I drive faster.
I stop some distance from the house. The road we're on circles all of Lake Tahoe but at this place it is three hundred yards up the side of the mountain. Grabbing a shotgun and ignoring the others,I slip six shells into it. The remainder of the ammunition is in the box that I stuff into my pocket. Popping open the driver's door, I am almost outside when James grabs my arm.
"Where are you going?" he demands.
"Some things you can't help me with," I say.
"Alisa,"Seymour says. The others only know me by that name.
"It has to be this way."I shake off James."Stay and take care of one another. She may come thisway yet."
I don't give them a chance to respond.Jumping out of the car, I run around the bend,and the moment I am out of sight I switch into hyper-mode. The tangled trees and uneven boulders don't even slow me. I reach the house in thirty seconds.
The front door has already been kicked in.
Kalika was watching which way my nose turned.
Inside I find Paula staring out a window that overlooks Emerald Bay. There is a small boat on the cold water, with an outboard motor softly churning through the night, heading away from us. Grabbing Paula from behind,I turn her around.
"Did she take the child?" I demand.
Pretty dark-haired Paula is the color of dirty snow.
"Yes," she says with a dry voice.
"Stay here." I pump my shotgun. "I will get him back."
The next moment finds me outside, running along the edge of the bay. In places this is difficult because the sides are sheer stone. When I come to such a spot I jump higher for any inch of ledge that will support my feet and keep running.Kalika's outboard motor is not very strong.I reach the isthmus seconds before her boat does. Dressed in a long white coat, the baby wrapped in a white blanket on her knees, she looks up at me as I raise my shotgun and take aim at her bow. She is only fifty yards away. Her eyes shimmer with theglowof the moon and she doesn't seem to be surprised.
The baby talks softly to her, infant nonsense. He is not afraid, but fear is almost all I know as I sight along the barrel and squeeze the trigger.
The blast of the shotgun echoes across the bay.
I have blown a hole in the front of the boat
Water gushes in. Kalika grabs the handle of the outboard and turns the boat around. For a moment her back is tome, an easy shot. Yet I don't take it. I tell myself there is a chance I might hit the child. At first Kalika seems to be headed back toward the beach below Paula's house, but then it is clear the miniature island in the center of the bay is her goal. Perhaps the water is gushing in too fast. Kalika picks up the child and hugs him to her chesteven before the boat reaches the island. Then she is tip and out of the sinking craft,scampering up the dirt path that leads to a small abandoned house at the top of the island. Sliding the shotgun under my black leather coat,I dive off the low cliff and into the water.
The lake temperature is bracing,even for me. But vampires never like the cold,although we can tolerate it far better than human beings can. My stroke is hampered by my clothes and gun,but I reach the island in less than a minute. Shivering on the beach in the rays of the moon,I remove the shotgun and pump another round into the chamber. There is a good chance it will still fire. If it doesn't then this will be the last moonlit night of my life.
I find Kalika sitting on a bench in the stone house at the top of the island. It is not properly a house, more an open collection of old walls. Last time I was here a guide told me people came here for tea during the Second World War.K alika sits with the baby on her lap, playing with him, obliviousof me and my shotgun.I feel I have to say something.Of course I am not fooled.I keep my weapon held ready.
Yet maybe I am the biggest fool of all.
"It is over," I say. "Set the child down."
Kalika doesn't even look up. "The floor is cold.He might catch cold."
I shake my gun. "I am serious."
"That is your problem."
"Kalika"
"Doyou know what name Paula gave the child?"she interrupts.
"No. I didn't stop to ask her."
"I think she named him John. That's what I've been calling him." Finally she looks at me. "But you know Mike, don't you?"
I am bewildered. "Yes. Have you spoken to him?"
"No. But I know him. He's a bum." She lifts the child to her breast. Kalika has a voluptuous figure;she could probably bear many healthy children. God knows what they would be like. She strokes the baby's soft skull. "I think we have company."
"What are you talking about?"
"Your friend is coming."
"Good," I say, although I don't hear anyone approaching."More reason for you to surrender the child." I grow impatient "Put him down!"
"No."
"I will shoot."
"No, you wont."
"You murdered two dozen innocent people. You ripped their hearts and heads off right in front of my eyes and you think I can still care for you? Well, you're wrong." I step closer and aim the shotgun at her face. "You are not immortal. If I fire and your brains splatter the wall behind you, then you will die."
She stares at me. We are out of the moonlight. There should be no light in her dark eyes at all. Nevertheless they shine with a peculiar white glow. I had thought it was red the last time I saw them during our confrontation on the pier. But maybe the color is not hers but mine.Maybe she is just a mirror for me, Kali Ma,the eternal abyss,who destroys time itself. My mother myself. I cannot look at her with the child and not think of when she was a baby.
"The body takes birth and dies," she says."The eternal self is unmoved."
I shake my shotgun angrily. "You will move for me, goddamn you!"
Kalika smiles. She wants to say something.
But suddenly there is a blade at my throat.
"I will take that shotgun," James says softly in my ear.
I am surprised but not terribly alarmed.
"James," I say patiently, "I am not going to shoot the child."
He presses the blade tighter and forces my head back.
"I know that,Sita,"he says calmly. "I still want the gun."
I swallow. Now I amc oncerned.
"How do you know my name?"I ask.
He grips the shotgun and carefully lifts it from my hands.