?"

"Everything."

"But you just said I was close!"

"When you roll the dice, close does not count. You either win or you lose."

"What did I lose when you returned?"

"What
is not important.
Why
is all that matters."

"Now listen to my song. It dispels all illusions... When you feel lost remember me, and
you will see that the things you desire most are the very things that bring you the greatest
sorrow."

"I have always desired two things," I say, remembering the Lord's words. "For five thousand years I have desired them. They were the two things that were taken from me the night Yaksha came for me and made me a vampire. The night he stole my daughter and husband. I never saw either of them again."

Ray is sympathetic. "I know."

I hang my head and it is now me who stands in shadows. "But when you came into my life I felt as if Rama had been returned to me. And when I became human and thought I was pregnant with your baby, I felt as if Krishna had returned Lalita to me." There is a tear on my face, maybe two, and I have to stop and take a deep breath. "But it didn't work that way. The things I craved so long were my greatest illusions. And they have brought me the greatest sorrow."

"Yes."

I lift my head and stare at him.

"They are not real," I say.

"Yes."

"As a vampire, I could see through my illusions, and that kept me going all these years, but as a human I couldn't see what was real and what wasn't. I was too weak."

"You create what you want. You always have. If you don't like it, you can always leave."

He speaks with gentle passion. "Don't say it, Sita."

But I have to. I feel as if I can see through him. Now I understand why he never went out.

Why he never met my friends or spoke to anyone besides Kalika and me. Why I had to do everything with my own hands. Between us, they were the only pair of hands we had.

"You're not real," I say.

He steps out of the shadows. His face is so beautiful.

"It doesn't matter, Sita. We can pretend it doesn't matter. I don't want to leave you."

My body is a chalice of misery. "But you're dead," I moan.

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) He comes close enough to touch me. "It doesn't matter."

No tears fall from my face. Dry sobs rack my body. They are worse than moist tears, worse because they are the evidence of evaporated grief, and I have only these to show to this silhouette of a boyfriend who stands before me now. This lover who can only love me as I deem myself worthy. No wonder he turned against me when I turned against him. He is a mirror on the tombstone. The film of black dust clears, and I see in the mirror that I have slowly been burying myself since I first came up the stairs of this house and heard the knock at the front door.

Who is it? Your darling. Open the door.

"I can't keep this door open," I whisper.

He touches my lower lip. "Sita."

I turn my head away from his hand. "No. You must go back."

"To where?"

"To where you came from."

'That is the abyss. There is nothing there. I am not there."

A note of quiet hysteria enters my voice. "You're not here. You're worse than a ghost. No one can see you! How can I possibly love you?"

He grabs my hand. "But you feel me. You know I'm here."

I fight to shake free of his hand but I just end up gripping it tighter. Yet I do not press it to my heart, as I used to. His hand is cold.

"No," I say. "I know you're not here."

He lightly kisses my finger. "Do you feel that?"

"No."

"You lie."

"You are the lie! You don't exist! How can I make you cease to exist!"

My words wound him, finally—they seem to tear the very fabric of his existence. For a moment his face shimmers, then goes out of focus. Yet he draws in a sudden breath and his warm brown eyes lock on to my eyes. He is not merely a mirror, but a hologram from a dimension where there are more choices than time and space. He is the ultimate
maya,
the complete illusion. The perfect love dressed in my own grief. No wonder when I met him in the coffee shop he was wearing the clothes he died in. He is nothing but a memory shouted back down the tunnel all mortals pass through when they leave this world. Yes, Ray is dead but I have let him become my own death as well.

He seems to read my thoughts.

His hope fades. He answers my last question.

"I died a vampire," he says. "You must kill me the way you would kill a vampire." He grabs a knife from the nearby table and presses it into my hand. "My heart beats only for you."

He wants me to cut his heart out. I try to push him away, but he holds me close. I can feel his breath on my face, like the brush of a winter wind. Yet now, here at the end, his eyes burn with a strange red light, the same light I have occasionally glimpsed in my daughter's eyes. He nods again as he reads my mind.

"If I return to the abyss," he says, "I'll see Kali there." He squeezes the handle of the knife into my palm. "Do it quick. You're right, the love is gone. I do want to die."

"I should never have been born," I whisper, addressing his last remark.

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He manages a faint smile "Goodbye, Sita."

I stab him in the heart. I cut his flesh and his bones, and the blood gushes over my hands, onto my clothes, and over the floor. The black blood of the abyss, the empty space of Kali.

But I scream as I kill him, scream to God for mercy, and the knife mysteriously falls from my hand and bounces on the dry floor. The blood evaporates.

His heart no longer beats and I'm no longer bloody.

He is gone, my ancient love is gone.

Out the window, the sun rises.

Taking Yaksha's blood, I pour it into the vial that once held Seymour's blood, the clear vial that I place above the copper and the crystals, between the cross-shaped magnets and the shiny mirror that reflects the rays of the sun directly into Arturo's hidden basement. I recline on the copper and the alchemy begins to work its dark magic on my trembling body. I have to wonder exactly
what
I will be when the sun finally sets and the process is complete. On impulse I have added to the vial a few drops of blood from Paula's child.

The blood of the infant that Kalika covets above all else. I can only hope it does me good.