The Last Vampire

by Whitley Strieber

  Leo put her hands to her cheeks and screamed. Her eyes wild, she turned to run out the door.

  Miriam was on her in an instant. She grabbed her collar, gave her a slap that snapped her head aside. “Shut up! You watch!” She glared toward Sarah, who was feeling the gorgeous postprandial levitation that came when you fed really well. Moral guilt had its limits. Now all was right with the world. Like an addict who has ridden the horse and lost, she was content with herself, made so by the charm of the drug that had seduced her.

  “Sarah,” Miri said, “take Leo down and show her how to do a proper burn. And I expect to see no ash, do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Miri.”

  “I’m sorry, Miri!”Leo babbled, rubbing her cheek.“I panicked.”Leo went to the remnant, touched the skin that tented the face.“This is incredible!”

  “It’s a small penalty to pay for eternal life, my dear. An occasional hobo goes to the Big Rock Candy Mountain.”

  Leo frowned. “The what?”

  “Gets released from the toils of a miserable life,” Sarah explained. Slang tended to enter Miriam’s vocabulary with a fifty to hundred year lag time.

  Leo would not touch the remnant, so Sarah threw it over her shoulder and took it down. In the basement, Sarah said, “Having fun?”

  “That’s not appropriate,” Leo said officiously. “A woman had to give her life.”

  “For me? Maybe I ought to kill myself.”

  “No, you have a right! Nature made you this way.”

  “Miriam Blaylock made me this way.And she’s going to do it to you, too.”

  “Miriam Blaylock is nature. And if she bloods me, it’s going to be the biggest privilege of my life.” They burned the remnant in a fire kept blue by Sarah’s careful attendance at the controls.

  As they were starting to ascend the stairs, Miriam said, “Come into the infirmary, please.”

  Sarah turned, surprised to find her down here. She was even more shocked when she saw that she was naked and all trace of makeup was removed. Her hair was coming back, a blond fuzz on her otherwise bald head.

  Leo gasped. Sarah took her hand. “Don’t be afraid,” she said.

  “But she’s — ”

  “She’s not a human being, Leo.” Sarah was stirred by the long, lean body, the deep, dark eyes. This was a being she loved, who had covered her with wild kisses, who had expressed every shading of passion upon her quivering, delighted body. No matter how much Sarah hated Miriam, she also loved her, and loved the fact that Miriam took pleasure in her. “You’re my beautiful one,” she would say, and kiss every part of her body, her lips, her eyes, her moist pudenda. “You pretty little angel, you dear, soft baby.”

  Leo made a terrified sound in her throat as the tall creature with the bright red eyes and wire-thin lips strode into the light. She took Leo’s hand. Sarah knew that Leo was now trapped. Nothing the girl could do — no matter how hard she struggled and fought — would release her from that seemingly gentle grasp.

  Sarah was horrified at what was happening — at how swiftly Miriam was acting, so that the girl had no time to consider her situation. But she was also fascinated because she had wondered about the scientific issues involved in the transfer process. She welcomed a chance to observe it clinically.

  Miriam drew Leo into the infirmary, a superbly equipped laboratory designed by Sarah, who followed obediently along.

  She was already being buoyed by the effects of her feeding. In an hour or so, the Sleep would come and she would take to bed, and Miri, as was traditional between them, would sing her a lullaby. The Sleep would take her, and as it did, she would deliver herself body and soul into the protective custody of her beloved and despised mistress.

  Miriam had tamed Sarah, after a fashion. But so also, Sarah had tamed Miriam . . . after a fashion. Thus does a love affair between species proceed — wild creatures finding what is universal between them, sensual delight and what abides in the heart, that love can cross any boundary and flourish anywhere.

  The blooding instrument — a black hose fitted with a small hand pump and two large silver needles — was already dangling from Miriam’s arm, one enormous needle a gray shadow in the flesh above the crook of her elbow.

  Leo was staring at it, her eyes practically popping out of her head. Stumbling, she followed Miriam into the small hospital room. Miriam patted the examination table. Leo sat.

  “Get the ice packs,” Miriam said.

  “What ice packs?” Leo asked.

  “We use ice packs in the procedure,” Miriam said. “Now strip.” She clapped her hands. “Chop chop!”

  Leo threw off her clothes. She lay down on the table, arms rigidly at her sides. Miriam looked at Leo’s arms. “Set it,” she said to Sarah.

  “I don’t like needles,” Leo said as Sarah stroked up a vein. How Sarah hated her now, the poor, scared little cow with her drippy nose and her big brown eyes.

  Now this kid would get what she wanted. Later today, Sarah would take her to the attic, let her listen to the rustling, introduce her to who lay there.

  “You will now be delivered of the blood of your eternal Keepers,” she said. “You will become part of me and I of you. Do you understand this?”

  Leo said in a tiny voice, “I think so.”

  “You will be given eternal life.”

  “Miri!”

  Miriam cast a glance at Sarah so terrible that her jaw snapped shut.

  “Eternal life! But you will be bonded to me by an unbreakable bond. You will be expected to serve me in every way, without question. There will never be an end to it. Do you understand this?”

  Leo turned her tear-streaked face to Sarah, and Sarah saw there a call for rescue from the very depth of this human creature. A soul was being lost, and it knew that it was being lost. But she said nothing.

  “Set the needle.”

  “N-no,” Sarah said. “No!”

  “You do it!”

  “Leo, this is wrong!”

  She tried to meet Leo’s eyes, but Leo would not look at her. Miriam grabbed the needle and jammed it into Leo’s arm. Leo cried out.

  Sarah reset it properly, secured it with tape.

  “You are free to go, Leo,” Miriam said. “I haven’t started yet.”

  “It hurts!”

  “Again I say to you, you are free to go.”

  Leo began to cry.

  Sarah was awed at what she was seeing. She had a sudden, electrifying insight into who the Keepers were, into what Miriam was. They were indeed a force of nature, and she thought that they might be killed, but they would never die. No matter who hunted the Keepers, the Keepers would always in one way or another wander the world, seeking the ruin of souls.

  Miriam grasped the pump in her long, narrow fingers and crushed the bulb smartly. Leo flounced on the table, giving a loud cry. Again, Miriam pumped, and again. Leo’s upper arm turned fiery red. She began to sweat.

  “How does it feel?” Sarah asked.

  “My arm’s on fire!”

  “Do you feel faint? Woozy?”

  “I see an ancient city!”

  Hallucinations. Interesting.

  Sarah touched the skin of the neck. Pulse very rapid. She laid her hand on the forehead. Hot, dry. She got the ice packs and laid them along Leo’s sides. Leo began to shiver.

  Miriam pumped, waited, pumped again. Leo’s eyes fluttered back into her head.

  “Slow down,” Sarah said, “she’s seizing.”

  Leo’s bowels let go.

  “Clean it up,” Miriam snapped, and Sarah went to work with towel, sponges, and bedpan.

  Leo cried and moaned. Sarah had to hold her arms so that she wouldn’t tear the needle out. She arched her back and writhed; she shook her head from side to side.

  Sweat, blushed pink, began to bead on her upper lip and forehead. Her epidermal capillaries were hemorrhaging.

  Sarah took her blood pressure — 270 over 140. Pulse rate 132. Temperature 106 degrees. She had perhaps h
alf an hour to live, fifteen minutes before brain damage or a stroke. Sarah got more ice, put a pack behind her neck, another between her legs. The temperature dropped to 104 degrees.

  Over ten slow minutes, Miriam pumped five more times. Leo came to and looked from one of them to the other out of agonized eyes.

  “How do you feel?” Sarah asked.

  “Water, please . . .”

  Miriam withdrew the needles. Sarah took alcohol and iodine and cleaned Leo’s wound and stopped the leakage of blood with a small pressure bandage. She didn’t need to do anything for Miriam. Her wound healed itself inside of a minute.

  “How did you know when to stop?”

  “Her skin told me.”

  Miriam’s people could diagnose practically anything in human beings by merely observing their skin tone. It was quite remarkable.

  “What would have happened if you’d kept on?”

  “I would have wasted blood. She would have died.”

  Miriam took Leo in her arms and went out with her, saying nothing to Sarah. She was more alien right now, less human, than Sarah had ever seen her. She realized that Miriam’s whole personality was a sort of act. Seeing her like this, you realized that she was light years away from being human.

  Sarah followed Miriam up to their bedroom. Miriam laid the girl, whose whole body was now flaming red, in the center of their bed. The Sleep was coming heavily onto Sarah, and she longed to lie down, too. But Miriam went to bed with Leo, enclosing her in her arms.

  Sarah was left to the daybed. As she drifted into the dreams she would share with the victim whose life flowed yet within her, she heard her Miri singing to her new captive,

  “Sleep my child and peace attend thee,

  All through the night.

  Guardian angels God will send thee,

  All through the night ”

  She cried herself to sleep, Sarah did, but when sleep came, it took her into a golden ship that sailed a windswept sea. In the purest blue sky she had ever seen, white seagulls wheeled and dove and cried. They came down and flew among the sails of her ship, and called to her with their harsh, haunting voices.

  She knew that they were the birds of God’s careless and unquenchable love, calling to her and to Leo, and even to Miri, as indeed they do to all.

  FOURTEEN

  The Veils

  Sarah awoke when the afternoon sun, glaring in the tall bedroom windows, turned the inside of her eyelids bloodred. Leo was there instantly, kissing her, embracing her. “Oh, Sarah, I’m so glad you’re awake! I’ve been missing you like crazy!” “You — you’re not sick?” She should have been hanging between life and death.

  “Oh, I was,” Leo said. “I was so sick.”

  “You slept for two days,” Miriam said. She came down out of the light like a descending angel. She was dressed in bright white silk. Her hair was nearly grown back, and flowing golden blond across her milky shoulders. She was perfectly made up, looking absolutely ravishing. Her eyes were their usual ashy gray.

  “We’re going to play this afternoon,” she said. “You’ll want to call your musical friends.”

  Sarah took Leo’s hands. “Leonore, do you know what’s happened to you? Do you understand anything about this at all?”

  “Look at my skin!”

  How well Sarah remembered that miraculous discovery. A woman loves a pure skin, more than most realize — until she suddenly has something she never dreamed possible.

  Leo shook her head. “And my hair!”

  It was as pretty as Sarah’s, almost as pretty as Miri’s.

  Perfection had transformed a pretty girl into a shockingly beautiful one. Leo smiled down at her. “I threw up all yesterday, but I’m better.”

  “I used up all the antinausea stuff,” Miriam said. “She took to it more easily than you.”

  “But now I feel — ” Leo shivered her shoulders. “I feel fabulous!”

  As Sarah went about the duties of her life, showering and washing her hair, Leo chattered away about herself. When should she feed? Should they hunt together or was that wise? On and on. It was utterly grotesque.

  “Leo,” she finally said when she was dressing, “I usually take this time in my office.”

  It was a lie and Leo knew it. But she understood and withdrew at last.

  When Sarah arrived downstairs, Leo was sitting cross-legged on the floor of the library looking at Keeper books she’d never been allowed to so much as touch. She tossed one of the ancient volumes aside and rushed up to kiss Sarah, chattering about yet more sensations and symptoms.

  Sarah picked up the book and replaced it in its box. “These are very fragile,” she said.

  “Yeah, they’re in Egyptian! Are they from Egypt?”

  “They aren’t in Egyptian. They’re in the Keeper language, which is called Prime. The book you were paging through is thirty thousand years old. It is made entirely of human parchment and is also the finest illustrated medical text on the planet. If it had a value, Leo, it would be, very simply, the most costly artifact in the world.”

  Leo had the hangdog expression of a surprised hound. But then she tossed her coltish hair and asked, “What are the first signs of hunger? I don’t actually know.”

  “You feel cold. Your skin starts to get cold. Then you become a bit less energetic. That’s how it begins.”

  “Should I get my own fleam?”

  She sounded very like a bride planning her trousseau, or a pregnant girl deciding the furnishings of the nursery.

  “Use a fishhook.”

  “Afishhook!”

  “A shark hook works quite well. I used one for years. The fleam belonged to my predecessor. Miriam just gave it to me recently.”

  “Your . . . what do you mean, ‘predecessor’?”

  “Oh, didn’t Miri tell you? We last about two hundred years. Unless there’s an accident, of course.”

  “We die?”

  “Oh, no. That we cannot do. We end up in the attic.” She smiled. “Like cast-off overcoats.”

  Leo glanced toward the stairs.

  “Miri didn’t tell you?”

  “No, she didn’t.”

  She took Leo’s hand and led her upstairs.

  Miriam was at the head of the stairs. “I thought you were going to make an arrangement, Sarah.”

  “An arrangement?”

  “Flowers. For our guests.”

  “I — yes. I was.”

  “Miri, do we die?”

  “You do not die.”

  “But she said — ”

  “The contents of the attic are my affair. As are those books. You girls do not ever touch Keeper things without my permission!”

  “I thought — ”

  “You thought you had the run of my house just because you’re blooded? You go downstairs and get things ready, both of you. And, Sarah?”

  “Yes, Miri?”

  “Be careful. Be very careful.”

  As Sarah was arranging the flowers that would stand on the piano during the musicale, Leo chattered away about the kinds of people she preferred to “do.”

  Finally Sarah snarled at her, “You’ve become a serial killer.”

  Leo went silent.

  Sarah turned on her. “You have! During the hundreds of years you now have before you, you’ll take thousands of lives! Men, women, children, every one of them wanting life and deserving life, and you will take their lives — steal their lives — because you’re a greedy, self-involved little monster!”

  “Sa-rah!”

  “You’re not worth the warts on one of their fingers! Not one! But in your arrogance, you think you’ve gained some natural right to kill them! Miriam has such a right — maybe! But you certainly do not.”

  “Then neither do you!”

  “I had this done to me. I didn’t ask for it. You did, Leo. You knew what it meant and yet you asked for it!”

  Miriam strode in. “Miri,” Leo wailed, “she’s — ”

  “I can hear,” Mir
iam growled. She looked from one to the other. “Two canaries in the same cage,” she said. “You’d better learn to get along, because you won’t be let out. I’m in trouble and I need you, both of you. Hell, I need ten of you! Fifty! But I do not need any bickering or moralizing or bitching. You’ll work together as a team or suffer the consequences.” She glared at Sarah. “Severe consequences.” She looked at the flowers. “That’s quite nice,” she said. Then, to Leo, “You are not her equal. You will learn from her and take her advice and, in my absence, her orders. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Miri.”

  “Miriam to you, child.” She went out.

  “Wow,” Leo said.

  As the sun slanted across the floor, Sarah got out their violas da gamba, and she and Leo set the chairs. Among musical circles in New York, Miriam’s talent was well known. Far more had heard descriptions of her playing than had actually been privileged to listen, however, for she never gave public concerts. In fact, she didn’t perform at all. This would be, as far as she was concerned, merely an hour’s casual entertainment.

  Leo greeted the guests, watching to see if they noticed how beautiful she looked. They noticed, all right — especially the women, who were always more aware than men of the details of beauty, the grace of the hands, the taper of the neck.

  Sarah and Miriam had been working together on LeSieur de Malchy’s splendid “Fifth Suite for Two Violas da Gamba” for a few weeks before Miriam went to Thailand.

  Maria Sturdevandt came and said hello to Sarah and Miriam. She would sing Madama Butterfly tonight at the Metropolitan Opera. With her was her companion Charlie Gorman. Bootsie Ferguson, the wife of Henry Ferguson, CEO of Goldman, Sachs was there.

  Miriam could play most instruments simply by picking them up, but she had practiced on the piano, the viola, and the flute, and on these she was masterful. Sarah had not been much involved in music before meeting her. But her own viola was now one of the loves of her life.