The Last Vampire
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The Last Vampire Series is a 6 book set written by Christopher Pike and chronicles the 5,000 year life of the "last vampire", Sita.
Vampires in Christopher Pike's setting could stay out during the day (but such a feat was incredibly difficult unless they were quite old, usually thousands of years), could die from sufficient injuries, and still needed to eat food. However, they possessed many of the same attributes of modern vampire legends, such as stamina, strength, vision, hearing, speed, and perfect memory. Indeed, as some aged, more powers manifested themselves, such as telepathy and telekenesis.
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[edit] Story
[edit] The Last Vampire
Sita was born 5,000 years ago in India. When she was but a child, a disease struck her village, and most of the villagers died, including her closest friend. A traveling man convinced the elders that he could drive away the disease by performing a ritual; it involved invoking a demon (a yakshini), into the recently deceased corpse of a dead, pregnant woman. Only a handful of the male villagers witnessed the demon killing the man before apparently vanishing, but Sita, hiding in the bushes, noticed that it had instead entered the corpse of the child, still in his mother.
Her father gave her a choice - she could let the child live or she could take his knife and strike it down now. She chose to let it live, and named the child "Yaksha", as in "begot from a Yakshini."
Yaksha grew to be a beautiful man in a short space of time, who'd always had an eye for Sita. By this time, she was grown up as well, and married to Rama, her husband, and even had a daughter.
It was about that time the men that had witnessed the long-ago ritual vanished, one after another, including Sita's father. One night, after he disappeared, Sita was awoken by a strange noise, and upon leaving her home, was attacked and dragged away by Yaksha. He explained what he was; though the word for vampire did not exist then. Some of the men were with him, transformed as he was (though being the first, he was forever more powerful than any of them, including Sita). He convinced her to join him, threatening to kill her sleeping husband and child if she did not.
It did not take long for the civilized world to realize what they were up against, and they begged Krishna, the 6th incarnation of the deity, to intervene. His troops slaughtered most of the fleeing vampires, but Yaksha and Sita survived. Krishna and Yaksha fought, and in the end Sita was given his grace under the condition that she never created another vampire. Yaksha was pardoned as well, but the pact Krishna spoke to him was unheard by Sita.
Yaksha spent nearly the next 5,000 years slowly hunting down the remaining vampires and destroying them before apparently being chased and murdered by a mob during the Middle Ages. Sita lived through the ages, in Egypt first, and gradually on and toward America as it was settled until the present day setting (1990s).
In the present day, Sita kills a private investigator that had been digging into her affairs and had noticed not only her age, but her immense and untraceable fortune. Before she killed him, however, he reveals that a man called Slim hired him. To learn more about Slim, and whoever hired him, Sita "arranges" to be abducted by his men. After learning what she can, she brutally kills Slim and some of his crew (the rest escape in a shootout with the police). She then learns that Slim has been acting on behalf of someone else - someone whom she realizes is Yaksha, apparently not as dead as she'd been led to believe.
In order to gain information on Yaksha's current whereabouts, Sita enters high school, and befriends Ray, the son of the now slain investigator (she later tells him who really killed his father). Only Ray could know how to get into his father's computer, where the information on where Yaksha is. She also ends up befriending another young man named Seymour. Seymour is HIV positive, and is so uncannily perceptive that she readily admits what she is and heals him of his illness. He becomes one of her closest friends for the rest of the series, and she depends on him for advice on numerous occasions.
It doesn't take long to fall in love with the exceptionally handsome Ray, and soon after she realizes he is none other than the 5,000 year later incarnation of her long dead husband, Rama. When Yaksha finally tracks her down, he mortally wounds Ray, forcing Sita to break her vow (thus removing Krishna's protection), and save him by turning him into a vampire.
Now both of them, on the run from Yaksha, figure out a way to survive the coming confrontation. Sita, sure that Yaksha is ready to die with her, sets up a trick. Dynamite is put in the sitting room, with the button on Yaksha's chair (so he can kill both himself, tired of his long life, and ensure the last of the vampires goes with him). Unknown to him, Sita's and Ray's chairs sit on top of a separate set of dynamite and a protective sheet of metal, and are designed to be thrown from the explosion when their dynamite goes off slightly early. The idea is to be set clear before the final explosion that should kill Yahksha.
Before she could set her plan in motion, Yaksha asks her what Krishna whispered in her ear thousands of years before and realizes the whole time that she was protected; Krishna had told Sita "Wherever there is love, there is my grace". Her love for Ray is what allowed her to break her vow and yet still keep it. When she originally became a vampire, she did so for love of her family, and therefore from the beginning she had always had Krishna's grace. Yaksha knows that Krishna would not want him to harm Sita and Ray, and instead he tells her to flee as the dynamite fuse burns down, destroying the house, apparently killing Yaksha, and injuring Sita (who survives into the next book).
[edit] The Last Vampire 2: Black Blood
Sita, now healed, hears of a group of vampires in LA that have been brutally murdering people in the area. As she is the only vampire now that Yahksha is dead, it is up to her to figure out what is happening.
She runs into the group, and quickly kills most of them only to find herself out-matched by the leader, Eddie. Surprised, she flees, and with Ray's help, deduces that Eddie must have found the remains of Yahksha from the explosion and used his blood to change himself. When she attempts a sneak attack to destroy him and his group during the day at their hideout, an abandoned warehouse complex, Eddie instead springs the trap on her and kills her lover, Ray. The explosion forces Eddie to flee, and seriously injures Sita, who is rescued from the flames by a nearby cop, Joel.
Joel, unable to believe his eyes as Sita heals right there, in the car, takes her to a motel, where she admits what she is, but leaves after admonishing him to never seek her out.
She finds the dying Yahksha stored in an ice-cream truck (vampires hate the cold, but can still withstand Antarctic-like temperatures without protection), near the site of the earlier battle with Eddie, and, comforting him as he dies, does as he asks; she drinks the rest of his blood, increasing her abilities far beyond what they were, hopefully putting her on par with Eddie.
Eddie kidnaps Joel and in retaliation Sita kidnaps his mother, who he has a strange relationship with, though her tactic fails; he tricks her into releasing his mother, mortally wounds Joel, and then breaks his mother's neck. With Joel bleeding to death, Sita gives in to Eddie, who starts to drain her of her blood. As she eases in and out, she remembers a song Krishna once played for her long ago, and starts to hum it, realizing that she could hypnotize Eddie. She lures him into a freezer where she chops his head off with the emergency axe (all industrial freezers seem to have one), and rescues Joel, turning him into a vampire as the book ends.
[edit] The Last Vampire 3: Red Dice
Sita and the now vampiric Joel are pursued by the government. Sita hijacks a helicopter and she and Joel leap from it to a lake.Sita escapes but Joel is captured by the military. Sita enters the military base and runs into her old lover, Arturo, a brilliant priest and alchemist she believed was killed in the Inquisition years ago. He attempted to use Sita's blood to recreate the blood of Christ and turned himself into a vampire-human hybrid. Sita detonates a nuclear warhead to ensure the government has no samples of vampire blood. Sita escapes but Joel and Arturo perish. Sita then uses Arturo's alchemic equipment to turn herself into a human.
[edit] The Last Vampire 4: Phantom
Sita, having turned herself back into a human at the end of Book Three, suddenly find herself not only pregnant, but back with Ray, who claims that he didn't die in the fight, but that Eddie had indeed revived him. She and Ray move to a suburb, and she starts to go about a normal, human life, befriending a very pregnant woman named Paula (who claims she has no idea how she was impregnated).
It takes little time to find out that her child (Kalika) is indeed a vampire, and none other than the earthly incarnation of Kali, the Supreme Goddess of Destruction. The child ages incredibly fast, and becomes very interested in Paula's child. To save Paula's child (who Sita believes is none other than the messiah, the new incarnation of Krishna, she turns herself back into a vampire. She uses blood recovered from Yaksha, and a vial of blood from Paula's newborn baby. She is even more powerful than before, but is still no match for Kalika. In a final fight with her daughter, Kalika kills Seymour and escapes (but without the baby).
Sita takes Seymours body to a funeral pyre to cremate him. In her tears, Sita knows that Seymour should not be dead. Using the remaining blood from the little saviour Sita uses it to bring Seymour back to life. Overcome with happiness, Sita does not tell Seymour of Kalika's doing, but vows to stop her daughter from getting ahold of Paula's child.
[edit] The Last Vampire 5: Evil Thirst
Sita's daughter, Kalika, has transformed into a blood-thirsty monster with power far beyond Sita's. It is Sita's task to track her down and destroy her, yet Sita still has trouble believing her daughter is totally evil. She still hopes to save Kalika, even if it means risking her own life--and perhaps the lives of everyone in the world.
The story opens as Sita and the newly revived Seymour attend a seminare of an ancient Egyptian Seer named Suzama. Sita knew her personally, and is interested to know that, in her Seer's eye, Suzama predicted the birth of God into three mortal forms at exact times. Two of these incarnations are Krisha and Jesus Christ. Sita learns from Dr. Seter, the man who discovered Suzama's Scripture, that Christ has been born again, as her friend Paula's new born son (and Paula herself is actually Suzama reincarnated. Unlike Ray, Paula begins to remember her previous life). Using her powerful powers of persuasion, Sita befriends Seter and his son James, authenticates the text, and discovers that Kalika wishes to kill the baby.
Mother and Daughter are reunited over the phone and through a miscalculation on Kalika's part, Sita discovers where her daughter lives. In a brutal fight, Sita is pushed off the roof of the building and is greviously injured. Finally, after an agonizing time spent trying to recover, she flees to Paula, who is beginning to remember her previous life as Suzama. She helps Sita to realize James, and his followers are evil beings, from another world, here to prevent the saviour from ensuring Earth one day moves towards the "light side". Kalika never intended to hurt the child, but instead was ensuring his protection.
During a confrontation, Kalika is mortally injured and gives her blood to her mother, finally saying, for the first time, that she loves her mother now, and forever. Sita, now incredibly powerful, with abilities beyond those of normal vampires, defeats Dr. Seter and his group, returning to Paula her unharmed son.
[edit] The Last Vampire 6: Creatures of Forever
After the events of Book Five, where Sita learns that there is more to the world than Vampires, Paula, who she now knows in the incarnation of her oldest friend, Suzama, the great Egyptian Seer, tells her that something is going to happen. Distraught, Sita asks if she will ever see Paula again, and she says, no.
Leaving Seymour and Paula behind, Sita begins delving deeper into the secrets of the group of powerful beings that stalk her. Along the way, she confronts another of these creatures only to find that their time is soon at hand, brought about by a centuries old mistake, committed by none other than the last vampire herself. After dispatching this foe, Sita is approached by a young woman, claiming to be a friend, and who offers Sita the chance to set right what went wrong nearly a thousand years earlier.
Sita embarks on this journey into the heart of darkness and confronts the evil that not only deceived and used Sita's power for evil without her knowledge, but who now has the power to upset the balance of life itself, tipping the scales in the favor of evil. In this epic conclusion to the Last Vampire, Sita must confront her darkest fears, and face an unthinkable choice; to go on as a creature of forever, or forsake her life and power for a destiny turned to ash 5000 years ago.
