Chapter 4

Blue Demons, Red Tara

I learned that the woman who followed Noore around topless carrying an AK-47 was named Tara. She was leaning against a stone pillar with her arms crossed and when I approached, she just looked at me up and down and said, "I know that look. Wanna fight?"

I nodded, "Yeah."

"I can send you in at two p.m. Think you can wait that long, killer?"

I wanted to know who was running things without Noore around. The Arena had been in Kyrat since the 1759, so surely there was a succession plan in place, but still.

"Yeah," I said, "I can wait."

"Go get me a cup of araa." She ordered, "I'll give you something extra if you do."

Extra? She was cute. I wasn't planning on getting laid here. I thought for a little while Amita and I would've had a thing. Now I could only imagine that we might've hate fucked. Actually, scratch that, she was dead now. I didn't want to think of her like that. Yuma, either. But I still dreamt about her in that half-conscious state. Thinking of Tara like that was just too… obvious, "Extra?"

"Yeah," she said, "You killed the King. I think that deserves something extra."

"So why am I getting you the araa?"

"Because I want it and you're going to get it for me."

Hard to argue with that logic. I went to the general store and came back with a bottle of araa stored in an old bottle of Kyrati gin. The lady at the counter even gave me a small stack of plastic cups. I tossed her an extra few rupees. Not like I was hurting for the cash.

I came back, avoiding a couple guys doing their own arena fight surrounded by a crowd of gamblers cheering them on. They were so drunk you could smell their bodies preserving all the way from my spot standing with half-naked Tara.

I handed her a plastic cup and poured her some araa.

"A gentleman," she said, "Thanks, Englishman."

"I'm not English."

"American?" She asked, "Same thing."

"They're… not." I said, smiling and drinking. Who gives a fuck?

"Hey, you're going to win in there, yeah?" She asked, throwing back her own drink.

"Yeah," I said, "I think so."

"You better. I have a lot riding on you." She held her hand out for more. I poured, "A lot of people do." She drank and said, "Everyone knows you killed Pagan."

"Everyone?"

"Oh yeah," she said, "We all know you hated him. That's why you came here, right?"

"Uh… no." I said.

She could see something in my face and looked at me sideways, "No? What happened? Are you like that Hurk? Had your California Sadness and came here to fight in a war?"

"I'm Kyrati, you know?" I stared down at the bottle, "Kyrati-American."

"Kyrati-American." She laughed, "Sorry about your mother. She was well-liked here."

I took another drink, "Fuck my mom." I said.

Tara laughed, "Oh? Like that, huh? Well, you would've known her better."

She palmed me something.

I looked down at it. It was a syringe filled with a purple liquid.

"Win this thing like you won the war."

"It was hard." I said, "Took more than a single syringe."

"Well, then… do it."

I handed her the bottle. The doors started to open by the front of the Arena, and the crowd started to go inside. I nodded and walked towards the fighting ring. I was led down below by another of Noore's assistants, topless and painted. She brought me to a room and locked the door. Down at the bottom of the stairs leading up to a pair of massive doors was a grenade launcher. A GL-A87 to be specific. There was just a letter T marked in paint on the top. Tara, I assumed. I liked her. I was a bit tipsy, and definitely had too much blood running through my system. That was probably good given that in a few seconds, I'd be out there exploding guys into particulate.

"… for bloody slaughter!"

I could hear the sounds of dogs barking, getting riled up and ready to tear apart human flesh.

Horns blasted outside in the arena over the cheer of the crowd.

The doors began to open. I picked up the launcher at the last second, and walked towards the blinding light.

When I opened my eyes, the light wasn't blinding at all. In fact it was the middle of the night. There was no light, just the cold. Tara was lying next to me, and I gather she was way more used to sleeping out in the elements than I was. I was pampered. When I slept with Boy Scout Troop 108 in the Adirondacks, I had a sleeping bag and a tent. When we went to the Winter Jamboree we rented a cabin. Tara slept naked in a ditch and considered herself lucky.

But we didn't have a ditch. We were lying in a field a hundred yards from the arena grounds. Shanath was safe, ironically. The Golden Path and Royal Army teams that made it out of the Arena alive shared alcohol and women once the fights were done. And if not, if they couldn't keep their anger and rage and alcohol in check, the crowds maintained a culture of keeping the teams separate in the first place.

Shanath is safe was a weird sentence to say to myself. Kyrat wasn't safe. And Shanath was in Kyrat. I guess the statement is relative to Kyrat in general, Shanath is safe. Ironically safe.

Tara was beautiful and slept with a smile on her face. I'm glad I cold have spent the night with her. This cold fucking night. I pulled my jacket over my waist. Didn't want her to see me like this. i.e. cold.

I tried getting some of those sights out of my head. Tara helped. The warmth of her touch. The feel of her body wrapped around mine. The sound of her voice so close to my ear. That all helped clear away the sight of a guy disintegrating into a cloud of blood, or the guy in the Bane mask with an insane aim and throw exploding into a fireball, or just the countless thugs dressed in red, or the ones in blue, or covered in yellow or green Holi dust.

When it happened, I felt nothing. What was the old quote? "When you shoot a terrorist what do you feel? Recoil." But now, afterward, I felt… something. It wasn't that they deserved to die. They most definitely did. Amita deserved to die. Every bastard I heard say "The best day of my life was the day I pledged myself to Pagan Min." Pagan deserved to die. De Pleur deserved to die. Noore…

Fuck. For every "best day of my life" men in his Army, there was a "I don't know what to do, if I join the Golden Path, I'll still be fighting against those I love." For every one who resorted to violence because they were hungry, there were kids conscripted into fighting for a psychopath like Pagan or Amita.

"Hey." Tara was waking, "Want to move over to my bed?"

"You have a bed?"

"You think I sleep out here every night?"

I laughed, "You told me you were used to it."

"I slept outside a lot. But not any more. Noore gave us food and a place to sleep."

I idly wondered out loud, "How did you come into Noore's service?"

"Pagan Min killed my family when I was twelve." she said matter of factly, "I was taken by one of his men and passed around a barracks for a couple months. I managed to escape and was going to kill myself. But Noore found me first. She was working on a plan to try and get rid of him. But he got wind of it and decided to fuck with her by sending her those letters."

Fuck.

"I'm sorry about that. Amita ordered me to kill her, but I tried not to."

"We saw. You didn't kill her."

"I know… I just… I guess of all the people I didn't kill," and it wasn't a lot, "I guess I wish I did. The way it went down… I just…"

"I know what you mean." she said. She helped me up and handed me my pants. It was kind of funny seeing her body like this, her breasts and arms and shoulders all made up with the Holi powder, while the lower half of her body was nothing but skin. I went to pick up the… cloth that served as her outfit, but she already had it and wrapped it around her waist, "C'mon."

I only put on my pants and my jacket. She led me around through a back entrance I didn't even know existed. Up the stairs and down the hall, there were chambers on both sides. No doors, just some heavy curtains. She led me to the third chamber on the right and moved the curtain aside, "In." I passed underneath her arm and behind the curtains. The room beyond was windowless, but had a pair of butter lamps lighting up a small altar underneath a frightening thangka scroll. I wasn't well-versed enough in all of the Himalayan gods to know who was depicted. In the dim light it looked like Yalung, but I was pretty skeptical that Tara was as crazy as a Yalung worshiper.

There was a bed. As soon as Tara walked over to it, she took off her skirt, letting it drop to the floor. She moved softly, loosely, as if in a dream. She turned to me, and I could barely make out her features in the light. She beckoned me closer. I stepped forward, dropping the rest of my clothes to the ground while she unzipped my jacket.

"Ajay Ghale," she whispered. Gah-lay she said in the Asian way, not Gale like I'd heard all my life and got tired of correcting when Yogi and Noore said it. She leaned forward and kissed me, pulling her body up, lifting her legs and wrapping them around my still clothed waist. She was light. Probably from a life adjacent to hunger. But her breasts weren't so light, and pressed against my chest.

It was weird. Being with her, on this bed that was only slightly softer than the earth outside, I felt like the damnation from killing so many people, so many of my own countrymen, distant cousins every one of them, even those Hong Kong mercenaries had families somewhere, all of it just suddenly didn't matter when Tara pressed her lips and body against me, and ran her fingers through my hair.

In the dim light of the butterlamp, with her hands running up and down my scarred body, bullet grazes still throbbing on my arm and against my right leg, I never wanted it to end. Left to my own devices, I couldn't let go of those demons. It was like Durgesh. I was a master of stealth when I had a gun in my hand, but I was completely defenseless against the yakshas and rakshas in my own head.

But I had Tara. And every kiss and every touch was an arrow I could use to help think clearly.