“Is that one of the reasons my father was investigating you?” he asks.
“Yes. Indirectly.”
“Have you spoken to my father?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Two and a half days ago.”
“Where?”
“At his office.”
Ray is annoyed. “You didn’t tell me. Why did you speak to him?”
“He called me into his office.”
“Why?”
I have to be more careful than ever. “He wanted to tell me that I was being investigated.”
“He wanted to warn you?”
“I believe so. But—”
“What?”
“He didn’t fully understand who had hired him, the nature of the man.”
“But you know this man?”
“Yes. From a long time ago.”
“What’s his name?”
“He changes his name often.”
“Like you?” Ray asks.
The boy is full of surprises. I reach over and touch his leg. “You are worried about your father. I understand. Please try not to judge me too harshly.”
“You are not being completely honest with me.”
“I’m telling you what I can.”
“When you say my father is in danger, what exactly do you mean? Would this man kill my father?”
“He has killed in the past.”
The space inside the car is suddenly cramped. Ray hears beyond my words. “Is my father dead already?” he asks quietly.
I have to lie, I have no choice. “I don’t know.”
We arrive at my house. No one has come while I was away, I can tell. I activate the security system. It is the most elaborate available on the market. Every wire of every section of fence around my house is now heavily electrified. There are motion sensors and laser beams and radar tracking the perimeter. I know it will not stop Yaksha for a second if he wishes to come for me. At a minimum he has twice my strength and speed. In reality I think he is much more powerful than that.
Ray wanders around my house, taking in the sights. He pauses and looks out over the ocean. A waning moon, half full, hangs over the dark shadow of the water. We face west, but behind us, in the east, I detect a hint of dawn.
“What next?” he asks.
“What do you want to do next?”
He faces me. “You are waiting for this man to come here.”
“Perhaps. He could come.”
“You said something about arming yourself. Do you have guns here?”
“Yes. But I’m not going to give you one. It would not help.”
“Are you some kind of expert with guns?”
“Yes.”
He is exasperated. “Who the hell are you, Sita? If that is even your real name.”
“It is my real name. Few people know it. It is the name my father gave me. The man I am talking about—he is the one who murdered my father.”
“Why don’t we call the police?”
“This man is very powerful. He has almost unlimited resources. The police would not be able to stop him if he wants to hurt us.”
“Then how are you going to stop him?”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Then why are we here? Why don’t we just get in the car and drive away?”
His question is an interesting one; it has a certain logic to it. I have considered the option since disposing of Slim. Yet I do not believe that I can run successfully from Yaksha, not once he has got me in his sights, which he obviously does. I do not like to postpone the inevitable.
“You can drive away if you want,” I say. “You can take my car and go home. Or you can take my car and drive to Los Angeles. That might be the best thing for you to do. I can tell you for a fact that while you are here you are in extreme danger.”
“Then why did you bring me here?”
I turn away. “I do not know why. But I think—I don’t know.”
“What?”
“This man—his real name is Yaksha—he knows you are my friend. You are part of the equation that deals with me—in his mind.”
“What do you mean?”
I turn back to Ray. “He has been watching me since I saw your father, I’m sure of it. But he has not come for me personally. Oh, he sent his people after me, but that is not the same thing, not to him and not to me.”
“You think that I afford you some protection?”
“Not exactly. More, I think he is curious about my relationship with you.”
“Why?”
“I do not make friends easily. He knows that much.”
Ray sighs. “I don’t even know if I am your friend.”
His words sting, more than the bullet I was hit with earlier in the night. I reach out and touch his face. Such a beautiful face, so like Rama’s, even though they do not look that much alike. Their essence is similar. Maybe Krishna was right. Maybe their souls are the same, if there are such things. I doubt I have one.
“I care more for you than I have cared for anyone in a long time,” I say. “I am much older than I look. I have been more lonely than I have been willing to admit to myself. But when I met you, that loneliness eased. I am your friend, Ray, even if you do not want to be mine.”
He stares at me, as if he, too, knows me, then lowers his lips to kiss my hand that touches him. His next words come to me as if from far away.
“Sometimes I look at you and you do not look human.”
“Yes.”
“You’re like something carved from glass.”
“Yes.”
“Old but always new.”
“Yes.”
“You said you are a vampire.”
“Yes.”
But he does not ask me if I am a vampire. He knows better. He knows I will tell him the truth, and he does not want to hear it. He kisses my hand again, and I lean forward to kiss his lips. Long and deep—he does not smother this time and I am glad. He wants to make love, I can tell, and I am very glad.
I start a roaring blaze in the living room fireplace, many logs piled high. There is a rug from ancient Persia on top of the wall-to-wall carpeting in front of the fire; it is where I sometimes sleep, when the sun is high. I bring in blankets and pillows. We undress slowly; I let Ray take off my clothes. He touches my body, and I kiss his from head to foot. Then we lie down together and the sex is a wonder to him, as well as to me. I am careful not to hurt him.
Later, when he is asleep, I go for an automatic weapon in the attic. I load the clip carefully, making sure all the parts are well oiled, ready for use. Then I return to Ray’s side and put the weapon under my pillow. Ray is exhausted; I stroke his head and whisper words that will cause him to sleep away the entire day. I suspect Yaksha will not come until the following night—a fresh night for a fresh slaughter. It would be his way. I know my gun will not stop him. I have only Krishna’s promise to protect me. But what is the promise of a God I don’t even know if I believe in?
Yet one thing is certain. If Krishna was not God, he was the most extraordinary human who ever lived. Even more powerful than all the vampires combined. I think of him as I lie beside Ray, and I wonder about my feelings of love for the boy. If they are just my longing for the face of Krishna hidden inside him. I do remember Krishna’s face well. It was a face that would be impossible to forget even after five thousand years.
NINE
Once more, I go back. We left the area, Yaksha and I. We were quickly joined by two of the men from the village who had disappeared. They were vampires. I was a vampire. But that word did not exist then. I didn’t know what I was, except somehow I was like Yaksha.
The horror and the wonder of it all.
My craving for blood did not come over me in the first days, and Yaksha must have told the others not to speak to me about it, because they did not. But I did notice that bright light bothered me. The rays of the midday sun were almost intolerable. This I understood. Because when we were
growing up, I had noticed that Yaksha had a tendency to disappear in the middle of the day. It saddened me that I would never again enjoy a wonderful daytime sky.
Yet the nights, they became a thing of great beauty. For I could see in the dark better than I had been able to see in the day. I would look up at the moon and see that it was not the smooth orb we had all believed, but a pitted and scarred world with no air. Distant objects would appear before me as if only an arm’s length away. I could see detail I had never imagined before: the pores of my skin; the multifaceted eyes of tiny insects. Sound, even on a supposedly silent plain, became a constant. I quickly became sensitive to the breathing patterns of different people. What each rhythm meant, how it corresponded to different emotions. My sense of smell took on an incredible vitality. With just a slight shift of the breeze the world was constantly bathed in new perfumes.
My newfound strength I loved most of all. I could leap to the top of the tallest tree, crumble huge boulders with a clap of my hands. I loved to chase the animals, especially the lions and tigers. They ran from me. They knew there was something inhuman about me.
But my blood hunger came over me quickly. On the fourth day I went to Yaksha and told him my chest was on fire and my heart was pounding in my ears. Honestly, I thought I was dying—I kept thinking about bleeding things. Yet I did not think of drinking blood, it was too impossible an idea. Even when Yaksha told me it was the only way to stop the pain, I pushed it out of my mind. Because even though I was no longer human, I wanted to pretend I was. When Yaksha had held me that long night, I felt myself die. Yet I imagined that I was alive as others were alive. But the life in me was not from this world. I could live off that life, but I could never give in to it. Yaksha told me I was sterile at the same time he told me about the blood. It made me cry for Lalita and Rama and wonder how they were doing without their Sita.
But I would not go to see them.
I would not let them see the monster I had become.
I feared I would make them vampires, too.
I resisted drinking another’s blood, until pain was all I knew. I grew weak; I couldn’t stop moaning. It was as if because I would not drink another’s blood, then the thing Yaksha had put inside me would eat me alive. A month after my transformation, Yaksha brought me a half-conscious boy, with his neck veins already partially open, and ordered me to drink. How I hated him then for putting such temptation in front of me. How it rekindled in me my hatred for how he had taken me from Rama and Lalita. Yet my hate did not give me strength because it was not a pure thing. I needed Yaksha after he changed me, and need is a close kin of love. But I would not say I ever loved Yaksha; rather, I looked up to him because he was greater than I was. For a long time he was the only one to look up to—until Krishna.
Yet I drank the boy’s blood. I fell upon him even as I swooned. And even though I resolved not to kill him, I couldn’t stop drinking once I started. Then the boy was dead. I cried in horror as he took his last breath in my arms. But Yaksha just laughed. He said that once you killed, it was easy to kill again.
Yes, I hated him then because I knew he was right.
After that, I killed many, and I grew to love it.
The years went by. We headed southeast. We never stopped moving. It never took that long for people in a village to realize we were dangerous. We came, we made friends—eventually we slew, and the rumors went before us. We also made more of our kind. The first vampire I created was a girl my age, with large dark eyes and hair like a waterfall made from the light of the midnight sky. I imagined she could become a friend, even though I took her against her will. By then Yaksha had told me what was necessary: the lifting out of my vein coming from my heart; the merger of her vein going back to the heart; the transfusion; the terror; the ecstasy. Her name was Mataji, and she never thanked me for what I did to her, but she stayed close in the years to come.
Making Mataji drained my strength, and it was several days and many victims later before I regained my full powers. It was the same for all of us except Yaksha. When he created another, he just grew stronger. I knew it was because it was his soul that fed us all. The yakshini embodied. The demon from the deep.
Yet there was kindness in him, but I couldn’t understand its source. He was protective of all he created, and he was unusually nice to me. He never again told me that he loved me, however, but he did. His eyes were often on me. What was I supposed to do? The damned could not marry. God would not witness the union as we had been taught from the Vedas.
It was then, maybe after fifty years of being a vampire, that we began to hear stories about a man many said was the Veda incarnate. A man who was more than a man, perhaps Lord Vishnu himself. Each new village we plundered brought us another detail. His principal name was Krishna and he lived in the forests of Vrindavana near the Yumana River, with the cowherders and their milkmaids—the gopis, they were called. It was said this man, this Vasudeva—he had many names—was capable of slaying demons and granting bliss. His best friends were the five Pandava brothers, who had the reputation of being the incarnation of more minor deities. Arjuna, one of the brothers, had almost the fame of Krishna. He was said to be the son of the great god Indra, the lord of paradise. We did not doubt, from what we heard, that Arjuna was indeed a magnificent warrior.
Yaksha was intrigued. The rest of us vampires were as well, but few of us wanted to meet Krishna. Because even though our numbers by then were close to a thousand, we felt Krishna would not greet us with open arms, and if half the stories told about him and his friends were true, he might destroy us all. But Yaksha could not bear the thought that there was a man in the land more powerful than he. Because his reputation had grown great as well, although it was the notoriety of terror.
We set out for Vrindavana, all of us, and we marched openly, making no secret of our destination. The many mortals whom we passed seemed happy, for they believed our wandering herd of blood drinkers was doomed. I saw the gratitude in their faces and felt the fear in my heart. None of these people had personally met Krishna. Yet they believed in him. They simply trusted in the sound of his name. Even as we slew many of them, they called out to Krishna.
Of course Krishna knew we were coming; it required no omniscience on his part. Yaksha had a shrewd intellect, yet it was clouded by the arrogance his powers had given him. As we entered the forests of Vrindavana, all seemed calm. Indeed, the woods appeared deserted, even to us with acute hearing. But Krishna was only saving his attack until we were deep into his land. All of a sudden arrows began to fly toward us. Not a rain of them, but one at a time. Yet in quick succession and fired with perfect accuracy. Truly, not one of those arrows missed its target. They went through the hearts and heads of our kind. They never failed to kill that which Yaksha had told us could not be killed. And the most amazing thing is we could not catch the man who shot the arrows. We could not even see him, his kavach, his mystical armor, was that great.
Mataji was one of the first to fall, an arrow between her eyes.
Still, we were many, and it was going to take time even for the finest archer of all time to kill us. Yaksha drove us forward, as fast as we could go. Then the arrows began to strike only the rear of our contingent, and then they ceased altogether. It appeared that we had been able to outrun even Arjuna. But we had left many behind. Rebellion stirred against Yaksha. Most wanted to leave Vrindavana, if they knew which way to flee. For the first time Yaksha was losing command. But it was then, in those enchanted woods, that we came across what at first seemed to Yaksha a great boon. We ran into Radha, the chief of the gopis, Krishna’s consort.
We had heard about Radha as well, whose name meant “longing.” She was called this because she longed for Krishna even more than she desired to breathe. She was picking jasmines by the clear waters of the Yamuna when we came across her. We did not frighten her; she actually smiled when she saw us. Her beauty was extraordinary; I had never seen and never would see in five thousand years such an exquisite female.
Her skin was remarkably fair; her face shone with the subtle radiance of moonlight. Her form was shapely. She moved as if in a joyful theater; each turn of her arm or bending of knees seemed to bring bliss. It was because each step she took, she took with the thought of Krishna. She was singing a song about him when we came upon her. In fact, the first words out of her mouth were to ask us if we wanted to learn it.
Yaksha immediately took her captive. She did not try to hide her identity. We bound her wrists and ankles. I was put in charge of her while Yaksha sent several of our kind calling through the woods that we had Radha and that we were going to kill her unless Krishna agreed to meet Yaksha in single combat. It did not take Krishna long to respond. He sent Yudhishthira, Arjuna’s brother, with a message. He would meet us at the edge of Vrindavana where we had entered the woods. If we did not know how to find it, Yudhishthira would show us the way. He had only two conditions. That we not harm Radha, and that he get to choose the form of combat. Yaksha sent Yudhishthira back saying that he accepted the challenge. It may have been that we should have first asked Yudhishthira which way to go. The woods were like a maze, and Radha was not talking. Yet she did not seem afraid. Occasionally she would glance my way and smile with such calm assurance that it was I who knew fear.
Yaksha was ecstatic. He did not believe any mortal could beat him at any form of combat. By such a pronouncement he appeared to discount the stories concerning Krishna’s divine origin. Yet when I asked him about that, he did not answer me. He had a light in his eyes, though. He said that he had been born for this moment. Personally, I was fearful of a trick. Krishna had a reputation for being mischievous. Yaksha brushed aside my concerns. He would destroy Krishna, he said, then he would make Radha a vampire. She would be his consort. I did not feel jealous. I did not think it would happen.
Eventually we found our way back to the place where we had entered the forest. We remembered the spot because there was a huge pit in the ground. Apparently Krishna intended to use this pit when he challenged Yaksha. His people were gathered about it when we came out of the woods. Yet they made no attempt to attack us, although our numbers were roughly equal. I saw Arjuna, standing near his brothers, his mighty bow in his hands. When he looked my way and saw me holding on to Radha, he frowned and took an arrow into his hands and rubbed it to his chest. But he did nothing more. He was waiting for his master. We were all waiting. In that moment, even though I was not yet seventy years old, I felt as if I had waited since the dawn of creation to see this person. I who held captive his great jewel.
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