“Your brother warned me about it too.”
“Did he?” She still could not believe that Kusum was uninvolved in this. Yet he’d warned Jack. “What did he say?”
“He mentioned side effects. ‘Undesirable’ side effects. Just what they might be, he didn’t say. I was hoping maybe you could—”
“Jack! Why are you playing games with me?”
She was genuinely concerned for him. Frightened for him. Perhaps that finally got through to him. He stared at her, then shrugged.
He went to the giant Victorian breakfront, removed a bottle from a tiny drawer hidden in the carvings, and brought it over to Kolabati. Instinctively, she reached for it. Jack pulled it away and shook his head as he unscrewed the top.
“Smell first.”
He held it under her nose. At the first whiff, Kolabati thought her knees would fail her. Rakoshi elixir! She snatched at it but Jack was quicker and held it out of her reach. She had to get it away from him!
“Give that to me, Jack.” Her voice was trembling with the terror she felt for him.
“Why?”
Kolabati took a deep breath and began to walk around the room. Think!
“Who gave it to you? And please don’t ask me why I want to know. Just answer me.”
“All right. Answer: no one.”
She glared at him. “I’ll rephrase the question. Where did you get it?”
“From the dressing room of an old lady who disappeared between Monday night and Tuesday morning and hasn’t been seen or heard from since.”
So the elixir was not meant for Jack! He’d come by it secondhand. She began to relax.
“Did you drink any?”
“No.”
That didn’t make sense. A rakosh had come here last night. She was sure of that. The elixir must have drawn it. She shuddered at what might have happened had Jack been here alone.
“You must have.”
Jack’s brow furrowed. “Oh, yes … I tasted it. Just a drop.”
She moved closer, feeling a tightness in her chest. “When?”
“Yesterday.”
“And today?”
“Nothing. It’s not exactly a soft drink.”
Relief. “You must never let a drop of that pass your lips again—or anybody else’s for that matter.”
“Why not?”
“Flush it down the toilet! Pour it down a sewer! Anything! But don’t let it get into your system again!”
“What’s wrong with it?”
Jack was becoming visibly annoyed now. Kolabati knew he wanted answers and she couldn’t tell him the truth without him thinking her insane.
“It’s a deadly poison,” she said off the top of her head. “You were lucky you took only a tiny amount. Any more and you would have—”
“Not true,” he said, holding up the still unstoppered bottle. “I had it analyzed today. No toxins in here.”
Kolabati cursed herself for not realizing that he’d have it analyzed. How else could he have known it contained durba grass?
“It’s poisonous in a different way,” she said, improvising poorly, knowing she wasn’t going to be believed. If only she could lie like Kusum! She felt tears of frustration fill her eyes. “Oh, Jack, please listen to me! I don’t want to see anything happen to you! Trust me!”
“I’ll trust you if you’ll tell me what’s going on. I find this stuff among the possessions of a missing woman and you tell me it’s dangerous but you won’t say how or why. What’s going on?”
“I don’t know what’s going on! Really. All I can tell you is something awful will happen to anyone who drinks that mixture!”
“Is that so?” Jack looked at the bottle in his hand, then looked at Kolabati.
Believe me! Please, believe me!
Without warning, he tipped the bottle up to his mouth.
“No!” Kolabati leaped at him, screaming.
Too late. She saw his throat move. He’d swallowed some.
“You idiot!”
She raged at her own foolishness. She was the idiot! She hadn’t been thinking clearly. If she had she would have realized the inevitability of what had just happened. Next to her brother, Jack was the most relentlessly uncompromising man she’d ever met. Knowing that, what could have made her think he would surrender the elixir without a full explanation as to what it was? Any fool could have foreseen that he would bring matters to a head this way. The very reasons she was attracted to Jack might have doomed him.
And she was so attracted to him. She learned with an explosive shock the true depth of her feelings when she saw him swallow the rakoshi elixir. She’d had more than her share of lovers. They’d wandered in and out of her life in Bengal and Europe, in Washington. But Jack was special. He made her feel complete. He had something the others didn’t have … a purity—was that the proper word?—that she wanted to make her own. She wanted to be with him, stay with him, keep him for herself.
But first she had to find a way to keep him alive through tonight.
12
The vow was made … the vow must be kept … the vow was made …
Kusum repeated the words over and over in his mind.
He sat in his cabin with his Gita spread out on his lap. He had stopped reading it. The gently rocking ship was silent but for the familiar rustlings from the main hold amidships. He barely heard them. Thoughts poured through his mind in a wild torrent. That woman he had met tonight, Nellie Paton. He knew her maiden name: Westphalen. A sweet, harmless old woman with a passion for chocolate, worrying about her missing sister, unaware that her sister was far beyond her concern, and that her worry should be reserved for herself. For her days were numbered on the fingers of a single hand. Perhaps a single finger.
And that blond woman, not a Westphalen herself, yet the mother of one. Mother of a child who would soon be the last Westphalen. Mother of a child who must die.
Am I sane?
When he thought of the journey he had embarked upon, the destruction he had already wrought, he shuddered. And he was only half done. Richard Westphalen had been the first. He had been sacrificed to the rakoshi during Kusum’s stay at the London Embassy. He remembered dear Richard: the fear-bulged eyes, the crying, the whimpering, the begging as he cringed before the rakoshi and answered in detail every question Kusum put to him about his aunts and daughter in the United States. He remembered how piteously Richard Westphalen had pleaded for his life, offering anything—even his current consort in his place—if only he would be allowed to live.
Richard Westphalen had not died honorably and his karma would carry that stain for many incarnations.
The pleasure Kusum had taken in delivering the screaming Richard Westphalen over to the rakoshi had dismayed him. He was performing a duty. He was not supposed to enjoy it. But he had thought at the time that if all three of the remaining Westphalens were creatures as reprehensible as Richard, fulfilling the vow would be a service to humanity.
It turned out quite differently. The old woman, Grace Westphalen, had been made of sterner stuff. She had acquitted herself well before fainting. She had been unconscious when Kusum gave her over to the rakoshi.
But Richard and Grace had been strangers to Kusum. He had seen them only from afar before their sacrifices. He had investigated their personal habits and studied their routines, but he had never come close to them, never spoken to them.
Tonight he had stood not half a meter from Nellie Paton discussing English chocolates with her. He had found her pleasant and gracious and unassuming. And yet she must die by his design.
Kusum ground his only fist into his eyes, forcing himself to think about the pearls he had seen around her neck, the jewels on her fingers, the luxurious townhouse she owned, the wealth she commanded, all bought at a terrible price of death and destruction to his family. Nellie Paton’s ignorance of the source of her wealth was of no consequence.
A vow had been made …
And the road to a pure karma involved keepi
ng that vow. Though he had fallen along the way, he could make everything right again by being true to his first vow, his vrata. The Goddess had whispered to him in the night. Kali had shown him the way.
Kusum wondered at the price others had paid—and soon would have to pay—for the purification of his karma. The soiling of that karma had been no one’s fault but his own. He had freely taken a vow of Brahmacharya and for many years had held to a life of chastity and sexual continence. Until …
His mind shied from the days that ended his life as a Brahmachari. Sins—patakas—stained every life. But he had committed a mahapataka, thoroughly polluting his karma. It was a catastrophic blow to his quest for moksha, the liberation from the karmic wheel. It meant he would suffer greatly, then be born again as an evil man of low caste. For he had forsaken his vow of Brahmacharya in the most abominable fashion.
But the vrata to his father he would not forsake: Although the crime was more than a century in the past, all the descendants of Sir Albert Westphalen must die for it. Only two were left.
A new noise rose from below. The Mother was scraping on the hatch. She had caught the Scent and wanted to hunt.
He rose and stepped to his cabin door, then stopped, uncertain of what to do. He knew the Paton woman had received the candies. Before leaving London he had injected each piece with a few drops of the elixir and had left the wrapped and addressed parcel in the care of an embassy secretary to hold until she received word to mail it. And now it had arrived. All would be perfect.
Except for Jack.
Jack obviously knew the Westphalens. A startling coincidence but not outlandish when one considered that both the Westphalens and Kusum knew Jack through Burkes at the UK Mission. And Jack had apparently come into possession of the small bottle of elixir Kusum had arranged for Grace Westphalen to receive last weekend. Had it been mere chance that he had picked that particular bottle to investigate? From what little Kusum knew of Jack, he doubted it.
For all the considerable risk Jack represented—his intuitive abilities and his capacity and willingness to do physical damage made him a very dangerous man—Kusum was loath to see him come to harm. He was indebted to him for returning the necklace in time. More importantly, Jack was too rare a creature in the Western world. Kusum did not want to be responsible for his extinction. And finally, he felt a certain kinship toward the man. He sensed Repairman Jack to be an outcast in his own land, just as Kusum had been in his—until recently. True, Kusum had an ever growing following at home and now moved in the upper circles of India’s diplomatic corps, but he was still an outcast in his heart. For he would never—could never—be a part of the “new” India.
“New” India indeed! Once he had fulfilled his vow he would return home with his rakoshi. And then he would begin the task of transforming the “new” India back into a land true to its heritage.
He had the time.
And he had the rakoshi.
The Mother’s scraping against the hatch door became more insistent. He would have to let her hunt tonight. All he could hope for was that the Paton woman had eaten a piece of the candy and that the Mother would lead her youngling there. He was quite sure Jack had the bottle of elixir, and that he had tasted it some time yesterday—a single drop was enough to draw a rakosh. It was unlikely he would taste it twice. And so it must be the Paton woman who now carried the scent.
Anticipation filled Kusum as he started below.
13
They lay entwined on the couch, Jack sitting, Kolabati sprawled across him, her hair a dark storm cloud across her face. A replay of last night, only this time they hadn’t made it to the bedroom.
After Kolabati’s initial frightened reaction to seeing him swallow the liquid, Jack had waited to see what she would say. Taking that swig had been a radical move, but he’d butted heads against this thing long enough. Maybe now he would get some answers.
But she’d said nothing. Instead, she started undressing him. When he protested, she began doing things to him with her fingernails that drove all questions about mysterious liquids from his mind.
Questions could wait. Everything could wait.
Jack floated now on a languorous river of sensation, leading he knew not where. He’d tried to take the helm but had given up, yielding to her superior knowledge of the various currents and tributaries along the way. As far as he was concerned, Kolabati could steer him wherever she wished. They had explored new territories last night and more tonight. He was ready to push the frontiers back even further. He only hoped he could stay afloat during the ensuing excursions.
Kolabati was just beginning to guide him into the latest adventure when the odor returned—just a trace, but enough to recognize as the same unforgettable stench as last night.
If Kolabati noticed it, she said nothing. But she immediately rose to her knees and swung her hips over him. As she settled astride his lap with a little sigh, she clamped her lips over his. This was the most conventional position they’d used all night. Jack found her rhythm and began moving with her, but like last night when the odor had invaded the apartment, he sensed a strange tension in her that took the edge off his ardor.
And the odor … nauseating, growing stronger and stronger, filling the air around them. It seemed to flow from the TV room. Jack raised his head from Kolabati’s throat where he’d been nuzzling around her iron necklace. Over the rise and fall of her right shoulder he could look into the dark of that room. He saw nothing—
A noise.
A click, really, much like the whirring air conditioner in the TV room made from time to time. But different. Slightly louder. A little more solid. Something about it alerted Jack. He kept his eyes open …
And as he watched, two pairs of yellow eyes began to glow outside the TV room window.
Had to be a trick of the light. He squinted for a better look, but the eyes remained. They moved, as if searching for something. One of the pair fixed on Jack for an instant. An icy fingernail scored the outer wall of his heart as he stared into those glowing yellow orbs … like looking into the very soul of evil. He felt himself wither inside Kolabati. He wanted to throw her off, run to the old oak secretary, pull out every gun hidden there and fire them out the window two at a time.
But he could not move. Fear as he’d never known it gripped him in a clammy fist and pinned him to the couch. The alienness of those eyes and the sheer malevolence behind them paralyzed him.
Kolabati had to be aware that something was wrong. No way she could not be. She leaned back and looked at him.
“What do you see?” Her eyes were wide, her voice barely audible.
“Eyes,” Jack said. “Yellow eyes. Two pairs.”
She caught her breath. “In the other room?”
“Outside the window.”
“Don’t move, don’t say another word.”
“But—”
“For both our sakes. Please.”
Jack neither moved nor spoke. He stared at Kolabati’s face, trying to read it. She was afraid, but anything beyond that was closed off to him. Why hadn’t she balked at the idea of eyes watching them through a third-story window with no fire escape?
He glanced over her shoulder again. The eyes were still there, still searching for something. What? They appeared confused, and even when they looked directly at him, they did not seem to see him. Their gaze slid off him, slithered around him, passed through him.
This is crazy! Why am I sitting here?
He was angry with himself for yielding so easily to fear of the unknown. Some sort of animal was out there—two of them. Nothing he couldn’t deal with.
As Jack started to lift Kolabati off him, she gave a little cry. She wrapped her arms around his neck in a stranglehold and dug her knees into his hips.
“Don’t move!” Her voice was hushed and frantic.
“Let me up.”
He tried to slide out from under but she twisted around and pulled him down on top of her. It might have been comical but for
her very genuine terror.
“Don’t leave me!”
“I’m going to see what’s out there.”
“No! If you value your life you’ll stay right where you are!”
This was beginning to sound like a bad movie.
“Come on! What could be out there?”
“Better you never find out.”
That did it. He gently but firmly tried to disengage himself from Kolabati. She protested all the way and would not let go of his neck. Had she gone crazy? What was wrong with her?
He finally managed to gain his feet with Kolabati still clinging to him, and had to drag her with him to the TV room door.
The eyes were gone.
Jack stumbled to the window. Nothing there. And nothing visible in the darkness of the alley below. He turned within the circle of Kolabati’s arms.
“What was out there?”
Her expression was charmingly innocent. “You saw for yourself: nothing.”
She released him and walked back into the front room, completely unselfconscious in her nakedness. Jack watched the swaying flare of her hips silhouetted in the light as she moved away. Something had happened here tonight and Kolabati knew what it was. But Jack was at a loss as to how to make her tell him. He’d failed to learn anything about Grace’s tonic—and now this.
“Why were you so afraid?” he said, following her.
“I wasn’t afraid.” She began to slip into her underwear. He mimicked her:
“‘If you value your life’ and whatever else you said. You were scared! Of what?”
“Jack, I love you dearly,” she said in a voice that did not quite carry all the carefree lightness she no doubt intended it to, “but you can be so silly at times. It was just a game.”
Jack could see the pointlessness of pursuing this any further. She had no intention of telling him anything. He watched her finish dressing—it didn’t take long; she hadn’t been wearing much—with a sense of déjà vu. Hadn’t they played this scene last night?
“You’re leaving?”
“Yes. I have to—”
“—See your brother?”
She looked at him. “How did you know?”