There had been a tiny space at the back of the fireplace, where they had pushed the ashes. She’d pulled bricks out and made her way into a brick pipe not more than eighteen inches in diameter, forcing her body into the space until her joints ground.
She lay with her eyes closed, willing herself not to cry out with the agony of it. If she opened her eyes, all she saw was wet, moldering brick a few bare inches above her face. The whole time she was struggling through the crack, she’d heard Martin screaming and screaming. The only thing the food she’d brought him had done was give him enough energy to die slowly.
They were gaining control over the fire, and above her she could now hear human voices. Water cascaded down.
She heard a sound, very distinct, and very different from the water, or the popping of Martin’s hot bones. This sound she heard was breathing — snick snick, snick snick — quick breathing, very light.
A rat was coming along the tunnel she was in, interested, no doubt, in the scent of raw, bleeding flesh. Or perhaps it was a devotee of cooked food. A French rat might be expected to be a sophisticate.
This rat represented a chance — a small one, admittedly, but its presence changed the odds from nonexistent to . . . well, a little bit better than nothing.
Here, little one, come here, little fruit. “The closer they are genetically to man, the better they are for you. The rats, the apes, the cows, all may be consumed to benefit.” So had said the Master Tutomon, her childhood tutor, with his lessons in geometry and languages and survival.
The rat hesitated. She could not see it, but the sound of its breathing and the patter of its feet were clear. It was on her left side, just parallel with her foot. To encourage it to come closer to her hand, she began to wriggle her fingers.
She needed to open her eyes, and she prepared herself as best she could. The space might be entirely dark by now, and that would be better. The light was much less, but she saw the bricks, so close that they were blurred to her vision. An involuntary gasp came out of her. The rat scuttled away.
She raised her head until it was pressed against the top of the pipe, then looked along her arm. The creature came back. She could just see its interested little face as it went snick-snick, snick-snick against her fingertips.
She stretched her arm, opening her fingers, letting the rat venture closer to the center of the trap. But it came no closer.
The indifferent trickle of water that had been slipping around her body was becoming a steady stream. If this pipe backed up, they would notice. They would send a crew down to unblock it. They would drag her out, even if it tore her to pieces. There would be no mercy. There was never any mercy; that had become quite apparent.
Now, the rat was returning. The rat, in fact, was very close to her fin-gers. Her exquisite nerves communicated the sensation as it sniffed their tips. Finally, it decided to stop sniffing and try a bite of the cool, still flesh that had drawn its curiosity. Instantly, it was in Miriam’s hand. It was wriggling and screaming its rat screams — ree-ree-ree. She sucked in her breath and moved her arm, drawing the creature closer to her mouth. She had to drag it against her naked breast, and as she did its needlelike teeth slashed the pale skin.
Then the creature was at her mouth. She bit off the shrieking head and drank the body dry, crumbling the remains, which were no more substantial than a little leaf.
The blood of the rat tasted surprisingly good. She could feel it spilling through her. It was going to be useful. But would it be enough for the task that lay ahead?
To continue the motion that her exhaustion had stopped, she had to work her arms over her head and press hard against the edges with her feet. In time, her bones would compress a little more, and she would move a few inches. However, if the pipe got any more narrow, she could be trapped.
Now that she was moving again, the water was sluicing around her, bringing with it bits of spent coal and ash. She pushed, felt more pressure, waited. Nothing.
If she was trapped — her heart began going faster. Harder she pushed, harder and harder. Still nothing. She felt her tongue swelling from the effort. Her bones ground and creaked. Her tongue began to push past the rows of cartilage that filled her mouth, that provided the seal when she sucked blood.
Still nothing, nothing, nothing! And then — worse — louder voices. Yes, the humans were in the basement, speaking about the slowness of the drain. They must unclog it, of course. They would find within it this strange, distorted being that would slowly return to its previous form, and they would know another secret of the Keepers, that vampires’ bones that were not brittle like their own, but pliant.
How would they kill her? Burn her until she was ash, as they had done to her mother? Hammer a stake into her heart until her blood stopped, then let her die over however long it took in a coffin — years, or even whole cycles of years? Or explode her head and dissolve her in acid?
There was a sound, and immediately a dagger of pain shot straight up her spine. The next instant, she slid along the pipe a substantial distance. She could have howled with the sheer joy of it, the wonderful sensation of release from the terrible compression.
The water she had been stopping came behind her, a gushing torrent that swept her down a wider sluiceway. Where she was now, there was considerably more light. It was coming from slits near the ceiling, that appeared at regular intervals. The space was high enough to stand up in, and she could peer through these slits.
She rose to a sitting position. She was exhausted. A rat was not worth much to her body, and she soon must feed again. She needed a human being.
She drew herself up and up, fighting the great blasts of pain from her tormented body. Finally, she was crouching. To see out, she would have to straighten herself, and she could not until her bones had spread again. She forced herself to try, to hasten the process as much as she could. Agony ran up and down her spine, causing her toes to curl and her lips to twist back. She hissed with it, she stifled the screams that tried to burst out of her throat.
Minutes passed. The water, which had been gushing past her knees, subsided to a milder flow. Its acrid stench was replaced by a surprising odor — the scent of a fresh spring. Her kind needed a lot of water and loved fresh water. She was smelling a clean, limestone spring beneath the streets of Paris, in the very sewer. She turned herself toward it and began slowly placing one foot in front of another, walking toward the source. Now she could see that the arched space widened. To her left and right there were muddy banks. In the water, there swam tiny fish, sweeping along before her like little schools of pale starlight.
This wonderful, entirely unexpected place must be the ancient River Bièvre. The rumbling overhead was a street. And indeed, when she finally managed to peer out one of the slits, she saw passing tires. As she moved along, the water became better and better. No sewage here at all, just the stream still dancing in its ancient bed of stones.
She began to look for a spring. There was certainly one nearby. She could smell its wonderful, stony freshness. Ten steps along, twenty, and she found it, its water bubbling cheerfully out of the ground. Above it, somebody in the long-ago had made a little grotto and set a cross, which now stood encrusted with rust. She lay herself down in the water and let it flow over her, let it kiss her wounds with its clean coldness.
The pain grew somewhat less. The cold was helping to heal the burns, the clean water to reduce the need of her blood to ward off infection. If the process was to speed up to a normal rate, though, she had to have food.
She lay in the pouring spring, twisting and turning slowly, allowing the water to clean every part of her, to sweep away the ashen skin and the burned flesh, and the debris that had collected in the wounds. The thick stink of it all washed away with it, leaving behind only the smell of the water and the smell of her.
Finally, when those two odors had not changed for a long time, she rose from the stream. She began moving along the riverbank, a naked, burned creature, svelte and, she suppo
sed, pale. She was looking for a manhole, some means of getting up into the city again, to the food supply that swarmed in its streets.
What she found instead was a door. It was steel and set high up in the wall, at the top of a series of iron rungs. The door was half the normal height and had a lever rather than a handle. She climbed the rungs, pulled the lever, which dropped down with a thud. She drew the door open and found herself looking into a dark room full of humming machinery.
She climbed into the room. In contrast with the wet cold that had surrounded her for hours, it was warm and dry. It felt fiercely hot, although she knew that this was only the effect of the sudden change.
Her nostrils had been seared, but her sense of smell seemed unimpaired. She smelled machine oil, the fumes of burning, and the scent of lots of electricity. This was a furnace room. She knew boilers and furnaces well. She had special uses for them. This one reminded her of the Ehler that she had in her house, a good, hot system with an ample firebox.
Beyond the furnace, she saw stairs. She mounted them, stopping at the top to listen and catch her breath. She laid her ear against the door that was there. On the other side, she heard the tap of footsteps. They moved slowly about, tip-tap, tip-tap, pausing here and there, then moving on. Suddenly a voice began to speak, using English. It spoke about the manufacture of tapestries.
This work had been going on when she was last here. Across the street from her mother’s house there had been a manufactory of tapestry. So it was still in operation, but there were also observers now, people from the English-speaking world being taken on tours of the works.
She turned the handle of the door. Locked. This was of little consequence. They had not learned the art of the lock, the humans. Shaking it a few times, she dislodged the tumblers. She knew exactly what she sought: a female creature of about her own size, preferably alone.
The tour group consisted of about twenty people being led about among the tapestries, which hung on large looms. She stepped out onto the gloomy area before the door, then slipped behind the nearest loom. On the other side, the weaver worked, stepping on her treadle and sliding thread through her beater.
Beneath the smock, the girl wore dark clothing of some sort; Miriam could not see exactly what it was. The casual dress of the modern age. She peered at the creature. It was intent on its work. She listened to the talk of the guide. The tourists drifted closer. In another moment, they would see this person, observe her working at her loom.
Miriam stepped into the girl’s view. She didn’t notice, such was her concentration. Miriam moved closer. Now, the girl stopped working and glanced her way, then looked harder. Her mouth dropped open. She looked the naked apparition up and down. An expression of pity crossed her face, mixing with horror as she realized that the woman she was seeing was severely burned.
Miriam stepped toward her. She swayed as if falling, causing the girl to instinctively move forward to help her. Miriam enclosed her in her arms and drew her behind the loom, then opened her mouth against the neck and pulled the fluids in fairly easily, requiring two great gulps to fin-ish the process.
Her whole flesh seemed to leap with joy; it was as if she were going to fly up to the sky. She fought against crying out, such was the pleasure. Her body from the top of her head to the tips of her toes filled with an electric tickling as her newly refreshed blood raced to repair her wounds.
The shuddering, tickling sensations were so overwhelming that she was dropped like a stone to her knees. She pitched forward, gasping, her body deliciously racked with a sensation very like climax. Again it came, again and again, and the voices came closer, and the tip-tapping of the shoes.
She grabbed the remnant, invisible in its heap of clothes, and pulled it behind the loom. As she untangled the dry, emaciated remains from the clothing, she heard a ripple of laughter. The tour guide had said something that amused her audience. The click of other looms went on. Quickly, quickly, Miriam put the clothes on — black jeans, a black turtle-neck, shoes that fit her, unfortunately, quite badly. Then the blue smock. No hat, and that was not good because her hair would take time to regrow. She needed a wig, but that could not be had here. She stood up.
“Noelle?”
It was the guide, curious about why she was not at her loom. They would know each other perfectly, of course.
“Noelle, what are you doing? Why are you back there?”
She could not speak. She had no idea what Noelle’s voice sounded like. If the woman came around the loom, she would see something impossible — a skeleton covered with skin, and standing over it, a hairless and eyebrowless creature, its skin flushed bright pink. The burns were probably still very much in evidence as well, making her the stars knew only how grotesque. She picked up the remnant and crushed it. The cracking, splintering sounds were appalling.
“Noelle!”
“I’m fixing it!”
“Who is that?”
“It’s me, please.”
The guide began her spiel again, but her uneasy tone told Miriam that she was not satisfied with what she had heard, just unable to understand what was going on. She’d send a guard around in a moment, almost certainly.
Staying behind the looms, trying to avoid being glimpsed by the workers or the tour group, she went quickly back to the door. She slipped through and down into the basement. She went to the furnace and opened the grate, stuffing the remnant inside. Never again would she be so foolish as to leave one of these little calling cards behind. In this new world of aggressive, smart human beings, one more mistake like that would be her last.
She looked around for a doorway to the outside, saw one marked Sortie,with a red light above it. She went out, finding herself in an alleyway. In one direction, there was a blank wall, in the other, an entrance into a rather quiet street. It was early evening now, and the shadows were growing long.
She immediately noticed a curious flickering effect against the walls and roofs of the street ahead. Each time the flickering got brighter, there would be an accompanying roar.
She moved forward cautiously, knowing that she had to go out into that street in order to escape. The closer she got to the opening of the alley, the brighter the flickering became, the louder the roaring. Now she could also hear crackling and smell a smell of burning petrol. The flicker-ing reflected against her black clothing. She held out her hands, looking down at them, at the orange light dancing on them. Then she stepped forward and immediately looked to the left, toward the source of the light.
The first thing she saw was the gutted ruin of her mother’s house. The Castle of the White Queen was streaked with soot, its every window black and dark, its roof collapsed into the shell of the building.
Before it there were dozens of police and fire vehicles and milling gendarmes. The light was not coming from their vehicles, though, it was coming from a bonfire in the middle of the street, which was being fed by men with flamethrowers. At the mouth of the Rue des Gobelins a high barrier had been erected. No member of the public could see over it. She did not think that she could easily get around it. In fact, going out into the street would cause an immediate reaction, given all the police and the care with which they were preventing sight of this place.
In the center of the fire, she saw black bones and bones glowing red. It was Martin, of course. Obviously, the humans knew enough about the Keepers to take extreme care that they were really dead. A gendarme glanced at her, made a clear gesture: stop there, come no closer. His glance lingered for a moment, then he turned away.
The ring of people around the bones were different from the gendarmes. They were dressed casually; they looked brutal. Nearer, stood a small knot of others whom she took to be the supervisors. These people around the fire, making sure that the very bones of their quarry were reduced to ash, were the killers of the Keepers.
It was possible, if she listened intently, to make out snatches of conversation — a gendarme muttering about overtime, one of the murderers saying some
thing about the temperature of the fire. Then the voice of a tall supervisor boomed out. “Fine ash,” it said, “then hose down the street.” That was to be the fate of her kind, then, to be reduced to ash and sent down the sewer.
Silence fell. More orders were given and one of the pompes was started up. Soon, water was pouring from its hoses and sluicing along the street. She watched it come toward her feet, watched as it reached the drain. It carried floating bits of burned material and chips of bone. A button came tumbling and bobbing along, and she saw that it was her own button, from the suit she’d had to leave behind in order to squeeze down the pipe that had saved her.
“Excusez-moi, mademoiselle.”
One of the gendarmes was coming toward her. He smiled slightly, then took her arm, but quite gently. “I will conduct you out.” He drew her forward. He blinked, seeing her bald head.
“What has happened?” she asked, trying to deflect his concern.
“Vagrants set fire to the White Palace. There were deaths.”
“Why were they burning the bodies?”
He shook his head. “It’s what the authorities said. Who knows why.”
She let the gendarme conduct her along. His body was loose, his breathing soft, his expression indifferent. Obviously he knew nothing of the Keepers and only assumed that she was a rather unusual looking woman. Her eyes were on the men who knew.
Closer she came to them, marching beside her policeman. They were engaged in intent conversation. She passed just behind the two supervisors. Then she saw one, a female, suddenly turn and face her. The creature was beautiful, with swaying blond hair. But its eyes, almost black, appeared as hard as chips of obsidian.“Excuse me,”it said in American-accented English.
The Last Vampire Page 13