it easy, son,” said the DCP gently. “Help will be here soon.” As he said it he heard the wail of sirens and in a moment saw the wash of watery headlights. By and by they were joined by Kapoor and a detachment from the local station, headed by the duty officer. The beaten adolescent lay quietly in Dayal’s arms as the men clustered around them. Kapoor knelt as well and felt for the boy’s hands. His eyes met Dayal’s as he counted ten fingers, then his eyebrows rose as he followed Dayal’s gaze to the puncture wounds in the boy’s neck. The driver arrived and reported the little gate in the wall a short distance away, and the road on the other side where the vehicles of the fighters must have been parked. Naturally, they were gone. Nevertheless, at a word from the duty officer, the men of the local station took off at a run to have a look around.
Kapoor peered at the local inspector, who picked wearily at the dripping collar of his uniform. “Didn’t you know?” he asked, without any apparent heat.
The inspector looked up, then away. “We’d heard.”
And so? wondered Kapoor.
“We’re a long way from HQ, uncle,” responded the inspector. “This rain has caused four accidents already tonight, including one less than a kilometer away on the highway. There’s been one building collapse and three evacuations. Up to eleven people might have died in the collapse. And over there, next to that new stadium, the local farmers are up in arms about the acquisition of their land for the parking lot.”
And your point is? inquired Kapoor’s eyebrows.
“Those fucking villagers are camped out with their sticks and their guns, uncle. If they start heating up, they won’t stop at biting each other. Frankly, these kids are a nuisance but they haven’t really hurt anybody.”
“Till now,” said the DCP.
The inspector nodded unhappily.
The DCP’s phone beeped. It was Smita. “It’s up on all the websites, sir.”
“Hmm. How did it end?”
“It came down to the boy in the kaffiyeh, the person holding the camera, and the boy I’m assuming you’re hovering over.”
The DCP grunted.
“They were obviously in a hurry. The boy in the kaffiyeh pummeled that poor child. Then he knelt over him, with his back to the camera, and appeared to bite his neck. The boy being bitten definitely seemed to be feeling it. Is he still alive?”
“He’ll live. Then?”
“The boy in the kaffiyeh let the victim collapse to the ground. Then he turned back to the camera and saluted. Very deliberately. He held up a finger, shook it at the camera, knelt down and drew it across the beaten boy’s throat, then stood up and saluted again. Then they seemed to hear something. Probably you. They took off running. The camera was killed seconds later.”
“Any progress on the account?”
“We’re working on it.”
The DCP hung up. At his feet, the boy stirred in the wet slush.
“Sacrifice,” he said faintly.
“What?” asked Kapoor.
“Sacrifice. He said I was a sacrifice.”
“Who did?” asked Kapoor roughly.
“The boy in the scarf. Our leader.”
“I thought you were a lycan?” said the DCP gently.
“No. No lycans. We’re all vampires. It was supposed to be my initiation.”
Kapoor and Dayal looked at each other.
“I suppose you don’t really know these guys?” asked Kapoor with disgust.
“No. They said I was a sacrifice. They said the Colonel would know and understand.”
“And that’s why they kicked the shit out of you,” said the inspector glumly.
“They said it was for my initiation.”
“They lied, son,” said Kapoor wearily. “They beat you up because they can. I suggest, when you’re out of hospital, you find new friends.”
The boy was put away in the back of the inspector’s duty jeep.
“May I ask you something, sir?” the inspector said to the DCP. The older officer nodded. “Why is Crime Branch interested in these freaks? More to the point, what do they have to do with your task force?”
“That’s two questions, inspector. But if you come across anything that might be of interest to me on either front, you’ll let me know, won’t you?”
The inspector looked at him, the bill of his uniform hat shaping the flow of the rainwater off his face. Then he nodded in turn, touched his hat, and drove away.
Kapoor and Dayal stood there, next to the latter’s car, in the relentless rain.
“That was staged for our benefit,” noted Kapoor.
Dayal nodded wordlessly.
“Kids these days. Seriously.”
Dayal had to agree.
“I think it’s time you called the Colonel.”
The path to Razia lay through a narrow alley that led off a busy road in south Delhi. There was a bank to one side with a line outside the ATM and a shop selling bodybuilding supplements in the basement. An outlet for Adidas guarded the other flank. The commerce of the main road ebbed and flowed around the parked cars. The pushcarts, cycle-rickshaws, and pedestrians, bent on their own business in the moist night, eddied around Dayal’s own car. He stepped out and lit a cigarette, looked one way then another, and moved into the alley.
This was one of Delhi’s urban villages and the alley was a tight one, along which ran close-packed houses. They were high enough and dense enough to cut off the sun at noon: at night, every person in these alleys was a ghost. Power lines snaked overhead, the myriad noises of soap operas and cricket matches came and went, and the smoke from the DCP’s cigarette floated up into the ephemerally electric night. The air was neon and then fluorescent, and once there was the silver illumination of a lightning flash, the blues and pinks of the streaming homes off to either side starkly vivid. Seconds later Dayal heard its attendant roar. But by then the alley, now meandering through the village, was dark again. A corner store that stocked cigarettes and paan masala and eggs and bread provided a beacon of light where Dayal stopped to ask for directions. The man looked at him, then away, and then looked again, and saw Dayal for what he was. So he pointed, reluctantly, in a particular direction. Dayal bought a cigarette and sauntered through the sodden lane.
The newer houses were built above little parking bays, where Dayal saw scooters and occasionally small cars. Once a cat walked along a boundary wall and sometimes a dog, surprised in his slumber, barked at the policeman. Dayal took no notice. A Northeastern woman hurried past in the opposite direction, her
