“Which means you’ve got to stay,” Mary says.
“We’d hate to put you guys out,” I say.
“You’re not,” Mary says. “Besides, you might have no choice but to stay here. It’s the weekend, and Santa Cruz is a resort town, at least to those who are from out of town. Unless you have reservations, you’re not going to find a room this late.” Mary pauses. “I’d be honored if you’d be our guests.”
I turn to the others, who nod their heads. I especially seek Paula’s approval. Like myself, she mustn’t sense any danger. Still, there’s an odd feeling in the air, a sense of the unknown that I can’t place, and that has me on guard. It’s not a sense of malice, it’s more like a mystery.
“Thank you. We’ll stay,” I say.
NINE
An hour later Seymour and I sit on our respective beds in the guesthouse. Both Paula and Shanti were exhausted from all the travel and wanted to go straight to sleep. For that reason they took the room in the house. Besides, Seymour and I, we belong together. He sits nearby, smoking a cigarette and scratching the blisters on the back of his hands.
“How bad are they?” I ask.
“Bad enough. I could use another shot.”
“I have a small vial of T-11 and syringes in the car. I can get them for you.”
“It can wait until morning.”
“There’s no reason you should be uncomfortable.”
“If Charlie and Matt don’t get their lab up and running, a lot more of us are going to be feeling uncomfortable real soon.”
“You don’t put much stock in them.”
“Hell, Matt’s like Superman. And I’m sure Charlie’s a genius in his field. But we’re asking too much of the guys in too short a time. The Telar have been around forever. They didn’t design a virus and vaccine that can be reconfigured in a few days. They designed it to destroy humanity. When you’re that pissed off at seven billion people, you’re going to come up with a pretty complex formula.”
“I hear ya.”
“Then how come you didn’t fight Matt to abandon his plan?”
“I would have fought him. Teri couldn’t.”
Seymour takes a drag on his cigarette. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I’m sorry.”
“I can’t complain. I’m still here, ain’t I? Besides, with Matt and Charlie off doing their thing, I can do what I have to.”
“Can you? You don’t have your invincible body anymore. How are you going to face Brutran as a newbie vampire? Even when you were Sita, she practically wiped the floor with you.”
“Your faith in me is overwhelming.”
“Sorry. I just never had the end of the world staring me in the face before.”
“It did in a few of your books. That must have helped you get used to it a little.”
“Let me tell you a secret that only writers know. All the stuff we write about, we’re glad it happens to other people. Because if it happened to us, we couldn’t handle it.”
“And that’s why you write about it.”
“Yep.” Seymour coughs and grinds out his cigarette in a plastic cup. He scratches his hands before feeling the hardness of his mattress. “What do you think of our hosts?” he asks.
“They look great together. But something doesn’t add up.”
“His age sure as hell doesn’t. Going by what you said, he looks even younger than Brutran.”
“That’s one point.”
“Are you worried that he’s a true psychic?”
“A little. He gave me a few funny looks. I wonder if he could read my mind.”
“Could you read his?” Seymour asks.
“No. I doubt the old Sita could, either. But that’s not what’s bothering me.”
“What is it then?”
“It’s the two of them together. It’s the way they took us into their home. To a certain extent, I felt the same around Professor Sharp, but I could understand his desire to talk. He’s old, he lives alone. He wants people to know about his discoveries before he dies.”
“He’s afraid of the IIC. I don’t think he wants too much publicity.”
“Sure. But you know what I’m saying. Sharp doesn’t want to go to his death bed without being acknowledged. I can understand his desire for company. Freddy and Mary are not the same kind of animal.”
“Why link them? They’re together now, sure, but she doesn’t have his history.”
“I just have this feeling . . . I don’t know.”
“Tell me.”
I sigh. “I’ve had it before.”
“When?”
“A long time ago.”
“Everything with you was a long time ago. When?”
“When Krishna was on earth,” I reply, and I don’t realize the words are true until I speak them aloud.
“You might be feeling that way because you spoke to John.”
“It didn’t come over me until . . . tonight.”
“You’re not making much sense.” Seymour keeps scratching. “You can get that medicine if you’re dying to take a late-night stroll.”
I jump up. “You poor dear. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Try not to get mugged.”
I reach for the door. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“I’m more worried about the mugger.”
I point a finger at him. “You. I should let you suffer.”
“I’d stop suffering if you made me a vampire.”
“You don’t want Teri’s blood. You don’t want to go through this awful thirst every night.” I open the door. “I’ll be back.”
The medicine is in the trunk. I have no trouble locating the vial of vaccine but I have to search for the package of syringes. The bright moon helps, the white beams peering over my shoulder. In the end, I find the needles under a book. A big fat book with a thick leather cover. I can hardly believe it. My hands tremble as I lift it clear.
It seems impossible but it’s Yaksha’s book. The original.
I hurry back to the guesthouse and show Seymour what I’ve found. He’s interested but he’s even more interested in the vaccine. I give him a high dose. I have suspected for some time that Charlie was being stingy with his injections. I shoot the blue liquid directly into the vein on Seymour’s left arm and he feels immediate relief. The black blisters on his hands begin to recede.
“Better?” I say.
“Yeah. I think Shanti and I both need the higher dose.”
“I wonder if I should wake her and give her a shot.”
“Not if she’s already asleep. I don’t think she’s suffering as much as I am.”
“I noticed that. I think the girl’s tougher than you.”
He ignores the dig and gestures to the book. “What did you find in the book that was so exciting?”
I stare at him. “You’ve seen this book before?”
“When I picked Shanti up at JFK. Isn’t this Yaksha’s book?”
“Yes,” I say feeling a slight overlapping of Teri’s memories with my own. The phenomena is happening less and less but it has not gone away. “I haven’t found anything new in it. I was just about to start looking. But I got this interesting idea today. It was when we were in the car. No, it might have been tonight. It doesn’t matter. I got the idea that there’s more to this book than meets the eye.”
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“There are parts where Yaksha goes into great detail. Like when he traveled to the New World and found Jamune and the Aztecs, and fought the bulk of the remaining vampires to the death. He narrates those battles blow by blow. But when he comes to other important matters, he skips over them quickly. Like the section where Krishna tells him the story of the Hydra and how to kill the Telar. It’s like important parts are missing. And he never writes about meeting his wife, Umara.”
“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 gaz
e 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?”