Thirst No. 1 Read online

  Krishna came out of the forest.

  He was not a blue person as he was later to be depicted in paintings. Artists were to show him that way only because blue was symbolic of the sky, which to them seemed to stretch to infinity, and which was what Krishna was supposed to be in essence, the eternal infinite Brahman, above and beyond which there was nothing greater. He was a man such as all men I had seen, with two arms and two legs, one head above his shoulders, his skin the color of tea with milk in it, not as dark as most in India but not as light as my own. Yet there was no one like him. Even a glance showed me that he was special in a way I knew I would never fully comprehend. He walked out of the trees and all eyes followed him.

  He was tall, almost as tall as Yaksha, which was unusual for those days when people seldom grew to over six feet. His black hair was long—one of his many names was Keshava, master of the senses, or long-haired. In his right hand he held a lotus flower, in his left his fabled flute. He was powerfully built; his legs long, his every movement bewitching. He seemed not to look at anyone directly, but only to give sidelong glances. Yet these were enough to send a thrill through the crowd, on both sides. He was impossible not to stare at, though I tried hard to turn away. For I felt as if he were placing a spell over me that I would never recover from. Yet I did manage to turn aside for an instant. It was when I felt the touch of a hand on my brow. It was Radha, my supposed enemy, comforting me with her touch.

  “Krishna means love,” she said. “But Radha means longing. Longing is older than love. I am older than he. Did you know that, Sita?”

  I looked at her. “How did you know my name?”

  “He told me.”

  “When?”

  “Once.”

  “What else did he tell you about me?”

  Her face darkened. “You do not want to know.”

  Krishna walked to the edge of the pit and gestured for his people to withdraw to the edge of the trees. Only Arjuna remained with him. He nodded to Yaksha, who likewise motioned for our people to back up. But Yaksha wanted me near the pit with my hands not far from Radha’s neck. The arrangement did not seem to bother Krishna. He met Yaksha not far from where I stood. Krishna did not look directly at Radha or me. Yet he was close enough so that I could hear him speak. His voice was mesmerizing. It was not so much the sound of his words, but the place from which they sprang. Their authority and power. And, yes, love, I could hear love even as he spoke to his enemy. There was such peace in his tone. With all that was happening, he was not disturbed. I had the feeling that for him it was merely a play. That we were all just actors in a drama he was directing. But I was not enjoying the part I had been selected for. I did not see how Yaksha could beat Krishna. I felt sure that this day would be our last.

  Yet it was not day, but night, although the dawn was not far off.

  “I have heard that Yaksha is the master of serpents,” Krishna said. “That the sound of his flute intoxicates them. As you may have heard, I also play the flute. It is in my mind to challenge you to a combat of instruments. We will fill this pit with cobras, and you will sit at one end, and I will sit at the other, and we will each play for the control of the serpents. We will play for the life of Radha. You may play what you wish, and if the serpents strike me dead, so be it. You may keep Radha for your own pleasure. But if the serpents should bite you so many times that you die, or decide to surrender, then you must swear to me now that you will take a vow that I will ask you to take. Is this a reasonable challenge?”

  “Yes,” Yaksha said. His confidence leaped even higher, and I knew how strong Yaksha was with snakes. For I had watched many times while he had hypnotized snakes with the sound of his flute. It never surprised me because sometimes yakshinis were depicted as serpents, and I thought Yaksha was a snake at heart. In reality vampires have more in common with snakes than bats. A snake prefers to eat its victim alive.

  I knew Yaksha could be bitten many times by a cobra and not die.

  Krishna left it to our people to gather the cobras, which took time because there were none in the forests of Vrindavana itself. But vampires can work fast if they must, and travel far, and by the following evening the pit was filled with deadly snakes. Now the feeling in our group favored Yaksha. Few believed a mortal could survive for any length of time in the pit. It was then I saw that even though Krishna had impressed the vampires, they still thought of him as a man, an extraordinary man, true, but not as a divine being. They were anxious for the contest to begin.

  I stayed with Radha throughout the day. I talked to her about Rama and Lalita. She told me that they had both passed out of this world, but that Rama’s life had been noble and my daughter’s had been happy. I did not ask how she knew these things, I simply believed her. I cried at her words. Radha tried to comfort me. All that are born die, she said. All who die are reborn. It is inevitable, Krishna had told her. She told me many things Krishna had said.

  Finally, close to dark, Yaksha and Krishna climbed into the pit. Each carried a flute, nothing more. The people on both sides watched, but from a distance as Krishna had wanted. Only Radha and I stood close to the pit. There had to be a hundred snakes in that huge hole. They bit each other and more than a few were already being eaten.

  Yaksha and Krishna sat at opposite ends of the pit, each with his back to the wall of earth. They began to play immediately. They had to; the snakes moved for each of them right away. But with the sound of the music, both melodies, the snakes backed off and appeared uncertain.

  Now, Yaksha could play wonderfully, although his songs were always laced with sorrow and pain. His music was hypnotic; he could draw victims to feed on simply with his flute. But I realized instantly that his playing, for all its power, was a mere shadow next to Krishna’s music. For Krishna played the song of life itself. Each note on his flute was like a different center in the human body. His breath through the notes on the flute was like the universal breath through the bodies of all people. He would play the third note on his flute and the third center in my body, at the navel, would vibrate with different emotions. The navel is the seat of jealousy and attachment, and of joy and generosity. I felt these as he played. When Krishna would blow through this hole with a heavy breath, I would feel as if everything that I had ever called mine had been stripped from me. But when he would change his breath, let the notes go long and light, then I would smile and want to give something to those around me. Such was his mastery.

  His playing had the snakes completely bewildered. None would attack him. Yet Yaksha was able to keep the snakes at bay with his music as well, although he was not able to send them after his foe. So the contest went on for a long time without either side hurting the other. Yet it was clear to me Krishna was in command, as he was in control of my emotions. He moved to the fifth note on the flute, which stirred the fifth center in my body, at the throat. In that spot there are two emotions: sorrow and gratitude. Both emotions bring tears, one bitter, the other sweet. When Krishna lowered his breath, I felt like weeping. When he sang higher I also felt choked, but with thanks. Yet I did not know what I was thankful for. Not the outcome of the contest, surely. I knew then that Yaksha would certainly lose, and that the result could be nothing other than our extinction.

  Even as the recognition of our impending doom crossed my mind, Krishna began to play the fourth note. This affected my heart; it affected the hearts of all gathered. In the heart are three emotions—I felt them then: love, fear, and hatred. I could see that an individual could only have one of the three at a time. When you were in love you knew no fear or hatred. When you were fearful, there was no possibility of love or hate. And when there was hate, there was only hate.

  Krishna played the fourth note softly initially, so that a feeling of warmth swept both sides. This he did for a long time, and it seemed as if vampires and mortals alike stared across the clearing at one another and wondered why they were enemies. Such was the power of that one note, perfectly pitched.

  Yet Krish
na now pushed his play toward its climax. He lowered his breath, and the love in the gathering turned to hate. A restlessness went through the crowd, and individuals on both sides shifted this way and that as if preparing to attack. Then Krishna played the fourth note in a different way, and the hate changed to fear. And finally this emotion pierced Yaksha, who had so far remained unmoved by Krishna’s flute. I saw him tremble—the worst thing he could do before a swarm of snakes. Because a serpent only strikes where there is fear.

  The group of snakes began to crawl toward Yaksha.

  He could have surrendered then, but he was a brave creature even if he was ruthless. He continued to play, now a frantic tune to drive away the snakes. At first it did slow them down, but Krishna did not tire. He continued on the fourth note, his breath quivering up and down through the hole, and at last a large snake slithered up to Yaksha. It bit him on the shin and held on fast with its teeth. Yaksha could not afford to set down his flute to throw it off. Then another snake came forward, and still another, until soon Yaksha was being bitten on every part of his body. He was the king of vampires, the son of a yakshini, yet even his system could absorb only so much venom. At last the flute fell from his hands and he swayed where he sat. I believe he tried to call out; I think he might have said my name. Then he toppled forward and the snakes began to eat him. I could not bear to watch.

  But Krishna stood then and set his flute aside. He clapped his hands, and the snakes hurried off Yaksha’s body. He climbed out of the pit and motioned to Arjuna. His best friend entered the deep hole and carried out Yaksha’s body and dumped it on the ground not far from me. He was breathing, I could see that, but barely, soaked head to foot with black venom; it oozed out of the many wounds on his body.

  I let Radha go. She hugged me before leaving. But she did not run to Krishna, but to the other women. Behind me I could hear the main body of the vampires shifting toward the woods, as if they planned to flee. Yet they waited still; they felt compelled to, I think, to see what Krishna would do next. Krishna ignored them. He gestured to me and came and knelt beside Yaksha. My feeling then was so peculiar. As I knelt beside Krishna, this being that would in all probability wipe me from the face of the earth, I felt as if I was under the umbrella of his protection. I watched as he put one of his beautiful hands on Yaksha’s head.

  “Will he live?” I asked.

  Krishna surprised me with his question. “Do you want him to?”

  My eyes strayed over the ruin of my old enemy and friend. “I want what you want,” I whispered.

  Krishna smiled, so serene. “The age is to change when I leave this world. Kali Yuga will begin. It will be a time of strife and short years for humanity. Your kind is for the most part tamasic—negative. Kali Yuga will be challenge enough for people without you on earth. Do you agree?”

  “Yes. We cause only suffering.”

  “Then why do you go on, Sita?”

  At his saying my name I felt so touched. “I just want to live, Lord.”

  He nodded. “I will let you live if you obey my command. If you never make another of your kind, you will have my grace, my protection.”

  I lowered my head. “Thank you, my Lord.”

  He gestured toward the other vampires. “Go stand with them. I must talk to your leader. His days are not over. They will not be over for a long time.” I moved to leave, but Krishna stopped me. “Sita?”

  I turned to look into his face one last time. It was as if I could see the whole universe in his eyes. Maybe he was God, maybe he was simply enlightened. I didn’t care right then, in that blessed moment, I just loved him. Later, though, the love was to turn to hate, to fear. They seemed so opposite, the feelings, yet they were all one note on his flute. Truly he had stolen my heart.

  “Yes, Lord?” I said.

  He bid me lean close to his lips. “Where there is love, there is my grace,” he whispered. “Remember that.”

  “I will try, my Lord.”

  I went and stood with the others. Krishna revived Yaksha and spoke softly in his ear. When Krishna was done, Yaksha nodded. Krishna bade him climb to his feet, and we saw that Yaksha’s wounds were gone. Yaksha walked toward us.

  “Krishna says we can go,” he said.

  “What did he tell you?” I asked.

  “I cannot say. What did he tell you?”

  “I cannot say.”

  Yet it was not long before I learned part of what Krishna had told Yaksha. Yaksha secretly began to execute each of the vampires. His acts did not stay secret long. I fled, we all did. But he hunted down the others, over the long years, even after Krishna was gone and Kali Yuga reigned. Yaksha chased them to the ends of the earth over the many centuries until there were none left that I knew of, except me. Yet he never came for me, and in the Middle Ages, as the Black Plague swept Europe, I heard that he was accused of being a witch, and also hunted down, by an entire army, and burned to ash in an old castle. I cried when the news came to me because even though he had stolen what I loved, he had in a sense created what I was. He was my lord as Krishna was my lord. I served both masters, light and darkness, both of which I had seen in Krishna’s eyes. Even the devil does God’s will.

  I never made another vampire, but I never stopped killing.

  TEN

  Ray stirs as the sun descends toward the western horizon. I sit by my computer on the small table at the end of my living room sofa, with the e-mail addresses Riley and Slim have provided for me. But I do not send Yaksha a message. It is not necessary. He is coming, I can feel him coming.

  “Ray,” I say. “It’s time to get up and enjoy the night.”

  Ray sits up and yawns. He wipes the sleep from his eyes like a little boy. He checks the time and is amazed. “I slept away the entire day?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I say. “And now you have to go. I have decided. It is not safe for you here. Go to Pat. She loves you.”

  He throws aside the blankets and pulls on his pants. He comes and sits beside me and touches my arm. “I am not going to leave you.”

  “You cannot protect me. You can only get yourself killed.”

  “If I get killed, then I get killed. At least I will have tried.”

  “Brave words, foolish words. I can make you leave. I can tell you things about myself that will make you run out of here cursing my name.”

  He smiles. “I do not believe that.”

  I harden my tone, though it breaks my heart to treat him cruelly. But I have decided that my reasons for bringing him to my home are selfish. I must have him go, whatever it costs.

  “Then listen to me,” I say. “I lied to you last night even when I supposedly opened my heart to you. The first thing you must know is that your father is dead and that it was I, not Yaksha, who killed him.”

  Ray sits back, stunned. “You’re not serious.”

  “I can show you where his body is buried.”

  “But you couldn’t have killed him. Why? How?”

  “I will answer your questions. I killed him because he called me into his office and tried to blackmail me with information he had dug up on me. He threatened to make it public. I killed him by crushing the bones of his chest.”

  “You couldn’t do that.”

  “But you know that I can. You know what I am.” I reach over and pick up a small miniature of the Pyramid of Giza that stands on my living room table. “This piece was made for me out of solid marble by an artist in Egypt two hundred years ago. It is very heavy. You can feel it if you don’t believe me.”

  Ray’s eyes are dark. “I believe you.”

  “You should.” I hold the piece in my right hand. I squeeze tight and it shatters to dust. Ray jumps back. “You should believe everything I tell you.”

  He takes a moment to collect himself. “You are a vampire.”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew there was something about you.”

  “Yes.”

  There is pain in his voice. “But you couldn’t have killed my father
.”

  “But I did. I killed him without mercy. I have killed thousands over the last five thousand years. I am a monster.”

  His eyes are moist. “But you would not do anything to hurt me. You want me to leave now because you do not want me to get hurt. You love me, I love you. Tell me you didn’t kill him.”

  I take his hands in mine. “Ray, this is a beautiful world and it is a horrible world. Most people never see the horror that there is. For most that is fine. But you must look at it now. You must look deep into my eyes and see that I am not human, that I do inhuman things. Yes, I killed your father. He died in my arms. He will not be coming home. And if you do not leave here, you will not return home, either. Then your father’s dying wish will have been in vain.”

  Ray weeps. “He made a wish?”

  “Not with words, but, yes. I picked up your picture and he cried. By then he knew what I was, though it was too late for him. He did not want me to touch you.” I caress Ray’s arms. “But it is not too late for you. Please go.”

  “But if you are so horrible why did you touch me, love me?”

  “You remind me of someone.”

  “Who?”

  “My husband, Rama. The night I was made a vampire, I was forced to leave him. I never saw him again.”

  “Five thousand years ago?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you really that old?”

  “Yes. I knew Krishna.”

  “Hare Krishna?”

  The moment is so serious, but I have to laugh. “He was not the way you think from what you see these days. Krishna was—there are no words for him. He was everything. It is he who has protected me all these years.”