Thirst No. 2: Phantom, Evil Thirst, and Creatures of Forever

  “Shanti?”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I want to apologize again for comparing you to a witch.”

  “You didn’t compare me to her.”

  “I meant her scars. I didn’t mean to say they reminded me of your scars.”

  “Mine are all gone thanks to you.”

  “I know. Your face looks great.”

  Shanti hesitates. “Yeah.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Is something about your face still bothering you?”

  “Well, I don’t want you to take this the wrong way.”

  “I won’t.”

  “But sometimes I feel like all the work the doctors have done is just an illusion.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I still feel ugly inside.”

  “You’re not ugly. Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Not outside, inside. Don’t you ever feel that way?”

  “I did today.”

  “When you injected the virus in the kids?”

  My turn to hesitate. “Yes.”

  “How do you feel about that?”

  “I have tons of guilt. Regret. Remorse.”

  “Don’t those words all mean the same thing?”

  “Yes, they’re synonyms.” I pause. “It’s odd, I had a talk with the ferryman about synonyms.”

  “That must have been amusing.”

  “There was not necessarily one answer for each riddle. You just had to get the meaning right.”

  “That makes sense.” She pauses. “Sita?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m exhausted. Can I sleep now?”

  “Sure. Sorry to bother you. Sweet dreams.”

  “Same to you. Good night.”

  I sit in the dark. The air conditioner remains silent. It continues to get warmer. All I have on is a thin T-shirt and the sweat drips off of me.

  “A word from me and you will be taken through the red door, where there is only fire and pain. There you will burn. But not like you burned on earth. In the world of the living you were a vampire. There you would heal quickly. But in the world of fire, there is no relief. There is only agony.”

  It was Tarana who said that.

  “Shanti?” I say.

  She sits up in bed and stares at me.

  “What’s bothering you?” she asks.

  “Why did you lie to me about Yaksha’s book?”

  “Lie to you? Why would I lie to you?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  “Sita, honestly, I brought the original home. It’s sitting right there on your lap.”

  “The first time we talked about this issue, I was in Teri’s body. I was confused. But now that I’m whole again, I’m a hundred percent sure I gave you a copy.”

  “Then how did you end up with the original?”

  “The question should be, how did you end up with it?”

  “I don’t understand. Are you accusing me of stealing it?”

  “That would be an amazing trick, to steal it from the Telar.”

  Shanti stands, puts her robe back on, and comes over and sits on the seat beside me. Her plastic surgery doesn’t look so good when she’s tired and not wearing makeup. Her scars are much more visible. She reaches for my hand but I don’t take hers.

  “What’s wrong?” she asks, worried.

  I shrug. “Just asking a few questions is all.”

  “No, you’re not. It’s like you suddenly don’t trust me.”

  I stare at her. I don’t speak. Silence can cut the deepest.

  Shanti grows restless. “Ask your questions and get it over with.”

  “How did you block the Cradle?”

  “I told you, I don’t know.”

  “I thought perhaps it was your goodness.”

  “But you’ve changed your mind?”

  “You know, the first time I was attacked by the Cradle, in Brutran’s house, it used you as an object of focus.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The Cradle struck and suddenly you were on her TV. You picked up a gun and forced it deep into your mouth. You pulled the trigger and blew away half your face. You ended up looking like, well, the day we met.”

  Shanti nods sadly. “I remember that day. You were very kind to me.”

  “You’re right, I fell for you immediately. That was unusual for me. Normally I warm up to people slowly. But right from the start, I wanted to take care of you.”

  “I suppose I cast a spell on you.”

  “Like a witch.”

  Shanti glares. “If you’re going to sit there and insult me . . .”

  “How long were you outside that London motel before you rushed in and saved me?” I interrupt.

  “Seymour and I had just gotten there.”

  “I always wondered about that morning. That was the worst time the Cradle ever struck me. I felt like I was in hell, literally. It was worse than when I was sitting in Brutran’s house. That always puzzled me. After all, Jolie was in Brutran’s house, and she was one of the leaders of the Cradle.” I pause. “You see what I’m getting at?”

  “No.”

  “I wonder if you were outside that motel room for an hour.”

  “With Seymour?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Doing what?” she asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What was Seymour doing during this hour?”

  “Maybe nothing. Maybe he didn’t know what he was doing. Just like I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  Shanti is annoyed. “Are you done?”

  “How did you get ahold of Matt’s blood?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The Cradle needed a sample of his blood to attack him. But when I was in the Cradle and we attacked Lisa, I saw she hadn’t stolen it. I saw she was completely innocent.”

  “Are you the one who killed her?”

  “Yes. She was my sacrifice.”

  Shanti stands and there appear to be real tears in her eyes. “You say that so casually. Like her death meant nothing to you.”

  “You’re wrong. I feel terrible about her death. Now wipe away those fake tears and sit back down and answer my question. Did you steal Matt’s blood that day he slipped on the pool deck and cut his scalp?”

  Shanti sits back down and wipes at her eyes.

  “It was Lisa who bandaged his head,” she says.

  “I know. That’s why I thought she was guilty. She threw away a lot of blood-soaked gauze when she was done with it. Tell me, did you take it?”

  “No.”

  I smile. “You know what’s weird?”

  “What?”

  “I can always tell if a person’s lying or not.”

  “So you’re absolutely sure I’m lying about the blood.”

  “Not at all. I can’t tell with you. I get no clear signal at all. It’s like you’re not really in this room. But it was odd Matt was so careless with his blood. I think you had something to do with that. I’m sure it was you who stole it. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t Seymour or Teri or Lisa. You’re the only one left.”

  Shanti acts bored. “Anything else?”

  “You told Brutran I was dead. From the start, you were the mole. But for some reason she doesn’t know you’re the mole. It’s like you implanted the info in her head. Her whole attitude toward you is bizarre. It’s like she’s afraid of you but doesn’t know why.”

  “Do you know why?”

  “I’m beginning to get an idea. I think you’re the head of the Cradle. Its immortal head. Oh, I suppose your body can be killed and that would be a pain in the ass for you because it’s a useful tool when it comes to spying on us. But I think deep inside, what you are, can’t be destroyed so easily.” I pause. “Isn’t that true, Tarana?”

  Finally, I have spoken the demon’s name, and just as the Lord’s name chanted aloud has immense power
to bring light and love, the demon’s name can alter the room so that it feels like it’s filled with poisonous snakes and other vile creatures. The temperature appears to rise twenty degrees in a heartbeat and a smothering heaviness chokes the air.

  Shanti smiles, or perhaps it is a sneer.

  “Very good, Sita. If you had just named me from the start, you could have avoided all this useless talk.”

  “Because when you expose a demon, it loses its power?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Umara.”

  “Only the host body can be harmed by exposure.”

  “So I haven’t actually hurt you?”

  Shanti grins and raises her hand and snaps her fingers.

  “Nope,” she says.

  I blink. An instant passes.

  Suddenly I’m standing in the living room of an expensive hotel suite overlooking a large city. It’s nighttime, the skyscrapers are all lit, and even though I know every major skyline in the world, I don’t recognize this one.

  The suite itself is five-star. It has the finest accommodations. There’s a wet bar stocked with liquors that cost a mint, a sunken sauna that gives off perfumed waves of steam, two adjoining bedrooms, and huge flat-screen TVs.

  Standing by the door is Tarana.

  He does not look like I expect.

  Does it matter? He can assume any form he chooses.

  He is a young man of thirty. He wears a beige suit and has a strong handsome jaw. His hair is black, neither long nor short; he combs it straight back. His eyes are large and dark. They are his most striking feature and perhaps his worst. When I look directly into them, I don’t feel so good.

  Yet he smiles when he sees me and crosses the room to shake my hand. His grip is firm but he does not try to crush my fingers. He’s much too subtle for that. You see, I know him, he has been watching me for days, and I have been feeling him. This is the one who has been standing behind me, the man in the mirror so to speak, a very powerful Familiar. How much more he might be, I’m not exactly sure, but I hope to find out.

  “Sita. I’ve looked forward to this meeting for ages.”

  “I didn’t expect we’d ever meet,” I reply, playing along. Of course we have already met. In front of the Scale, where we consummated our deal to kill Umara. Yet this Tarana acts more cheerful than the Caretaker in the red robe. The key word is “acts.” I know his behavior, like his appearance, can change in an instant.

  “Life is like that. Impossible to predict. Can I get you a drink?”

  “No thanks.”

  “Have a seat,” he says, gesturing to a chair, while sitting on the couch across from me. Out of nowhere a Scotch and soda with ice appears in his right hand. “So how did you know it was me?”

  “Shanti?”

  He acts disappointed. “Shanti was just a tool, a convenient puppet I decided to use for a while. Frankly, I’m surprised it took you so long to see through her disguise. That saccharine personality I used around you should have given you a clue. Didn’t I make her just a tad too perfect? I even had her worshipping the same god as you.”

  “I admit, I should have spotted her sooner. But how did you two get hooked up? Young Indian girl. She doesn’t seem like your type.”

  Tarana gestures upward, as if he’s pointing to the surface of the earth. “One thing you have to know is that they’re all my type. Shanti is a perfect example. That history she fed you was all lies. She didn’t get trapped in one of those arranged Indian marriages where she had to agree to spend the rest of her life with the biggest asshole who happened to come up with the biggest dowry. In reality, Shanti’s fiancé refused to marry her because she scared him. She didn’t spend her days reading the Gita. She was into what you would call the left-handed path. She loved nothing more than to go out late at night and hang around graveyards and perform ceremonies designed to reanimate corpses. Oh, that must sound familiar to you. Isn’t that how Yaksha came to earth?”

  “Yaksha started as a demon but redeemed himself in the end.”

  “Good for him. I doubt Shanti has much chance of doing that. To make a long story short, it was while she was in the midst of conversing with one of her excited corpses that I took over and we struck up a deal. Nothing too fancy, but you see, I already had my eye on you and I figured she might come in handy later on. She ended up being more useful than even I planned. She was my principal alter ego when it came to the Cradle. She could cast a spell on any of them: Haru, Cynthia Brutran—it made no difference.”

  “Is that how she got Yaksha’s book from Haru?”

  “Naturally.”

  “Is that why Cindy feared her?”

  “Brutran never understood why she felt so uneasy when Shanti was around. It was Brutran that ordered the hit on Shanti, not me. But that didn’t worry me. I knew you would protect her.”

  “But Shanti’s uncle backed up her story. Or was he just another of your pawns?”

  “What do you think?”

  “How did Shanti get the acid burns on her face?”

  “She did those to herself. It was a requirement on my side to make sure she was serious about our relationship.” Tarana chuckles. “To think how frightened Shanti’s fiancé was of her to start with. Once she fried off half her face, he tried to escape her by moving to England. Too bad she got to him before he could get away.”

  “I assume he came to a bad end.”

  “Worse than Numbria, if you can imagine. I’ll spare you the gory details. If you’ll answer my original question. How did you know I was the immortal head?”

  He is not asking about being Shanti. He is asking how I knew he was Tarana. Indeed, he wants me to think of him as Tarana.

  Why?

  So I will not guess who he really is?

  “Who else would know to come running when human beings started experimenting with arrays, cradles, and links? To be blunt, Tarana, I think you’re the cosmic expert at establishing contact with mortals and feeding them the information they need to know to totally screw up their lives.”

  “That’s high praise coming from a monster like you.”

  “I was a monster once. I retired from that position long ago.”

  “Did you? What about the three hundred syringes you prepared for Seymour to inject? I understand you switched the vaccine for the virus.”

  “I did what had to be done.”

  Tarana smiles. “A lot of people down here say that.”

  “I imagine they do. But if I hadn’t done it, would we be having this conversation right now?”

  “I’m sure the question weighs on your heart. A part of you wonders if the Scale would have treated you better if you hadn’t chosen to murder those kids.”

  I stop, he’s got me. “I confronted the Scale before I killed them.”

  “Surely you realize time has no meaning in that place.”

  He’s trying to confuse me, to make me doubt myself. The trouble is, he’s doing a damn fine job of it.

  “I’m not here to talk about the kids,” I say. “We had a deal and I kept up my end. I killed Umara. I want to be compensated.”

  “You already have been. I’ve kept you from burning.”

  “I want more.”

  He smiles and takes a sip from his glass. “I admire a greedy woman. What do you want?”

  “The Cradle’s Internet program destroyed.”

  “Sorry, no can do.”

  “It’s just a bunch of code.”

  “Code that I happened to write. Let’s be blunt, Sita, you only killed Umara so you could destroy the Telar. I didn’t interfere because it worked to both our advantages. The Telar had run the world for so long they had begun to bore me, and there’s nothing I hate worse than someone who bores me. But the Cradle were my kids. I honestly didn’t think you had the nerve to inject a bunch of children with a deadly virus.”

  “Since you hate boring people, I’m glad I was able to surprise you.”

  Suddenly angry, he slams down his drink on
the glass coffee table, chipping the edge. The outburst reminds me how unpredictable he can be.

  “You did more than that! In a single stroke you wiped out years of preparation. Next to the code I loaded on the Internet, the Cradle was my strongest link to the world.”

  “You can always create another.”

  “Not easily. Matt, Brutran, and the rest of your clowns will be on the lookout for another one. They’ll probably stop it before it can get started.” He pauses. “Unless of course you stop them.”

  “What are you offering?”

  “The obvious. To continue our relationship.”

  “Why should I want to do that?” I ask innocently.

  “In case you’ve forgotten, you’ve already been judged. You’re damned, Sita, which means you either play by my rules or you burn.” He glares as he gestures out the window, his anger not far away. “This whole city is surrounded by fire.”

  “It sounds like Baker.”

  “I assure you it’s a lot hotter than that hick town.”

  “Fine, I’ll make another deal with you.”

  My quick response seems to take him by surprise.

  “Excellent. Your greed grows. Tell me what you want and I’ll get it for you. Then I’ll tell you what I want and you obey me without question.”

  “That sounds too much like our last deal. Where I was forced to agree to a contract I never got a chance to read.”

  “No one ever gets to read my contracts.” He pauses. “What is it you want?”

  “The answer to the first riddle the ferryman gave me.”

  Tarana snorts and takes a large gulp from his drink. “You can’t even remember the question. Why should you care about the answer?”

  “Humor me.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll help create another Cradle for you.”

  He whirls the ice in his glass. “You’re not asking much in return for such a huge task.”

  “Then give it to me.”

  He shakes his head. “I’m disappointed in you. I would expect your desires to match your abilities. That Greek myth—the ferryman and his riddles. What a waste of time, even for the dead. One would have thought they could have come up with something better after all these years.”

  “I think the riddles endure because they work. They help remind a person what he or she learned in a particular life.” I pause. “As does the Scale.”