F. Paul Wilson - The Tomb

Chaos was the result. The rakoshi panicked, clawing at each other to escape the fire and avoid those who were burning from it.

Jack heard Kusum's voice shouting, "Stop it! Stop it or I'll wring her neck!"

He looked up and saw Kusum with his hand around Vicky's throat. Vicky's face reddened and her eyes widened as he lifted her half a foot off the ground to demonstrate.

Jack released the trigger of the flamethrower. He now had a wide area of floor clear to him. Only one rakosh—one with a scarred and distorted lower lip—stayed near the platform. Black smoke rose from the prone forms of a dozen or so burning rakoshi. The air was getting thick.

"Treat her well," Jack said in a tight voice as he backed against the wall. "She's all that's keeping you alive right now."

"What is she to you?"

"I want her safe."

"She is not of your flesh. She is just another member of a society that would exterminate you if it knew you existed, that rejects what you value most. And even this little one here will want you locked away once she is grown. We should not be at war, you and I. We are brothers, voluntary outcasts from the worlds in which we live. We are—"

"Cut the bullshit!" Jack said. "She's mine. I want her!"

Kusum glowered at him. "How did you escape the Mother?"

"I didn't escape her. She's dead. As a matter of fact, I have a couple of her teeth in my pocket. Want them?"

Kusum's face darkened. "Impossible! She—" His voice broke off as he stared at Jack. "That necklace!"

"Your sister's."

"You've killed her, then," he said in a suddenly hushed voice.

"No. She's fine."

"She would never surrender it willingly!"

"She's asleep—doesn't know that I borrowed it for a while."

Kusum barked out a laugh. "So! My whore of a sister will finally reap the rewards of her karma! And how fitting that you should be the instrument of her reckoning!"

Thinking Kusum was distracted, Jack took a step forward. The Indian immediately tightened his grip on Vicky's throat. Through the tangle of her wet stringy hair, Jack saw her eyes wince shut in pain.

"No closer!"

The rakoshi stirred and edged nearer the platform at the sound of Kusum's raised voice.

Jack stepped back. "Sooner or later you're going to lose, Kusum. Give her up now."

"Why should I lose? I have but to point out your location to the rakoshi and tell them that there stands the slayer of the Mother. The necklace would not protect you then. And though your flamethrower might kill dozens of them, in their frenzy for revenge they would tear you to pieces."

Jack pointed to the bomb slung from his belt. "But what would you do about these?"

Kusum's brow furrowed. "What are you talking about?"

"Incendiary devices. I've planted them all over the ship. AH timed to go off at three forty-five." He looked at his watch. "It's three o'clock now. Only forty-five minutes to go. How will you ever find them in time?"

"The child will die, too."

Jack saw Vicky's already terrified face blanch as she listened to them. She had to hear—there was no way of shielding her from the truth.

"Better that way than by what you've got planned for her."

Kusum shrugged. "My rakoshi and I will merely swim ashore. Perhaps the child's mother waits there. They ought to find her tasty."

Jack masked his horror at the thought of Gia facing a horde of rakoshi emerging from the bay.

"That won't save your ship. And it will leave your rakoshi without a home and out of your control."

"So," Kusum said after a pause. "A stalemate."

"Right. But if you let the kid go, I'll show you where the bombs are. Then I'll take her home while you take off for India." He didn't want to let Kusum go—he had a score to settle with the Indian—but it was a price he was willing to pay to get Vicky back.

Kusum shook his head. "She's a Westphalen… the last surviving Westphalen… and I cannot—"

"You're wrong!" Jack cried, grasping at a thread of hope. "She's not the last. Her father is in England! He's…"

Kusum shook his head again. "I took care of him last year during my stay at the Consulate in London."

Jack saw Vicky stiffen as her eyes widened.

"My daddy!"

"Hush, child," Kusum said in an incongruously gentle tone. "He was not worthy of a single tear." Then he raised his voice. "So it's still a stalemate, Repairman Jack. But perhaps there is a way we can settle this honorably."

"Honorably?" Jack felt his rage swell. "How much honor can I expect from a fallen… "—What was the word Kolabati had used?— "… a fallen Brahmachari?

"She told you of that? Kusum said, his face darkening. "Did she also tell you who it was who seduced me into breaking my vow of chastity? Did she say who it was I bedded during those years when I polluted my karma to an almost irredeemable level? No—of course she wouldn't. It was Kolabati herself—my own sister! "

Jack was stunned. "You're lying!"

"Would that I were," he said with a faraway look in his eyes. "It seemed so right at the time. After nearly a century of living, my sister seemed to be the only person on earth worth knowing… certainly the only one left with whom I had anything in common."

"You're crazier than I thought you were!" Jack said.

Kusum smiled sadly. "Ah! Something else my dear sister neglected to mention. She probably told you our parents were killed in 1948 in a train wreck during the chaos following the end of British colonial rule. It's a good story—we cooked it up together. But it's a lie. I was born in 1846. Yes, I said 7546. Bati was born in 1850. Our parents, whose names adorn the stern of this ship, were killed by Sir Albert Westphalen and his men when they raided the temple of Kali in the hills of northwestern Bengal in 1857. I nearly killed Westphalen then myself, but he was bigger and stronger than the puny eleven-year-old boy I was, and nearly severed my left arm from my body. Only the necklace saved me."

Jack's mouth had gone dry while Kusum spoke. The man spoke his madness so casually, so matter-of-factly, with the utter conviction of truth. No doubt because he believed it was truth. What an intricate web of madness he had woven for himself.

"The necklace?" Jack said.

He had to keep him talking. Perhaps he would find an opening, a chance to get Vicky free of his grasp. But he had to keep the rakoshi in mind, too—they kept drawing closer by imperceptible degrees.

"It does more than hide one from rakoshi. It heals… and preserves. It slows aging. It does not make one invulnerable —Westphalen's men put bullets through my parents' hearts while they were wearing their necklaces and left them just as dead as they would have been without them. But the necklace I wear, the one I removed from my father's corpse after I vowed to avenge him, helped mend my wound. I lost my arm, true, but without the aid of the necklace I would have died. Look at your own wounds. You've been injured before, I am sure. Do they hurt as much as you would expect? Do they bleed as much as they should?"

Warily, Jack glanced down at his arms and legs. They were bloody and they hurt—but nowhere near as much as they should have. And then he remembered how his back and left shoulder had started feeling better soon after he had put on the necklace. He hadn't made the connection until now.

"You now wear one of the two existing necklaces of the Keepers of the Rakoshi. While you wear it, it heals you and slows your aging to a crawl. But take it off, and all those years come tumbling back upon you."

Jack leaped upon an inconsistency. "You said 'two existing necklaces.' What about your grandmother's? The one I returned?"

Kusum laughed. "Haven't you guessed yet? There is no grandmother! That was Kolabati herself! She was the assault victim! She had been following me to learn where I went at night and got—How do you Americans so eloquently put it?—'Rolled.' She 'got rolled' in the process. That old woman you saw in the hospital was Kolabati, dying of old age without her necklace. Once it was replaced about her neck, she quickly returned to the same state of youth she was in when the necklace was stolen from her." He laughed again. "Even as we speak, she grows older and uglier and more feeble by the minute!"