Thirst No. 3 (43 page)

Three days before, when Seymour had awakened on that awful morning, the first thing he’d noticed was that Teri was asleep beside him. She was lying so still, though, that he went so far as to creep over to her on his hands and knees to make sure she was alive. He was relieved to find her breathing, although she was as silent as a mouse. He supposed that came from running a hundred miles a week.

However, he didn’t check her leg. He occasionally wrote violent scenes, but when it came to the real thing, his stomach was nowhere to be found, unless it was over in the bushes barfing. He didn’t mind that Sita had used his jacket to cover Teri.
He assumed Sita had kept him warm enough with the fire. She was good at taking care of people.

It was then he heard the talking outside. Only these people weren’t having a friendly conversation, but a major argument. Putting on his shoes, Seymour hurried from the cave to see what was the matter.

Sita was sitting on a boulder near the cave entrance. Matt paced in front of her, a laser rifle slung over his shoulder. Seymour was pleased to see a helicopter parked beside the lake. At least they weren’t going to have to hike out of this remote place. Last night, jumping into the frozen lake at a hundred miles an hour had given him enough of a thrill to last him the rest of his life.

There was something about the high Rockies on a sparkling summer morning. If only Sita and Matt weren’t fighting, the scene would have been enchanting.

Seymour was half-awake. It took him a while to catch on.

“You had no right,” Matt was saying. “You’re not God. My father told me about your arrogance. I didn’t want to believe it until the trials came and you juiced her up like a common junkie. I should have seen then that this day would come.”

“Bullshit,” Sita snapped. “No one could have seen this day coming except for you. Yeah, you, and don’t look so startled. I did what I did because you put me in an impossible situation. Face it, Matt, the day you decided your privacy was more important than my safety was the day you killed Teri.”

Seymour wanted to say Teri was alive but was afraid to interrupt.

“You were the one who exposed Teri to risk,” Matt said.

“I did everything I could to protect her.”

“You don’t protect someone by making them a celebrity! You turn them into a target. That’s why I kept my mouth shut around her.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s right. You’re a master at the silent routine. Why didn’t you say a word to me about the Telar, even when you knew they’d just sent an assassin after me?”

“I didn’t know about Claudious until after the fact.”

“You could have told me about the Telar a week after I killed him. Then I wouldn’t have ended up in Arosa, which led to Goldsmith, which, by the way, led to here. It’s here Teri fell. It’s here her leg cracked open and she lost most of her blood.” Sita paused. “I tried calling you, but you didn’t answer. I was on my own. I had to make a decision.”

“That’s my point. It’s not a decision she would have made.”

“You don’t know that. You weren’t here.”

“I didn’t have to be here. I saw how she reacted to what you did to that woman in London. She would never have chosen to die and be reborn as a vampire.”

Seymour finally began to see the light.

“I couldn’t just let her die,” Sita said, her voice cracking with emotion.

“Yes, you could have. It’s what she would have wanted.”

“You say that so easily. But you weren’t here. I had to decide.”

Matt halted his pacing and held out a threatening finger. “Now you lie. I hear the stink of lies all over your voice. Teri must have spoken to you at the end. She must have told you to let her go.”

Sita stared at him. A watery tear ran from one eye, and she wiped it away. A bloody tear ran from the other, and she shook as if she was going to collapse. Seymour had never seen her in such a state. He wouldn’t have thought it possible.

“You’re right,” she said. “What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”

“You can’t kill her. It’s done.”

“It’s not done. My father taught me it takes twenty-four hours to make a vampire.” He paused. “We can stop it before it’s too late.”

Sita trembled. “You’ll just march in the cave and shoot her? You think you can do that?”

He removed the rifle from his shoulder. “Yes.”

Sita stood from the boulder. “No.”

“You can’t stop me.”

“I can try. Believe me, I’ll try.”

“For God’s sake, you’re not even armed.”

Sita strode toward him and shoved him in the chest. She hit him hard, but he didn’t fall over, just took a step back. “I’ll die before I let you kill her. And maybe when I’m dead, you’ll
look around, at the lake, at the sky, at my body, and you’ll change your mind. It’s a risk I’ll take. So go ahead and shoot. Because I can’t live without her.”

Finally, Matt showed his pain.

“I can’t live without her either! But now I’ll never be able to let go of her. Because of you. Because of what you’ve done. She’ll still be here, but it won’t be her. She’ll be—”

“What? A monster? A vampire? Your father was a vampire. You loved him. Why can’t you love Teri the same way?”

“She won’t be the same! Nothing will ever be the same again!”

“It’s better than death. Anything is better than nothing.” Sita reached to try to hug him. “Believe me, Matt, this way at least life goes on.”

He hugged her in return, and they wept in each other’s arms.

Seymour felt like he shouldn’t watch. That he was prying.

He turned to leave. Then he felt a strange vibration in the air.

It came out of nowhere, but suddenly it was everywhere.

Seymour noticed a smell. A familiar odor used in childish stories to scare boys and girls and ignorant people into obeying whoever was telling the tale. Sulfur, burning sulfur, the stink of rotten eggs. It rushed his nose and kept going until it struck the back of his skull. Suddenly he had a headache, and there was a ringing in his ears, which scratched on his nerves, irritating them at a deep level. In the space of seconds he felt angry
at everyone. But worse, a thousand times worse, he knew the hatred was going to last forever.

“Help,” Seymour mumbled. “Help me.”

But there was no one present who could help him. His friends were caught in the same psychic web. Sita was no longer weeping in Matt’s arms. She was backing away from him, her face flushed with fear. Matt had his laser rifle in his hands, and the grin on his face, why, it belonged to the boy with the magnifying glass whose greatest joy was to sit in the backyard on a sunny day and focus his glass on ants, grasshoppers, butterflies, and even frogs, and slowly boil off their skin until they either turned to ash or else began to leak dark blood. Matt was that twisted child grown to stature, with the power of a sun in his hands.

He lifted the rifle and pointed it at Sita.

Seymour knew then that Matt was the focus, while she was the target. Seymour began to walk toward her. He had to help; he had to do something.

“You bitch,” Matt said softly. “You think you can change my girl into a bloodsucking whore like you and get away with it. Well, you best think again. No woman of mine is ever going to leave my bed at night to go suck other men. After I burn your heart out, I’m going to take what’s left of it to her and see if she bites. If she does, I’ll do the same to her. And if she doesn’t . . .” He chuckled obscenely. “I’ll do her just the same.”

“Matt, listen to me, this isn’t you!” Sita cried. “It’s the Array!”

Sita had not lost the power of her voice, and it hit Matt like a sobering bucket of ice water. For an instant he lost his sick grin and sank into painful confusion. His obscene manner vanished as quickly as it had come.

“My name’s not Matt,” he mumbled. “It’s not Ray.”

Sita implored him with every fiber of her being.

“It’s called the Array! It’s evil. Remember London. Remember what it made me do.”

“No!” Matt held up a hand to hold her back. “I saw what you did! You ate that girl. You’re the evil one.”

Seymour continued to close on them.

Sita softened her voice but kept begging.

“You can fight this, Matt. Fight it for Teri.”

Seymour saw it might have been a mistake to use Teri’s name at such a delicate moment. Because even before the Array had struck, the name had been tearing the two of them apart. Now, tossed into this cauldron of madness that had possessed Matt’s brain, the name threw a switch, but the wrong one. The slimeball returned with renewed bitterness. He raised the rifle.

“Shut up! You’re the one who poisoned her with your filthy blood. You’re a goddamn witch is what you are. A witch from hell who has to burn.”

Matt pressed a switch on the side of the laser.

A row of red lights lit up. Seymour recognized them.

The weapon was now armed and ready to fire.

Seymour darted toward Matt. He had traveled maybe half a step when Matt reacted. He turned and focused the laser on Seymour.

“Why, the bitch has a pup,” he gloated.

“No!” Sita shouted.

“Yeah!” he yelled and pressed the trigger.

The ruby beam lashed out. Seymour saw it, his own death approaching. He knew for a fact a laser traveled at the speed of light. What he didn’t understand was how Sita managed to leap in front of it.

The beam hit her in the chest and burned through her sternum and melted a large chunk of her heart. But it didn’t cause her chest cavity to rupture like the others. The laser punched a hole in her chest, and from both openings poured forth gallons of blood. Blood that turned to red dust the instant it touched the air. Dust that in turn changed to gold flakes, as a sweet-smelling breeze suddenly swept the area. As the gold sparkled in the sunlight, lifting higher and higher on a spinning funnel, Seymour realized the Array had switched off, or else had been turned off by a greater power.

“Krishna,” Sita whispered.

Matt dropped the rifle and caught her before she fell.

Seymour ran to his side. They were too late.

Her empty eyes were fixed on the endless blue sky.

Sita, last of the vampires, was no more.

•   •   •

Seymour managed to nod when Teri said hello.

“You okay?” he said.

She lowered her head. “Okay,” she replied.

The burial ceremony was brief. Each of them said a few words about Sita. How they had met. What she had done for them. When she had made them laugh. Why they had loved her. They went around the circle, and even Charlie said a few words. But Teri and John remained silent, and Seymour was not surprised.

As a final farewell, they each placed a red rose on top of her casket. Shanti said, “Good-bye, Sita. Miss you.” Paula said, “Good-bye, Sita. Love you.” The rest said similar things, except for John and Teri. But this time John did show some feeling. The dark-haired boy with the luminous dark eyes knelt at the head of her coffin and placed his own head on the sweet-smelling maple. He stayed in that position a long time, as much as five minutes. No one disturbed him. When he was done, he stepped toward Teri and took her hands and squeezed them. They were exactly the same height, and they stared at each other over a short distance that seemed to stretch as the seconds went by. Finally John smiled faintly and released her.

It was over.

Everyone left the cemetery except Seymour. Shanti assured him that Matt could give her a ride back to the hotel. Not caring that he was staining his suit with dirt and grass, Seymour sat on the ground and used the coffin for back support. It felt
heavy considering it held a 120-pound woman. Of course, she had been no ordinary woman, not to him. She had filled his world and made it complete.

Now . . . he could not think of now.

He scratched at his blisters. They weren’t too bad. Just itchy.

He did not know how long he sat there. It was nice just to be near her. The weird thing was he still felt her presence. He kept expecting to hear her voice. He had always loved her voice. He had loved everything about her. He was lucky in that respect, that their lives had crossed paths. He felt he was one of the chosen few. Yet to lose her this way . . . it was like a curse.

He supposed that was how the universe kept balance.

He remembered how she had said Krishna’s name as she died.

According to the Gita, that meant she was now one with him.

Seymour hoped that was true.

After so much struggle, she deserved to find peace.

“Seymour,” a voice called. It startled him, and he realized he might have been dozing. But he quickly stood when he saw Teri Raine walking toward him. Brushing off his pants, he noticed all the cars were gone except his. Teri would need a ride back to wherever Matt was staying.

It was supposed to be a secret. Matt was acting like a haunted man. Hell, he must be feeling like one. Who wouldn’t? In one crazy stroke he had killed his father’s true love. And now
he was condemned to sleep with a vampiric copy of his own love.

“Teri. This is a surprise,” Seymour said.

“How are you doing?”

“I’ve been better. How about you? Has the change been rough?”

“I felt confused the first few days. I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing.” She paused. “But everything became clear when I saw John.”

“That’s good. I thought it would be rough without having Sita to guide you. I’m happy for you. You know, I was just sitting and thinking that now you’re the last vampire.”

Teri stared at him. “That’s true. Nothing’s changed.”

He wasn’t sure what she meant. “Well, if you’re okay with it, then I’m sure in time Matt will come to accept that you’re still his girl.”

“You’re not hearing me. I’m not his girl. Nothing’s changed.”

He finally did hear her. Still, he couldn’t accept it.

“What do you mean?”

She hugged him and buried her face in his shoulder. Then, as if telling him the secret of secrets, she spoke in his ear. “It’s me, Sita. I’m still here. I’m in Teri’s body.”