The Last Vampire

by Whitley Strieber

  As she played, she gazed from one member of their small audience to another. She watched Falstaff Rosenkrantz, editor of Vanity Fair, searching his pockets for what turned out to be a Chap Stick. His powerful shoulders and narrow waist suggested good-sucking veins. She imagined how he would taste, all salt and wine.

  As she watched Miriam’s long, splendid hands manipulate her bow with the lightness of a breeze, she drew her own notes as best she could.

  Sarah felt rotten about feeding and about Leo, and Miriam was distracted by her crisis, but the listeners, by their expressions, obviously felt as if they were in the presence not simply of musicians, but of masters of music. The suite proceeded from its dancing allemande to the saraband and finally the subtle, generous minuet. They sat side by side, Miriam in a summer dress of the lightest blue silk, Sarah in jeans and a black turtle-neck.

  Standing open on the piano was a bottle of claret, a Latour nearly a hundred years old. There were glasses about and another, identical bottle beside it. A half-filled crystal carafe, shaped for use in ice, stood on an extraordinary little table. This wine was a white, but its color — a pale, rich gold — suggested that it, also, must be very fine. In fact, it was a freezing cold, exquisitely sweet Yquem, just now, at forty years, coming into its maturity. When guests sipped these wines, they would close their eyes.

  The furnishings, also, were extraordinary. The chairs upon which the guests sat were Directoire pieces, some of them. It is to be remembered, though, that the designs of that period were inspired by classical models, and some of the other chairs were originals, carried from hearth to hearth in Miriam’s baggage for millennia. Their wood, having been lovingly cared for by Sarah and all of her predecessors, was as rich as when it had been cut in the now-vanished forests of Greece and Italy and the Levant.

  Miriam remembered when this piece had first been played. It fit the moment so well because it had been composed out of pain, and this was a time of pain.

  LeSieur de Malchy had fallen in love with Lamia, and Lamia had amused herself by leading him on, letting him kiss her alabaster limbs and gaze into her proud and laughing eyes. She had drawn him into deep, true love, as she was so very expert at doing, with the intention of then abandoning him to his music. She didn’t want a man. She wanted a composition.

  Out of his anguish had emerged music fit to satisfy the ancient heart of the Keeper. Among humans, it had never been all that popular, but when Keepers joined to play, LeSieur was inevitably among the choices.

  The instruments that Miriam and Sarah used had belonged to LeSieur, made by Barak Norman, of London, for him.

  Miriam, as she played, well recalled LeSieur and her mother playing the piece together.

  The room had been small and close with candle smoke, but finished in gold, with scenes of forest walks painted on its walls. The music, Miriam remembered, had captured, as if in a living amber, the passion that this man felt for the woman who sat with him in her tall wig and splendid white gown.

  Only Miriam had been their audience, as she was audience to every moment of her adored mother’s life. As Sarah served her now, she had once served Lamia.

  The music came to its end. There was no applause. They had learned long ago, her friends, that such displays were not wanted. She poured herself some wine. It was the least refined alcohol she could tolerate, wine. But the soul of the grape, captured, gave her spirit enough pleasure that she had collected wine through the years. She’d drunk Falernian in Rome, for she had been intimately involved with the lives of the old emperors.

  Most of these men had not died by assassination as history recorded, but as vestal sacrifices. Rome had been secretly ruled by a concealed religion. The emperors were only seasonal kings, doomed to serve the state until the priestesses of Vesta decreed that it was time for them to die. They learned of this little condition only after they achieved the purple. It was no wonder that so many of them went mad.

  Some had been throat-slit or smothered or strangled, but others had been delivered to certain dark villas, rich, strange places whose graceful inhabitants spoke a tongue like thunder. The Vestas were a conclave of Keepers.

  She put the glass down and walked out, never thinking to excuse herself from her guests. This house was run according to very ancient principles. It was an extremely exclusive place but, like an ancient palace, wide open to all who had the right to enter.

  Whatever happened in here, they were free to come and watch . . . or at least, so it was meant to appear. They did so, full of nervous excitement over their attendance at what they perceived as extremely private moments — Miriam at her toilette, Miriam making love.

  This was the way the aristocrats of history had conducted their lives. Their privacy consisted of being surrounded by their people, and Miriam could be comfortable no other way.

  Or so it seemed. Miriam’s ancient life was, of course, far more complex than it appeared. There were secrets within secrets. For, as Sarah and now Leo knew, this splendid house was also a place of murder, where innocent blood was guzzled like cheap champagne.

  Paul was pushing a cockroach to the edge of the shower stall with his toe when he noticed something very odd about his feet.

  He squatted, then got out of the shower and looked more closely.

  It was the vampire blood that had made his skin so pale and smooth. Back in the ossuary, his shoes had been flooded with it. He rubbed his shoulder. Had it also sped his healing even more than usual?

  He went back into the shower and washed and washed, using the cheap sliver of soap that had come with this cheap sliver of a hotel room. He stood in the small oblivion of the drumming water, watching the suds go down the drain.

  It felt as if he were washing off a whole lot of his past in this lousy shower. Down the drain went his loyalty to his agency. Down the drain went his expectations about his own future: the successful end to his career, the honored retirement. He’d been a priest of death, and down the drain went this celibate life. Freud had said that all men want the same things: honor, riches, power, fame, and the love of women.

  Well, he’d lost it all, hadn’t he? — except maybe the love of a woman. But what woman would want a burned-out guy who couldn’t even tell her what his life had been?

  Becky, damnit, was the only woman he really wanted to talk to, and he hadn’t realized it until too late. Probably all she’d ever felt for him anyway was a little compassion, maybe. Women didn’t fall in love with him. They sensed all the damn violence, was his theory. He scared them. Or maybe it was all the traveling, the lack of time in one place.

  He’d taken care of sex almost clinically, using whores like toys . . . or machines. Soon he wouldn’t even be able to afford to do that.

  Lying on the bed in his tiny room, he concentrated on his immediate course of action. He had eight grand. That would last a couple of months. But he didn’t intend to spend anything like that much time here.

  He lay paging through his well-thumbed copy of New York by Night, looking for the names of clubs, then calling information and asking for the numbers. Things in the world of Goths and Vampyres changed fast, and what had been au courant six months ago was way past its time now. None of the clubs mentioned had numbers. Probably they were all closed or transformed into more trendy incarnations.

  So maybe the thing to do was to go downtown and just walk the streets. He’d pass the locations of the old clubs. Who knew what he’d find.

  On the other hand, maybe this approach was total bullshit, just an excuse for a bar crawl. In his heart of hearts, what he wanted to do was to get seriously fucked up, then find some whore to suck him off. That would put a decent end, at least, to a real bad few of days. He’d arrived in the Big Apple almost hallucinatory with lack of sleep and jet lag and the spiritual exhaustion that comes after you’ve been doing a lot of killing. And he’d arrived on the run. He’d holed up here, phoning a sandwich shop for food and newspapers. The room had no TV, so he’d slept a lot. At least one thing: the s
houlder was doing lots better. Still hurt, but hell, by all rights he probably ought to still be in the hospital.

  He had to get a gun. If he was going to blow the shit out of vampires, he sure as hell was going to need one. Too bad he couldn’t get hold of one of those fancy French jobs. Now, that had been a weapon. Hadn’t that baby worked! He’d settle for a good old .357, though. It had done good service for him in Asia, and it’d work fine here. You got close, aimed at the head. It was effective. Blew their noggins into meat and ketchup.

  Problem was, where did you get a gun in Nueva York without triggering some stoolie network? Guys in the illegal gun trade made money two ways — off their customers and off the cops they tipped. Of course, they wouldn’t tip on a real customer, but some jerk coming off the street, he’d get fingered for sure. His full description would arrive at the nearest precinct in ten minutes tops. Gun raps were a good collar in this town. Looked nice in a cop’s paper.

  First things first. Locate the vampires. If the club scene didn’t do it, then go to public records, work the pattern-of-disappearances angle. What worried him about that was that a whole lot of people evaporated in this town. It wasn’t like Beijing or Singapore or Tokyo, where a disappearance was news. Hell, most missing persons didn’t even make the back pages in this wild old burg. So okay, he’d work the club angle to death.

  They were on their way to the club, the Bentley rolling down Fifty-seventh Street toward Fifth Avenue. Miriam and Sarah sat side by side. Leo was on one of the tiny jump seats facing them.

  Miriam said, “A man may show up tonight asking after Ellen Wunderling. It’s about time for him to find us. I want to be informed the moment it happens.”

  The bottom dropped out of Sarah’s gut.

  Leo asked, “Who’s Ellen Wunderling?”

  “One of our dear princess’s little follies,” Miriam said, playfully kissing Sarah’s cheek.

  Ellen Wunderling had been Sarah’s worst mistake until the Paris emergency debacle. But why would anybody still be investigating that case? The police had closed it.

  Sarah wasn’t like a Keeper. She would not be able to escape from prison. If she went, she would die there, horribly, of hunger. What would happen to somebody like her, buried in a prison graveyard?

  “What man?” she asked carefully, worried that Miriam would say no more. Since Paris, Miriam had obviously lost a great deal of trust in her.

  Miriam reached up and opened the car’s sunroof. They were now speeding down Fifth Avenue. The spires of St. Patrick’s Cathedral swept past one side of the Bentley, Rockefeller Center the other.

  Sarah curled up to her. “Miri, I’m so sorry I did her!”

  “Don’t start apologizing again. We’re past that. Anyway, it turns out to be useful.” She stroked Sarah’s head.“Ellen is our little tar baby.” She smiled softly.

  Sarah didn’t quite understand. She knew, however, that questioning would do no good.

  “I hope Rudi’s there early,” Leo said. “I want to do all kinds of stuff tonight! I want to see how it feels now. Does it feel different, Sarah?”

  “No crashes, no hangovers,” Sarah said. She gave her a false smile. “But the only drug that really matters — ” She glanced toward the intercom button. It was off. “ — is blood.”

  “You’re hungry, dear,” Miriam said to Leo. “You just don’t realize it. We’ll need to find you a victim.”

  Leo kissed Miriam’s neck. “Give me more of your blood. I want to be more like you.”

  “You’re as much like me as you’ll ever be.”

  “You’re a fool, Leo,” Sarah said.

  Miriam gave her a shy sort of a smile. “Twenty years of love, and that’s all the loyalty you can offer.”

  Sarah smiled right back. “ ‘Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption.’ I violate my Hippocratic Oath by the very nature of my life.”

  “Take off your clothes,” Miriam said.

  “What?”

  They were crossing Thirty-fourth Street. The Empire State Building swept past above, visible through the open sunroof.

  “Do it.”

  Sarah didn’t want to, not here, not in front of Leo.

  Leo said, “I’ll help you.”

  “Sarah.” There was a clear warning in the tone.

  A few contortions between her and Leo, and Sarah was naked. She felt herself blushing. She covered her breasts with her arm.

  Pushing her arm aside, Miriam took one of her nipples between her fingers and pinched it, watching Sarah’s face. At first, Sarah tried to conceal her agony, but she finally cried out; she couldn’t help it, the pain was so intense.

  Leo watched, her eyes going nervously from Sarah’s contorted face to Miriam’s impassive one. “What’s going on? Why are you hurting her?”

  Miriam turned on the intercom. “Luis, take us on a tour. Fourteenth, down Broadway, give us half an hour.” She released Sarah, who clutched her agonized breast.

  Miriam took Sarah’s face in her hands, gazed into her eyes. After a moment, she kissed her, pressing her tongue against Sarah’s lips until she opened her mouth.

  No matter how often they kissed, Sarah was always shocked by the sensation of those narrow teeth and that rough tiger’s tongue. Miriam’s mouth had a faint, meaty sourness that was at once sickening and delicious. Then Miriam broke away, spread Sarah’s legs, and slipped to the floor.

  Sarah could not have been more amazed. She looked at Leo and shook her head, to communicate her total confusion.

  While Manhattan slid by above them and the Broadway crowds shuf-fled up and down outside the tinted windows, Miriam buried her face in Sarah’s lap.

  Never had Miriam taken such a posture. This was Sarah’s place with Miri, not the other way around.

  But — oh, my. Oh, my! Sarah thrust herself at Miri’s face, her hands moving to guide her head, to press her mouth more tightly against her.

  Miriam knew how to restore the bondage of a rebellious slave; she had done it thousands of times over the eons. She injected her tongue deep into Sarah’s vagina. The powerful organ stretched the membranes as tight as drumskins. When there was resistance, Miriam pressed harder. Sarah writhed. Miriam moved her head back and forth, but slowly, pumping carefully. Sarah held Miriam’s temples with shaking hands and glared down at her, crying and laughing, then threw her head back and grimaced through a fusillade of explosive climaxes. When they finally stopped, Miriam slowly withdrew, dragging her roughness along Sarah’s clitoris. When she raised herself, Sarah embraced her, clung to her, kissing her face and neck, then knelt on the floor of the limousine and kissed her hands and feet.

  Sarah lay at Miriam’s feet, her head in her lap, weeping softly. And so, Miriam thought, the little creature has come back to me.

  “Hey,” Luis said over the intercom, “you’re drivin’ me crazy up here. I’m gonna come in my pants.”

  “Leonore’ll do you at the club,” Miriam said to him as she lit a cigarette. She drew Sarah up beside her, took her head down to her shoulder. “You’re my girl?” she said, her tone kindly.

  “Yes.”

  She looked at Leo. “Hot?”

  “Oh, my.”

  “Take it out on Luis.”

  “I don’t want to make love to Luis.”

  “I’ll expect him to report that you were sensational. Incidentally, you’re going to feed tonight, so what do you want?”

  Leo barely whispered the words. “A man like my father.”

  “Ah. And your father was?”

  “Powerful.”

  Miriam smiled slightly, parting her lips just a little.

  “When you do that,” Sarah said, “you look ten and ten thousand at the same time.”

  Miriam burst out laughing. “It’s one of my best smiles!” The laughter was brittle and harsh, and Sarah was glad when it ended. “Stand up,” Miriam said suddenly. They had never closed the
sunroof.

  “I’m naked!”

  Miriam gave her a familiar look out of the corner of her eye. Immediately, Sarah rose to her feet.

  Miriam thought, Good. She does not think, she obeys. She’s come back at last.

  The slipstream roared in her face, sending her hair flying back. They were going down Houston Street toward the Hudson. Crowds on both sides of the street started cheering and applauding.

  Sarah threw back her head and raised her arms high and screamed and screamed and screamed.

  New York wasn’t exactly the most dangerous city in the world, but the screams that Paul was hearing made him think that a woman was being killed. He looked up West Broadway toward the sound — and saw a black Bentley pass, going west on Houston Street. Some idiot girl was standing up in the open sunroof bellowing her head off, that was all.

  She’d scared the hell out of him, damned rich bitch. He’d’ve liked to have given her a piece of his mind. Probably some damn tripper, that was why the screams were so bloodcurdling.

  New York was one giant drugstore. Everybody was young, everybody had money, and every damn thing was definitely for sale. Ecstasy, crystal meth, crack, coke, hash, grass, horse, even old-fashioned shit like his beloved opium. God knew, you could probably buy laudanum somewhere. You could get ten percent absinthe, for sure, hecho en Mexico. He liked getting drunk on absinthe. There was a poet in him, and the wormwood brought him out. Last time he’d done a bottle of good absinthe, it had been on the terrace at Las Brisas in Acapulco, one of the most beautiful places in the world to do serious drinking. The mountains, the city lights below, the sun setting over the Pacific — the view was unequalled. He’d gone back to his room afterward and written a thirty-page epic poem about the death of Nebuchadnezzar. Next morning, he’d had to go on the Internet to find out who the hell Nebuchanezzar was. Some ancient king.

  A couple came toward him, dressed all in black. The girl’s long, loose dress suggested possible gothic overtones. “Excuse me, I’m looking for a club called Shadowcat. Is there a place called Shadowcat around here?” The couple stopped. The girl was a heartbreaker, round face, merry brown eyes, and one of those smiles that says I know what you want. She had a cute rack, too, a couple of sweet little apples. She said, “The things you’re staring at are called breasts,” and the two of them walked off laughing.