“How old was the girl?” Seymour asks.
“Three or four.”
“The woman had known you about ten minutes?”
“You see why it was strange. Of course I said, sure, no problem, I’ll watch your kid. But the woman had barely left and the kid started moving all over the place. She was out of control. She lifted up a vase and smashed it on a glass table. She cut her hand pretty bad. I was picking out the shards of glass when her mother returned. Well, you would have thought I was choking the child. The woman went nuts and grabbed her kid and bolted out the door. Yet there was no real reason for her to leave. She was supposed to have this important meeting with Mr. Brutran.”
“What was the setup?” Seymour asks.
“Oh, it was brilliant. You know how careful I am with my blood. To get it, you practically have to kill me. But by using this child to collect it, they made me drop all my defenses. I had nothing to pick the glass out of the girl’s hand with except my fingertips. I pricked my own skin in several places. By the time the woman fled with her kid, several of my fingers were bleeding. I ran to the restroom and washed away the blood and bandaged my hands. The cuts healed quickly. But the damage was already done.”
The light dawns for Seymour. “They had samples of your blood from the drops on their floor. They might even have siphoned blood from the pipes in the restroom, if they had prepared their plumbing ahead of time.”
“Make no mistake, the pipes were prepped to catch my blood. The whole thing was planned down to the last detail.”
“How did they get the child to break the vase on cue? They could have trained her, but that would have taken time.”
“They didn’t have time and they didn’t need it. They have the Array. They must have briefly focused it on the girl. Even before she broke the vase, she was fidgeting.”
“How does having your blood allow them to focus the Array on you?
“Since I don’t know what it is, I can’t answer that question. But I’ll give you another reason why I know that stealing my blood is the key to understanding that first meeting. When I finally got in to see Brutran, we talked briefly before she cut our meeting short. I could tell she wanted to talk more, only later, away from the prying eyes inside that building. At the same time, she felt secure there. No one sees her without having guns aimed at them.”
“But you said she didn’t have security at her own house.”
“Exactly. I expected her house to be a fortress, like her work. But she lives alone, with her kid, maybe a husband. None of it made any sense. Then I realized something odd about the timing of our second meeting. After we first met, she stayed inside her office two days in a row. I know because I watched her from a spot back in the hills. I had her under observation the whole time. She never went home—she just kept working.”
“She’s obviously a workaholic.”
“I said the same to Lisa. But Lisa told me she’d never seen Brutran stay at the office overnight. Don’t you see? Brutran knew I was watching. She knew I was waiting for her to leave the building so I could get her alone. Only the next day she wasn’t afraid to be alone with me.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t see what this has to do with your blood.”
“I think the woman needed that extra day to load the Array with my blood so it could be used as a weapon against me. That’s why she wasn’t afraid to meet with me the second time, after two days had gone by. At that point, she knew she could focus the Array on me.”
“You’re making some pretty big leaps in logic here.”
“You wouldn’t have thought so if you were with me. She didn’t blink when I walked into her living room. She knew she had the upper hand.”
“But you beat her. You escaped.”
“Barely. And look what happened to Numbria.”
Seymour hesitates. “What did happen?”
“I was gripped by a overwhelming compulsion to drink her blood. To eat her alive. To torture her to death in the most painful way imaginable.”
“The compulsion gripped you within seconds?”
I frown. “Not exactly. It seemed to start while I was asleep. Only I wasn’t asleep.”
“What do you mean?”
I take Seymour’s hand. “You know, I’ve never believed in the devil. The last two thousand years, all the time the church was talking about Satan, I assumed they were trying to create a bogeyman to scare people into doing what the church wanted. Now I’m not so sure. The thing that came into that room—the only way I can describe it is to say it was demonic.”
“Did you actually see a demon?”
“It was more like I was given an insight.”
“Into what?”
“Into Lucifer.” I let go of his hand and press my palms against my closed eyes. I feel a headache coming on. I need to change the subject. At the same time, I have to express my fear. Seymour’s the only one who can understand it, and I can see even he’s struggling with it.
“What was the insight?” he asks gently.
I fight to get out the words.
That the Light Bearer knows he’s the same as God.
But they don’t come. I can’t speak them.
“It was not important,” I whisper.
“Did you feel the same way in Brutran’s house?”
“The evil element was stronger when I was with Numbria. And I felt . . . what it made me do was sacrilege. Like I defiled myself by being unable to resist it.”
“Nonsense. You did everything you could to resist it.”
“Did I? Or was there a part of me that wanted to drink her blood?”
“Listen, you’re a vampire, it’s natural for you to crave blood. But that doesn’t mean you wanted to hurt her.”
“I wish I could believe that.”
“Is that why you want to see John? Are you looking for absolution?”
It’s hard to admit. “Perhaps.”
“Sita. You’ve done more than anyone else in the world to try to protect people.”
“Protect them from what? Myself? Other vampires like me?”
“I’m not a priest, but don’t they say there can be no sin without the intention to do wrong? The fact that Numbria died . . . It sounds cold, but she was just collateral damage.”
“Try telling her that. But you can’t, can you?”
I’ve gone too far. Seymour can’t accept what I’m saying.
“Do you honestly think the Array is connected to Lucifer?”
I shake my head. I can’t argue anymore. My headache is worse. We’re outside beneath a crystal blue sky, weaving through the beautiful hills of Santorini, the shimmering waters of the Aegean Sea never more than a mile away. Yet I somehow smell the odor of fire and brimstone, and still hear the cries of the damned.
Paula lives near the airport, another artery through which visitors come to the island. She supports herself by renting low-powered motorcycles, the most popular way of getting around on the islands. She has a large stock, a hundred bikes, and makes more money than she can spend. I know all this from the spies I hired to find her. Paula and John have lived on Santorini for over a decade.
Her home is a block from her shop, a modest one story with a clay tile roof and brightly whitewashed walls, which makes it indistinguishable from 90 percent of the houses on the island. She’s quick to answer the door when we knock. She smiles when she sees me, but I feel the expression is forced.
“Hello, Sita. Hi, Seymour,” she says.
Seymour gushes. “I didn’t know you knew my name.”
“Sita’s told me all about you. Come in, please.”
Paula wears white shorts and a pink top. Her legs are deeply tanned. She’s aged since we last met, which is only natural after fifteen years. Yet I can tell most of the lines on her once-smooth complexion are due to stress. Nevertheless, she is still striking, with her long black hair and large dark eyes. She has incredible lashes; she can convey a dozen subtle moods in the way she bats them. She also has one of t
he most lovely voices I’ve ever heard. She can disarm most people with a few words.
We sit in her living room. In the back, I hear John playing a computer game—the firing of electronic weapons, the howls of the special-effect villains as they die. I don’t know what I expected John to be doing when we arrived, but playing games was not one of them.
“This is a pleasant surprise,” Paula says when we’re all seated with cups of tea. She’s an expert when it comes to herbs. Her teas are not only tasty but healing. “Why didn’t you call and say you were coming?”
“I was afraid you’d say no,” I reply.
“Sita, you’re one of my oldest friends.”
“I’d say she’s definitely your oldest,” Seymour puts in.
Paula smiles. “I can’t argue there.”
“Is John here?” Seymour asks.
“He’s in the middle of a computer game. You don’t want to interrupt. He gets . . . annoyed. He should be done in a few minutes.”
“How has he been?” I ask.
“Fine.”
“Yourself?”
Paula shrugs. “Life doesn’t get much nicer than Santorini. We’ve been very happy here.”
“I’m glad,” I say.
“Tell me about your life,” she asks me.
I hesitate, then glance at Seymour. “Tell her. The last three months.”
Seymour gives a brief summary, starting with my meeting with Teri and Matt and finishing with my catastrophic interrogation of Numbria. Paula listens closely, although she shifts her focus in three directions: on Seymour, on me, and out the window. The last disturbs me, because I know when she gazes into nothing she sees the most. I suspect her unpredictable power to see the future has suddenly awakened.
A chill runs through the room. In the back John stops playing, and there is only silence. I feel it and it scares me. It’s not why I came to see her. I’m not there for a reading. I wouldn’t mind some comfort, of course, to be told everything is going to be all right. But I don’t want the truth, no, never, no one wants to hear that.
For some reason, a quote of Krishna’s comes back to me:
“No one awakens in the morning thinking they will die that day. Not a saint or a sinner. Not even a condemned killer. We all know we’re mortal, and yet we all believe we’ll live forever.”
Suzama would have known I’d come to see her out of fear. And when Paula looks at me, I sense she sees the same thing—that I’m afraid I’ll die in Arosa.
When Seymour finishes, Paula sits quietly. John has finished with his game but hasn’t come out to greet us. His mother gestures for Seymour to go to him.
“He’s waiting for you,” she says. Seymour, suddenly unsure of himself, glances at me and then retreats to the back room. Paula stands and slips on a pair of sandals. “Let’s walk to the beach.”
The sea isn’t far, but when we reach it, Paula removes her sandals and heads north, letting the waves wash over her bare calves. I do likewise; the water feels wonderful. We walk a ways, but at one point she takes my hand and steers us up a dusty path that leads into a sheltered cove where a few old pillars lie worn and broken. We sit on a boulder beside the relics. They are too big, too heavy, to steal.
I continue to feel tense. Paula lets go of my hand and looks at me and shakes her head. “Why did you do it?” she asks.
Seymour’s summary was short but detailed.
“Why did I give Teri my blood, or why did I say hello?”
“From the moment you said hello, you were going to give her your blood.”
“That’s not true.” I pause. “At least, I didn’t plan on giving it to her.”
“Talk to me about it, Sita.”
Her simple request shakes me to the core. “You have a son. He’s your whole life. He fills your days. I had two daughters. Both were taken from me. More than anyone, you know about my loneliness.”
“You’ve been lonely all your life. Why try to fill the void now?”
“The older I get, the more I feel the need for comfort.”
“That’s no answer.”
“It’s the truth. What else do you want me to say?”
“You knew that bringing Teri into your life would bring risk.”
“Yes.”
“It’s unlike you to be selfish.”
“I don’t know. I can be the most selfish person on earth.”
“Sita . . .”
“What?”
“Why?”
“I don’t know! She was there, she was beautiful, and I knew she was related to me. She even looked like me. I couldn’t resist. Of course, I knew it was a mistake to talk to her, that it would only lead to us getting involved. I’m not saying it was innocent. I planned to have a relationship with her.”
“One you began with a murder.”
Seymour had told her about Danny Boy.
I harden my voice. “I killed that guy to protect her.”
“It sounds like Matt can protect her.”
“I had to be sure. Besides, the guy was a rapist and a murderer. What difference does his death make? The world is better off without him.”
“You haven’t changed, have you? You’re still so confident in your ability to judge. I’m surprised you still come to me for advice.”
I go to snap at her but then remember who I’m talking to, who she might be. I feel Suzama so near when I sit beside Paula. Their voices, their words—they echo together inside me. There’s a gentleness to her manner but a harshness to her gaze. Sitting so close to her, I feel pinned beneath a microscope. I cannot lie to her, there would be no point.
I lower my head. “I’m lost. I need your help.”
“You want me to peer into your future?”
“No. I know you hate doing that.”
“I don’t hate it so much as I can’t control what I see.”
“Don’t you always see the truth?”
Paula shakes her head. “The future’s in flux. I see possibilities.” She gestures to the worn pillars. “From our point of view, nothing is set in stone.”
“Krishna could see the future. One future.”
“His point of view was wider than mine.”
“Maybe I should talk to John.”
“If he’ll talk to you.”
“Did he know we were coming?”
“I didn’t ask. But I knew.”
I mock her. “So it wasn’t really a pleasant surprise.”
“Seriously, Sita, if you’ve come for my advice, then you should heed it. Leave Teri and Matt alone. Let them live their lives.”
“What will happen if I don’t?”
“What always happens to those you love.”
“But, for good or bad, I’ve already opened the door. They’re exposed. The Telar and probably the IIC know about them. They need my protection.”
“Were you able to protect Ray? Joel? Your own daughter?”
“Kalika died trying to protect John! In case you’ve forgotten!”
“He only needed protecting because you showed up.”
“That’s a lie. I bumped into you by accident.”
“But after that you sought me out. Why?”
“You know why. You reminded me of Suzama.”
“Suzama’s dead. That was another life. You have to stop living in the past. Seymour knows that. The only reason you had Kalika was because of Lalita. And the only reason you want to talk to John is because you once met Krishna.”
“To hell with that and to hell with you! I need help! Help me!”
“Shanti can block the Array.”
I stop. “In London, when she walked in the room and touched my face, the spell broke. But Seymour didn’t tell you that. How did you know?”
“Why do you think IIC wants her dead?”
“How does she do it?”
“It doesn’t matter. She can protect you from the attacks.”
“I can’t take Shanti with me to Switzerland.”
“The Telar are located the
re?”
“I have a couple of leads that point in that direction.”
“You can be sure they left the leads behind on purpose.”
“Don’t you think I know that? I’m probably walking into a trap. How can I take Shanti with me?”
“You decide. Brutran and the IIC are one issue. The Telar are another.”
“They appear to be enemies. Brutran said as much. I was thinking if I could pretend to help one side, and do the same with the other side, I could stir up a war between the two. Let them annihilate each other.”
“The Telar are ancient. They won’t fall for anything so obvious.”
“Did you know about the Telar?”
“Yes.”
“How come you didn’t warn me about them?”
“The world is filled with sleeping enemies. Should I wake them all up so they can come chasing after you?”
“The Telar are devotees of Suzama. They study her prophecies.”
“Suzama never spoke about them. On purpose.”
“But she spoke about John. Doesn’t that worry you?”
“Many seers in the past and the present have predicted the Second Coming. Why should that bother me?”
“I told you, the Telar take Suzama seriously. If that’s the case, they’re probably interested in John.”
Paula waves her hand. “John can take care of himself.”
“You should have told my daughter that.”
Paula stares at me in shock. “You can’t blame us for that. Everything that happened, it was either your choice or hers.”
“I didn’t choose for Kalika to die.”
“Kalika did what she had to do to protect John. But Teri hasn’t been given a choice. If you stay on your present course, she’ll die, or worse.”
“What could be worse?”
Paula stands. “That’s all I can tell you at this point. Let’s go back.”
When we reach the house, I’m disappointed to see Seymour sitting on the front porch. I know the verdict before he speaks.
“John’s started another game. He doesn’t want to be interrupted.”
Paula holds up a hand before I can speak. “The games are important to him. He’s trying to tell you it’s not a good time, Sita.”