Thirst No. 5: The Sacred Veil

by Christopher Pike

  Seymour smiles. “How will you protect me, Jolie?”

  “I can make people die with my mind,” she says simply.

  Seymour loses his smile and turns on Brutran. “You should never have shot that soldier in front of her,” he says.

  Brutran shakes her head. “I should have shot him earlier.”

  Seymour appeals to me and Matt. “I don’t know if I’m going to feel very safe at that motel,” he says.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “But ask yourself, how safe are the Goodwins right now?”

  • • •

  Before knocking on the door, I know we have the right house. The scenery is identical to what can be seen in Shanti’s photograph. The residence is surrounded by maples and birch and there’s a small lake two hundred yards from the back porch. The trees do not crowd the home, however, and there’s plenty of room to walk around the gardens. It’s a lovely property, and I’d even go so far as to say it’s peaceful, except all the lights are out and the front door lies wide open.

  Plus I smell blood.

  Matt gives me a look.

  He doesn’t have to say it. We’re too late.

  The car we’re driving comes from the motel where we deposited the others. We plan to return it well before morning, no harm done. Because it’s obvious the Goodwins have already been attacked, we don’t bother to hide our approach but park at the end of their long driveway and walk to the door. The smell of blood thickens, and it’s not a sweet smell, not even to me, a vampire. Blood spilled in violence never smells fresh. We hear the sound of labored breathing and draw our handguns.

  Matt leads the way. It’s dark, but that’s no obstacle for either of us. I see the couch from the photograph, where the happy couple was sitting, the wide windows that look out on the grass and trees. Yet the place is a mess, it has been ransacked: the sofa cushions gutted with a sharp blade, all the drawers thrown open, even the backs of the wall paintings torn off.

  Whoever came was looking for something.

  The home is a two-story but already we know there is no one upstairs. The gasping breaths come from a hallway near the back door, the sounds of two dying men. Matt gives me a questioning look and I nod. He turns on the living room light and we go to see what has become of Mr. Goodwin.

  I recognize him from Shanti’s photograph.

  But who is the other man?

  Mr. Goodwin lies on his back in a pool of blood, his head propped up by the screen door. His face is battered, swollen around the eyes and mouth, and the stab wounds to his gut are deep. The one on the right side will be fatal. It goes through the liver and it is still leaking. His features would be black from the bruising if he weren’t so white from blood loss. Matt feels the man’s pulse and shakes his head.

  “I don’t know if we can revive him,” he says.

  “We have to try.” I pause. “I don’t hear or smell Sarah in the area.”

  “She’s not here. They must have taken her.” Matt gestures to the other man, who has a single massive bruise on his left temple but no other apparent injuries. He is thirty, dark-haired, extremely handsome, and has on gray slacks and a smartly tailored black sports coat that speaks of money. Matt leans over him and checks his vitals. He even goes so far as to remove the man’s right shoe and pinch his Achilles tendon.

  “He’s out cold,” Matt says, gently feeling the guy’s head. “He has a skull fracture. Any idea who he is?”

  “No,” I say. “But let me concentrate on Mr. Goodwin. He’s not going to last much longer.”

  Matt pulls out his cell. “Should I call for an ambulance?”

  I shake my head. “It’s too late for doctors. But I might be able to reach him.”

  Placing my left hand on his forehead and my right over his fading heart, I lean forward and whisper in the man’s ear, putting all the power of my voice into my words. Yet I don’t try to overwhelm his will with blunt persuasion. There’s a pleading tone in my voice and in my own heart.

  “Mr. Goodwin,” I say. “My name is Sita. You don’t know me but I’m an old friend of your family. I’m here to help. I know you’re out, you can’t hear me, not consciously, but you can feel me. My hand is on your head, my fingers are next to your heart. Let my energy flow from my body into your body. Feel my heartbeat. Feel my breath.”

  I lean over farther and breathe through his closed lips.

  His chest rises and falls.

  A sigh escapes his swollen mouth and his eyes open.

  He blinks. “Sita,” he whispers.

  I nod. “You’ve heard my name before.”

  He coughs weakly. “Long ago. How . . .” He doesn’t finish and his eyes close. I shake him gently.

  “Mr. Goodwin, tell me your first name.”

  His eyes reopen. “Roger.”

  “Roger. Try to stay awake. We need your help to find your wife.”

  Pain fills his face. “Sarah. They took her.”

  “Who took her? Describe them.”

  “A man and a woman. Cruel. They beat us. They wouldn’t stop.”

  “Did they question you?” He doesn’t respond. I shake him harder. “Did they come for the veil?”

  Roger Goodwin’s eyes suddenly come into focus, and it’s like he’s seeing me for the first time. “Who are you?” he demands, blood spilling over his lips. He’s bleeding internally, of course, he’s been stabbed a half dozen times. Nevertheless, Matt gestures to his cell phone, silently insisting he should call for an ambulance. I shake my head.

  “I told you, my name is Sita,” I say.

  A note of suspicion enters his voice. “You’re blond, blue-eyed. Are you German?”

  He’s really asking if I’m Aryan and in fact I am. I’m an original, a product of the race that conquered India thousands of years ago. I look like a poster child for Hitler’s perfect race—one of the reason the Nazis trusted me at the start of the war.

  “I’m not German. I’m a friend. My family knew your wife’s family. They knew Harrah and Ralph Levine. They were with them in Auschwitz. That’s how I know about the veil.” I pause. “I’m a friend and this is my friend Matt. We can help save your wife.”

  He gropes feebly with his hands, searching for something he’s lost. The move is reflex, nothing more. “My wife, they took my wife. Sarah.”

  “You said a man and a woman took her. Did they take the veil as well?”

  Again, he freezes at the mention of the veil. It’s obviously something the two kept secret. “Your family was in the camp?” he asks warily.

  “Yes. My grandparents were in Poland during the war. Harrah and Ralph told them about the veil, and together they escaped from Auschwitz.”

  “What were their names?”

  “I’m named after my grandmother. Her name was Sita. Roger, I know you’ve heard the name before.”

  He nods weakly. “From Sarah’s grandmother. Harrah.”

  “Then you know you can trust me. You have to trust me and my friend. We’re the only ones who can get your wife back. You have to tell us what you know. Did the people who kidnapped Sarah take the veil?”

  An unlooked-for strength enters his voice and his face hardens. “No. They tortured us, but Sarah wouldn’t tell them where it was.”

  “Do you know where it is?” I ask, and it’s difficult to keep the desperation out of my voice. Of course, I’m relieved to hear it hasn’t fallen into enemy hands, at least not yet, but I fear what they will do to Sarah to get her to talk. Roger Goodwin sighs, the sound as sad as his approaching death. The man knows he’s finished.

  “Sarah never told me where she kept it,” he says. “She said only women could know.”

  Harrah had told me something similar.

  Only women could possess the veil.

  It was a rule in the Veil of Veronica tradition.

  “Can you describe the man and woman who took your wife?” I ask.

  “The woman, she looked like you, a little older. Blond, beautiful, but with cold eyes.”


  “What did the man look like?” And I half expect him to describe the man lying only ten feet away.

  But Roger Goodwin’s face twists into horror at the question. “He was the Beast. I swear it was him.” He stops and frowns. “But he was young.”

  For a moment I don’t understand the reference.

  Yet his choice of words sends a chill through my body.

  At Auschwitz the Jews called Himmler the Beast.

  Roger Goodwin’s spasm of strength is fading. His eyes fall shut as more blood leaks from his mouth. I don’t have to hold his pulse to hear his heart skip in his chest. Physically prodding him to talk will no longer work. Once more I lean over and whisper in his ear.

  “Roger. There’s another man lying here. He’s unconscious, we don’t know if he’ll wake up. Who is he?”

  Mr. Goodwin’s voice is faint. “A man came. He came to help us. He burst through the door. But they struck him down.”

  “Do you know who this man is?”

  “Never saw him before. But he fought . . . he fought for us.”

  “Roger. You’re dying, but Sarah is still alive. You’ve got to tell us something we can use to save her.”

  The words come out in a fading gasp. “They took her into the sky.”

  “Into the sky? I don’t understand.”

  “In a vim . . . A vim . . .”

  “Vim.” His last word, and it means nothing to me.

  His breath rattles in his chest and his heart stops.

  I stretch him out so he can rest more comfortably on the floor. A useless gesture but I want to do something for him. A brave man, it’s sad he had to die brokenhearted. The way he said Sarah’s name, it was obvious he loved her very much.

  Matt puts his hand on my shoulder. “Did he tell you anything we can use?” he asks.

  “Not really.”

  “Sarah must be strong to hold out under such torture.”

  Standing, I shake my head. “A mortal can only hold out so long. She’ll break eventually.” Frustrated, I pound the wall, and my fist goes right through it. “Damn it! We should have gotten here earlier.”

  Matt gestures to the dispersal of the blood on the floor, how some of it has dried. “This happened two or three hours ago. Even if we’d come straight here, we would have been too late.”

  I brush the plaster from my fist, my anger still raw. “True. But we could have gotten more out of Roger.”

  “What’s done is done. What do we do now? Do you want to try to wake the other man?”

  “Not yet. I need a moment.” Linking my mind with Mr. Goodwin’s has drained me. The man is dead but I still feel his pain, his anguish.

  “I understand,” Matt says.

  We survey the mess the assailants have made of the house. The man and woman did a thorough job, and we can tell by the force they used that they might have the strength of a vampire or a Telar. However, we both agree that we should be able to see things that they missed.

  Yet the land behind the house draws me. Roger was clearly heading that way when he fell. It must be the direction they took Sarah.

  “Search the house for anything unusual,” I say. “I’m going to check outside.”

  “Why?” Matt asks.

  “I want to know what he was trying to tell us when he died.”

  The backyard is a field of grass, sprinkled with trees, that leads to the lake. The first twenty yards are carefully trimmed, then the growth turns wild and the footprints are easy to spot in the matted green blades. There is a combination of three sets of footprints, followed by only two, which makes me think that Sarah stumbled and was swept off her feet and carried away.

  But to where?

  The footprints suddenly dead-end at the edge of a clearing. At the center of the meadow is a three-foot scorch mark. Here the grass has not simply been burned—it’s been incinerated into a fine black powder. Yet the footprints stop thirty feet from the mark, and the grass around it appears untouched.

  I kneel to examine the powder, but something keeps me from touching it. What’s left of the grass—and the underlying earth for that matter—is giving off a sickly glow. Humans couldn’t see the faint radiance but I can and know what it signifies.

  The burned powder is radioactive.

  “They took her into the sky,” I say to myself.

  Matt calls from the house. He has found something, I can tell by his tone. I’m tempted to take a sample of the powder but doubt the Goodwins have a lead-lined container in their kitchen or garage. I can tolerate tremendous heat, your standard house fire for example, but radiation and I do not get along, especially in high doses. For me to be able see the glow emanating from the scorched circle means it is hot enough to drive a Geiger counter wild.

  Inside, Matt shows me a handwritten diary.

  The book is small; it could fit in my back pocket.

  “It was hidden in the bedroom wall, in a wooden panel,” he says. “They plastered over the spot. Recently, too, the only reason I was able to spot it was because the plaster was still damp.”

  I study the book. The feel of the paper, the smell of the ink, the style of the binding—all these details tell me the book is extremely old. Indeed, it reminds me of handwritten books I owned in in France during the seventeenth century.

  But the text is not in French. At first I assume I’m looking at three alternating languages: Latin, Greek, and Aramaic. But there appear to be twice as many Aramaic letters. Then I realize that the author also used an ancient Hebrew script that at first glance can be mistaken for Aramaic.

  I can read and write the four languages, of course, I’ve lived with them. But I can’t read a line of the book. It’s in code, a complex code, that someone spent a long time developing.

  I’m older than Matt and know more about old languages. I explain to him my thoughts on the book, but he surprises me by pointing out a fact I’ve missed.

  “Whoever wrote this was copying it from another book,” he says. “Note the style of the script. The guy wrote without pausing to think.”

  “You’re right. But why do you assume it was a man?”

  “Few women were taught to read or write that long ago.”

  “True. But women were always the custodians of the tradition of the Veil of Veronica.”

  “How do you know the book is related to the veil?”

  I skip to a line near the back of the book. It stands alone and it’s the only line that’s not in code, although it was still written in the four separate languages. It says simply, The Story of Veronica.

  I translate it for Matt. He stands thoughtful.

  “You have to break the code,” he says.

  “I will.” I tell him what I discovered out back. His puzzlement deepens.

  “Are you saying something landed there?” he asks.

  “There’s no sign a craft set down on the grass.”

  “But the radiation. Who walks around with radioactive materials?”

  “Dangerous people. Crazy people. I don’t know.”

  The mystery man on the floor begins to stir. Matt and I turn in time to see him open his eyes. He groans in pain and we move to his side. I kneel near his head and take his hand.

  “Try not to move,” I say. “You have a serious concussion.”

  He stares up at me. His eyes are a warm brown, deep set, and even though he is groggy, I sense a deep intelligence in them. “It’s you,” he says.

  I’m immediately suspicious. “You know me?”

  “Sita,” he whispers.

  “Who are you?”

  “Mr. Grey.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I was waiting, watching.”

  “The Goodwins?”

  His eyes fall shut. “I was waiting for you.”

  He’s unconscious. I glance at Matt. “Well?” I say.

  “He must be from the government. They must have figured out our destination.”

  “How? We had the photograph, they didn’t.”


  “It doesn’t matter. Brutran could have given away the Goodwins with all her poking around online.” Matt pauses. “We should kill him. Or leave him here to die.”

  “Roger Goodwin said he fought to save them.” I consider. “As far as we know, the government agencies are not calling me Sita.”

  “What are you saying? That we take him with us?”

  Reaching over, I cradle Grey in my arms and stand. “Chances are he’ll wake up again. We can question him more at the motel. We can decide there.”

  Matt doesn’t share my point of view. “You’re exposing the others to unnecessary risk.”

  “I know but it’s not like we have a lot of leads. We have to take a few risks.”

  On the way back to our car we spot another trail in the grass. The footprints match Grey’s shoes and lead to the spot where he was spying on the Goodwin home, a cluster of bushes not far from the road. I put Grey in the backseat of our car before hiking to the spot with Matt. There we find a black bag filled with electronic equipment that could have been purchased at Radio Shack. Yet the components are arranged in ways I don’t understand.

  “I don’t think he was carrying a gun,” I say.

  Matt nods as he studies the bag’s contents. “This doesn’t look like spy equipment.”

  “Still think he’s government?”

  “I don’t know what to think,” Matt says.

  We return to the motel where we left Seymour, Brutran, and Jolie. Matt goes to check on the others while I lay Mr. Grey on my bed and carefully feel around the bruise on his head. The tips of my fingers are sensitive—I don’t need an X-ray to pick up the hairline fracture. The man would probably be better off in a hospital but I’m reluctant to part with him.

  Why would he fight so hard to protect the Goodwins?

  Matt enters my room, Seymour at his back.

  “Brutran is resting,” Matt says. “She told me to tell you she’d talk to us in the morning. Jolie is sound asleep. They’re both exhausted.”

  “How come you’re not sleeping?” I ask Seymour.

  “Like I could with you two out prowling around.” He pauses. “Matt told me what happened at the house. Pretty creepy.”

  “It was sad,” I say.

  Seymour comes close, points to the man on my bed. “Should we be making new friends?” he asks.