Craving (22 page)

Frowning, I was thrown back again, to my youth, to my father reading me bedtime stories from the books in his mind or reciting the Bible from memory, holding my hand and tucking me in, despite my protests.

“The serpent was hungry and tried to eat the fruit, but it was not to his liking. The next day, Himsuka took the fruit to the king and presented it. Immediately, the king cut the fruit and was about to eat it, when someone suggested that he let the fruit be tested by a servant. He did so, and the man immediately fell down dead.”

I let loose a soft laugh. “Damn snakes and their fruit.”

Arthur bobbed his head. “The king was enraged and hacked Himsuka to pieces. Then he told the kingdom the fruit was the fruit of death and threw it away, but even discarded, it grew into a tree. The king built a wall around it in fear, and no one went near it, until one day, an ailing, elderly couple ate the fruit, longing for death, and instead, awoke revived and youthful . . . and eternal.”

I looked at him. The pause grew long. “Is that it? What does
that
tell me?”

He took my hand in both of his and began to play with my fingers. “The fruit is an idea, a truth, and the snake represents the many things that can sometimes twist the truth. Poor Himsuka was condemned due to a misunderstanding of the truth he shared, and therein lay the tragedy. But the fruit flourished and even now is eaten by those who do not know what it will really do to them.”

I watched him splay my fingers and gently stroke the creases of my palm. “I’m confused.”

He planted his index finger into the center of my hand. “It is an
idea,
Lilith. It changes, evolves, constantly. It spreads and for some, does nothing, but for others, unravels what they are. For them, the fruit is poison.”

“An idea gave me superpowers?”

He chuckled and let go of my hand. “Ideas can give you dreams, change the world. Why is it so difficult to believe that they can alter your body? Tibetan monks can slow their heartbeat to extraordinary lows. Olympic divers can go up to fifteen minutes without air. Japanese Zen masters died standing up, having written the last line of their
jisei
poems immediately before their deaths. Why are visions any different? Humans have been having them for years, tapping into the collective mind, so why can’t that be concentrated in one mind changed by an idea?”

“But . . . but Eva didn’t do anything to me!”

His look prodded me, and the last conversation I had had with Eva came back to my mind. She had said a great deal that made almost no sense, could one of them have been
the
idea?

“Do you remember everything that happened when you spoke to her?” he asked quietly. “Every word she said?”

“Yes,” I whispered.

“And the days that followed?”

I blinked, determined to turn the earth of my thoughts and find the seed, pluck it out, and show it to him. If I could do that, then I could deny it had ever happened, but to my misery, I could not recall. There were snippets, brief moments, faded and blurred recollections of standing vaguely in my house, looking around in confusion, but until I had shown up in the police station, there was nothing concise.

I shook my head in disbelief, my eyes stinging. What was going on?

“You were changing,” he revealed. “It takes a little more than a month for those that change fastest.”

“My time is almost up,” I breathed. “And the First Sangha? What happened to them?” I reached up and touched my damaged wrist gently. “Why was Ursula capable of seeing lies?”

He stood up. “The idea is meant to help, but like a fairy tale, people often regret what they desired. Their cravings cause them suffering. To Ursula, the most important thing was truth; it was so important that she lost sight of the one pure truth: that all truth is relative and mutable.”

I looked up at him in consternation, “That’s a paradox.”

“Yes,” he replied with a nod. “And so the misunderstanding begins.”

“Then . . . my dream?”

“Prevention and the knowledge to facilitate it,” Arthur interrupted, and I thanked him for taking the pressure of saying the word from me. “If you had known what would happen to your parents, you would never have let them leave. If you had known about Howard’s wandering, you would never have chosen to involve yourself with him. If you had known about and understood Eva’s hardships . . .”

My heart plummeted. “I could have stopped her.”

I stared at his hands, gripping the rail easily.

“The fruit of knowledge.”

My eyes slid up his arm to his shoulder and face. “Why the blood?”

“It represents life, all the physical things they lack. Perhaps they crave closeness. I cannot say and as I said, it’s different for each one.”

“Closeness,” I whispered. Eva, all her young life, had wanted nothing but to be close to someone, to be listened to, to be loved completely, without resentment, without anger, without second thoughts. That was what she had craved and that was why she had fallen apart.

“She could be herself.”

I fought to get out the words, “I’m going to be one of them?”

Arthur leaned over me and kissed my forehead. It was sudden, but reminded me that I was not alone. “You are not finished yet. That is why I am fighting so hard to get you to put down the fruit.”

I laughed suddenly. “So that’s why! All this skepticism, the way you reacted to me going to the club! You were trying to . . . . to . . . train me?”

He leaned back with an unbelievably kindhearted look. “I’m sorry. I did not mean to compromise your integrity, but I could see immediately what was happening and, though I could not stop her, I wanted to at least help you.” Another kiss was placed on my sleeping third eye. “Forgive me, or I won’t be happy.”

“Well, desire is the cause of suffering, someone once told me.”

His Adam’s apple moved in a silent chuckle. “Indeed and you could rid me of some of mine by simply accepting my apology.”

I don’t know what possessed me. I reached up and tenderly pushed a strand of hair from his face. “I forgive you,” I murmured, “but only if you keep me from ending up like that bloodthirsty witch.”

His stare hardened and I sensed the determination in his words. “I promise, I will do my best for you.”

I leaned back against the pillow and closed my eyes, sleepy “I wonder what happened to
their
Himsuka.”

A phone rang, and, surprised to find it in his pocket, Arthur withdrew Unger’s old cell and opened it. As if from another era, he seemed delighted to find it worked.

“Yes, Detective.”

He blinked at me as Unger’s loud voice ricocheted around the room. After a few moments, he handed the phone to me.

“Hey, Matthew, nice to hear your shouts!” I said in a monotone.

“Lilith?”

“Still with the living,” I said, though my voice was catching every few words, “sort of.”

He sighed in relief and took a few moments to collect himself. “I’ve been shitting myself for the last four hours wondering, and would have been fine if
either of them
had answered their
god damned
phones!” he snarled, accenting each piece of rage with a quieter version of the scathing speech he had given the pleasantly smiling man in front of me.

“I’m fine, Detective, relatively speaking.”

“What’s that mean? Is your arm okay?”

I think the sheer enormity of it had pulverized my ability to stay rational. I laughed outright. “Yeah . . . it’s fine.”

Though I’m not sure I am.

I waited for him to hurl another question at me, but it seemed he was finished.

“Tell me she’s dead, Unger.” I gripped the phone desperately.

His voice dropped to the throaty whisper of gruff and unpolished sympathy. “She’s dead.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, of course! Moksha’s here though,” he divulged, “and raising bloody hell.”

“Right.” Because it couldn’t ever be simple. I looked at the scarificator. “Fucking vampires.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

“What?” Unger demanded.

“I’m . . . not even going to try to explain this one.”

*  *  *

I carefully stacked the red volumes inside the box from my seat in the happy face.

“You shouldn’t be lifting anything heavy with that hand,” Sam warned. He picked up the box and looked down at me, his sleeves rolled up to expose the blurred black lines of his military tattoo.

“I’m being very careful,” I reassured him.

“Did you take your antibiotics today?”

I raised my eyebrows. “Since when do you put two words together?” At his facial twitch, I waved away his offense. “I’ll take it when we’re done here.”

He left the apartment to take the box down to the car, passing Arthur on the way in. I avoided looking at him. I still had so many questions and though he made me feel comfortable, even happy, he also made my lack of knowledge apparent. In his company, whenever the footing was obviously unequal, I felt as if I had fallen behind the class and was fighting to catch up.

Tell the truth.

The truth was, I still felt bad about having doubted him and couldn’t bear to ask him anything when in that state of mind. I couldn’t make sense of my feelings, whether I was attracted to him because I saw him as stable or had tapped some part of my missing sexuality.

He unloaded what little there was in the kitchenette and carefully put it into boxes for Goodwill. Unger had decided it wasn’t safe for me to stay there, especially if Moksha wondered what had really happened to Ursula. So while I was allowed to leave the hospital and go to and from the coffee shop, I was never alone. Sam had become my constant companion, and for the ninja mission of rescuing Eva’s property, the entire Scooby Gang had been recruited.

I glanced back at Arthur and was surprised to find him gazing at me, leaning against the breakfast bar.

“What?” I laughed nervously, looking away.

“You’ve been very quiet.”

“I have a lot to think about.” I put a few more books into the empty box. Without any rational thoughts to rely upon, I somehow thought that if I put my back to him, he wouldn’t be able to see what I was going through, but Arthur was the most astute person I had ever met. I should have known better.

“This is true,” he murmured casually, “but are you not using that as an excuse to avoid dealing with the issues?”

“Truth getting in the way of truth?” I mumbled, closing the box. The shelves were almost empty, her closet was clean, and soon everything would be gone. I would be closing the door on Eva’s life on a down note, wondering why she had done this to me.

“I’m sure there are a thousand questions in your mind,” Arthur hinted.

“If you’re trying to get me to ask you, I’m not going to. I don’t want a teacher.”

He laughed quietly. “Have you considered that perhaps it is a debriefing necessary for you to join an elite squad of vampire-hunting spirit ninjas?”

I stopped what I was doing and turned to look at him. He seemed so pleased with himself that I couldn’t help but laugh too.

“Alright, alright.” I threw up my hands. “Go on then.”

He sighed. I knew he could sense it, the distance I was putting between us, and I suppose I had just been waiting for him to try and cross it. I took a dust cloth to the shelves and wiped away the last pieces of my sister.

“How long have you been tracking
them
?”

“Them? You mean the Arhat.”

“The Arhat?” I frowned, more Sanskrit.

“Those of the Sangha,” he murmured, pulling the plates down and stacking them in a crate.

“I thought that’s what they were called: the Sangha.”

“The Sangha is an organization, but the people in it are Arhat.”

“Oookay,” I gave in. “So how long?”

“Would you believe if I said most of my life?”

“Yes.” It would certainly explain his lack of an identity. After all, how could a person hunt monsters when the monsters hired researchers like my sister, unless they obscured their existence in some way? “Why?”

He shrugged, but didn’t look away from his task. “It’s a duty. I’ve been watching them, but the older ones are almost impossible to find, let alone follow. They and their underlings have such varied abilities, it is difficult to go into any circumstance feeling capable.”

I walked over to the bar and lay my bandaged wrist on the counter. “What sort of abilities?”

“Remote-viewing,” he replied pointedly, “telepathy, the ability to control others with fear.”

“You said older . . .” I hesitated,

“The closer to the source, the stronger they are.”

“Immortal?” I could barely say it.

He pulled out a sponge and began scrubbing the tile, his face turned from mine. “I do not believe it is perfect immortality.”

“How can you be sure?”

He went still, but did not turn. I watched his breathing, slow and calm. “Ursula was more than one hundred years old.”

I gasped. “Shut up!” He turned to look at me finally, assessing my reaction. “You’re not jerking me around?”

He looked confused by the slang. “No.”

“Well, she died pretty easily.”

“Clinical immortality,” he explained. “When left to their own devices, the Arhat do not die, but if injured, if the systems of their bodies are disrupted, they perish just like a normal person, if they are unable to heal fast enough.”

I laid my head down on the counter and let the cool tile refresh me. He continued to work until the counter gleamed. When he was finished, he began emptying the refrigerator, dumping rotting takeout containers in the garbage.

“Where does it come from?”

He narrowed his eyes at a Styrofoam container that smelled particularly awful and dropped it before looking up.

“It can be traced back to the very foundation of Buddhism, to the enlightenment,” he said softly, his revelation contrasted by the mundane task he was performing. It made it even clearer to me that this was his everyday life, not the overwhelmingly strange event it was for me. Never mind that he had a coffee shop, wore socks, or made sandwiches; he was a vampire hunter. All the normal stuff was window dressing. Then again, I mused, would I have liked him as much if he had been nothing
but
the normal stuff?