The Last Vampire

Ray stirs as the sun descends toward the western horizon. I sit by the fax machine on the small table at the end of my living room sofa, with the numbers 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."

"You believe that?"

I hesitate, but it is true. Why can't I accept the truth? "Yes."

"Why?"

"Because he told me he would if I listened to him. And because it has been so. Many times, even with my great power, I should have perished, But I never did: God blessed me." I add, "And he cursed me,"

"How did he curse you?"

Now there are tears in my eyes. "By putting me in this situation again. I cannot lose you again, my love, but I cannot keep you with me, either. Go now before Yaksha arrives. Forgive me for what I did to your father. He was not a bad man. He only wanted the money so that he could give it to you. I know he loved you very much,"

"But--"

"Wait!" I interrupt. Suddenly I hear something, the note of a flute, flowing with the noise of the waves, a single note, calling me to it, telling me that it is already too late. "He is here," I whisper,

"What? Where?"

I stand and walk to the wide windows that overlook the sea. Ray stands beside me. Down by the ocean, where the waves crash against the rocks, stands a solitary figure dressed in black. His back is to us, but I see the flute in his hand. His song is sad, as always. I don't know if he plays for me or himself, but maybe it is for both of us.

"Is that him?" Rays asks;

"Yes."

"He's alone. We should be able to take him. Do you have a gun?"

"I have one under my pillow over there. But a gun will not stop him. Not unless he was riddled with bullets."

"Why are you giving up without a fight?"

"I am not giving up. I am going to talk to him."

"I'm coming with you."

I turn to Ray and rub the hair on his head. He feels so delicate to me. "No. You cannot come. He is less human than I am. He will not be interested in what a human has to say." I put my finger to his lips as he starts to protest. "Do not argue with me. I do not argue."

"I am not going to leave," he says.

I sigh. "It may be too late for that already. Stay then. Watch. Pray."

"To Krishna?"

"God is God. His name doesn't matter. But I think only he can help us now."

A few minutes later I stand ten feet behind Yaksha. The wind is strong, bitter. It seems to blow straight out of the cold sun which hangs like a bloated drop of blood over the hazy western horizon. The spray from the waves clings to Yaksha's long black hair like so many drops of dew. For a moment I imagine him a statue that has stood outside my home for centuries. Always, he has been in my life, even when he was not there. He has stopped playing his flute.

"Hello," I say to this person I haven't spoken to since the dawn of history.

"Did you enjoy my song?" he asks, his back still to me.

"It was sad."

"It is a sad day."

"The day is ending," I say.

He nods as he turns. "I want it to end, Sita."

The years have not changed his appearance. Why does that surprise me when they haven't changed mine? I don't know. Yet I scrutinize him more closely. A man has to learn something in so many years, I think. He cannot be the beast that he was. He smiles at my thought;

"The form changes, the essence remains the same," he says. "That is something Krishna told me about nature. But for us the form does not change."

"It is because we are unnatural."

"Yes. Nature abhors the invader. We are not welcome in this world."

"But you look well."

"I am not. I am tired. I wish to die."

"I don't," I say.

"I know."

"You tested me with Slim and his people. To see how hard I would fight."

"Yes."

"But I passed the test. I don't want to die. Leave here. Go do what you must. I want nothing to do with it."

Yaksha shakes his head sadly, and that is one change in him--his sorrow. It softens him somehow, making his eyes less cold. Yet the sorrow scares me more than his wicked glee used to. Yaksha was always so full of life for a being that would later be labeled the undead.

"I would let you go if I could," he says. "But I cannot."

"Because of the vow you took with Krishna?"

"Yes."

"What were his words?"

"He told me that I would have his grace if I destroyed the evil I had created."

"I suspected as much. Why didn't you destroy me?"

"There was time, at least in my mind. He did not put a time limit on me."

"You destroyed the others centuries ago."

He watches me. "You are very beautiful."

"Thank you."

"It warmed my heart to know your beauty still existed somewhere in the world." He pauses. "Why do you ask these questions? You know I didn't kill you because I love you."

"Do you still love me?"

"Of course."

"Then let me go."

"I cannot. I am sorry, Sita, truly."

"Is it so important to you that you die in his grace?"

Yaksha is grave. "It is why I came into this world. The Aghoran priest did not call me, I came of my own will. I knew Krishna was here. I came to get away from where I was. I came so that when I died I would be in that grace."

"But you tried to destroy Krishna?"

Yaksha shrugs as if that is not important. "The foolishness of youth."

"Was he God? Are you sure? Can we be sure?"

Yaksha shakes his head. "Even that does not matter. What is God? It is a word. Whatever Krishna was we both know he was not someone we can disobey. It is that simple."

I gesture to the waves. "Then the line has been drawn. The sea meets the shore. The infinite tells the finite what is supposed to be. I accept that. But you are faced with a problem. You do not know what Krishna said to me."

"I do. I have watched you long. The truth is obvious. He told you not to make another of your kind, and he would protect you."

"Yes. It is a paradox. If you try to destroy me, you will go against his word. If you do not try, then you are damned."

Yaksha is not moved by my words. He is a step ahead of me; he always was. He points to the house with his flute. Ray continues to stand beside the window, watching us.

"I have watched you particularly close the last three days," he says. "You love this boy. You would not want to see him die."

My fear is a great and terrible thing in this moment. But I speak harshly. "If you use that as a threat to force me to destroy myself, then you will still lose Krishna's grace. It will be as if you struck me down with your own hands."

Yaksha does not respond with anger. Indeed, he does seem weary. "You misunderstand me. I will do nothing to you while you are protected by his grace. I will force you to do nothing." He gestures to the setting sun, "It takes a night to make a vampire. I am sure you remember. When the sun rises again, I will come back for you, for both of you. By then you should be done. Then you will be mine."

There is scorn in my voice. "You are a fool, Yaksha. The temptation to make another of our kind has come to me many times in the long years, and always I have resisted it. I will not forsake my protection. Face it, you are beaten. Die and return to the black hell from where you came."

Yaksha raises an eyebrow. "You know I am no fool, Sita. Listen."

He glances toward the house, at Ray, then raises the flute to his lips. He plays a single note, piercingly high. I shake with pain as the sound vibrates through my body. Behind us I hear glass break. No, not just glass. The window against which Ray is leaning. I turn in time to see him topple through the broken glass and plunge headfirst onto the concrete driveway sixty feet below. Yaksha grabs my arm as I move to run to him.

"I wish it did not have to be this way," he says.

I shake off his hand. "I have never loved you. You may yet have grace before you die, but you will never have that."

He closes his eyes briefly. "So be it," he says. I find Ray in a pool of blood and a pile of glass. His skull is crushed, his spine is broken. Incredibly, he is still conscious, although he does not have long to live. I roll him over on his back, and he speaks to me with blood pouring from his mouth. "I fell," he says.

My tears are as cold as the ocean drops on my cheeks. I put my hand over his heart. "This is the last thing I wanted for you." "Is he going to let you go?" "I don't know, Ray. I don't know." I lean over and hug him and hear the blood in his lungs as his breath struggles to scrape past it. Just as the breath of his father struggled before it failed. I remember I told the man that I could not heal, that I could only kill. But that was only a half truth, I realize, even as I grasp the full extent of Yaksha's plan to destroy me. Once he used my fear to make me a vampire. Now he uses my love to force me to make another vampire. He is right, he is no fool. I cannot bear to watch Ray die knowing the power in my blood can heal even his fatal injuries. "I wanted to save you," he whispers. He tries to raise a hand to touch me, but it falls back to the ground. I sit up and stare into his mortal eyes, trying to put love into them, where for so many years with so many other mortals I have only tried to put fear.

"I want to save you," I say. "Do you want me to save you?"

"Can you?"

"Yes. I can put my blood in your blood."

He tries to smile. "Become a vampire like you?"

I nod and smile through my tears. "Yes, you could become like me."

"Would I have to hurt people?"

"No. Not all vampires hurt people." I touch his ruined cheek. I haven't forgotten Yaksha's words about coming for both of us at dawn. "Some vampires love a great deal."

"I love ..." His eyes slowly close. He cannot finish.

I lean over and kiss his lips. I taste his blood.

I will have to do more than taste it to help him.

"You are love," I say as I open both our veins.