“So I win,” he says.
“What do you win? You’re a miserable creature, and when I’m gone you’ll still be miserable. Power, wealth, even immortality—they don’t bring happiness. You will never know what the word means.”
Eddie laughs. “You don’t look so happy right now.”
I nod. “That’s true. But I don’t fool myself that I am. I am what I am. You are just a caricature of a hero in one of your perverted fantasies. One morning, one night I should say, you’ll wake up and look at yourself in the mirror and wish the person staring back at you weren’t so ugly.”
“You’re just a lousy loser.”
I shake my head. “I am not just talking about your ugly face. If you live long enough, you’re going to eventually see what you are. It’s inevitable. If I do fail to kill you tonight, I predict you will eventually kill yourself. Out of sheer loathing. One thing for sure, you’re never going to change. You’ll always be something sick that the creation just happened to vomit forth when God was looking the other way.”
He snorts. “I don’t believe in God.”
I nod sadly. “I don’t know if I do, either.”
A wave of dizziness sweeps over me.
My blood, my immortal blood, is leaving me.
It will not be long now.
Yet I cannot stop thinking of Krishna, even when the tall glass is full and Eddie raises it to his lips and toasts my good health and drinks it down in one guttural swallow. It is as if my dream of Krishna and the story he gave to Yaksha have become superimposed over each other in my mind. Actually, it is as if I have two minds, one in this hell I can’t block out, the other in a heaven I can’t really remember. But the duality of consciousness does not comfort me. The memory of the bliss of my imagined conversation with Krishna on the enchanted hilltop just makes this bitter end that much more difficult to accept. Of course, I do not accept it. Even though I have surrendered, I have lived too long to lie down and be sucked dry like this. Krishna beat the demon by playing the enchantress. How may I play this same role? What is the key? If only he would appear before me now and tell me. Another glass fills and Eddie drinks it down.
“Now I will play you a song made up of the seven notes of humanity. All the emotions you will feel as a human and as a vampire. Remember this song and you will remember me. Sing this song and I will be there.”
Why did he tell me that? Or did he tell me anything at all? Did I not just dream the whole thing? I had just lost Ray. My subconscious must have been starving for comfort. Surely I created the whole thing. Yet, if I did, the joy of the creation brought me more joy than anything in this world has. I cannot forget the beauty of Krishna’s eyes—the blue stars wherein the whole of the creation shines. It is as if I trust in his beauty more than in his words. His love was a thing that never needed to be understood. The day we met, it was just there, like the endless sky.
The day we met.
What did he do that remarkable day?
He played his song on his flute. Yaksha had challenged him to a contest. Together they went into a large pit filled with cobras, and it was agreed that whoever came out alive would be the victor. Both carried flutes and played songs to enchant the serpents and keep them from striking. But in the end Krishna won because he knew the secret notes that moved the different emotions inside all of us who were present. With his song Krishna struck deep into Yaksha’s heart and brought forth love, hate, and fear—in that order. And it was this last emotion that defeated Yaksha because a serpent only strikes when it senses fear. His body oozed venom by the time Krishna had Yaksha carried from the pit.
I have no flute on which to play that song.
Yet I remember it well. Yes.
“Sing this song and I will be there.”
From that day, and that time outside of time, before there even were days, I remember it. My dream was more than a dream. It was a key.
Staring Eddie straight in the eye, I begin to whistle.
He pays me no heed, at first.
He drinks down a third glass of my blood.
My strength begins to fail. There is no time for love, even for hate. I sing the last song Krishna sang to us, the one of fear. The note, the tone, the pitch—they are engraved in my soul. My lips fold into the perfect lines of Krishna’s flute. I do not see him, of course, and I doubt that I even feel his divine presence. Yet I feel something remarkable. My fear is great, it is true, and that emotion goes deep into my blood, which Eddie continues to drink. Anxiety crosses his face as he takes another sip, and for that I am glad. Yet beyond this I sense the true significance of my body, the instrument through which this song of life and death is continually playing for all of us. The realization even gives me a sense of the player, my true self, the I that existed before I stepped on this wicked stage and donned the costume of the vampire.
Again, I remember wanting to be different.
Eddie pauses with the bloody glass in his hand. He looks at me strangely. “What are you doing?” he asks.
I do not answer him with words. The tune continues to pour from my lips, a poisonous note with which I hope to save the world. The influence of it spreads throughout the room. Joel’s breathing becomes painful—my song is killing him as well. It is irritating Eddie, that’s for sure. He suddenly drops his glass and shakes his gun at me.
“Stop that!” he orders.
I know I have to stop, at least this melody. If I don’t he will shoot me and I will be dead. But another note comes to me, and it is odd because it is not one that Krishna played the day he dueled with Yaksha. Yet I know it, and once again I believe that the dream must have been a genuine vision. Before I entered the creation, Krishna gave me all the notes of life, all the keys to all the emotions a human being, and a monster, could experience.
I sing the note of the second center in the body—the sex center. Here, when the life energy flows, there are experienced two states of mind. Intense creativity when the energy goes up, intense lust when it goes down. Leaning toward Eddie, holding his eye as if it were his pleasure button, I pierce that secret note through his ears and into his nervous system and I send it down. Down even into the ground where I wish to bury his stinking body. It does not matter that I do not lust for him myself. It only matters that I have finally understood the meaning of Krishna’s fable. I am the enchantress. The gun in Eddie’s hand wavers and he stares at me in a new light. No longer does he just want my blood. He wants the container as well—my flesh. I pause long enough to give him a nasty grin. He resisted my suggestions before and my lover died. He will not resist me now and he will die.
I am that cheerleader he never had in high school.
“You have never had someone like me,” I say softly.
Another note. Another inhuman caress.
Eddie licks his lips.
“You will never have someone like me,” I whisper.
I do not sing the note. It sings itself.
Eddie fidgets, beside himself with passion.
“Never.” I form the word with my wet lips.
One more note. I barely get it out.
Eddie drops his gun and grabs me. We kiss.
Hmm. Yuck.
I pull back slightly to let him adore the whole of me.
“I like it cold,” I say.
Eddie understands. He is an ice-cream man, a connoisseur of frozen corpses. It is his thing and we should not judge him too harshly. Especially when he falls for my suggestion and drags me in the direction of the rear of the house. Toward the huge freezer where he used to go searching for Popsicles in the middle of the night. I am so weak—Eddie drags me by my hair. Yanking the fat white door open, he throws me inside, into the foggy frost, the cold dark, where his eyes are not as sharp as mine, and both our aversions to cold will stand or fall in critical balance. Landing on my ass, I quickly stand and find Eddie staring at me in that special way. I do believe he is not even going to give me a chance to fully undress. Tossing my head and hair to the side,
I raise my right hand and place it on my left breast. One last time, just before I speak, I whistle the note.
“I do so prefer the dark,” I say. “For me, it makes it that much more dirty.”
Eddie—he has many buttons. This one makes his leg lash out. Behind him, the door shuts. The overhead light either doesn’t work or doesn’t exist. All is dark, all is cold.
I hear him coming toward me.
More than that I can distinguish a faint outline of him, even in the total absence of light. And I can tell by the lack of focus in his movements that he cannot see me at all. Also, already I can tell the cold has dulled his vampiric blood. This is both good and bad. The slower he is, the easier he will be to handle. Yet the same effect applies to me as well. My only advantage is that I know the dullness is coming. Unfortunately, snakes never mate on a winter night. The freezer puts a hold on his reckless passion just when I need it most. Before I can sing another note, he pauses in midstride, and I see that he realizes he has been tricked. In a flash he turns for the door.
I trip him. He falls to the floor.
In the event a large freezer door gets jammed and a person is locked inside, it is required by law that an ax be kept inside at all times. That way, if need be, the unfortunate individual can chop his way out. In Eddie’s freezer the ax is strapped to the inside of the door, which is normal. As Eddie falls, I leap onto his back and over his head and grab that ax. It is a big sucker. Raising it over my head, feeling the weight of its sharp steel blade, I know true happiness.
“What’s your favorite flavor, little boy?” I ask.
Eddie quickly goes up onto his knees, searching for me in the dark, feeling with his hands, knowing I’m near but not realizing what I have in my hands.
“Huh?” he says.
“Cherry red?” I shout.
I bring the ax down hard. Cut off his goddamn head. Black blood gushes out and I kick his amputated coconut into what could be a box of ice-cream sandwiches. Dropping the ax, I fumble in the dark with the door, barely getting it open. My strength is now finished. Even with the ax, even being a vampire, I would not have had the energy to chop my way out.
I find Joel dying on the couch. He has a minute more, maybe two. Kneeling before him, I lift up his sunken head. He opens his eyes and tries to smile at me.
“You stopped him?” he whispers.
“Yes. He is dead.” I pause and glance at the needle still in my arm, the tourniquet and the plastic tubing. I twist the latter to keep it from leaking my blood onto the floor. Searching Joel’s face, I feel such guilt. “Do you know what I am?” I ask.
The word comes hard. “Yes.”
“Do you want to be like me?”
He closes his eyes. “No.”
I grab him, shake him. “But you will die, Joel.”
“Yes.” His head falls on his chest. His breath is a thing of resignation, a settling of ripples on a mountain pond that prepares for a winter’s frost. Yet he speaks once more, one sweet word that pierces my heart and makes me feel he is my responsibility: “Sita.”
The seconds tick. They always do. The power of an entire sun cannot stop them even for a moment, and so death comes between the moments, like a thief of light in the dark. Eddie had brought a spare syringe. It sits on the dining room table like a needle that waits for me to poke in the eye of God. Krishna made me promise to make no other vampires, and in return he would grant me his grace, his protection. And even though I did make another when I changed Ray, Yaksha believed I still lived in that grace because I gave Ray my blood to save him, only because I loved him.
“Where there is love, there is my grace.”
I believe I can save Joel. I feel it is my duty to do so.
But do I love him?
God help me, I don’t know.
Stumbling into the dining room, I fetch the extra syringe. It fits snugly onto the end of the plastic tubing. Because I still wear the tourniquet, the pressure is on my veins and my blood will flow into his. Like Ray, six weeks ago, Joel will be forever altered. But staring down at his unconscious face, I wonder if any creature, mortal or immortal, has the right to make decisions that last forever. I only know I will miss him if he dies.
Sitting beside him, cradling him in my arms, I stick the needle in his vein. My blood—it goes into him. But where will it stop? As I sink into the couch and begin to pass out, I realize that he may hate me in the morning, which from now on will always come at night for him. He told me not to do it. He may even kill me for what I have done. Yet I am so weary, I don’t know if I even care. Let him carry on the story, I think.
Let him be the last vampire.
RED DICE
For Rene
ONE
I am a vampire. Blood does not bother me. I like blood. Even seeing my own blood does not frighten me. But what my blood can do to others—to the whole world for that matter—terrifies me. Once God made me take a vow to create no more vampires. Once I believed in God. But my belief, like my vow, has been shattered too many times in my long life. I am Alisa Perne, the now-forgotten Sita, child of a demon. I am the oldest living creature on earth.
I awake in a living room smelling of death. I watch as my blood trickles through a thin plastic tube into the arm of Special Agent Joel Drake, FBI. He now lives as a vampire instead of the human being he was when he closed his eyes. I have broken my promise to Lord Krishna—Joel did not ask me to make him a vampire. Indeed, he told me not to, to let him die in peace. But I did not listen. Therefore, Krishna’s protection, his grace, no longer applies to me. Perhaps it is good. Perhaps I will die soon. Perhaps not.
I do not die easily.
I remove the tubing from my arm and stand. At my feet lies the body of Mrs. Fender, mother of Eddie Fender, who also lies dead, in a freezer at the end of the hall. Eddie had been a vampire, a very powerful one, before I cut off his head. I step over his mother’s body to search for a clock. Somehow, fighting the forces of darkness, I have misplaced my watch. A clock ticks in the kitchen above the stove. Ten minutes to twelve. It is dark outside.
I have been unconscious for almost twenty-four hours.
Joel will awaken soon, I know, and then we must go. But I do not wish to leave the evidence of my struggle with Eddie for the FBI to examine. Having seen how Eddie stole and used the blood of my creator, Yaksha, I know I must vaporize this sick house. My sense of smell is acute, as is my hearing. The pump that cools the large freezer in the back is not electric but powered by gasoline. I smell large amounts of fuel on the back porch. After I toss the gasoline all over the house, and wake Joel, I will strike a match. Fire pleases me, although it has the power to destroy me. Had I not been a vampire, I might have become a pyromaniac.
The gasoline is stored in two twenty-gallon steel tanks. Because I have the strength of many men, I have no trouble lifting them both at once. Yet even I am surprised by how light they feel. Before I passed out, I was like Joel, on the verge of death. Now I am stronger than I can ever remember being. There is a reason. Yaksha gave me what blood he had left in his veins before I buried him in the sea. He gave me his power, and I never realized how great it was until this moment. It is a wonder I was able to defeat Eddie, who also drank from Yaksha. Perhaps Krishna came to my aid, one last time.
I take the drums into the living room. From the freezer, I remove Eddie’s body, severed head, and even the hard blood on the freezer floor. I pick them all up and place them on my living room barbecue. Next I begin to break up the couch and tables into easy-to-burn pieces. The noise causes Joel to stir but he does not waken. Newborn vampires sleep deep and wake up hungry. I wonder if Joel will be like my beloved Ray, reluctant to drink from the living. I hope not. I loved Ray above all things, but as a vampire, he was a pain in the ass.
I think of Ray.
He has been dead less than two days.
“My love,” I whisper. “My sorrow.”
There is no time for grief; there never is. There is no time for joy, I think bi
tterly. Only for life, pain, death. God did not plan this creation. It was a joke to him, a dream. Once, in a dream, Krishna told me many secrets. But he may have lied to me. It would have been like him.
I am almost done throwing the fuel around and tearing up the house when I hear the sound of approaching cars. There are no sirens but I know these are police cruisers. Police drive differently from normal people, worse actually. They drive faster and the officers in these squad cars are anxious to get here. I have incredibly sensitive hearing—I count at least twenty vehicles. What brings them here?
I glance at Joel.
“Are they coming for Eddie?” I ask him. “Or for me? What did you tell your superiors?”
But perhaps I am too quick to judge, too harsh. Los Angeles has seen many strange sights lately, many bodies killed by superhumans. Perhaps Joel has not betrayed me, at least not intentionally. Perhaps I have betrayed myself. I have gotten sloppy in my old age. I hurry to Joel’s side and shake him roughly.
“Wake up,” I say. “We have to get out of here.”
He opens his drowsy eyes. “You look different.” he whispers.
“Your eyes are different.”
Realization crosses his face. “Did you change me?”
“Yes.”
He swallows weakly. “Am I still human?”
I sigh. “You’re a vampire.”
“Sita.”
I put a finger to his lips. “Later. We must leave here quickly. Many cops are coming.” I pull him to his feet and he groans. “You will feel stronger in a few minutes. Stronger than you have ever felt before.”
I find a Bic lighter in the kitchen, and we head for the front door. But before we can reach it I hear three cruisers skid to a halt outside. We hurry to the back, but the situation is the same. Cops, weapons drawn, have jumped out of their cars with whirling blue and red lights cutting paths in the night sky. More vehicles appear, armored monstrosities with SWAT teams inside. Searchlights flash on and light up the house. We are surrounded. I do not do well in such situations, or else, one might say, I do very well—for a vampire. What I mean is, being trapped brings out my most vicious side. I push aside my recently acquired revulsion for violence. Once, in the Middle Ages, surrounded by an angry mob, I killed over a hundred men and women.