The Last Vampire

by Whitley Strieber

  Was he losing his touch, or what? Then he saw a bookstore. Maybe they had some kind of SoHo guide that was more up-to-date than his copy of New York by Night.

  He loved to read, and he hadn’t been in an English language bookstore this big in years. Hundreds of titles, everything very colorful and appealing, all sorts of stuff. A dozen SoHo guidebooks, all brand-new. He opened one, SoHo Unbound. Under the heading, “Deep Dark Deadly,” was a list of spots with appropriately strange names — The Marrow Room, Bottomley Topps, Dragged to Death.

  He sure as hell felt dragged to death, but he decided to try The Marrow Room instead, because it had a more vampirish sort of a ring to it. Actually, none of them sounded much like they had anything to do with gothic play-acting. But one could always hope.

  The Marrow Room turned out to be a lavish nightclub full of what looked to him like little kids. There was music blasting, strobes and lasers flashing. Wonderful little bubblegum girls kept dancing up to him and waving their mermaid locks. He smiled and nodded, forcing himself not to so much as glance down. It wouldn’t have mattered, anyway — the whole damn place was full of jailbait.

  He went to the bar. “Stoli on the rocks,” he said.

  The bartender looked at him. “Parents room in the back, mister. But it’s BYOB.”

  He didn’t really know what the hell kind of place he’d blundered into, but there was no damn point in finding out, that was for sure. When had rock clubs for children come in?

  He left. A clutch of what looked like eight-year-olds clustered under a nearby stoop smoking and muttering together. This was different from Asia? How?

  Then he saw a storefront with a black cat discreetly painted in one corner as the only indication that it wasn’t altogether abandoned. A black cat was promising. He pushed the door open.

  There were skulls. His stomach gave a turn. He never wanted to be in an ossuary again. But the skulls contained candles. There was music, very bad rock of some indeterminate kind, and here and there a few people in vaguely gothic costume sitting at tables. A couple danced mechanically under purple light on a small dance floor. The place smelled like cigarettes and sour beer. The bar had a rack on it with bags of potato chips.

  “Stoli on the rocks,” Paul said.

  The bartender, a listless woman of about sixty wearing a black dress, poured something clear out of a bottle with no label into a glass with a whole lot of ice. She brought it over. Her face was painted white, her lips dark, dark red. She was wearing plastic teeth.

  “I’m looking for Ellen Wunderling,” Paul said.

  “You a cop?”

  “Not.”

  “Wanna bj? Fifteen bucks.”

  Paul was beginning to think of a whole lot of reasons to throw up. He was homesick. He wanted to go to one of those Bangkok barbershops where a cloud of comely maidens massaged you, cut your hair, did your nails, and gave you a blow job for fifteen damn bucks.

  “I’m doing research on Ellen Wunderling.”

  “Never came in here.” She turned away, busied herself pulling a beer — for whom it wasn’t clear.

  “Any other place I could go? I’m new here, and I don’t know the scene.”

  “Well, the first thing to do is not dress like a bus driver trying to pawn himself off as another bus driver. That horror show isn’t gonna get you in anywhere.”

  “These are new clothes.”

  “Go over to Shambles on Prince Street. You can get all kinds of stuff there. Get a hat, some blacks, some fingernails.” She cackled. “Get pierced, officer, then we’ll all just love you!”

  “I’ll pierce you,” a voice called.

  “Oh, shit,” another voice murmured.

  Paul went over to the table. He wasn’t absolutely sure if he was talking to a man and a woman, two women, or two men. But he sat down anyway. He wasn’t planning to get in bed with them. Or get pierced. “I’m looking for Ellen Wunderling,” he said.

  “Mistah Wunderling, he dead,” the most likely to be male said. His mouth was full of potato chips.

  “Miss Wunderling.”

  “You gotta go deep into the jungle, man — real deep. Try Hexion or the Hellfire Club — ” The girl — and Paul was now sure she was a for-real female and that underneath all that Vampirella makeup, she was your basic Queens chick — shook her head. “Hexion is a cannibal place,” the girl said. “They serve brain soup.”

  “It’s not real brains.”

  “What’s the Hellfire Club?”

  “A Catholic hangout. Run by former nuns.”

  “Any Ellen Wunderling connection?”

  “He should go to the Veils.”

  “Him and the Count of Monte Cristo.”

  “What’s the Veils?”

  “Just the most exclusive club in Manhattan.”

  “The world.”

  “Same difference. But it was the last place Ellen was seen alive.”

  FIFTEEN

  Scorpion Dance

  Normally Leo was not much interested in the lesbian stuff that went on between Miriam and Sarah, but watching them this close, with Sarah going wild like that right in her face, was thrilling. When Miriam had kissed her before, she’d been polite about it and pretended, but it hadn’t really been a turn-on. This had been the most amazingly intimate, beautiful thing.

  She’d been a lonely little rich girl before she came to the Veils, her main claim to fame being that she was the daughter of, like, the second cousin once removed of General Patton. She had a co-op loft in SoHo in an artist building that was full of lawyers. She had a Maserati and a little pocket yacht called the Y’All Come, but Y’all generally didn’t.

  At, like, four o’clock one morning when she was so fabulously wasted, Miriam had said to her, “Come and follow me.” They’d laughed. But she’d been totally in wonder because she was not exactly the kind of super cool person who’d be invited into Miriam’s house.

  Next thing she knew, she’d been given a little bedroom with cute curtains and a high brass bed. She’d had pretty much the run of this, like, amazing house. Gradually, she’d realized what Miriam did, Miriam and Sarah. They were lovers, but they also — well, wow, she was one of them now.

  She squeezed her toes in her shoes. It was totally incredible to suddenly have this ultimate power. She’d never had any power at all. But now she sure did. She could point to somebody and say, “I want that one,” and that person would undergo the most important experience of his or her life.

  She wanted to feed for the first time. Even if she didn’t have all that much hunger. She wanted this to happen.

  It was unimaginable that she would live a really long time. But Miriam had stuff that was, like, Egyptian that was still in use. They had some three-thousand-year-old chairs in there. Leo had researched it. She’d priced it. A chair like the one Miriam had been sitting on during their viola drag would go on at Sotheby’s easily for one million bucks.

  She was going to see, like, the future. Spaceships. Aliens. Whatever the hell. Unless the world ended. Global warming, was that for real? Miriam said, “What happens happens.” That was the way to approach it.

  They were coming up to the club. Great. She was already high. She’d been awful sick at first, but since this morning, she’d started to feel better and better and better, and now she felt completely damn wonderful. She didn’t have any aches or pains at all.

  The Bentley stopped. “Okay,” Leo said, popping the door.

  But Sarah grabbed Miriam’s wrist. “Don’t do this!”

  “It’s safe enough.”

  “You can’t be certain.”

  Leo watched them bicker. They’d both been real scared lately. For sure; Leo was no fool — she could see it. This guy was bad news.

  Miriam started to get out again.

  “The front of the club’s too public. Go in the back.”

  Miriam stroked Sarah’s head. “There’s going to be a confrontation, child. And the club is where it’s going to happen.”

&nb
sp; Leo watched her go in. Then she helped Sarah dress. “That was so cool. I feel like I really know you now, Sarah.” Nervously, she kissed her cheek. Maybe Sarah would do something sexy with her. She’d love to find out how it felt. Or Miriam — but that was too, too awesome.

  “You know me,” Sarah said. She followed Miriam, and Leo hurried after her. As usual, the club was dark, entirely invisible from the street. There was never a crowd outside the Veils. Ordinary people couldn’t find the place. They weren’t supposed to — only those who knew. And now Leo was, like, at the top of the food chain. She knew the truth behind all the rumors about Miriam Blaylock and Sarah Roberts. Sarah’d had a lover whom Miriam had killed, that was the main rumor. Another doctor. That they never talked about.

  Miriam intended to capture the monster that was tracking her and feed off him, maybe even feed him to Leo; she wasn’t sure. That depended on Leo. She was a tiresome little thing, truth to tell, but pleasant to have around and very eager.

  Sarah, by contrast, was that most dangerous of slaves — one who did not understand the real meaning of servitude. An evil old Roman emperor, Septimius Severus, had once asked Lamia, “As all the world is my slave, why is it that only I am not free?”

  Contained in those words was the ironic essence of the relationship between slaves and masters. Sarah was a poor slave because she thought of herself as a captive. Leo would be a good one because she would always look upon her accession to the blood as an achievement, not an imposition. This was why Miriam had been so careful to let her make a clear choice.

  As Luis opened the door to the club, Miriam gave a tweak to the little rod in his pants. “Leonore,” she said, “will go to you in the Pump Room.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “I really gotta do him?” Leo whispered.

  “Leo, I’ve serviced Luis dozens of times myself. You’ll enjoy it.”

  “But I’m not a whore, Miriam. I’m . . . one of you.”

  “And we are objective about sex. It’s a commodity just like booze and drugs. Sex is part of this business. Leave your emotions out of it, and your ego. Sex isn’t the sort of Blue Broadway that the average Jill imagines, my dear.”

  Sarah laughed. Miriam wondered what she found funny, let it go. She strode across the glittering bar that was the club’s first and most public room, calling out, “The front’s to be open tonight, Bill.”

  “You want the sign up, ma’am?”

  “I want the sign.”

  Sarah came hurrying along behind her. It was only ten, so there were few people here. “That’s a bad idea,” she hissed.

  Miriam stopped, turned to her, put her hands on her shoulders. She had not understood the notion of the tar baby. “He’s going to find us. But he must do it on his own, and the sooner the better.”

  She went to Bill, who was digging behind the bar for the small brass sign that said on it only, “Veils.” This sign was placed on the door. Beyond that, they never went. “William, love, there’s a good chance that a man will come in looking for Ellen Wunderling.”

  “That again! Don’t they ever give up?”

  “He’s not a cop. I want him drugged a little. Offer him a drink. Lace it with — I don’t know — something that’ll relax him, make him a little hallucinatory, perhaps. Ask Rudi. But be careful with him.”

  “Oh, yeah, you bet.”

  “What’s the crash so far?”

  “Nobody upstairs. Dungeon’s active, though. Seth’s on the horse, and that bishop is back. Upstairs is gonna get jammed later. We got DJ Bones tonight.”

  “Make him a regular.” His sound had incredible drive, but there was an elegance to it that fit this club very well.

  “Twenty thousand dollars a night.”

  “Do it.”

  So that her early guests would see her and be able to tell the later ones that she was indeed here, she went to her customary table at the rear of the bar. Also, she was most interested in watching who might come in that door. He’d had three days to find the place, and he was far from stupid. He’d be here.

  At first glance, this room appeared to be the extent of the Veils. But the point of the name of the club was that there were many levels, many layers to pass through. Beyond this room, there were eight others, but many more than eight different ways to sin.

  Rudi came up to her. “I got great meth,” he said, “plus them new Hi-Los and some dig hash. The hash was cheap.”

  “Push it hard,” she said, looking past him. “I’m probably going to do a pipe later with a friend.” She had a room in the basement that was locked using Keeper techniques. Not even Sarah could enter it unless invited. Sometimes, when the club was crowded and some target was available, Miriam might take it down there. Hidden in the room’s floor was an entrance to a short tunnel that led into the boiler room of an adjacent building. The boiler there had a very good firebox, where Miriam could dispose of remnants quite easily. She would crush them to jagged bits, and they’d burn with a sparkle and a hiss when she threw them in. If the tunnel was ever found, it would appear to be nothing but an old, disused drainage line.

  Miriam liked her room. She enjoyed the absolute privacy, the absolute secrecy. Being that it was entirely hidden, she had done some extremely wicked things there, so wicked that not even Sarah could know.

  She intended to be very, very wicked to the hunter, more wicked than she’d been to any human being in hundreds of years. If he brought his little gang of helpers, so much the better. She would take them all, gorging herself in the fashion of old, tormenting them so terribly that the ones who had to watch would be sick all over themselves before their turns came.

  “Cigarette me,” she said to Leo, who was hovering.

  The girl lit a cigarette, handed it to her. “Um, can I go down with Seth after I do Luis? They’ve got that Presbyterian bishop in the cage.”

  “Play your heart out, baby.”

  Sarah leaned close to her, whispered. “Thank you so much for what you did. I’m still singing inside.”

  Miriam smiled up at her, then watched her carefully as she disappeared into the back of the club. She was watching the way the shoulders were held, and the head. A slave’s posture was very subtly different from that of a free man. Not that they were bowed, but there was in the way they moved the aimlessness of somebody who has not planned their own actions. Sarah walked with decision.

  Miriam sighed. Sarah was perhaps too much in love to be a good slave. A lover sought constantly to remake the beloved in the image of her dream. A slave accepted mastery.

  “Sarah,” she said.

  Sarah turned back. Miriam noticed that there were tears in the edges of her eyes. “Yes, Miri?”

  “Turn on the veils, dear!”

  “God, I forgot!”

  Sarah turned the doorway on, causing the back of the club to disappear behind what appeared to be a dark mirror.

  Doug Henning had designed the doorways for her, using his unique skills with light and mirrors. People seemed to disappear into a shimmering black haze when they left one room of the club, and come into view just as uncannily in the next. Thus the Veils.

  She sat smoking and waiting. Miriam could wait well. She could wait for days, weeks.

  She wondered if the hunter had as yet done any of his evil work in the United States. At the last conclave, held in January of 1900, there had been nine Keepers in America. Perhaps a few more had come over the past century, but probably not. They were not a migratory people. They had divided the corners of the world when they first arrived here, and nobody had wanted the Americas — there had been no indigenous population to work with there.

  Two American Keepers had been killed in the airplane collision at Tenerife Airport in 1977. It was thus possible that there were only seven Americans left, including herself. It was also possible, if the murderers had already been here, that she was alone.

  Even alone in all the world. That was possible, too.

  She was contemplating this eerie
thought when she heard a male voice, pleasantly strong, say, “I wonder if you’ve ever heard of Ellen Wunderling?”

  He stood at the bar, a tall man with penetrating eyes, smiling at Bill with a detective’s careful eyes.

  Miriam’s heart never beat with excitement. At least, it hadn’t in so many years that she could not remember the last time. It was humming now.

  “That’s him,” Leo hissed excitedly, “that’s him!”

  “Have you done Luis?” “Miriam, do I have to?”

  “Go! Now!”

  The girl left. Miriam could now concentrate on the hunter. Look at those eyes, that face, the rippling power of the muscles beneath the cheap clothes. He was damned beautiful, this one. She felt herself getting wet for him . . . which was quite odd, but not entirely surprising. Humans could amuse her, but they did not cause spontaneous sexual arousal. Even as her sex came trembling to life, her mouth filled, for another part of her was threatened and preparing to fight.

  Look at him there, in his rumpled clothes, with that fearsome face of his. Did anybody else find him so ferocious looking? They had no idea what he was. They had no idea where he had been or what he had done.

  Look at the cast of his jaw, the line of his nose, his darkly glowing skin. And his eyes, look at the way they flicked here and there, like the eyes of a nervous fox.

  Almost, it was not a human face. Almost, it was the face of some sort of exotic animal.

  The outline of his suit told her that was carrying, and the gun was big — a magnum, maybe worse.

  She was well back in the shadows, but she wondered now if it had been wise to get even so close as this. If he recognized her — but that was absurd. He was, after all, only human. But look at his movements, the grace, the precision — was he only human?