“What happened then?”
“British soldiers sacked the temple of Kali where our ancestors worshipped. They killed everyone they could find, looted what they could, poured burning oil into the rakoshi cave, and set the temple afire. Only one child of the priest and priestess survived.” She glanced at the empty shell. “And only one intact rakosh egg was found in the fire-blasted caves. A female egg. Without a male egg, it meant the end of the rakoshi. They were extinct.”
Jack touched the shell gingerly. So this was where those horrors came from. Hard to believe. He lifted it and held it so the light from the lamp shown through the hole into the interior. Whatever had been in here was long gone.
“I can tell you for sure, Kolabati: They aren’t extinct. I saw a good fifty of them in that ship tonight.”
Fifty … he tried to blank out the memory. Poor Nellie.
“Kusum must have found a male egg. He hatched them both and started a nest.”
Kolabati baffled him. Could it be true that she hadn’t known until now? He hoped so. He hated to think she could fool him so completely.
“That’s all well and good, but I still don’t know what they are. What do they do?”
“They’re demons—”
“Demons, shmemons! Demons are supernatural! Nothing supernatural about those things. They were flesh and blood!”
“No flesh like you have ever seen before, Jack. And their blood is almost black.”
“Black, red—blood is blood.”
“No, Jack!” She rose on her knees and gripped his shoulders with painful intensity. “You must never underestimate them! Never! They appear slow-witted but they’re cunning. And they are almost impossible to kill.”
“The British did a good job, it seems.”
Her face twisted. “Only by sheer luck! They chanced upon the only thing that will kill a rakosh—fire! Iron weakens them, fire destroys them.”
“Fire and iron…” Jack suddenly understood the two jets of flame Kusum had stood between, and the reason for housing the monsters in a steel-hulled ship. Fire and iron: the two age-old protections against night and the dangers it held. “But where did they come from?”
“They have always been.”
Jack stood up and pulled her to her feet. Gently. She seemed so fragile right now.
“I can’t believe that. They’re built like humans, but I can’t see that we ever had a common ancestor. They’re too”—he remembered the instinctive animosity that had surged to life within him as he’d watched them—“different.”
“Tradition has it that before the Vedic gods, and even before the pre-Vedic gods, there were other gods, the Old Ones, who hated mankind and wanted to usurp our place on earth. To do this they created blasphemous parodies of humans embodying the opposite of everything good in humans, and called them rakoshi. They are us, stripped of love and decency and everything good we are capable of. They are hate, lust, greed, and violence incarnate. The Old Ones made them far stronger than humans, and planted in them an insatiable hunger for human flesh. The plan was to have rakoshi take humankind’s place on earth.”
“Do you believe that?” It amazed him to hear Kolabati talking like a child who believed in fairy tales.
She shrugged. “I think so. At least it will do for me until a better explanation comes along. But as the story goes, it turned out that humans were smarter than the rakoshi and learned how to control them. Eventually, all rakoshi were banished to the Realm of Death.”
“Not all.”
“No, not all. My ancestors penned the last nest in a series of caves in northern Bengal and built their temple above. They learned ways to bend the rakoshi to their will and they passed on those ways, generation after generation. When our parents died, our grandmother passed on the egg and the necklaces to Kusum and me.”
“I knew the necklaces came in somewhere.”
Kolabati’s voice was sharp as her hand flew to her throat. “What do you know of the necklace?”
“I know those two stones up front there look an awful lot like rakoshi eyes. I figured it was some sort of membership badge.”
“It’s more than that,” she said in a calmer voice. “For want of a better term, I’ll say it’s magic.”
As Jack walked back to the living room, he laughed softly.
“You find this amusing?” Kolabati said from behind him.
“No.” He dropped into a chair and laughed again, briefly. The laughter disturbed him—he seemed to have no control over it. “It’s just that I’ve been listening to what you’ve been telling me and accepting every word without question. That’s what’s funny—I believe you! As a kid I saw some weird stuff in the Barrens, but this! It’s the most ridiculous, fantastic, far-fetched, implausible, impossible story I’ve ever heard, and I believe every word of it!”
“You should. It’s true.”
“Even the part about the magic necklace?” Jack held up his hand as she opened her mouth to elaborate. “Never mind. I’ve swallowed too much already. I might choke on a magic necklace.”
“It’s true!”
“I’m far more interested in your part in all this. You must have known.”
She sat down opposite him. “Friday night in your room I knew there was a rakosh outside the window. Saturday night, too.”
Jack had figured that out by now. But he had other questions: “Why me?”
“It came to your apartment because you tasted the durba grass elixir that draws a hunting rakosh to a particular victim.”
Grace’s so-called laxative … a rakosh must have carried her off between Monday night and Tuesday morning. And Nellie last night. But Nellie—those pieces of flesh held on high in the flickering light … he swallowed the bile that surged into his throat—Nellie was dead. Jack was alive.
“Then how come I’m still around?”
“My necklace protected you.”
“Back to that again? All right—tell me.”
She lifted the front of the necklace as she spoke, holding it on either side of the pair of eyelike gems. “This has been handed down through my family for ages. The secret of making it is long gone. It has … powers. It is made of a special iron, which traditionally has power over rakoshi, and renders its wearer invisible to a rakosh.”
“Come on, Kolabati—” This was too much to believe.
“It’s true! The only reason you are able to sit here and doubt is because I covered you with my body on both occasions when the rakosh came in to find you! I made you disappear! As far as a rakosh was concerned, your apartment was empty: If I hadn’t, you would be dead like the others!”
The others … Grace and Nellie. Two harmless old ladies.
“But why the others? Why—?”
“To feed the nest! Rakoshi must have human flesh on a regular basis. In a city like this it must have been easy to feed a nest of fifty. You have your own caste of untouchables here—winos, derelicts, runaways, homeless people no one would miss or bother to look for even if their absence was noticed.”
That explained all those missing homeless the newspapers had been blabbering about.
Jack jumped to his feet. “I’m not talking about them! I’m talking about two well-to-do ladies who have been made victims of these things!”
“You must be mistaken.”
“I’m not.”
“Then it must have been an accident. A missing-persons search is the last thing Kusum would want. He would pick faceless people. Perhaps those women came into the possession of some of the elixir by mistake.”
“Possible.” Jack was far from satisfied, but it was possible. He wandered around the room.
“Who were they?”
“Two sisters: Nellie Paton last night and Grace Westphalen last week.”
Jack thought he heard a sharp intake of breath, but when he turned to Kolabati her face was composed.
“I see,” was all she said.
“He’s got to be stopped.”
“I know.” K
olabati clasped her hands in front of her. “But you can’t call the police.”
The thought hadn’t entered Jack’s mind. Police weren’t on his list of possible solutions for anything. But he didn’t tell Kolabati that. He wanted to know her reasons for avoiding them. Was she protecting her brother?
“Why not? Why not get the cops and the harbor patrol and have them raid that freighter, arrest Kusum, and wipe out the rakoshi?”
“Because that won’t accomplish a thing! They can’t arrest Kusum because of diplomatic immunity. And they’ll go in after the rakoshi not knowing what they’re up against. The result will be a lot of dead men. Kusum will go free, and instead of being killed, the rakoshi will scatter around the city to prey on whomever they can find.”
She was right. She’d obviously given the matter some thought. Perhaps she’d even considered blowing the whistle on Kusum herself. Hell of a responsibility to carry alone. Maybe he could lighten the load.
“Leave him to me.”
Kolabati rose from her chair and came to stand before Jack. She put her arms around his waist and laid the side of her head against his shoulder.
“No. Let me speak to him. He’ll listen to me. I can stop him.”
I doubt that very much, Jack thought. He’s crazy, and nothing short of death is going to stop him.
But he said: “You think so?”
“We understand each other. We’ve been through so much together. Now that I know for sure he has a nest of rakoshi, he’ll have to listen to me. He’ll have to destroy them.”
“I’ll wait with you.”
She jerked back and stared at him, terror in her eyes. “No! He mustn’t find you here! He’ll be so angry he’ll never listen to me!”
“I don’t—”
“I’m serious, Jack! I don’t know what he might do if he found you here with me and knew you’d seen the rakoshi. He must never know that. Please. Leave now and let me face him alone.”
Jack didn’t like it. His instincts were against it. Yet the more he thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded. If Kolabati could convince her brother to eradicate his nest of rakoshi, the touchiest part of the problem would be solved. If she couldn’t—and he doubted very much that she could—at least she might be able to keep Kusum off balance long enough for Jack to find an opening and make his move. Nellie Paton had been a spirited little lady. The man who killed her was not going to walk away.
“All right,” he said. “But you be careful. You never know—he might turn on you.”
She smiled and touched his face. “You’re worried about me. I need to know that. But don’t worry. Kusum won’t turn on me. We’re too close.”
As he left the apartment, Jack wondered if he was doing the right thing. Could Kolabati handle her brother? Could anyone?
He took the elevator down to the lobby and walked out to the street.
The park stood dark and silent across Fifth Avenue. Jack knew that after tonight he would never feel the same about the dark again. Yet horse-drawn hansom cabs still carried lovers through the trees, taxis, cars, and trucks still rushed past on the street, late workers, party-goers, prowling singles walked by, all unaware that a group of monsters was devouring human flesh in a ship tied to a West Side dock.
Already the horrors he’d witnessed tonight were taking on an air of unreality. Was what he’d seen real?
Of course it was. It just didn’t seem so standing here amid the staid normalcy of Fifth Avenue in the upper Sixties. Maybe that was good. Maybe that seeming unreality would let him sleep at night until he took care of Kusum and his monsters.
He caught a cab and told the driver to go around the park instead of through it.
6
Kolabati watched through the peephole until Jack stepped into the elevator and the doors closed behind him. Then she slumped against the door.
Had she told him too much? What had she said? She couldn’t remember what she might have blurted out in the aftermath of the shock of finding that hole in the rakosh egg. Probably nothing too damaging—she had such long experience at keeping secrets from people that it was now an integral part of her nature. Still, she wished she could be sure.
Kolabati straightened up and pushed those concerns aside. What was done was done. Kusum would be coming back tonight. After what Jack had told her, she was sure of that.
It was all so clear now. That name: Westphalen. It explained everything. Everything except where Kusum had found the male egg. And what he intended to do next.
Westphalen … she thought Kusum would have forgotten that name by now. But then, why think that? Kusum forgot nothing, not a favor, certainly not a slight. He would never forget the name Westphalen. Nor the timeworn vow attached to it.
Kolabati ran her hands up and down her arms. Captain Sir Albert Westphalen had committed a hideous crime and deserved an equally hideous death. But not his descendants. Innocent people should not be given into the hands of the rakoshi for a crime committed before they were born.
But she could not worry about them now. She had to decide how to handle Kusum. To protect Jack she would have to know more. She tried to remember the name of the woman Jack said had disappeared last night … Paton, wasn’t it? Nellie Paton. And she needed a way to put Kusum on the defensive.
She went into the bedroom and brought the empty egg back to the tiny foyer. There she dropped the shell just inside the door. It shattered into a thousand pieces.
Tense and anxious, she found herself a chair and tried to get comfortable.
7
Kusum stood outside his apartment door a moment to compose himself. Kolabati was certainly waiting within with questions as to his whereabouts last night. He had his answers ready. What he had to do now was mask the elation that must be beaming from his face. He had disposed of the next to the last Westphalen—one more and he would be released from the vow. Tomorrow he would set the wheels in motion to secure the last of Albert Westphalen’s line. Then he would set sail for India.
He keyed the lock and opened the door. Kolabati sat facing him from a living room chair, her arms and legs crossed, her face impassive. As he smiled and stepped forward, something crunched under his foot. He looked down and saw the shattered rakosh egg. A thousand thoughts hurtled through his shocked mind, but the one that leaped to the forefront was: How much does she know?
“So,” he said as he closed the door behind him. “You know.”
“Yes, brother. I know.”
“How—?”
“That’s what I want to know,” she snapped.
She was being so oblique! She knew the egg had hatched. What else did she know? Not wanting to give anything away, he decided to proceed on the assumption that she knew only of the empty egg and nothing more.
“I didn’t want to tell you about the egg,” he said finally. “I was too ashamed. After all, it was in my care when it broke, and—”
“Kusum!” Kolabati leaped to her feet, her face livid. “Don’t lie to me! I know about the ship and I know about the Westphalen women!”
Kusum felt as if he had been struck by lightning. She knew everything!
“How…?” was all he could manage.
“I followed you yesterday.”
“You followed me?” He was sure he had eluded her. She had to be bluffing. “Didn’t you learn your lesson last time?”
“Forget the last time. I followed you to your ship last night.”
“Impossible!”
“So you thought. But I watched and waited all last night. I saw the rakoshi leave. I saw them return with their captive. And I learned from Jack today that Nellie Paton, a Westphalen, disappeared last night. That was all I needed to know.” She glared at him. “No more lies, Kusum. It’s my turn to ask, ‘how?’”
Stunned, Kusum stepped down into the living room and sank into a chair. He would have to bring her into it now … tell her everything. Almost everything. There was one part he could never tell—he could barely think about that himself
. But he could tell her the rest. Maybe she could see his side.
He began his tale.
8
Kolabati scrutinized her brother closely as he spoke, watching for lies. His voice was clear and cool, his expression calm with just a hint of guilt, like a husband confessing a minor dalliance with another woman.
“I felt adrift after you left India. It was as if I had lost my other arm. Despite all my followers clustered around me, I spent much time alone—too much time, you might say. I began to review my life and all I had done and not done with it. Despite my growing influence, I felt unworthy of the trust so many were placing in me. What had I truly accomplished except to filthy my karma to the level of the lowest caste? I confess that for a time I wallowed in self-pity. Finally I decided to journey back to Bharangpur, to the hills there, to the temple ruins that are now the tomb of our parents and heritage.”
He paused and looked directly at her. “The foundation is still there, you know. The ashes of the rest are gone, washed into the sand or blown away, but the stone foundation remains, and the rakoshi caves beneath are intact. The hills are still uninhabited. Despite all the crowding at home, people still avoid those hills. I stayed there for days in an effort to renew myself. I prayed, I fasted, I wandered the caves … yet nothing happened. I felt as empty and as worthless as before. And then I found it!”
Kolabati saw a light begin to glow in her brother’s eyes, growing steadily, as if someone were stoking a fire within his brain.
“A male egg, intact, just beneath the surface of the sand in a tiny alcove in the caves! At first I did not know what to make of it, or what to do with it. Then it struck me: I was being given a second chance. There before me lay the means to accomplish all that I should have with my life, the means to cleanse my karma and make it worthy of one of our caste. I saw it then as my destiny. I was to start a nest of rakoshi and use them to fulfill the vow.”
A male egg. Kusum continued to talk about how he manipulated the foreign service and managed to have himself assigned to the London Embassy. Kolabati barely heard him. A male egg … she remembered hunting through the ruins of the temple and the caves beneath as a child, searching everywhere. In their youth they both had felt it their duty to start a new nest and they had desperately wanted a male egg.