The Last Vampire (28 page)

“My God, who’s that?”

“A publishing executive on a guilt trip.”

There was a guy tied to a pole being whipped by two other guys with thick, black paddles.

“More publishers?”

“Two congressmen kissing a senator’s ass. They’ll be taking their turns on the post later.”

“You ever get a president in here?”

“What country?”

“U.S.”

“Which one?”

“Well, how about Bush?”

“Which one?”

Okay, that question was answered. “How much for this room?”

“Oh, you can do this room on my nickel. I’ll top you.”

“In your dreams, sweetie. Not my
schtick
.”

She shrugged. “You’d be surprised what it’s like, getting topped really well. Your ego is, like, imploded. This whole club is about blowing the ego away. Every room does it, but differently.”

“The Japanese garden?”

“The right kind of high, and you’ll feel very close to heaven there.”

“High is high.”

“No way. Our dealer is an MD who not only deals, he designs. He’s given all our customers physicals, he knows exactly what makes them tick. He’s doing blood tests, prescribing, adjusting, all during the course of the evening. They are being taken so high they’re gonna forget even their damn names.”

“And then the music blows you wide open.”

“You can get very close to God in here, mister. This place is sacred.”

Hell
called
sacred
— that was something he never thought he’d hear. “Can we go somewhere else?” This was not the part of the club for him. He wanted to do some pipe, or at least get another drink. There wasn’t much second-hand smoke down here, and he was crashing.

This time they went up in an elevator so small that they were touching. He sprang up instantly. When the doors opened, he stayed like that, because this was a ballroom full of beautiful beds, and there were people openly making love on them.

A pair of singers, a lovely, tall girl and a young man who was even taller, stood together singing in voices so filled with gentleness that they might have been saints. He recognized “All Through the Night.”

“O’er thy spirit gently stealing,
Visions of delight revealing,
Breathes a pure and holy feeling . . .”

There was a solemnity to this place that seemed at odds with what appeared to be an orgy in progress. Paul was a smart man, and he was well able to see the careful thought that had been put into all this. This room, for example, was about disconnecting sex from sin. No more need to hide.

Once in a while, he’d hit a house in Vientiane or Phnom Penh with a bunch of guys, and it would develop into pretty much of an orgy. It was fun but it was ugly, and you felt dirty afterward. In this room the lack of shame brought with it a sense of purity. Thirty or forty human beings were enjoying one another in all kinds of intimate ways, doing everything you could imagine with each other. Their faces glowed with lust, they sweated. But it was all so joyous.

Maybe Leo was right, maybe there was something kind of sacred here.

Seeing all these bodies entwined, he was starting to look at Leo real hard.

But she probably outclassed him like everybody else in this place . . . except for the morons in the dungeon. They were pols, and that was sorta his world. But he could not relate to getting whipped. He got punished plenty without any assistance. The knife wound was still healing good, for example, but he sure as hell knew it was there if he tried to raise the arm too high.

Leo was terrific looking — clean as a whistle and sexy as hell. He could get into her in a second,
way
into her. His equipment had been considered pretty sensational by some. Maybe she’d like a little taste.

He decided to give it a try. “Look, I’d like — ” She rested her eyes on him, which instantly shut him up. “Let’s go downstairs,” he said, his voice husky with embarrassment. He couldn’t proposition her in here, for Chrissakes. He was no damn angel; he needed his privacy.

She strolled out into the foyer. He wasn’t quite sure where she was coming from, and he didn’t want to insult anybody. But he had to get it on somehow. He was human. He couldn’t just be left to Sally Five himself in his hotel room, not after all he’d seen and felt here tonight. He wanted to be loved, too. But since that didn’t seem likely to happen to him, maybe she’d just give him a break, here.

“I think you’re really — I mean, I could sure as hell give you a nice time. If you need a tip — if that’s the drill — ”

“I want to show you a very special space now,” she said. She took his hand.

How anything could possibly top what he had seen so far, he could not imagine. This wasn’t just a place of pleasure. It was a whole new approach to pleasure, as something that did not need to be hidden and wasn’t a sin. Even the ones in the dungeon were learning that lesson, in their own peculiar way.

The people who could come here were immensely privileged. All of his life, he had thought that the social barriers by which we live were a tragedy. Miriam Blaylock, whom he viewed now as something of a young genius, was challenging those barriers here, and he was beginning to decide that she was succeeding.

They went down a back stairway, steel stairs in a fluorescent-lit well. There were doors with Exit signs all over the place and a hose station on every landing. He’d also noticed that the place was sprinklered and smoke-alarmed. “I’ve never seen so much safety equipment.”

“We’re very careful. You don’t want the least feeling of danger.”

“I’ve never felt so safe in my life.”

She squeezed his hand.

“Look,” he said, “I’m sorry if I embarrassed you. Or insulted. I just — I find you, you know, really, really attractive.”

“I’m flattered.”

They came to the bottom of the stairs, where there was a door with a breakaway bar that looked as if it must lead into an alley. A horrible thought crossed his mind. “I’m not getting the boot, here, I hope?”

She opened the door. There was a tiny chamber entirely made of mirrors. When he went in, there were Pauls staring at him from every direction, all of them disappearing into an infinity of repetitions. It was a sort of visual echo. “Hey, this is — ”

“Have a fabulous time.” She slammed the door, and he found himself alone in the small space. He turned around immediately, but saw only more mirrors and could not find the door.

Above all things, he hated confinement. But this was a place of pleasure. He was getting the ride of a lifetime for a poor bastard like him. He was not going to ruin it by freaking out.

So he wouldn’t freak out, but the guy looking back at him out of all these mirrors, he looked like he would. Look at the eyes, look at all that pain. Then he thought he saw another face. He saw — Jesus God, he’d been a fool to come here! It was one of them, watching him through the damn mirror. He went for the gun that wasn’t there, then lashed out. His fist smashed into the mirror. The room shook, he felt a blast of pain up his hurt arm . . . but the mirror did not crack.

There was a voice then, very soft, “Turn right and walk toward me.”

He turned right. There was nobody to walk toward but his own reflection.

“Come on.”

He took a step, feeling ahead — and felt air. This mirror was another one of the veils.

Was he walking into whatever had swallowed Ellen Wunderling? Some kind of damn superexclusive vampire lair? Oh, hell, if he was, he’d at least take a few with him.

He stepped into the most palatial bedroom he had ever seen. On the bed sat Miriam. She was playing the flute, and doing it with exquisite skill. He gaped at her, at the tall bed she was in, at the phenomenal tapestries on the walls.

There was a window, and outside he could see smiling green fields with people working in them, men with brown tunics and caps. A horseman rode along a path, a man dressed in the fabulous clothes of the distant past.

She stopped playing long enough to say, “It’s a TV screen.”

But it was very well done. The image was so clear that it looked more like a window than a window.

There was a chair across from the bed, big, carved, almost a throne. He sat in it. He watched Miriam Blaylock play, watched and listened. This was one talented lady. What the Veils was about was limitless wealth and the power of human genius. If you had the cash, the Veils could rebuild your soul.

Or if you were a damn dogface on a lucky streak, like yours truly.

Miriam was wearing a white nightgown cinched just under her breasts with a pink ribbon. He thought,
I have never been in such a wonderful place with such a wonderful person before, and I think I’m about to get laid.

Christ almighty. Now, he had to prepare himself. When she was finished with that sweet prelude, she was going to raise her eyes, and he was going to see once again her angelic and spectacularly sexy face. He was already as hard as iron. The issue was, how did he do it, if indeed he was to be afforded that privilege, without wadding her on stroke two?

The music came to an end. She put down the flute.

When he applauded softly, she laughed. “I was just fooling around.”

“You fooled around with the
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
better than anybody I’ve ever heard. Better than Galway.”

“I adore James.”

“You know him?”

“We’ve played together.”

“Okay.”

Silence fell. He didn’t know what to do next, what to say. He was way out of his class; that was the truth of it. He looked up at the ceiling, which was painted with a night sky, dark blue with gold-leaf stars and a moon that looked more like it had a snake in it than a man. The constellations were strangely off, too.

“That’s an antique ceiling. Do you like it?”

“Oh, yeah. How old is it?”

She got off the bed and came over and sat on the arm of the chair. “It’s from Atlantis.”

“Okay,” he said again, and instantly felt like a total jerk. What was he, a stroke victim, here? Couldn’t he come up with something a little funny at least, in response to a funny remark from her?

“Okay what?”

“Sorry, I’m just — well — I gotta be honest. I’m just totally overwhelmed, here. Your club — I mean, Jesus. I admit to feeling just a little outclassed.”

She leaned down and grasped him through the silk pants. There was no underwear involved in this outfit, so it was a pretty intimate contact. The pleasure was intense.

“You need to cool down a little,” she said.

“I need to cool down,” he repeated.

She got up and went over to a big chest. It was made of dark wood, carved with writhing snakes. She opened it and he was amazed to see her bring out an opium rig with two of the most magnificent ivory pipes he’d ever seen. “You said you’d like a pipe. I think it’ll help a lot.” She stopped, though, then cocked her head, as if considering something that was a little new to her. “We’re not against drugs, are we, Mr. CIA man?”

“Nah, the Company’s a big importer. Anyway, I been doin’ shit since ’Nam. I’m in an extreme business. You can’t handle it without extreme relaxation. You gotta compensate.”

She gave him a pipe, started to prepare it for him.

“There’s that antique lighter again. Lady, you gotta ditch that thing; you’re gonna burn up.”

She glanced at him in a way that kind of shook him up. Was it a cold glance? Or hate? Jesus, if —

But then she smiled, and it was just so sweet that he could not believe that she was anything except very charmed by him.

He took a long pull and in a second was rewarded with good vapor. It seeped through him like blood in a sponge. It was very good vapor.

She lit her own pipe, then went to the bed and lay back, cradling it. He did the same, lying face-to-face with her. As he smoked, he felt his erection calming down. That was good. The opium would make the evening last.

She kissed him on the neck, just a peck, then giggled. He kissed her back, right on the mouth, hard and long.

After that she didn’t giggle again.

M
iriam was careful with his kiss. She was not sure how much Keeper anatomy he knew, and until she was, she would take no chances touching his tongue with her own. Afterward, he gazed at her with what she thought were the saddest eyes she had ever seen.

Now, they were smoking together. She was handling the pipes.

He was still devouring her with his eyes, and there was in the back of her mind the thought that he might have some level of recognition.

She gave him a smile calculated to seem shy, a little surprised. He sighed, smoked, closed his eyes.

She removed the pipes after a few more minutes. She wanted him calm, but not in a stupor. Two pipes of this opium would put a human being in one, no matter how strong he was.

“Nobody’s interested in opium anymore,” he said, lounging back on the bed. “I mean, I picked up on it in the jungles of Cambodia. Primitive place.”

“My opium is grown on a Crown estate in Myanmar, processed in a facility built for the CIA in 1952. Some say it’s the very best pipe on earth. Did you know Maurice McClellan? He was in charge of that operation for CIA.”

“I knew Maurice.”

Then he was suddenly watching her with eyes as hard and cold as black diamonds. She was surprised — stunned, in fact — to realize that she’d just now made a mistake. If she were really in her early twenties, Maurice would have died when she was just a child.

“He was a friend of my father’s,” she said, rolling over on her back and putting her hands behind her head to telegraph how complete was her ease. “He introduced him to Prince Philip.”

“Yeah, that’d be Maurice. He traveled in pretty rarefied circles.”

“You know what we should do?” she said.

“What?”

“We should get you more comfortable.”

“This is a boss suit. I like the way it feels.”

“It’s club wear. When somebody comes in — ”

“Dressed like a bum, like me.”

“You were confusing my guests. They thought you were some kind of a cop.”

“Do you get cops around here?”

“Sure. The precinct’s just around the corner.”

“I noticed.”

“It’s not a problem.” Not when fifty thousand dollars a week was being sent over there and half the powerful people in the city were making sure that this particular block just plain was not patrolled.

She slid her hands under his shirt. He blinked his eyes. He got so hard so fast that there was a hissing sound as his organ slid against the silk of his trousers. As she unbuttoned the shirt, she wondered how much blood he could lose without dying. He was very strong. He’d probably last and last.

Once he was well trussed up, her plan was to remove all her makeup, to let him know that he had been captured by a Keeper. Then she would prick a tiny hole in his neck and use him as a teaching tool, letting Leo take him by small sips.

She ran her hands along his shoulders, pushed back the shirt. “You’re
so strong
,” she breathed.

“I work out.”

“What do you press?”

“Oh, two hundred. Two-twenty if I’m healthy.”

“You’re unhealthy?”

“I tend to get wasted.” He nodded toward the pipes. “That, booze, girls. I’ve lived in Asia too long, done too much — too much work.”

“What is your work?”

“Classified.”

She laid her head against his chest, drew herself, catlike, close to him. “That’s exciting.”

“What do you think I do? What’s your guess?”

“You — let me see — you’re
very
strong. But you’re also smart.” She whispered. “You’re a government assassin.”

He chuckled. “You kept my gun.”

“You can’t bring a gun in here. It’s against the law.”

“I thought the law didn’t apply to you.”

“My law.”

“How did you get so rich?”

“My great-great-great-great — let’s see, five greats — one more — great-grandfather was Lord Baltimore. He owned Maryland.”

“That’ll do it. But I still want my gun back.”

“When you leave.”

For a moment, he looked, she thought, kind of like a wild animal. He was hair-trigger; she knew that. Up close like this, he seemed even more dangerous.

She stretched, lying half in his lap and half on the bed. When she stopped, the edge of her hand was lying against his erection. She said, “Uh-oh.” Then, “Can I be a bad girl?”

“Be a bad girl.”

Very lightly, she touched it. Then she snatched her hand away. “Oh, it’s
huge!”

He swallowed. He was trembling a little.

She felt more intimately. “It can’t be as big as it feels.” “Have a look,” he whispered.

“Shall I?”

He was too big around the waist for the pants, so they were only three-quarters zipped. She opened them. He came out, bobbing, the glans gleaming in the soft light.

He
was
huge. She pressed into the tender glans with a fingernail, then held the enormous thing in both of her hands. She drew off the pants. He shuffled out of the shirt.

She had not seen a male so beautiful in years. His muscles were fabulous, his skin lustrous. His face was purest masculine poetry, chiseled and hard, but with the complex, haunted eyes of somebody who had led a dangerous and uncertain life.

Whatever, he was a lovely specimen and he was going to make a sumptuous meal. She was actually a little jealous of Leo. What a great first supper!

A few minutes before he was brought in, she had gone down and checked the furnace next door. All was in order. Under the bed was the black overnight case that she would carry his remnant in.

But all that was for later. Until Sarah returned, she would continue to play with him. She needed that book. If Sarah did not find it, then this creature would discover that Foggy Bottom could be used for more than just games. There were some very serious implements there, and she knew just exactly how to apply them.

She stroked his chest, made a ring around one of his nipples with her finger. She touched the puckered wound on his shoulder. “This hurt?”

“A little. It’s healing.”

She remembered how good it had felt, seeing that knife dig in. If there had been a little more room for her backhand, she would have sliced the arm off.

“What happened?”

“A client became upset.”

“Very upset.”

“Very.”

She kissed the corner of his mouth, but drew aside when he tried to kiss her back.

“You know, Miriam, I have to be honest with you. This is the nicest night of my life.” He looked her up and down. She was still wearing her sheer nightgown. “You are — oh, gosh — so much more than you seem. I mean, please don’t take this wrong, but you’re just a kid, and this place is really deep, here. That girl that took me around — she said it was sacred and I thought she was a complete moron at first. But I started realizing what you were doing. And I want you to know this — I agree with it.”

“Thank you.”

“You came up with the whole concept?”

“Yes.” She took his hands to her bodice, put the ribbons in his fingers. Then she drew his hands slowly apart. As she did so, the ribbon came away and the gown fell down her shoulders like drifting smoke.

“Oh, my,” he said. Her breasts were gracefully full, curved just right to fit the cup of the hand. He raised his hands. But he dared not touch. They were like some kind of perfect art, a porcelain dream.

She took his hands to them. When they lay in his rough palms, the nipples became erect. Gooseflesh dusted the pink areolas.

“Oh, Lord,” he said, watching this. He bent to her, laid his lips on that sweet skin of hers. Up close it had the texture of a child’s, absolutely smooth, as if life had not yet touched it.

Christ, he ought to ask for her driver’s license. But he wouldn’t, because if this was a minor, then God had made this kid to boogie and he was sorry, but she was gonna boogie tonight.

Her lips hung slack in a way that said she was real interested and real ready. He kissed her, which was awful nice. But he was careful, because he had a thing about him that had not always gone down with women, although the whores pretended to love it, of course. His tongue was kind of — well, rough. No other way to put it. He had a cat tongue. He went deeper, though. Couldn’t help it. The kiss itself was luring him, so sweet was her mouth. He just loved kissing this woman. Oh, wasn’t she a
woman?
Nice!

He wanted to touch his tongue to hers, but she didn’t seem to have one. It was way back in there. ’Course it was. She was probably scared to death.

But then he did, and when he did, she arched her back and cried out so loud it broke the kiss.

“Sorry!”

She threw her arms around him and latched onto him with her legs. She kissed him and kissed him, and he thrust his tongue into her mouth and her groaning and crying made him wild for her. She loved it; she loved the way he was.

She was haunted by how much he reminded her of Eumenes, who had been not only her husband, but her only Keeper lover. Power like this was something she had not tasted in eons. He was like the roaring oceans of the world, the flames of the stars, a tornado, a typhoon.

She locked her lips to his and opened her mouth to him, and he thrust in and rested in the kiss. Even though he had not yet entered her, she came to climax, came again and again beneath his sweating, eager body.

She looked at him, drinking him with her eyes. Never had there been a man so beautiful, never so filled with raging sexuality, never so — so — there were no words to describe it. No words.

They rolled and he was under her. The opium had done perfectly: he was ready, but he wasn’t going to explode.

He let her sit on him, felt her take his penis in her two hands. Her cheeks flushed as she stroked it, loved it, kissed it, and licked it. It wasn’t human, it couldn’t be — because it was going to fit her and they did not fit her. They were wasted, small creatures in their sex, not like a real man, a Keeper man.

He was — but this was impossible. They didn’t interbreed. She put that stupid idea right out of her head. He was a lucky accident, is what he was and that was
all
he was.

She wanted to taste of him. She wanted to know his every intimate truth. He excited her, truly, despite the hate that flapped in her heart.

“Hey,” he said, lifting his head and kissing her hard. “You’ve got a tongue like mine. We’re two cats.”

It was true, and this was getting very strange very fast. “We’re made for each other,” she said carefully.

He slid to come from beneath her. She knew what he wanted and responded instantly, with delight. She was
never
on the bottom, but with him yes. Yes. She belonged under him. It felt meant to be. She shifted her weight.

His huge form dominated her. Gazing into his eyes, she spread her legs.

“Okay, baby,” he said,“this one belongs to
me.”
On that word he pushed into her.

The world turned black. Then a dam burst. Thunder rumbled in her head. Thrusting at him, she screamed out his name,
“Paul, Paul, Paul!”
as he pumped deep and withdrew, pumped deeper and harder, lingered then drew back, thrust and pumped, thrust and pumped.

It was as if she had become a single, blazing point of pure pleasure that was racing out through the universe at a million times the speed of light.

Then he rested upon her, and the feel of his surprisingly great weight on her body was the most wonderfully natural feeling in the world. He felt so much like Eumenes it almost broke her heart.

His loins surged, and the pleasure became a fiery comet that went straight through her. He slid himself almost all the way out, then plunged in again. He held her down, and she enjoyed the illusion of being helpless — oh, for the first time in years and years and years — and it was just so damned awfully wonderful. It wasn’t scary — or it was, but that was part of the enjoyment. He was slow with her, and precise with her, sliding in and out, in and out while she shook her head from side to side and arched her back and yammered his lovely name.

It was
just
like being under Eumenes, having all her power stripped away by his greater power, and being free in bondage to him at last.

While he thrust, Paul drank her with his eyes. Not only did she look wonderful and taste fabulous and feel great to touch and hold, she had a very special instrument down there. This lady could use those muscles, yes, she could, to kiss the shaft and compress the tip in ways that not even the most skilled whores of Bangkok or Seoul or H.K. could even dream about.

Oh, my stars and bars, thank God for that pipe,
he thought,
or I would’ve come and been done in the middle of stroke one.

As it was, he went slow and careful while she kissed his chest and bit his hairs and licked his nipples. She cried out, she trembled like a branch in a storm, she pumped while he pumped, faster now, yelling, grasping his buttocks, pulling and pushing him. He was riding this filly, for sure; he was bigger than he’d ever been, and it felt better than it ever had.