Thirst No. 5 (40 page)

Frau Cia does not hold the box, nor a bottle of gasoline, or even a box of matches. But the way she stares at me is unnerving. Everything I despise about Himmler is suddenly magnified in her. Her eyes, they are black, they have no whites. Her
expression is blank, it has no life, no anger, no hatred, nothing. Yet it’s her nothingness that causes me to pause. The presence I felt working through Himmler, I feel it now inside of her.

Only more focused, more dangerous.

I don’t know why but I suddenly feel afraid.

Worse, I
know
if I try to save Anton I’ll be caught. I’ll be tortured. They’ll burn me again. They’ll keep burning me. It will never stop.

Frau Cia holds open her arms. “Sita, come. Join us. You are so close to us now.”

“No!” I cry, spinning on my heels and fleeing. I run all the way back to where Harrah and Ralph huddle in the bushes. They try to calm me. For a long time I can’t speak, I can’t stop shaking.

“Did you find Anton?” Harrah asks finally.

I hesitate. “He’s dead. We have to save ourselves now.”

I
exit the session in an instant. One moment I’m crouched in the bushes outside Auschwitz, the next I’m sitting across from Seymour on top of the hill in Joshua Tree National Park. Matt stands over us.

“That was gruesome,” Matt says.

“You heard what I did at the end?” I ask.

Matt nods. Seymour speaks quickly. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. You did everything you could to save Harrah and Ralph. Anton . . . he was severely injured. He would never have made it out of Poland.”

My guilt is unbearable. I wonder if it’s the reason I blocked out the memory. It’s hard for me to tell the others how I feel but the compulsion to confess is strong.

“He risked his life to save me and I left him to die. I left him to be tortured to death,” I say.

“You once told me that Krishna said guilt was the most useless of all emotions,” Seymour says.

“It is useless. That doesn’t make it any less real,” I say.

Seymour stands and offers me a hand, pulling me to my feet. “Let’s focus on what we learned. You really did go aboard a
vimana
. A nuclear bomb was detonated at the Battle of Kurukshetra, like the legends say.”

“The Mahabharata called it
Pashupata
,” Matt says.

I shake my head. “How were Yaksha and I rescued from the
vimana
? The last thing I remember was staring out at the stars.” I look to Matt for answers. “Did your father talk to you about what happened?”

Matt nods. “That’s why I’m here. You might even say that’s why I spent so much time playing the game.”

“I don’t understand,” I say.

Matt points down the hill. “I’ll have to explain later. They’re coming.”

Three figures approach from the direction of the road. The light in the east has grown but sunrise is still thirty minutes away. I don’t need the sun, however, to recognize Sarah Goodwin and Frau Cia. The man—I have never seen him before—looks like a younger version of Himmler.

It makes no sense but Frau Cia has not aged.

The young man kicks Mr. Grey’s leg, forcing him awake. He orders him to stand. Mr. Grey, his head heavily bandaged, appears resigned to the task. He and Sarah Goodwin trudge
up the hill behind the other two. Sarah herself looks in poor shape—it’s obvious she has been tortured. Her blue sweats are streaked with blood and both her eyes are blackened.

Still, although she is hurting, she makes an effort to help Mr. Grey climb the hill. She must have a piece of Harrah in her, I think.

“Did anyone think to bring a gun?” Seymour asks anxiously.

“I’ve got one,” Matt says.

“It won’t help. The guy has the box,” I say.

“I thought you broke it,” Seymour says.

“It looks like it’s been fixed,” I say. We’re assuming there is only one box—the one taken from the
vimana
that crashed five thousand years ago.

Soon they stand before us, although Sarah and Mr. Grey quickly move to our side. Their act does not bother Frau Cia and . . . Himmler’s child? It must be his child, or his grandchild—the man has characteristics of Cia and Himmler. I see both parents in the lines of his face and the darkness in his eyes. He holds the box and keeps his fingers close to the black dial.

Cia radiates the inhuman horror I felt from her at Auschwitz. She and her child are like twin objects that float in a vast black sea—an impersonal ocean that controls what they do. The fact that they’re here is enough to stain the hill.

I lean over and whisper in Sarah’s ear. “Are you all right?”

She sighs. “I’ve been better. Have you been searching for me?”

“Frantically.”

“Is Roger . . .”

“He’s dead. I’m sorry.”

Her head drops. “I knew, he was so hurt.”

I speak softly in her ear. “Do you have the veil?”

Sarah nods.

“Sita,” Cia interrupts in a German accent. “It’s been a long time.”

“Frau Cia. You haven’t aged. Yet you’re not vampire or Telar.”

Cia nods. “We met during the war, and close to a thousand years ago, in Landulf’s castle. I can see you’re puzzled.”

“The woman who posed as Landulf of Capua’s consort died in the Middle Ages,” Seymour says. “Her heart was cut from her body.”

Cia smiles faintly. “That must mean I have no heart.”

She taunts him. She’s saying Seymour wrote her as having no heart because a part of him sensed—through my mind—that she was devoid of all human feeling.

She has a heart, though, it pumps with unusual vigor. Either she stole my blood long ago or else the creature that chose her as a vehicle keeps her from aging. It’s possible both are true. I only know she’s strong and very fast, and that Tarana lives inside her. The same for the man.

“What do you want?” I ask.

Cia shrugs. “What you want. We have come for Vishnu’s
Vimana
.”

Vishnu’s
Vimana
. Vishnu is a name for God in India. Specifically, the word refers to that aspect of God that maintains the creation. In Vedic texts, Brahma creates the universe and Shiva destroys it at the end of time. Shiva, Brahma, and Vishnu make up the holy trinity of the Vedas. Many scholars feel they parallel the Christian concept of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. However the name is viewed, it’s odd to hear a monster like Frau Cia speak of seeking a holy vessel.

“You believe it’s here?” Matt says.

“We know it’s here. Can’t you see it?” Cia gestures to one of the tall Joshua trees on the hilltop, the one on our right.

“Very funny,” I reply. “Are you saying it’s cloaked as a tree?”

“Yes,” Cia says.

Matt appears to accept her answer. Perhaps something in the game pointed to the Joshua trees, I don’t know. I watch as he nods to the Joshua tree on the left. “What type of
vimana
is that?” he asks.

Cia laughs softly. “
Our
kind. The kind that strikes fear into every living creature.”

“We’re not afraid of you,” I say firmly.

“No? The last time we met you looked frightened. When you ran from the camp and left Anton behind. By the way, he died cursing your name. I thought you should know.”

“For such a powerful woman, you’re remarkably boring.” I yawn. “But I suppose you’re a big hit with all the Pentagon generals.”

Cia snickers. “You think I still work with those fools? I gave them sixty years to figure out how to speed up their damn ships. And they’re still stuck circling the planets.”

Seymour is puzzled. “So you don’t work on the fast walkers anymore?”

“Nope,” Cia says.

Matt intrudes. “You’ve known where Vishnu’s
Vimana
is. Yet you have waited until now to come for it. Why? Is there something that keeps you from boarding it?”

Cia looks at him with approval. “A thinking man. I like that. Yes, the
vimana
is difficult to enter. It only responds to someone it recognizes.”

Cia and Matt look at me; they all do.

“I’ve never seen this Joshua tree before. Or Vishnu’s
Vimana
,” I say.

“You have,” Cia says. “But like everything that has to do with this topic, you don’t remember. In Auschwitz we did our best to help you with this block. But it’s time you got over it for yourself.” She adds, “You don’t want us to help you again.”

“You and your tedious threats,” I mutter.

Cia turns to her companion. “Give them level three.”

The man turns a dial on the box. The faint screeching sound starts, low at first, then louder, bringing with it brain-bursting
pain. Matt and I double up; it’s impossible to block it out. The pain vibrates every nerve in our skulls. I have never seen Matt cry out before.

Then I notice we’re not alone. Seymour is also suffering from the sound. I don’t understand why. Is our telepathic link still intact? Is the tiny amount of blood I put in his veins to cure his HIV infection resonating with the noise? He drops to his knees and blood runs from his nose. The sound is killing him.

“You’ve made your point!” I gasp.

Cia signals to the man, who twists the dial back to zero. The pain recedes immediately. Matt kneels to attend to Seymour, but my attention is diverted. For a few seconds, as my jangled nerves were calming down, I saw the faint outline of a red
vimana
where the Joshua tree on our left is standing. It was not a mirage, it was real.

Indeed, I suspect it’s the trees that are not real.

“You learn faster these days,” Cia says. “Or is it that you value your companions so highly?”

“I have no memory of Vishnu’s
Vimana
,” I reply.

For the first time Cia steps close. She stops within striking distance, and I have no doubt she’s taunting me. A leap into the air, a kick with my right foot—I could decapitate her in an instant. But what would the man with the box do? Turn the dial up to ten? Seymour’s head would explode. Certainly Matt and I would be knocked out, leaving the others helpless.

Our foes have planned this encounter carefully.

“By now you must recognize the pattern,” Cia says. “All memories relating to the
vimanas
are blocked inside you. Until we stimulated you at Auschwitz, you had no memories at all of what went on during the Battle of Kurukshetra. You didn’t even recall listening to your blessed Krishna’s talk about the
vimanas
.”

“Go on,” I say.

“Shortly after you left Auschwitz, you blocked the memories again. To put it bluntly, Sita, something inside you is forcing you to play the fool. Knowing your fiery temperament, that must annoy you. Personally, it would enrage me. I wouldn’t stand for it—no, I’d fight against the block with everything inside me.”

“Unless the block was put there for a reason,” Matt says.

Cia’s face registers a flash of anger before she hides it with a fake smile. “Can you suggest a reason for the block?” she asks.

Matt considers. “Not long before he died, my father told me about the
vimana
you seek. Hearing about it affected me deeply. Suddenly the world was no longer enough. Simply knowing the
vimana
exists here on earth has driven me to find it. I’d go so far as to say it has come close to driving me nuts.”

“It affected you that much?” I say.

Cia snorts. “You would have reacted worse. You would have spent your entire life trying to locate the
vimana
so you could fly off into the stars and find the magical world where your blessed Krishna lives.”

I go to snap at her but realize she’s right.

“It’s the time for all the old secrets to be revealed,” Cia says. “Tell Sita everything Yaksha told you, Matt. She deserves to know the truth.”

“Matt,” I say when he doesn’t respond.

“I hate talking about it in front of them,” he says.

“But they already know. They have always known,” I reply.

Matt hesitates. “The two of you didn’t drift forever in the damaged ship. You were rescued by celestial beings my father had no words for. They brought you home, and yet it was so painful for you to leave them after what they had shown you, you asked that all your memories be erased.” Matt pauses. “You’re the cause of the block. You’re the one who asked for it.”

His words almost knock me over. “Did Yaksha?”

“No.”

“He knew the truth all these years?”

“Yes.”

“Then how come he didn’t leave?”

“He had made a vow.”

To destroy all the vampires,
I think.
To kill me.

“I understand,” I say.