“I don’t have to say it.”
That’s what I love about Seymour. No one can cut to the chase like him. I tell him about my feeling of being watched. He’s worried.
“They must have picked up your trail. Finish with your captive and get as far away from her as fast as you can. Let her live. Send her back to them as a goodwill ambassador.”
“She’s bleeding an awful lot to be an effective ambassador.”
“They don’t heal like you do?”
“No. But they’re very strong, very fast. I could let her go and she could turn around and try to kill me.”
“It’s your call.”
“There’s something else that bothers me about this feeling of being watched. It reminds me of the IIC group.”
“The Array?”
“Yes.”
“That gold medal is costing you in more ways than one.”
“That’s not fair. Teri deserved to fulfill her dreams.”
“Bullshit. She cheated, even if she doesn’t know it.”
“That wasn’t her fault.”
“It doesn’t matter. Look at the attention it’s brought. The vampire I wrote about was obsessed with staying in the shadows. What’s gotten into you?”
“How do you know I didn’t plan this? Look how it’s flushed my enemies out into the open.”
“As far as I can tell, you’re the one who’s out in the open.”
I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing.
“Let me help you,” Seymour continues. “Let me come there. I can help you question the woman.”
“You’re too squeamish.”
“Listen to me, Sita, please. I have a bad feeling about this.”
“Go back to sleep. I know what I’m doing.”
“Famous last words. If you begin to feel the least bit odd, call me.”
I promise. I hang up and drive back to the motel. Numbria hasn’t tried to escape. She must know more about the strength of the handcuffs than I do. I start out by showing her the labels on the two bottles I hold in my right hand: dilaudid and morphine.
“I’ll give you a shot to take away the pain and then bandage you,” I say as I fill the syringe. “I can set your broken bones, too. I don’t need an X-ray. I assume once everything is set, you’ll heal much faster than your average person?”
“Why are you doing all this?”
“There’s no reason for you to suffer.”
“You’re a hypocrite. You’re going to make me suffer if I don’t answer your questions.”
“A hypocrite says one thing and means another.” I find a vein and insert my needle and inject her with the opiate solution. Her face relaxes almost instantly. “I haven’t lied to you.”
“You’re Bloody Sita,” she mumbles. “You want my blood.”
“I’m not interested in your blood,” I say, although I must admit I have seldom encountered blood that smells so vibrant. It makes sense. Their power must be derived from their blood. I imagine drinking it would be a rare delight.
Yet I push away such thoughts as I clean her wounds with alcohol and hydrogen peroxide. For her size, I have given her a strong shot. She appears to float on euphoric waves, even as I dig out fragments of bone from both her knees and sew up my incisions. The bones in her palms are also a mess, and I wonder if she will need a specialist and a series of operations to recover.
When I’m finished attending to her injuries, and before the narcotics wear off, I give her a shot of Sodium Pentothal. She doesn’t notice. There are still enough opiates in her system to potentiate the truth serum. Her eyes fall shut, but I don’t mind. As long as she can hear me.
“You hear my voice, don’t you, Numbria?”
“Yes.”
“And you know my name?”
“Yes.”
“What is my name?”
“You have many. Alisa Perne. Lara Adams. Your oldest name is Sita. Bloody Sita.”
“Why do you call me Bloody Sita?”
“Because you are a vampire. You are evil.”
“Who told you I am evil?”
“The Source.”
“Is the Source an individual? Or a group of individuals?”
“A group.”
“Does this group have a leader?”
“Yes.”
“Is it like a secret council but with a president?”
“Yes.”
“How old is the Source?”
“It goes back to the beginning of time.”
“The beginning of history?”
“Yes.”
“What does your group call itself?”
“The Telar.”
“Are the Telar connected to the IIC?”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“Do you know what the Array is?”
“No.”
“Do you know a woman named Brutran?”
“No.”
“Have you heard her name mentioned?”
“No.”
“Can the word ‘Telar’ be translated into English?”
“Roughly.”
“Translate it for me.”
“It means the Immortals.”
“How old is the oldest Telar?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you were to guess, what would you say?”
“Ten . . . twelve . . . thousand years old.”
I have been standing as I question her. Now I have to sit down. It is hard for me to imagine any creature on earth older than myself. It’s just so ingrained in me that I’m the oldest.
“How many Telar are there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Roughly.”
“Five thousand. Maybe more.”
“Are many Telar over ten thousand years old?”
“No.”
“How old are you, Numbria?”
“Eight hundred years.”
“Where were you born?”
“In Italy. In the Dark Ages.”
“You were alive when the plague spread over Europe?”
“Yes.”
“Did any of the Telar catch the plague?”
“Many did. Many died.”
“Did any members of the Source catch it?”
“They saw it coming. They hid away. They survived.”
“Did the Source instruct you to hide?”
“Yes. But when I heard, it was too late. Azol was sick.”
“Who is Azol?”
“My brother. He died from the plague.”
“Was he Telar?”
“He was my brother.”
“Did the original Telar form a civilization?”
“Yes.”
“What was it called?”
“The Egyptians.”
“But modern archaeologists say the ancient Egyptian society only goes back five thousand years. How could the Telar be older?”
“Modern archaeologists know nothing.”
I don’t argue the point. I fled India for Egypt five thousand years ago, and it was a thriving civilization. That’s when I met Suzama. It was largely wrecked by a group called the Setians, before I left, although I heard it quickly rebuilt itself.
“Do the Telar have records of a group called the Setians?”
“Yes.”
“How do the Telar describe them?”
“As a race of demons.”
Fair enough, I think.
“Do the Telar have records of a priestess named Suzama?”
“Yes.”
“How do they describe her?”
“As a divine oracle.”
“Was Suzama Telar?”
“Suzama was mortal. The Telar are immortal.”
“Was Suzama aware of the Telar?”
“The Source cannot be sure what Suzama knew.”
“Do the Telar have any record of me in ancient Egypt?”
“Not that I am aware of.”
“When did the Telar become aware of vampires?”
“I don’t know.”
> “Was there one vampire in particular who made the Telar aware of them?”
“Yes.”
“What was this vampire’s name?”
“Yaksha.”
My heart skips in my chest. Simply to hear his name spoken by this stranger disturbs me. “Did Yaksha know about the Telar?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“How can you be sure?”
“He married a Telar.”
I almost swoon. My maker, Yaksha, not only knew of this race of immortals—a race he never told me about—but he was close to them. Hell, he married one of them. I don’t know why, but I suddenly feel betrayed.
“What was his wife’s name?” I ask.
“We do not speak of her.”
“Why not?”
“She betrayed the Telar by being with the vampire.”
“Did she become an outcast? Yaksha’s wife?”
“Yes.”
“Was she killed?”
“Yes.”
“By whom?”
“The Source. The high priest of the Source.”
“You mean the boss?”
“Yes.”
“Did this boss try to kill Yaksha?”
“Yes.”
“But he failed.”
“Yes.”
“Why did he fail?”
“Yaksha . . . Clever. Powerful. Impossible to kill.”
“Yaksha must have been angry the Source killed his wife.”
“We do not speak of it.”
“Did he take revenge? Did he wipe out your Source?”
Numbria takes a long time to answer.
“The Source is eternal. It cannot be destroyed.”
“What is the goal of the Telar?”
“To survive. To control.”
“Are there members of the Telar in high positions in society?”
“Yes.”
“In politics?”
“Yes.”
“In business?”
“Yes.”
“In science?”
“No.”
“The Telar avoid scientific positions because they wish to avoid sharing their scientific knowledge with the rest of mankind. True?”
“Yes.”
“Do the Telar wish to help mankind?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Human beings have spread across this planet like a plague. They poison it. They must be stopped.”
“How do you plan on stopping them?”
“There are ways.”
“Tell me of some of these ways.”
“The Source has not revealed what it will do next.”
“But you’re convinced the Telar want to exterminate mankind?”
“Not exterminate.”
“You will allow some humans to survive?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“To study them. To learn from them.”
“What could you possibly learn from a human being?”
I’m shocked when the question provokes an extreme response. First Numbria doesn’t answer, and I make the mistake of thinking she has not heard the question, that she has dozed off. But when I repeat it, with more force, she gets agitated. She begins to thrash in the bed, threatening to open the wounds I’ve worked so hard to close. Obviously I have struck a nerve. I have no choice but to sedate her further, and soon she is asleep.
For a long time, I sit and ponder how I could have shared a world with the Telar and yet been unaware of their existence. To make matters worse, Yaksha clearly didn’t trust me with the knowledge of their existence. True, I only saw him at the end of his life, but he could have warned me.
Was he afraid of what I might do to them? Or was he trying to protect me from them? Maybe he felt if they didn’t know where I was, then it would be better for all concerned.
“But they know about Bloody Sita,” I say aloud as Numbria sleeps.
Who was this Telar that Yaksha married? She must have been a remarkable woman to have captured his heart. Here, in my arrogance, I always imagined I was the only one he loved. The truth is sobering. No, worse, much worse, it breaks my heart. I don’t even know her name. I only know the Telar killed her to punish her for being with Yaksha.
Long ago, I was his lover. But that was before Krishna entered our lives and forced him to take a vow to destroy all the vampires—including me. Krishna asked me to take a vow too. To make no more vampires. In return, he promised I’d always have his grace, his protection. Thus Krishna gave Yaksha and me contradictory vows. Leave it up to the Lord of the Universe to make our life’s purpose impossible.
I’m weary. It’s been a long time since I’ve rested, and my battles with the Telar have exhausted my reserves. I crave sleep but fear to stretch out on the floor and black out. Instead, I lock the windows and the door and sit in a chair facing Numbria, with a gun on my lap.
Long ago I learned to half sleep, where my mind empties itself of thought and my metabolism slows down, but I still hear what’s going on around me. The practice has saved my life on more than one occasion.
Turning off my cell, I close my eyes and rest.
The devil does not exist. I do not believe he exists. Nor do I believe the old saying that the devil’s greatest accomplishment was to convince the majority of mankind that he does not exist. For me, Satan and a literal hell are fables born of Christianity’s desire to control humanity by increasing its fear of death. After all, I’m five thousand years old and I’ve never met Satan.
Until now, I fear. I feel he is close.
I do not feel like I’m dreaming.
It’s all . . . too real.
Fire and brimstone. I choke on red smoke and squirm from the heat of surrounding flames. My eyes are neither open nor closed. I sense a number of creatures around me, but when I try to focus on them, something else takes their place.
I feel as if I stand on a precipice above an abyss filled with lava and demons. Yes, real live demons, who torture thousands if not millions of souls who have sinned during the course of their short lives. This precipice—I feel like I’ve been shepherded there by a being greater than myself. A malevolent being who knows all my sins and who can hardly wait to make me suffer for them. Far below, I hear demons applauding with ravenous anticipation when they see me waiting to be shoved inside.
Inside where? Hell. I’m standing at the gates of hell.
“No!” I cry. “Don’t put me in there! I don’t belong in there!”
My cries make the demons explode in laughter. They know that no one who has been brought to the gates of hell ever returns. The reason is simple. It’s their master who chooses who enters this accursed region, and their master is never wrong because—even though he’s opposite of Almighty God—he’s almost as old as God. He’s the alpha and omega, the one and the many. His names are endless—Devil, Satan, Old Gooseberry, Beelzebub, Old Nick, Lucifer . . .
For some reason, in this place of darkness and pain, the name Lucifer, “the Light Bearer,” haunts me the most. I recall how in the beginning God created heaven and the earth, and in heaven he created the greatest angel of them all. Greater even than Michael and Gabriel. His name was Lucifer, and God placed him above all the angelic hosts by endowing him with the light of the Holy Spirit itself. With this light Lucifer felt he was the equal of God, and thus was poisoned with arrogance, the first and most damning of all his sins, for it led to all his other crimes.
It was because of arrogance Lucifer strove to replace God in heaven, and rallied the bulk of the angels to his side by promising them a share of his light. These angels who joined him did so because Lucifer was so bright, so enchanting, and the Lord had never promised to grant them such a wonderful boon.
When the war began, Lucifer had numbers on his side, but when he rose up against God, the Lord chose not to fight. Instead, God bid his servants to save heaven and earth. He commanded Michael and Gabriel, and other archangels—whose names have long since been forgotten—to
strike down Lucifer and his rebels.
How long this battle waged, no mortal was ever to know, for it was fought in a realm outside of time and space. But eventually Lucifer fell into the pit that God had prepared for him, and those angels who fought with him also fell, and became known as demons, and they hated the pit almost as much as they hated their master, who had promised them glory but instead led them to eternal damnation.
But it is said by Michael and his brothers that they did not defeat Lucifer, for he was too powerful. Lucifer was defeated for another reason. As he fought to claim heaven for his own, he had to call more and more upon the light of the Holy Spirit for strength, and the deeper he dove into the light, the more he realized the light had its origin in God.
Therefore, Lucifer realized a terrible irony. In his quest to destroy God, he saw that he was fighting against himself, for his light was not only of God, but his very being had been created by God. And Lucifer saw he was God, as were all those fallen ones who fought beside him.
Yet in the end, rather than share this truth with his demons, he chose instead to descend into the pit. It’s said he traded eternal bliss for endless agony, all because he could not stand to admit the truth to anyone else.
It is this same Lucifer who stands before me at the gates of hell. He asks if I understand why I’m here, and I cry out, “No!”
He laughs as he replies, “But Sita, you have also fallen. Even when you have seen that my light is no different from the light of your precious Lord?”
I try to answer but cannot speak. My fear is too great. I scream as his shadow engulfs me, and weep as he throws me into the pit.
But God does not hear my cries. For I am forsaken.
I awaken on the floor of the motel to the screams of Numbria. She thrashes on the bed in agony. She cries for another shot. As if in a dream, I reach for the needle and fill it with opiates. Yet as I turn back to her, I can’t help but notice the blood soaking through her bandages. Its smell seems to penetrate to the core of my brain, and I feel I have reverted to a yakshini, a devil from the deep, a reptile consumed with hunger. There’s no sympathy in me. How can there be? After all, Lucifer is right, I am forsaken.
“Sita, help me,” Numbria cries. “There’s something wrong with my mind. There’s something inside me. I can’t stand it. It’s killing me!”
I sit beside her on the bed and lick my lips and smile.
“Do you want me to stop the pain?” I ask.
She glances at the needle in my hand. “Yes! Stop it!”