Thirst No. 2 (35 page)

vampire. The last vampire, whose long life now comes to a close.

Death does not scare me, but oblivion does. There is a difference. In my daughter's ashes I see my own bright star sink beneath the surface and go out. My end will erase my beginning. I don't know how but I know it is true. And I must choose that end because it is my destiny.

3

The wallet and the passport from Heidi's pockets identified her as a certain Linda Clairee.

I know her address, her bank account number, even her supposed birthdate. She is supposed to have lived in a house not far from where I lived when I gave birth to Kalika. I am very curious as I drive to her house after flying into LAX.

The place is modest, nondescript even, stucco walls with a wooden fence surrounding an uninspired yard of grass and a few bushes. Slowly I walk toward the front door. There is someone inside watching TV and drinking what smells like beer. The sounds and odors drift out through a torn screen door. I knock lightly and brace myself for instant death.

Yet I have a matrix in my pocket, and I have finally figured out how to operate the ray gun. It is a totally cool weapon.

A bearded fellow in a frayed T-shirt answers the door. He looks as if he's on his second six-pack. Twenty-five, at most, his gut hangs over his belt like a sausage off the side of a breakfast plate. But I warn myself that Heidi—Linda—appeared to be very ordinary until her psychic force field went up. This guy might be more than he appears, but it's hard to believe.

"Hello," I say. "Is Linda home?"

He burps. "She's out of town."

At least he doesn't know she's missing her head.

"My name is Alisa," I say. "I'm an old friend. Do you know when she'll be back?"

"She didn't say."

"OK." I catch his eye through the screen door and squeeze his neuron currents. "Would it be OK if I come in and search through her personal things?"

His brain is soft mud, easy to impress—I think. "Sure," he says, and opens the door for me.

"Thank you," I respond.

I leave him in the living room, watching a baseball game. But my ears never leave him. If he tries to sneak up on me, he'll fail. But I won't kill him, if he shows strange powers, not right away.

Linda's room is neat and tidy. She seemed to enjoy sewing and the Dodgers. And if I begin to think I have the wrong house, there are pictures of her and Brother Bud on the mirror on top of the chest of drawers, cheap Polaroids shot with a camera with a dusty lens.

Heidi is Linda and I am in the right bedroom. In each of the pictures Linda smiles as if someone just told her to.

I search the drawers and find nothing important. Even the closet is boring—clothes and baseball caps, shoes and socks. And this is the creature who said we all have powers? Talk about a double life. I am on the verge of leaving when a stack of papers under the bed

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They are all about UFOs.

Specifically, newsletters from a UFO foundation.

FOF—Flying Objects Foundation.

What happened to the unidentified? I don't care. All the newsletters are addressed to Linda Clairee. She was definitely a member of this group, and it is the only wrinkle in her ordinary life that I have found. Holding the papers in my hand, I return to the living room and Bud. He is, in fact, finishing a can of Budweiser as I walk in. I turn off the TV without asking his permission and sit down across from him.

"Hey," he says, annoyed.

I catch his eye and burn a tiny hole in his frontal lobes. It will probably do him good, in the long run.

"Where did Linda say she was going?" I ask.

He replies in a flat voice, staring straight ahead. "Phoenix."

"What's in Phoenix?"

"A convention."

"A UFO convention?"

"Yes. FOF."

"Did Linda often attend such conventions?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

He could be hypnotized. "She likes UFOs."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

"Are you interested in UFOs?"

"No."

"Does Linda believe UFOs exist?"

"Yes."

"Is she an alien?"

"What?"

"Is Linda an alien creature?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Sure, I'm sure."

"When did you meet Linda?"

"Three years ago."

"Where?"

"In a bar in Fullerton."

"What does Linda do for a living?"

"She works as a secretary."

"Have you ever been to her place of work?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"In Fullerton. On Commonwealth and Harbor. Grays DP Office."

"What is Linda like?"

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"Nice. Boring. Sexy."

"What is it like to have sex with her?"

"Fun. Always the same."

"What's your name?"

"Bill."

"What do you do for a living, Bill?"

"Drive a truck."

"Have you ever noticed anything unusual about Linda?"

"What do you mean?"

"Besides attending UFO conventions, does she do anything else odd?"

"Yes."

"What?"

"She stares at the sky at night a lot."

"How often?"

"Every night."

"Does she tell you why?"

"No."

"Do you ask?"

"No."

"When do you expect her back?"

"In two days."

"The convention runs until then?"

"Yes, I think."

"Does Linda have any family?"

"No. They are all dead."

"Every one of them?"

"Yes. Everyone."

"Bill, I am going to leave now but I might be back later. Until I return, I want you to forget I was ever here. I never existed. If someone should ask you if a stranger was here, just say no. Do you understand?"

"All right."

"Also, if Linda should fail to come home, don't worry about her. Get yourself another girl.

She is not so important. Understand?"

"Yes."

"Good." I stand and step over and turn the TV back on. "Goodbye, Bill."

He glances up from the game. He doesn't even realize I interrupted it. "Goodbye," he says.

There is a plane leaving for Phoenix in fifty minutes and I get on it. Linda's newsletters have told me where the FOF convention is being held—a Holiday Inn beside a busy freeway. Once in Phoenix, I rent a Jeep and drive to the hotel, but all the rooms are taken.

Taking a room at a nearby hotel, I shower and then go for a walk in the desert. Perhaps the UFO freaks took a hotel near the edge of town so they could look at the night sky. It is late—I study the stars as I walk, but nothing flies down from the sky to whisk me away.

Yet I feel no pleasure beneath the heavens. A past I cannot remember haunts me.

"We are of an ancient tradition. Our line is mingled with yours, and with that of others.

We hold all powers."

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Still, Linda wanted more of my blood, if she had any of it to begin with. Yet she must have had something unique. She was fast and strong, more powerful than virtually any vampire Yaksha made. Plus she had technology that put the government's most secret toys to shame. But so many of her answers had made no sense. What did she want to initiate me into?

"But to join us you must sacrifice him. It is part of your initiation."

It was almost as if she wanted to introduce me to the black mass.

I know about such things, sexual magic, from the past.

The torture and the blood, the sudden awakenings.

But I have not thought of them in a long time.

I find a sandy bluff and sit atop it to mentally survey my life, trying to find a point where my blood could have been taken without my knowledge. But except for Arturo and his alchemy, I think, my blood has always been mine to do with as I chose. Yet a faint feeling of dread sweeps over me as I look back. My shadow is long and dark. In it could lie secrets, hidden from even me, where blood was exchanged and vows were pledged that my conscious memory never recorded. It is as if I sense a blank spot, a place of reality that wasn't real after all. But I only sense its existence—I don't see it. I have to wonder if my imagination leads me to a wall of illusion. My thoughts are never far from those I left behind in Tahoe: John, Seymour, Paula. But Paula swears they are safe there, for now, and she should know. She who has deep visions.

A shooting star crosses the sky and I make a wish.

"Krishna," I whisper, "don't let me die until I have set right what I made wrong."

Suzama's words are with me. God's plan.

Somehow I know it was me who messed it up.

Maybe that's what she had been trying to tell me.

Maybe that was why she sent me away.

4

The next morning I am at the FOF convention in the Holiday Inn, milling around the many booths, poking my head in on lectures. The attendance is substantial, at least two thousand people. The crowd is pretty evenly divided between males and females, but otherwise the cross section is peculiar. There are, for want of a better expression, a lot of nerds here.

Many are overweight and wear thick glasses. These are true believers, no doubt about it.

The saucers are coming and they are prepared. In fact, they believe they are already here.

Eavesdropping on their jumbled thoughts, I soon get a headache.

I sense no superbeings in the vicinity, yet I don't drop my guard. If this convention was important to Linda, there is somebody significant here. If only I knew who. Besides thoughts, I listen to heartbeats, trying to find physiologies that mimic mine. But there is nothing here but pure humanity.

The talks are boring, discussions of different sightings that have about as much credibility as reports of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. As I sit through one, yawning, I think about what I should have done with my life. Retired to a remote spot to spend a year building toys and baking goodies, which I would deliver once a year to the needy. At least

Create PDF files without this message by purchasing novaPDF printer (http://www.novapdf.com) then I could have given vampires a better name.

Yet there is a lecture at the end of the day that catches my eye. It is entitled: "Control Versus Anarchy—An Interstellar Dilemma." The speaker is to be Dr. Richard Stoon, a parapsychologist from Duke University. He has a list of impressive academic credentials beside his name, but it is really the buzz of the crowd that draws me to the talk. They have been waiting for this guy. I hear them whispering to one another. Dr. Stoon is supposed to be brilliant, charismatic, unorthodox. It is the last lecture of the convention, and I take a seat at the back of the audience and wait for Dr. Stoon to enter.

Beside me sits a pale blond woman, with a waist as small as my own, and clear blue eyes.

She has a kind smile and I quickly scan her mind, detecting nothing more than a day job at a boring office, and a husband who has just been laid off. She appears to be in her early twenties but could be older. Noticing my scrutiny, she glances over and brightens.

"Hello," she said with a southern accent. "It's been a fun convention, hasn't it?"

"I haven't been here for the whole thing. I just caught today."

"Have you heard Dr. Stoon speak before?'"

"This will be my first time. What's he like?"

"Very forceful, opinionated." She pauses. "He's interesting but to tell the truth he is awfully arrogant."

"Why don't you leave then?" I ask.

She makes a face. "Oh, I couldn't do that. I'm one of those people who has to see everything." She pauses and studies me. There is a sparkle in her eyes; she is far from stupid, but she doesn't want people to know. She offers her hand. "I'm Stacy Baxter."

I shake. "Alisa Perne. Pleased to meet you." I give one of my more common aliases because I'm no longer trying to hide. I want to draw the enemy out.

"Very pleased to meet you," Stacy replies. "I don't think I've seen you around before?"

"This is my first UFO convention."

"So what do you think?"

"It's all very interesting."

Stacy laughs. "No, you don't! You think we're all crackers."

Crackers. I haven't heard that expression in twenty years.

I have to smile. "I don't think you're crackers, Stacy."

She's pleased. "Maybe we can have coffee together after Dr. Stoon's talk."

"I'd enjoy that," I reply.

Dr. Stoon enters a short time afterward. He is a big burly man, of Slavic descent, with dark piercing eyes. His age, like Stacy's, is difficult to pinpoint. He could be thirty-five, or ten years older. He moves as if he owns the room, as if every eye should be on him. After a brief introduction, he is at the podium, overpowering it with his bulk and attitude. His voice, when he speaks, is gruff and unpleasant. Yet he sounds smart, like someone who knows more than he is saying.

And his words sound strikingly familiar.

"There are two kinds of beings in this creation," he says. "Those who strive for perfection and those who submit to chaos. It is the same in outer space as it is on this world—there is no difference. We either choose to be masters of our destinies, or we let the fates rule us. I am speaking now about power, and you might wonder what power has to do with a lecture on UFOs. I tell you it has everything to do with our space brothers. Each night we