Thirst No. 5: The Sacred Veil

by Christopher Pike

  Yaksha shakes his head, annoyed. “Not now, Sita.”

  I hear steps overhead, count three people. “Has Karna come aboard?”

  “Yes. He has taken control of the vimana. We’re high above the battlefield. They’re preparing to drop a weapon of some kind.”

  “We have to stop them. The way Duryodhana described it—the weapon can destroy all the Pandavas and their army at once.”

  “We can do nothing as long as that man can create that sound.”

  Above us, through the opening in the ceiling that leads to the control room, I see glimpses of blue sky and green forest. We must be miles above the ground. I can see the two armies moving into position to fight. This will be the fourth and probably the last day of battle. I struggle with the chains to no avail.

  “Can you break us free?” I ask.

  “Yes. But I told you, the man with the box . . .”

  “He can’t deal with the two of us at once. Break us free and rush the man with the box and Duryodhana. Spare Karna, he’s a good man. While you’re busy with them, I’ll destroy the weapons.”

  “It was the weapons that almost killed you.”

  “Better I die than the Pandavas and Krishna. Come, we have to hurry.”

  Yaksha has to focus all his strength to break our chains. He’s close to exhaustion by the time we’re free. But there’s no time to recover. He runs up the stairs while I head back down.

  A light flashes green beside the pit where I stored the weapons. But it turns red as I approach. I hear the weapons shift beneath the floor and know they are seconds away from being released. I don’t know what to do. I fear I’m too late to save Krishna.

  I lash out at the glass pipes with my hands and feet. Boiling mercury pours over the floor. Overhead, the awful screech sound from the metal box begins and then suddenly cuts off. Before the mercury can touch me, I leap onto the stairs and rush back to the second level. I slam the portal shut behind me.

  A blinding ball of fire explodes over the battlefield. It swells in size until it appears to cover both armies. But as the light begins to dim I see the weapon has burned more Kauravas than Pandavas.

  I hear a loud popping sound and an invisible fist smashes me to the floor. Suddenly I weigh a hundred times my weight. Above me the blue sky turns black.

  Once more, for the third time, I lose consciousness.

  When I awaken I’m sitting near Yaksha on the upper level. Countless stars drift by. In the distance I see an extremely bright star. Yaksha tells me it is the sun.

  “It can’t be the sun. It’s too small,” I say.

  “Its size has not changed. It is farther away.”

  “How did we get here? Who is flying the ship?”

  “No one. Karna is dead. Duryodhana is dead. So is the man with the box. I put their bodies below. They died when the ship flew above the sky.”

  “Why?” I ask, sad to hear Karna is gone and with him his dream of visiting the stars.

  “You must have felt the pressure. It was too much for the others. Every bone in their bodies snapped. They died instantly.”

  I stare out at the black sky and the bright stars.

  “How are we to get home?” I ask.

  “I have no idea,” Yaksha says.

  • • •

  “That’s it?” Himmler yells at me as Harrah sobs in the corner. They put out the flames when I began to talk but they have done nothing to soothe her burns. Himmler continues to rant, “All you recall is you and your lover floating away to the stars?”

  “I never said we reached the stars,” I say. “I told you what happened. What else can I do? You should be satisfied.”

  Himmler slaps me with the back of his hand. “Don’t tell me what is satisfactory! How did you get back to earth?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Where did you land the vimana?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How did the rotating mercury create the force that lifted the ship?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Were the glass pipes surrounded with magnets?”

  “I don’t remember any magnets.”

  “How hot was the mercury?”

  “Boiling.”

  “Boiling!” Himmler cries at me, hysterical. “Do you want to see what that word means? Tell me what I want to know or I put your friend’s hands back in the flames.”

  “I hate you!” I swear, putting so much hate in my voice I’m surprised the walls don’t crack. Yet Himmler drinks up my bitterness as if it were a caress. He enjoys it! He brings his face close to mine. His eyes are nothing but swollen pupils. They are holes; there is no bottom to his madness.

  “At last you understand,” he says softly.

  I spit in his face, the saliva hitting his lips. He wipes away most of it with his tongue. “Burn the Jew,” he orders Major Klein.

  “No!” I yell. Arching my back, I strain with every fiber of my being to reach the top of the pole. The handcuffs refuse to break but this time the metal stretches slightly. Just enough to let me touch the key.

  I knock it into my palm and clasp it tightly.

  Himmler takes a step back, his expression puzzled.

  I move too fast for a human to follow. Inserting the key in the lock, I twist it clockwise and the lock snaps open. Kneeling, I slip it into the ankle cuffs and twist the key again. I hear a second snap and step away from the pole.

  Himmler turns for the door. I grab his arm and pull him back. But before I can reach up and snap his neck, the soul-piercing noise of the box fills the room. Major Klein holds it at eye level and twists the black knob all the way around. A wave of agony strikes from every angle. Knowing I’m close to blacking out, I drop to my knees. But I realize if I allow myself to lose consciousness, the nightmare will never end, for me or my friends.

  Himmler runs out the room. The scientists chase after him. I crawl toward Major Klein, and he makes my task easier by taking a step toward me. He wants to shove the box down my throat. I see his wolfish grin.

  I refuse to scream. Reaching up, through a shower of agony, I grab his arm and snap the bone in two. He drops the box, and with my free hand I slap it out the door, where it strikes a wall and falls silent. Standing, I grab ahold of his other arm and snap that bone. I smile as he begs for mercy.

  “Like you know what the word means,” I say just before I break his neck. How satisfying it is to kill him.

  But how foolish it is to take my eyes off Frau Cia.

  Besides myself and Harrah, she’s the only one left in the room. The Puppet Lady, I have called her in my thoughts. Yet it’s clear I’ve underestimated the woman. For she is the only one who stays behind to fight me. At first I think her a fool, a brave woman but an idiot nevertheless. Then I realize she’s holding the bottle of gasoline, the one from the table, and the box of matches. It’s no reason to panic. I’m a vampire, I think, I can easily disarm her. . . .

  In a blinding move she throws the entire bottle of gasoline over me, taking me totally off guard, soaking me from head to toe. Before I can respond she lights a match. Such a small flame, it shouldn’t threaten me. Even if she tries to throw it at me, I can easily knock it away. . . .

  Holding the match out as if it were a steel blade, Cia dives straight toward me. I’m not only soaked in gasoline, I’m surrounded by a cloud of fumes. It’s the fumes that ignite first—they require only a spark. She is three feet away and still coming when my combustible aura meets her flame and I’m transformed into a human torch.

  I’ve been burned before, of course; even in this very room. But to be engulfed in flames is not the same thing. No, to become one with the fire is like embracing an eternity of punishment—all condensed in a few seconds of infinite horror.

  I dance around the room like a wounded animal. I try to scream but the flames burn away my voice. Laughing, Frau Cia runs from the room—I see her leave through a blistering red haze—and slams the door shut. I don’t care. All I know is pain.

/>   I feel I’ve become one with the fire. I feel damned.

  Harrah throws a cloth over me and somehow wrestles me to the floor. I hear her whispering, I hear her prayers. I even hear steam rising from my blackened skin. The fire is out. How can the fire be out? It doesn’t matter, I’m in too much pain for it to matter.

  For a long time, forever it seems, I pray to die.

  But then slowly, I return to life, to the world.

  I open my eyes and see Harrah smiling at me.

  “You’re going to be all right,” she says.

  “How?” I ask, my voice shaky.

  “You have on the veil. It healed me, now it’s healing you.”

  “No. You mustn’t let it get dirty.”

  Harrah chuckles. “You’re not dirty, child.”

  Slowly, the pain begins to recede and I’m able to stand. I hug the veil tightly, afraid to let it go, afraid I’ll catch fire again. I have been to hell and back, and I pray to Christ I never return. At this moment, I believe in him. I believe he is every bit as great as Krishna.

  When I can think, I step to the door. It’s locked.

  “Shit,” I whisper. “We’re trapped.”

  “Are we?”

  I point to the special alloy. “This metal, I can’t break it.”

  “Try.”

  “What? I have done nothing but try.”

  “Try now,” Harrah says.

  She’s telling me that because I wear the veil, nothing can stop me.

  I leap in the air and lash at the door with both feet.

  It convulses. It breaks. The door falls to the ground.

  “Where is Ralph?” I ask.

  “In the factory, making uniforms. I’ll lead you to him.”

  We find Ralph and I take him and his wife and rush the SS soldiers who guard the camp’s north corner. I kill a dozen in seconds before I rip apart the wire fence and lead my friends outside. I hide them in a cluster of bushes.

  “Stay here. I have to find Anton,” I say, giving Harrah the veil. She pushes it back.

  “Keep it,” she says.

  “I’m healed now, I’ll be all right.”

  I return to the camp. I feel strong. I’m surprised how good I feel. The fire . . . well, I don’t want to think about the fire. But I feel confident I can rescue Anton and get the four of us out of Poland alive.

  I remember Himmler’s words.

  “Anton is three stories up. Locked in a room with twenty other dying men. . . .”

  I’m grateful the fool gave me such precise directions. All I have to do is return to the building where I was being held and find the floor he spoke of and break down the right door. No problem.

  Yet as I enter the building I fled moments before, I see Frau Cia. She stands outside the door of a cell, and even from this distance I can hear my lover’s moans mingling with the cries of the other prisoners. He’s in pain, and every now and then he whispers my name, praying that I’ll save him a second time.

  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.”

  SEVENTEEN

  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 int
errupts 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.”