by K. N. Banet
“Is it ever consistent?” he asked.
“You’d have to ask Cassius. He once told me it depended on the region of that world. Like his homelands are very consistent with this world, but others bend time more extremely and fluctuate in a pattern. It all depends.”
“Ah.” Raphael nodded slowly. “Thanks for listening to me.”
I shrugged, not wanting the conversation to end but unsure how to keep it going. I looked down at my rug and wondered how Raphael would feel if I showed him more, gave him another piece of me.
“I’ve never given you a dossier on nagas, have I?” I asked softly.
“No. I figured you would tell me about your kind or make me figure it out on my own.”
I smirked. “Yeah…I just didn’t think about it. Did you do any research?”
“I did. I read a Wiki article and dug into some of the legends and all of that. Had some interesting questions, but I was never really sure how to ask.”
“Let me guess. You read the legend of Kaliya.” I tried not to sigh. It was unavoidable once people did even a tiny amount of research to realize I was the namesake of a great legend. “Yes, I’m named after him.”
“I figured that much,” Raphael said smartly, a smirk on his face, mirroring my own. “I’m betting you know the truth of the story, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” I murmured. I knew the story well, better than most, probably better than anyone. I was his namesake, after all. “I’ll give you the cliff notes because most accounts get it…mostly right.
“Kaliya was chased away from his home by Garuda, the eagle or the bird man or bird god, however you want to phrase it. He had multiple forms. He was a god or supernatural in his own right, and he hated our kind. So, Kaliya ran from his home to a place where Garuda couldn’t get to him, a region called Vrindavan, and got into a spot of accidental trouble. Kaliya was immensely powerful, but with very little control. He poisoned the Yamunā river with his venom because he was so powerful. When others drew close, he was scared and paranoid, so he hurt them or killed them, thinking he was protecting himself and his family. The god Krishna stumbled on him and saw the plight the locals were having and killed Kaliya.”
“I thought he just sent Kaliya to the um…Shit, there was a place…”
“Pātāla,” I answered, knowing he probably thought Pātāla was a real place. Some underground system of caverns or something. Some made that mistake, not understanding the connotation of what Kaliya’s story was about.
“Yeah, it’s like subterranean—”
“It’s the underworld,” I corrected softly. “Krishna sent Kaliya to hell. He killed him. Kaliya’s mate and his female family members begged for mercy for their powerful male, and Krishna killed him. And it wasn’t Krishna’s fault…” I sighed, looking away. “Kaliya was supposed to live away from humanity because he couldn’t learn to control his power. He was too dangerous and broke the rules. He was paranoid and scared when someone came to tell him to leave and go back to his home. But he was only protecting himself and his family from Garuda. He was stuck between Krishna and Garuda. Krishna killed him and sent him to the underworld. There are actually two naga realms in the underworld, but…” I shrugged. It didn’t really matter. I didn’t personally understand the distinction between them and how some nagas ended up in one and others in the other. One had Kaliya, and the other had Vasuki, who was a whole different conversation.
“Dig a little deeper next time,” I told him, smiling tightly. “This is all on the internet.” I made sure ages ago. Humans just needed to learn how to find it and understand it.
“Oh…Wow. I feel for him.” Raphael’s eyebrows went up, and I wondered if he saw the parallels. Trying to do anything he could to save his family, my ancestor Kaliya crossed paths with someone more dangerous than his original foe. In the end, he died anyway. His fate was inescapable, no matter how good or bad he was. It was just his fate. “It was all Garuda’s fault.”
“That’s the general consensus among my people,” I agreed, nodding. “So, yeah, a lot of truth in that legend, but it’s often played off with Kaliya being the bad guy. They hear about what he did in Vrindavan and forget he would have never been there if it weren’t for Garuda, who…well, is thankfully dead now. The leaders of the naga have displayed Garuda’s bones in their homes for centuries.” I gave my mother’s portion of the collection to Adhar ages ago, but I grew up able to see them every day in a display case in one of our homes’ sitting rooms.
“Morbid, but can’t…form an opinion on it. Not my place, is it?”
“One day, you’ll embrace the monster in you, and you’ll find someone whose bones you want to keep,” I said, smiling a little as his face flushed.
“I don’t think I’ll ever go that far, but sure, you can believe that.”
“You should learn the pleasurable taste of revenge.” With my smile growing, I kicked the rug in my room enough to reveal the corner of a trap door. “And if you want to know all about my people, here’s where I keep everything about them.”
He might be my mate one day. He deserves to know.
I pulled open the trapdoor and grabbed the small chest, pulling it out of the little airtight space.
“I stole all of this. Inside, there’s some really…” I put the chest on the bed and opened it. “Gross things.”
“Holy…” He looked inside, and I knew he saw the jar first. “Why do you have…”
“A jar with eyes? Because our people are killed for our parts by some. I’ve told you about that, and you heard how those inmates taunted me about it. I find them and bring them home. One day, I hope to find everything and take it all back to India, or send it to someone I know can handle it. Give them all a proper burial in our homeland. Maybe one day, they’ll be reborn, and this will just be a bad memory for our kind.”
“Reborn?”
“That’s the funny thing about nagas. There’s only a thousand of us, and parting us out like this? Well, the belief is the souls of these nagas can’t be reborn until they’re whole again. That’s why our numbers keep dropping, and we’re not having enough children.”
“Wait, hold on. I’m still trying to get on the same page with the reborn comment. You mean reincarnation?”
“Yup.” I looked at him, totally unsurprised by his reaction. “Originally, a thousand nagas were born. They grew up and mated with human women, but no children were born. Then the first naga was felled in battle. Suddenly, one of those women got pregnant, and she gave birth to the first female naga. A thousand souls, constantly being reincarnated, over and over with no memories of their pasts. For a long time, we could tell who was reborn of who. It was more important than our genealogy. There was a ceremony, and we learned the identity of our previous life and could learn from that life’s experiences with others. My mother told me it was frowned on to judge a child for their previous life or hold grudges. A new life meant new chances.” I knew I was rambling. My mother knew who she had been reborn from. I didn’t. Between her childhood and mine, our people had been decimated. No one would ever know again, not with so many dead.
“Are you okay?” he asked softly. “You can put that away. You don’t need to show me—”
“Yes, I do,” I said, trying to sound strong. “A lot of people don’t get it. They don’t understand that…I do everything for them,” I whispered at the end, running my hand over a naga skin purse. It was the newest piece of the collection. “All of it, I do for them. Raphael…I saved you four months ago, thinking you might know something about Mygi, and Mygi might connect to everything I’ve been…” I shook my head sadly. “It wasn’t real. It was a connection I made in my head based on a stupid little girl who owned a bag once.” I picked up the bag and sighed. “This one. Her brother works for Mygi. I thought there might have been something there.”
“Kaliya, it’s okay.”
“It’s not,” I hissed. “It’s not okay. It’s not okay that I dragged you into my life with my enemies and all
of this. It’s not okay that I got Carter killed.”
“He and I made the decision to let him try feeding on me to fight back. Sinclair killed him for it and damn near killed the rest of us. We knew it was a long shot. We knew we could die that night. That wasn’t all your fault.”
“Yes, it was.” Carter should never have been in Sinclair’s line of sight. It was my fault. I was the one who used him for information. I was the one who lost the phone, detailing that simple conversation and ploy. I was the one who failed.
I don’t know what he saw on my face, but I knew something in me had begun to crumble and fall. A shield I had been holding so tightly, only Cassius and Hisao had ever seen past it in the last century, no one else.
I had the shield because it helped me be alone and kept me and others safe. I needed Raphael to know that, to know the dark parts about being a naga—about being me.
All because of this. This insane quest I was on to find who or what was behind the slaughter of my people. I was the only person who believed there was some higher plan. Adhar and the rest? They just thought it was hunters who were looking for big prizes—just the way of things. We were a small species and could be easy prey if we weren’t careful.
I was the only naga convinced something else was going on, and my quest for answers only got people hurt and killed.
I needed Raphael to know it could be him one day.
“I’d be willing to help—”
“You can’t help me with this,” I said finally, closing the chest to cut off his offer. I put it away while Raphael sat there, staring with wide eyes. “I just wanted to show you.”
“I went into your office earlier,” he said finally. “I saw your…board, like you did at the condo. Is all that trying to find out who’s killing the nagas?”
“Yup.” I closed the trap door and fixed my rug. “I thought I told you not to go in there the first time I brought you here.”
“I forgot because I’ve been in there before. When I watched you charm that snake.”
I looked up at him, narrowing my eyes. I had forgotten about that.
“Well…” I crossed my arms, staring at the big man still sitting on the edge of my bed. “Now, you’ve opened up to me, and I’ve opened up to you.”
“Yeah, look at us. Everyone is trying to kill us, yet we’re closer than ever.” He grinned, and I couldn’t help but smile a little, just a little. “We should do this more often. Maybe one day we’ll be friends.”
“A cold day in hell, I think is the Christian saying,” I said, shaking my head. He chuckled and didn’t move. He was right. Since the moment the explosion wracked the prison, and I realized he was over me, shielding me, we were closer than ever. I felt like I could talk to him, and he took it all in stride, everything I threw at him.
Something was changing in him.
“What else was down there?” he asked, gesturing to the rug and speaking quietly.
“Books of legends…well, legends to humans. They’re our tales. Our stories. Our truths,” I answered. “One day, I might let you read them.”
“I would enjoy that. I always loved mythological studies in school. I’m a Roman Catholic, but…there’s something about other religions and cultures I’ve always been really interested in.”
“Be careful. You have those pesky things called the Ten Commandments. Doesn’t one of them say something about no other gods or something?” I couldn’t help but smile.
“‘I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt not have any strange gods before Me,’” Raphael recited dutifully. “It’s the First Commandment, actually.” He looked away for a minute, then down at his hands. I wondered what was suddenly on his mind. As I watched him, I realized one strange thing since he and I had started living together—he had stopped going to church. I didn’t see him pray, and I never saw a Bible in my condo.
Something is bothering him, and it’s going to bug me now.
“Raph—”
“What’s next?” he asked suddenly.
If he wants to avoid it, I’ll let him. It’s not my business to pry.
“We wait for one of two things. The Tribunal tells me where Levi is, and we go get him, or we head out for the prison again at dawn.”
15
Chapter Fifteen
At dawn, I had no word from the Tribunal about the coven or Levi’s location, which meant the prison was our objective. Raphael and I loaded my BMW up and pulled away from my home, heading back for the prison. The ride was silent and dark, even though I knew the sun was out. It was just behind the looming dark clouds pouring rain on everything. I was getting alerts on my phone about flash flooding in different areas of Phoenix.
“The coven needs to find him faster,” I said softly, watching the road as the rain came down.
“Agreed,” Raphael said softly.
Nothing more was said. There was nothing else to say. I knew I could ask him about earlier, but I didn’t want to.
Well, I do, but how the hell does someone broach that sort of topic? It’s not my business.
But it felt like it was. That’s what friends did, right? Asked about each other, made sure everything was okay. The issue wasn’t if there was a problem, it was if Raphael considered me a friend who could ask those things, and I didn’t feel up for rejection. So, I drove in silence.
“Do you pray?” he finally asked with Phoenix far behind us. We were nearly at the prison.
“No,” I answered. “I haven’t prayed for a long time.”
“Why?”
“The gods didn’t answer.” I was a generally honest but not open person. I had opened up to Cassius a long time ago, and now, here I was, opening up to Raphael. The parallels between the two men were something I kept running into. They were both moral, good men. Because I knew they would keep my secrets, I felt more comfortable with them.
“I noticed you haven’t…been overtly religious since we met.”
“He never answered either,” Raphael whispered. “Sorry. Earlier really put me in a mood.”
“It happens.” I knew that all too well. It was easy for the changes in life to throw you off balance, especially when you look back and see just how much it changed. When I was in my thirties, I had that moment. It paralyzed me for what felt like weeks. For the first time in twenty years, I had spoken to Adhar and realized I wasn’t the little girl he remembered and never would be again. I had fundamentally changed, and it finally caught up to me.
“Who would you pray to if you could pick someone right now?” he asked, leaning back more comfortably in his seat. Since we got in the car, he’d been stiff, and I took his relaxing as a good sign he was getting back to normal.
“Kali, if I wanted to draw on strength. Vasuki for things naga related. There are so many options. It all depends on what I would pray about; that’s how I’ve always decided.”
“I’ve heard both those names. Kali shows up a lot in pop culture, and Vasuki was the…” Raphael snapped his fingers. I was impressed he was taking time to learn things about my culture, almost touched. The last time I spoke to anyone who took such an interest was decades ago. Cassius never asked, but I knew his reasons. He’d known, just as I did, that our relationship would never last, and we both had tried not to get too invested.
“Vasuki, the serpent king,” I finally said for my roommate. “The king of the naga. If I wanted more feminine prayer, I could pray to Manasa, the goddess of snakes and Vasuki’s sister.” I shrugged. “But I don’t pray anymore. I figured if they wanted to look out for our kind, they would have started doing so a long time ago.”
“Do even the famous nagas get reborn? Like the gods?” Raphael watched me intently. I was almost a little mad he’d thrown me into my own origins and not told me more about his problems.
“Raphael…all nagas are technically gods. Well, we’re considered divine because of our origins, and that’s how we’re classified in the Archives,” I smirked. “Kaliya of legend, Vasuki, Manasa…we’re all just one of the tho
usand. Some of the ancient names have stuck around, embodying beliefs, and we can only hope their souls in the afterlife listen, or one day they’ll be reborn and answer our prayers. Not all nagas were equal. Some rose up and had more power.” I was still smirking as his eyes went wide. “Don’t be too alarmed. We’ve lost a lot of our power over the centuries.”
“What kind of powers?”
“The ability to be…a monster,” I said, not finding a better word for it. “Nagas could once possess many different forms, from human-like to full snake and a lot in between, depending how powerful the naga was. Some think we’ve lost it because we’ve bred with humans.”
“So, like Wesley turning into a movie werewolf, you could become some…half-snake, half-human thing.”
“Possibly, but no one has that power anymore.” It would be nice. In that form, a naga was at its most powerful. If I could do it, I wouldn’t have had a hard time with Sinclair. I wouldn’t be fragile like a human or crushable like a normal snake.
“Now, back to you. If we’re playing twenty questions, it’s definitely your turn. Why have you really stopped praying?”
“Of course. Yeah…I was raised Roman Catholic, but I only really started praying and being devout when I was on the run.” He sighed and turned to look out of the window. “I thought maybe it was my lack of faith that turned me into a monster. But God never answered my prayers. You showed up. I’m still whatever I am, we’re in danger again, and I’ve killed people…”
“I found you at a church,” I pointed out. I wasn’t going to be the person who discounted a foreign god. I was more than willing to scream bloody murder at my own, but no one else’s.
