Thirst No. 2 (14 page)

Indeed it feels almost more natural than it used to. But I definitely decide to stick with an old technique of killing—the nose into the brain thrust. It is straightforward and effective.

My only trouble—as I tense my muscles to respond—is that I still love her.

Kalika begins to reach out with her right arm.

I leap up and forward. My lift off the ground is effortless. If I were taped and the video later slowed down for viewing, the human eye would assume that gravity had no effect on me. Of course this is not true—I cannot fly. Only strength is responsible for the illusion. I whip toward Kalika, my right foot the hammer of Thor. I cock it back—it will soon be over.

But somewhere in the air I hesitate. Just slightly.

Probably it makes no difference, but I will never know.

The red flames smolder deep in Kalika's eyes.

My divine hammer is forged of crude iron ore. My daughter grabs my foot before it can reach her face. Real time returns, and I begin a slow horizontal fall, helpless as she grips my foot tighter. Seymour cries in horror and my own cry is one of excruciating pain. She has twisted my ankle almost to the breaking point. I hit the asphalt with the flat of my back and the back of my skull. Kalika towers over me, still holding onto my boot. Her expression is surprisingly gentle.

"Does it hurt?" she asks.

I grimace. "Yes."

Kalika breaks my ankle. I hear the bones snap like kindling wood in a fire, and a wave of red agony slams up my leg and into my brain. As I writhe on the ground, she takes a step back and patiently watches me, never far from Seymour's side. She knows vampires. The pain is intense but it doesn't take long before I begin to heal. The effect of Yaksha's blood on my system no doubt speeds up the process. In two minutes I am able to stand and put weight on the ankle. But I will not be kicking her again in the next few minutes, and she knows it.

Kalika grabs Seymour by the left arm.

His mouth goes wide in shock.

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"I will not ask you again what I want to know," she says.

I try to stand straight. Insolence enters my tone. "You know what bugs me most about you? You always hide behind a human shield. I'm here and you're there. Why don't we just settle this between us? That is, if you’ve got the guts, girl."

Kalika seems to approve of my challenge. She smiles and this particular smile seems genuine. But I'm not sure if it is good to push her into too happy a mood for she suddenly readies over, picks Seymour up with one hand by grabbing his shirt, and throws him over the side of the pier. The move is so unexpected that I stand stunned for a second. I hurry to the railing in time to see Seymour strike the water. She threw him hard and high—he takes a long time to return to the surface. He coughs as he does so and flays about in the dark but he seems to be all right I hope he is not like Joel who couldn't swim.

"Seymour!" I call.

He responds with something unintelligible, but sounds OK.

Kalika stands beside me. "He has a sense of humor," she says.

"Thank you for sparing him." The pier is long and the water is cold. I hope he is able to make it to shore. I add, "Thanks for giving him a chance."

"Gratitude means nothing to me," she says.

I am curious. "What does have meaning to you?"

"The essence of all things. The essence does not judge. It is not impressed by actions, nor does it reward inaction." She shrugs. "It just is, as I am."

"I can't tell you where the baby is. I deliberately told Paula not to tell me where she was going. They could be in Canada by now or in Mexico."

Kalika is not disturbed by my revelations. "I know there is something you are not telling me. It relates to future contact with the child. You told Paula one other thing besides what you just said. What was it?"

"There was nothing else."

"You are lying," she says.

"So I lie? What are you going to about it? I'm not going to tell you anything. And if you kill me you still won't get the information you want." I pause. "But I can't believe that even you would kill your own mother."

She reaches out and touches my long blond hair with her bloody hand. "You are beautiful, Sita. You have lived through an entire age. You have out-smarted men and women of all nationalities, in all countries and times. You even tricked your creator into releasing you from his vow to Krishna."

"I did not trick Yaksha. I saved him."

She continues to play with my hair. "As you say, Mother. You have faith in what you know and what you remember. But my memory is older, far older, and death or the threat of death is not the only means of persuasion I have at my disposal." She tugs lightly on my hair. "You must know by now that I am not simply a vampire."

"What are you then?"

She takes my chin in her hand.
"Look
into my eyes and you will see."

"No. Wait!"

"Look, Mother." She twists my head around and catches my eyes. There is no question of my looking away. It is not an option. The blue-black of her eyes have the pull of a black hole, the grip of the primordial seed that gave birth to the universe. The power that

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) emanates from them is cosmic. They shine with colors the spectrum has forgotten. Yet they are such beautiful eyes, really, those of an innocent girl, and I fall in love with them all over again. From far away I hear my daughter's voice, and it is the voice of thunder echoing and also the mere whisper of a baby falling asleep in my lap in the middle of the night. "Behold your child," she says.

I look; I must look.

There are planets, stars, galaxies, and they are seemingly endless. Yet beyond them all, beyond the backbone of the sky, as the Vedas say, is the funeral pyre. There sits Mother Kali with her Lord Kala, who destroys time itself. As each of the planets slowly dies and each sun gradually expands into a red dwarf, the flames that signal the end of creation begin to burn. They lick the frozen asteroids and melt the lost comets. And there in that absolute space Kali collects the ash of the dead creation and the skulls of forgotten souls.

She saves them for another time, when the worlds will breathe again, and people will once again look up at the sky and wonder what lies beyond the stars. But none of these people will know that it was Kali who remembered them when they were ash. None of them will know who buried them when there was no one left to cover their graves. Even if they did remember, none of them would worship the great Kali because they would be too afraid of her.

I feel afraid as I remember her.

As she asks me to remember.

There is another voice in the sky.

I think it is my own. The shock breaks the vision.

I stumble back from my daughter. "You are Kali!" I gasp.

She just looks at me. "You have told me the phone number Paula will call in one month."

She turns away. "That's all I wanted to know."

It is hard to throw off the power of the vision.

"Wait. Please? Kalika!"

She glances over her shoulder. "Yes, Mother?"

"Who was the child?"

"Do you really need to know?"

"Yes."

"The knowledge will cost you."

"I need to know!" I cry.

In response Kalika steps to the end of the pier. There she kneels and pulls a board free. It is an old board, long and narrow, but as she works it in her powerful fingers it begins to resemble something I know all too well from more superstitious eras. Too late I realize she has fashioned a stake. She raises the tiny spear over her head and lets fly with it.

The stake goes into the water.

Into Seymour's back. He cries out and sinks.

"No!" I scream.

Kalika stares at me a moment. "I told you it would cost you." She turns away. "I don't lie, Mother."

My ankle is not fully recovered but I am still a strong vampire. Leaping over the side of the pier, I hit the cold salt water not far from where Seymour flounders two feet below the surface. Pulling him up for air, I hear him gasp in pain. My eyes see as well in the dark as

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) in the daylight. The stake has pierced his lower spine. The tip protrudes from where his belly button should be. His blood flows like water from a broken faucet.

"This hurts," he says.

"Seymour," I cry as I struggle to keep him afloat, "you have to stay with me. If I can get you to shore, I can save you."

He reaches for the stake and moans in pain. "Pull it out."

"No. You'll bleed to death in seconds. I can take it out only when we reach the beach.

You must hold on to me so that I can swim as fast as possible. Listen to me, Seymour!"

But he is already going into shock. "Help me, Sita," he chokes.

"No!" I slap him. "Stay with me. I'll get you to shore." Then, wrapping my right arm around him, I begin to swim as fast as I can with one free arm and two boot-clad feet. But speed in the water is not Seymour's friend. As I kick toward the beach, the pressure of the passing water on the stake makes him swoon in agony. The rushing water also increases his loss of blood. Yet I feel I have no choice but to hurry.

"Stop, Sita," he gasps as he starts to faint. "I can't stand it."

"You can stand it. This time you're the hero in my story. You can write it all down later.

This pain will not last and you will laugh about it in a few days. Because tonight you're going to get what you've always wanted. You're going to become a vampire."

He is interested, although he is clearly dying. The beach is still two hundred yards away.

"Really?" he mumbles. "A real vampire?"

"Yes! You'll be able to stay out all night and party and you won't ever get old and ugly.

We'll travel the world and we'll have more fun than you can imagine. Seymour?"

"Party," he says faintly, his face sagging into the water. Having to hold his mouth up slows me down even more but I keep kicking. I imagine an observer on the pier would think a power boat were about to ram the beach. The sand is only a hundred yards away now.

"Hang in there," I tell him.

Finally, when we are in five feet of water, I am able to put my feet down. I carry him to the beach and carefully lay him on his right side. There is no one around to help us. His blood continues to gush out around the edges of the wooden stake, at the front as well as at the back. He is the color of refined flour. He hardly breathes, and though I yell in his ear I have to wonder if he is not already beyond hearing. Already beyond even the power of my blood. The situation is worse than it was with Ray and Joel. Neither of them had an object implanted in them. Even vampire flesh cannot heal around such an object, and yet I fear I cannot simply pull it out. I feel his life will spill out with it and be lost on the cold sand.

"Seymour!" I cry. "Come back to me!"

A minute later, when all seems lost, when he isn't even breathing, my prayer is mysteriously answered. He opens his eyes and looks up at me. He even grins his old Seymour grin, which usually makes me want to laugh and hit him at the same time. Yet this time I choke back the tears. The chill on his flesh, I know, is from the touch of the Grim Reaper. Death stands between us and it will not step aside even for a vampire.

"Seymour," I say, "how are you?"

"Fine. The pain has stopped."

"Good."

"But I feel cold." A tremor shakes his body. Dark blood spills over his lips. "Is this

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normal?"

"Yes. It is perfectly normal." He does not feel the stake now, or even recognize how grave his condition is. He thinks I gave him my blood while he was unconscious. He tries to squeeze my hand but he is too weak. Somehow he manages to keep talking.

"Will I live forever now?" he asks.

"Yes." I bury my face in his. "Forever and ever."

His eyes close. "I will love you that long, Sita."

"Me, too," I whisper. "Me, too."

We speak no more, Seymour and I.

He dies a minute later, in my arms.

His body I take to a place high in the mountains where I often walked when I lived in Los Angeles. On a bluff, with a view of the desert on one side and the city on the other, I build a funeral pyre from wood I am able to gather in the immediate area. Seymour rests comfortably on top of my construction. At the beach I had removed the bloody stake and thrown it away. He is able to lie on his back and I fold his hands over his big heart.

"You," I say. "You were the best."

There is a wooden match in my right hand, but somehow I am unable to light it. His face looks so peaceful I can't stop staring at him. But I realize the day is moving on, and that the wind will soon pick up. The flames should finish their work before then. Seymour always loved the woods, and wouldn't have wanted them harmed by a raging forest fire.

He loved so many things, and I was happy to be one of them.

I strike the match on the bark of a tree.

It burns bright red, and I can't help but think of Kali.

Many things pass through my mind right then.

Many question and so few answers.

Yet I let the flame burn down to my fingertips.

There is pain, a little smoke. The match dies.

And from my pocket I withdraw the vial of blood.

Number seven.
Ramirez. I
look up.

"What is the cost, Kalika?" I ask the sky.

After opening the vial, I pour half the blood over Seymour's wound, and the other half down his throat. Then I close my eyes and walk away and stand silently behind a tall tree for five minutes. Some mysteries are best left unexplained. My hope refuses to be crushed.

I have found love and lost love, but perhaps what I have finally rediscovered is my faith in love. I stand and pray—not for bliss or miracles—I simply pray and that is enough.

Finally I walk back to the funeral pyre.

Seymour is sitting up on the wood and looking at me. His fatal wound has healed.

"How did we get here?" he asks.

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Of course I have to laugh. "It's a long story," I say.

But I wonder how to finish the story for him.

I still wonder who the child is.

More, I wonder who he
was.

CHRISTOPHER

PIKE