Thirst No. 1 Page 35

  “Ti amo anch’io, Sita,” he said. “I love you, Sita,” I had never heard him say a whole sentence before. I was so overjoyed that I didn’t stop to think I had never told him my real name. In all of Italy, only Arturo and Ralphe knew it. We were both happy for the child, that his brain seemed to be functioning normally. It was one of the few times in my life I cried, tears of water, not tears of blood.

  The red tears would come later.

  This first successful experiment gave Arturo tremendous confidence and weakened his caution. He had seen a mental change; he wanted to see a physical one. He went looking for a leper, and brought back a woman in her sixties whose toes and fingers had been eaten away by the dread disease. Over the centuries I had found it particularly painful to look upon lepers. In the second century, in Rome, I had a beautiful lover who developed leprosy. Toward the latter stages of his disease, he begged me to kill him, and I did, crushing his skull, with my eyes tightly clenched. Of course, now there is AIDS. Mother Nature gives each age its own special horror. She is like Lord Krishna, full of wicked surprises.

  The woman was almost too far gone to notice what we were doing to her. But Arturo was able to get her breathing deeply, and soon the magic was happening again. She began to hyperventilate, twitching worse than the boy had. Yet her eyes and face remained calm. I was not sure what she felt; it was not as if she suddenly sprouted toes and fingers. When she was through, Arturo led her upstairs and had her lie down on a bed. But from the start she did seem stronger, more alert.

  A few days later she began to grow toes and fingers.

  Two weeks later there was no sign of her leprosy.

  Arturo was ecstatic, but I was worried. We told the woman not to tell anyone what we had done for her. Of course she told everyone. The rumors started to fly. Wisely, Arturo passed her cure off to the grace of God. Yet, during these days of the Inquisition, it was more dangerous to be a saint than a sinner. A sinner, as long as he or she was not a heretic, could repent and escape with a flogging. A saint might be a witch. Better to burn a possible saint, the Church thought, than let a genuine witch escape. They had a weird sense of justice.

  Arturo was not a complete fool, however. He did not heal more lepers, even though dozens came to his door seeking relief. Yet he continued to experiment on a few deaf and dumb people, a few who were actually retarded. Oh, but it was hard to turn away the lepers. The lone woman had given them such hope. Modern-day pundits often talk of the virtue of hope. To me, hope brings grief. The most content people are those who expect nothing, who have ceased to dream.

  I had dreamed what it would be like to be Arturo’s lover, and now that he was mine, he was unhappy. Oh, he loved to sleep with me, feel me close beside him. But he believed he had sinned and he couldn’t stop. The timing of our affair was unfortunate. He was breaking his vow of celibacy just when he was on the verge of fulfilling his destiny. God would not know whether to curse or bless him. I told him not to worry about God. I had met the guy. He did what he wanted when he wanted, no matter how hard you tried. I told Arturo many stories of Krishna, and he listened, fascinated. Still, he would weep after we had sex. I told him to go to confession. But he refused—he would only confess to me. Only I could understand him, he said.

  But I didn’t understand. Not what he had planned.

  He began to have visions during this period. He’d had them before—they didn’t alarm me, at least not at first. It was a vision that had given him the mechanics of his transformative technique, long before we met. But now his visions were peculiar. He began to build models. Only seven hundred years later did I realize he was building models of DNA—human DNA, vampiric, and one other form. Yes, it is true, while we watched the people twitch on the floor under the influence of my bloody aura, Arturo saw more deeply than I did. He actually understood the specific molecule whose code defined the body. He saw the molecule in a vision, and he watched it change under the magnets, crystals, copper, and blood. He saw the double helix of normal DNA. He saw the twelve straight strands of my DNA. And he saw how the two could be conjoined.

  “We need twelve helix strands,” he confided in me. “Then we will have our perfect being.”

  “But the more people you experiment on, the more attention you will draw to yourself,” I protested. “Your Church will not understand. They will kill you.”

  He nodded grimly. “I understand. And I cannot keep working on abnormal people. To make a leap toward the perfect being, I must work with a normal person.”

  I sensed what was in his mind. “You cannot experiment on yourself.”

  He turned away. “What if we try Ralphe?”

  “No,” I pleaded. “We love him the way he is. Let’s not change him.”

  He continued to stare at the wall, his back to me. “You changed him, Sita.”

  “That was different. I knew what I was doing. I had experience. I healed his wounds. I altered his body, not his soul.”

  He turned to me. “Don’t you see it’s because I love Ralphe as much as you do that I want to give him this chance? If we can change him from the inside out, transform his blood, he will be like a child of Christ.”

  “Christ never knew of vampires,” I warned. “You should not mix the two in your mind. It’s blasphemy—even to me.”

  Arturo was passionate. “How do you know he didn’t? You never met him.”

  I got angry. “Now you speak like a fool. If you want to experiment on anyone, use me. You promised me you would when we started this.”

  He stiffened. “I can’t change you. Not now.”

  I understood what he was saying. Suddenly I felt the weight of shattered dreams. In my mind I had been playing with a daughter who had never been born, and who probably never would be.

  “You need my blood first,” I replied. “The pure vampire blood.” It was true he had to replenish the blood in the crystal vial, not before each experiment, but often. Old blood did not work—it was too dead. I continued, “But what if your experiment does work and you do create a perfect being? I cannot give enough blood to alter everyone on this planet.”

  He shrugged. “Perhaps those who are altered can become the new donors.”

  “That is a huge perhaps. Also, I know people. This will be an exclusive club. It doesn’t matter how good your intentions are now.” I turned away and chuckled bitterly. “Who will be given a chance at perfection? The nobility? The clergy? The most corrupt will feel they are the most deserving. It is the oldest lesson of history. It never changes.”

  Arturo hugged me. “That will not happen, Sita. God has blessed this work. Only good can come from it.”

  “No one knows what God has blessed,” I whispered. “And what he has cursed.”

  A few days went by during which Arturo and I hardly spoke. He would stay up late making models of molecules no one had seen, afraid to talk to me, to touch me. I never realized until then how he saw me as both a gift and a test from God. Of course I had given him my immortal perception on the matter, but he had seen me that way from the start. I brought him magic blood and delicious sensuality. He was supposed to take one and not the other, he thought. He lost his intuitive sense that kept him from mistakes, I believe, because he no longer thought he was worthy of having it. He stopped praying to God and started muttering to himself about the blood of Jesus Christ. He was more obsessed with blood than I was, and I had it for dinner every few days.

  One evening I could find Ralphe nowhere. Arturo said he had no idea where he was. Arturo wasn’t lying, but he wasn’t telling the whole truth either. I didn’t press him. I think I didn’t want to know the truth. Yet had I insisted he tell me, I might have stopped the horror, before it got out of hand.

  The screams started in the middle of night.

  I was out for a walk at the time. It was my custom to go out late, disguised, find a homeless person, drink a pint of blood, whisper in his or her ear, and put the person back to sleep. Except for evil priests, I didn’t often kill in those day
s. The cries that came to me that night chilled me through. I ran toward the sounds as fast as I could.

  I found five bodies, horribly mangled, their limbs torn off. Obviously, only a being of supernatural strength could have committed these acts. One person, a woman with an arm lying beside her, was the last one still alive. I cradled her head in my lap.

  “What happened?” I asked. “Who did this to you?”

  “The demon,” she whispered.

  “What did this demon look like?” I demanded.

  She gagged. “A hungry angel. The blood—” Her eyes strayed to her severed arm and she wept. “My blood.”

  I shook her. “Tell me what this demon looked like?”

  Her eyes rolled up into her head. “A child,” she whispered with her last breath and died in my arms.

  Sick at heart, I knew who the child was.

  Far away, on the far side of the town, I heard more screams.

  I flew toward them but once again I was too late. There were more shredded bodies, and this time there were witnesses. An angry mob with burning torches was gathering. They had seen the demon child.

  “It was heading for the woods!” they cried.

  “We have to stop it!” others cried.

  “Wait!” I yelled. “Look how many it has killed. We can’t go after it without help.”

  “It killed my brother!” one man cried, pulling out a knife. “I’m going to kill it myself.”

  The mob followed the man. I had no choice but to tag along. As we wound through the dark streets, we found still more bodies. A few had had their heads ripped off. What was the mob thinking? I asked myself. They would fare no better against the monster. Of course mobs and rational thought are not complementary. I have seen too many mobs in my day.

  When we reached the trees on the edge of town, I left the rabble to search for the monster myself. I could hear it, two miles ahead, laughing uproariously as it tore off the head of an animal. It was fast and strong, but I was a pure vampire, not a hybrid. It would be no match for me.

  I came across it as it ducked from tree to tree, preparing to attack the mob.

  “Ralphe,” I whispered as I moved up behind him.

  He whirled around, his face covered with blood, a wild light in his eyes. Or I should say, no light shone there. His eyes were snakelike. He was a serpent on the prowl, searching for the eggs of another reptile. Yet he recognized me—a faint flicker of affection crossed his face. If it was not for that, I would have killed him instantly. I had no hope he could be converted back to what he had been. I have intuition of my own. Some things I simply know. Usually the bitterest of things.

  “Sita,” he hissed. “Are you hungry? I am hungry.”

  I moved closer, not wanting to alert the mob, which was closing in. Ralphe had left a trail of blood. The stuff dripped off him; it was enough to make even me sick. My heart broke in my chest as he came within arm’s reach.

  “Ralphe,” I said softly, all the time knowing it was hopeless. “I have to take you back to Arturo. You need help.”

  Terror disfigured his bloody expression. Obviously the transformation had not been pleasant for him. “I will not go back there!” he shouted. “He made me hungry!” Ralphe paused to stare down at his sticky hands. A portion of his humanity did indeed remain. His voice faltered on a lump of sorrow in his throat. “He made me do this.”

  “Oh, Ralphe.” I took him in my arms. “I’m so sorry. This should never have happened.”

  “Sita,” he whispered, nuzzling his face into my body. I could not kill him, I told myself. Not for the whole world. But just as I swore the vow inside, I leapt back in pain, barely stifling a cry. He had bitten me! His sorrow had vanished in a lick of his lips. I watched in horror as he chewed down a portion of my right arm, an insane grin on his face. “I like you, Sita,” he said. “You taste good!”

  “Would you like more?” I asked, offering him my other arm, tears filling my eyes. “You can have all you want. Come closer, Ralphe. I like you, too.”

  “Sita,” he said lustfully as he grabbed my arm and started to take another bite. It was then I spun him around in my arms and gripped his skull from behind. With all the force I could muster and before my tears overwhelmed me, I yanked his head back and to the side. Every bone in his neck broke. His small body went limp in my arms—he had not felt any pain, I told myself.

  “My Ralphe,” I whispered, running my hands through his long fine hair.

  I should have fled with his body then, buried it in the hills. But the execution was too much, even for a monster like me. The life went out of me and I wanted to collapse. When the mob found me, I was cradling Ralphe’s body in my arms, weeping like a common mortal. My ancient daughter, my young son—God had stolen them both from me.

  The mob surrounded me.

  They wanted to know how I had stopped the demon child.

  A few in the mob knew me.

  “You take care of this boy!” they cried. “We saw you and the priest with him!”

  I could have killed them right then, all fifty of them. But the night had seen too much death. I let them drag me back to the town, their torches burning in my bleary eyes. They threw me in a dungeon near the center of town, where the executions took place, taunting me that they were going to get to the bottom of how this abomination was created. Before the sun rose, I knew they would be pounding on Arturo’s door, digging into his secret underground chamber, collecting the necessary evidence to show the feared inquisitors. There would be a trial and there would be a judge. The only problem was, there could be only one sentence.

  Yet I was Sita, a vampire of incomparable power. Even the hard hand of the Church could not close around my throat unless I allowed it. But what about Arturo? I loved him but could not trust him. If he lived, he would continue his experiments. It was inevitable because he believed it was his destiny. He had enough of my blood left to make another Ralphe, or worse.

  A few hours later they threw him in a cell across from me. I begged him to talk to me but he refused. Huddled up in a corner, staring at the wall with eyes as vacant as dusty mirrors, he gave no indication of what was going through his mind. His God did not come to save him. That was left for me to do.

  I ended up testifying against him.

  The inquisitor told me it was the only way to save my life. Even chained in the middle of the high court with soldiers surrounding me, I could have broken free and destroyed them all. How tempting it was for me to reach out and rip open the throat of the evil-faced priest, who conducted his investigation like a hungry dog on a battlefield searching for fresh meat. Yet I could not kill Arturo with my own hands. It would have been impossible. But I could not have him live and continue his search for the sacred blood of Jesus Christ. Jesus had died twelve hundred years ago, and the search would never end. It was a paradox—the only solution was agonizing. I could not stop Arturo so I had to let others stop him.

  “Yes,” I swore on the Holy Bible. “He created the abomination. I saw him do it with my own eyes. He changed that boy. Then he tried to seduce me with the black arts. He is a witch, Father, that fact is indisputable. God strike me down if I lie!”

  The old friar at the church also testified against Arturo, although the inquisitor had to first stretch him on the strappado to get the words out of his mouth. It broke the friar’s heart to condemn Arturo. He was not alone in his guilt.

  Arturo never confessed, no matter how much they tortured him. He was too proud, his cause too noble, in his mind. After the trial, we never spoke. Indeed, I never saw him again. I didn’t attend his execution. But I heard they burned him at the stake.

  Like any witch.

  NINE

  I sit at a poker table trying to bluff a high roller from Texas into folding. The game has been going on awhile. There is one hundred thousand dollars in cash and chips on the table. His hand is better than mine. Yaksha’s mind-reading gift has grown more powerful in me—I can now see the man’s cards as if viewing th
em through his eyes. He has three aces, two jacks—a full house. I have three sixes—Satan’s favorite number. He has the winning hand.

  The Texan wears leather cowboy boots, a five-gallon hat. The smoke from his fat cigar does not irritate my eyes. He blows a smelly cloud my way as if to intimidate me. I smile and match his last bet, then raise him another fifty thousand. We are enjoying a private game, in a luxurious corner of the casino, where only fat cats hang out. Three other men sit with us at the table, but they have since folded. They follow the action closely—they all know each other. The Texan will not like to be humiliated in front of them.

  “You must have a royal flush, honey child,” he says. “Betting the way you do.” He leans across the table. “Or else you got a sugar daddy paying your bills.”

  “Honey and sugar,” I muse aloud. “Both are sweet—like me.” I add, sharpening my tone, “But I pay my own bills.”

  He laughs and slaps his leg. “Are you trying to bluff me?”

  “Maybe. Match my bet and find out.”

  He hesitates a moment, glancing at the pot. “The action is getting kind of heavy. What do you do, child, to have so much dough? Your daddy must have given it to you.”

  He is trying to ascertain how important the money is to me. If it means a lot, in my mind, then I will be betting heavily only if I have an unbeatable hand. Leaning across the table, I stare him in the eye, not strong enough to fry his synapses but hard enough to shake him. I don’t like being called a child. I am five thousand years old after all.

  “I earned every penny of it,” I tell him. “The hard way. Where did you get your money, old man?”

  He sits back quickly, ruffled by my tone, my laser vision. “I earned it by honest labor,” he says, lying.

  I sit back as well. “Then lose it honestly. Match my bet or fold. I don’t care which. Just quit stalling.”

  He flushes. “I’m not stalling.”

  I shrug, cool as ice. “Whatever you want to call it, old man.”