Thirst No. 4 (13 page)

“You must have skipped that section. It is there. I remember when Shanti’s uncle was translating portions of the book, when you were being held captive by the Telar. He told us about Umara back then.”

“I’m not saying Yaksha doesn’t mention her in the book. He doesn’t describe the day they met. He just starts talking about her like she’s always been a part of his life.”

“Maybe he met her earlier than you think.”

“He shouldn’t have met her until he reached Egypt. But even if they did meet before then, he should have written about it. After all, she was the love of his life.”

Seymour hears the change in my voice. I can’t hide anything from him. “You were the love of his life,” he says.

“It’s not like we were in competition. I hardly saw him.”

Seymour strokes my head. “Sita. He loved you and you loved him. You can’t measure that love by how many days you spent together.”

I’m moved by his concern for my feelings. The truth is, I haven’t accepted the fact that Yaksha had a wife. Five thousand years of daydreams don’t wash away overnight.

“Thank you,” I whisper.

He kisses my cheek. “Besides, I’m the one who should be jealous. You’re my dream girl and I’ve never gotten to have sex with you.”

“You know, I’m not myself these days. And if Matt ever found out, the only question would be which one of us he would kill first.”

Seymour drapes his arms around me. “Matt’s not here and you’re not his girlfriend.”

“I’m not really Sita, either. You’d be making love to a ghost.”

“As long as you’re a friendly spirit, I don’t mind.”

I can’t help but laugh. “Look at you, Seymour. You don’t care if I’m Sita or Teri. You’d sleep with either of us. True?”

He shakes his head. “You’re the love of my life. That’s never going to change.”

“I know.” I give him a quick kiss on the lips. “Thank you.”

He points to Yaksha’s tome. “Tell me more about your idea about the book.”

“I’ve been trying to put myself inside Yaksha’s mind. He knew that the Telar were interested in the story of his life. He knew they were anxious to study it. Eventually, he must have realized, they would get their hands on it. How could he protect its deepest secrets from them?”

“He could have placed a hidden code within the pages.”

“Clever. Unfortunately, Yaksha knew how smart the Telar were. No matter how brilliant his code, he must have figured they would eventually break it. But that wouldn’t have stopped Yaksha. When it came to the parts of his life he was anxious to keep secret, he must have written it in such a way that only a vampire could retrieve it.”

“Logical. But how did he do it?”

I hold up a portable sprayer that either Mary or Freddy uses to water their plants. I spotted it on the porch while walking back to the house from the car.

“Watch this,” I say to Seymour, and squeeze the handle on the sprayer. A mist fills the air between us.

“It’s just plain water, isn’t it?” he asks.

“Yes. Now let’s try an experiment.” Unscrewing the sprayer cap, I set it down and open a vein in my wrist with my nails. As my blood drips out, I hold my wrist above the lid of the sprayer. I don’t put too much blood in it; I don’t think it will be necessary. A minute later I replace the cap and shake it a few times. Then turn the sprayer toward the book. “I hope this works,” I mutter.

“If it does it’s ingenious,” Seymour replies, quickly grasping the principle. Once more, I squeeze the handle, and a fine mist, tinged slightly red, fills the air and settles over the open pages.

Instantly a series of words appears between the sentences.

Seymour claps. “Bravo, Yaksha! He designed it so that his secret notes could only be retrieved by a vampire. And since you were the last vampire, besides him, he wrote those sections for your eyes only.” He pauses, impressed. “How the hell did you figure that out?”

“It always bugged me that Yaksha wrote his autobiography in the heart of enemy territory. Now I realize he did it to throw them off. He conned them into thinking they have all his secrets.”

“Cool. What do the secret messages say?”

I lift the book and hold it to my chest. “Sleep, Seymour, and let me study it tonight. If I find something important, I promise, you’ll be the first to know.”

“I’m too excited to sleep. We should study it together. I might see something you miss.”

“In ancient Sanskrit? I hardly think so.”

Seymour gives me a knowing look. “You’re just hoping to find sections where he talks about how much he’s missing you.”

I point at his mattress. “To bed. Now. I have a feeling we’re going to have a busy day tomorrow. You’re going to need your strength.”

Shaking his head, Seymour trudges over to the bed. He strips down to his shorts and slips under the blankets. “I have trouble sleeping with a light on,” he says.

“No problem. The moon’s out. I was thinking of reading outside.” I cross the room and lean over and kiss his cheek. “You have my permission to have sex with me in your dreams.”

“Since when do I need your permission?”

Mary and Freddy’s home is located on the edge of town, more in the woods than the city proper. The residence looks like an old hippie abode but the property is lovely, filled with tall pines and thick grass. I find the well Freddy spoke of. It stands in the center of a meadow and is exposed to bright moonlight. I sit on the ground with my back to the stone and lightly spray more pages. Once my vampire blood has had its alchemic way with the mysterious ink Yaksha used to create the hidden passages, it appears that the words are permanently revealed. It’s an important point. I cannot let the book fall into the hands of the Telar.

Again.

I could have sworn I gave Shanti a copy.

I assume Teri’s memory is playing tricks on me.

I find the section where Yaksha first meets Umara, his future wife and Matt’s mother. I’m shocked to learn the encounter takes place in India, in the days after the battle at Kurukshetra, where Krishna revealed the holy scripture known as the Bhagavad Gita to Arjuna.

It’s soon after the battle. Yaksha is wandering alone in the woods, his heart both heavy and joyous. He describes how he’s happy because he got to spend time with Krishna and is now more convinced than ever that he is the supreme being. Yet the tasks Krishna has assigned him are intimidating. Yaksha not only has the responsibility to destroy all the vampires, Krishna has given him a new job. To travel to Egypt and try to contain an immortal race of beings called the Telar.

Yaksha is thinking of the Telar when he first sees Umara.

I read the passage with great interest.

I stared at the woman transfixed, feeling I had stumbled into a dream. She was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen. At the same time she looked familiar, and I didn’t understand how that could be. Surely I would have remembered meeting her.

She was alone, dressed in the garb of a gopi, a female devotee of Krishna, wearing a saffron-colored sari. Yet her skin coloring set her apart from the rest. It was lighter; to me it shone like polished bronze. Her hair was long and dark, her eyes as brown as the earth after it has been washed by a storm.

She sat on the stump of a long-dead tree, a small book in hand, and moved her lips as she read its words aloud. She continued to do this even when I had moved close enough to be heard. It appeared the book
meant more to her than my company. But she nodded in my direction as if to say she would talk to me soon.

It felt like an eternity before she closed the book and looked at me. “Hello,” she said. “You are Yaksha, the demon warrior. I’ve heard of you.”

“Then you have heard wrong. I am no demon. In this last battle I fought alongside Arjuna and Bhima, and helped them defeat Dhuryodhana.”

“I meant no offense. I embrace the dark the same as I do the light. I care nothing about your mysterious birth.” She smiled. “You wonder how I know so much about you.”

I felt exposed. It was her eyes. I could not gaze into them without wanting to confess all the deeds of my life, both good and bad. “I feel we’ve met before,” I said.

She nodded. “Long ago and far away. In Vrindavana, near the banks of the Yamuna, when you and your kind sought to invade Krishna’s land. I was there the day you challenged Krishna and descended into the cobra pit.”

There were many gopis present that day, at least a few hundred. I must have missed her in the woods.

“That was many years ago,” I said. “Were you a child?”

“I was as you see me now.”

“How is it that you haven’t aged?”

“You haven’t aged, either.”

I shrugged. “I’m different from other men.”

“But you’re not a monster?”

“If you want me to leave, I will be on my way,” I snapped.

“That’s not necessary.” She made room for me on the stump. “Come, sit beside me, rest. You fought hard the last few days. You must be weary.”

I almost left. She enjoyed teasing, a quality I especially despised in women. I suspected if I stayed she would continue to taunt me. Yet she was so beautiful; it would have been difficult to walk away. I sat and gestured to her book.

“What are you reading?” I asked.

“A copy of
The Lord’s Song
, the Gita. I daresay it’s the first copy.”

I thought that I alone, besides Arjuna, had heard what Krishna said before the battle. “How did you get it?” I asked.

“I wrote it down with my own pen.”

“So you were there that day.”

“The whole world was there that day.”

“You could not have heard what was said.”

“No?”

“You should destroy that book. What Krishna
taught was secret. It was sacred. It wasn’t for the common man.”

“If Krishna isn’t here for the common man, then why has he come to this godforsaken planet?”

“What’s a planet?”

“A world. Krishna chose to come to this world. But there are many others like it, in the sky, circling the stars you see at night.”

“That’s a strange idea. He told you this?”

“He didn’t have to tell me. I knew it long before I came to India.”

“You’re from another land. Now I understand. I have never seen a woman who looks like you. Tell me about your home.”

“It’s called Egypt, and it belongs to this world. Our culture’s more advanced than yours. We have vast farmlands and are able to feed tens of thousands. We have brilliant artists, engineers, mathematicians, and healers. We have built many wonderful cities alongside a great river called the Nile.”

“What is it you do in Egypt?”

“I’m a teacher and a priestess. I teach the young how to read and write. I also teach them about Isis, the Universal Mother.” She stopped and smiled. “But now that I’ve met Krishna, I’ll have to teach them about him as well.”

“How can you worship two gods? There can be only one.”

“Krishna says the one are the same as the many. Study the Gita. Krishna doesn’t care for our human laws. The world he comes from was old before our sun burned in the sky. We’re lucky to grasp a fraction of what he tells us.”

“That I can well believe.”

She was a bold woman. She had the nerve to pat me on the back. “You look troubled, Yaksha. What is it? Have I said something that upset you? It’s a bad habit of mine, to make fun of strangers. Of course, if you knew me better, I’d probably still make fun of you.”

“Who are you?”

“My name is Umara.”

“How is it you know my name?”

“The snakes hissed it aloud when you entered the pit.”

“Your mocking grows tedious.”

“I apologize. You were most impressive that day. No man had ever challenged Krishna before.”

“I was young, I was a fool.”

“Perhaps. Kidnapping Radha was a strange way to say hello.”

“I regret that. I wish I could find her and ask her forgiveness.”

“You can’t, she’s dead.” Umara eyed me curiously. “You still haven’t told me what’s bothering you.”

“You. I’m not sure if you’re to be trusted.”

“You obviously haven’t met many strong women.”

“A strong woman doesn’t disturb me. But I find you out here in the middle of nowhere, after so many years, and you haven’t aged. You say you are from Egypt, and Krishna has already told me about a group of immortals who live there, called the Telar. He says they’re dangerous.”

“Some are. Not all.”

“Are you Telar or not?”

“I am.”

I stood and reached for the hilt of my sword. “Damn you, I knew it. I should take your head.”

“Don’t you find it more attractive attached to my body?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think. I have taken a vow. Your kind must be destroyed.”

She stared at me. “The same is true of vampires. Krishna told you to kill them all. Remember, I was there that day. I heard what he said.”

“How? He whispered in my ear.”

“Is it true or not?”

“I’ve killed thousands of vampires since that day.”

“No doubt. But I saw one the other day. She was
present at the great battle. I watched her as she watched you. You saw each other, although you tried to pretend that you didn’t.” Umara paused. “Her name is Sita, if I’m not mistaken.”

I shook with anger. “She is no concern of yours!”

“She’s a vampire, and you’ve taken a vow to destroy them all. Tell me, Yaksha, with Sita so near at hand, why didn’t you spare a minute and sneak up on her and cut off her head?”

“It is . . . She’s someone I once knew.”

“Now she’s someone you must kill.”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“The time’s not right.”

“You can’t do it, can you?”

“Silence!” I yanked my sword free and put the tip to her neck. “You will not speak of her again.”

Umara was unafraid of my sword. She casually brushed the blade aside and stood. I couldn’t understand how warm her eyes were when her words were so harsh.

“I can do it for you,” she said.