The Last Vampire (9 page)

Just under that garret there, behind the little, arched window was a sumptuous chamber where a Keeper could make sport with his kill for as long as he cared to, flushing it with fear again and again, then calming it and delivering bursts of incapacitating pleasure to it. This would bring the flavor of its blood to an incredibly delicious richness, sweet and sour, reflecting the secret harmonies that sounded between agony and ecstasy.

She had not fed like that in a very long time. Mother Lamia always did. Sometimes her feedings would last for days. But Miriam’s human lovers had not cared for it and had felt awful for the victims when she did it.

Sarah, for example, could only bear to see Miriam do the quickest of kills. She herself struggled to live without killing, taking her nourishment from blood bank goop and pleading with Miriam for frequent transfusions that left both of them dizzy and bitchy.

Miriam went to the door. The way she felt now, she’d like to take a big, blood-packed human straight up to that chamber. Full or not, she’d spend a couple of days on it, using all of mother’s old techniques.

They were the Keepers, not the kept. No matter how brilliant, how numerous, or how violent, mankind remained first and foremost, their damned
property!

She pushed at the door. Locked. She shook it three times, making the very precise movements that were designed to dislodge the tumblers, in the event you had no key. Keepers did not have private property. All belonged to all.

It opened. She stepped in, treading softly in the footsteps of her lost past. A profound silence fell, a Keeper silence. Overhead, the great beams that had been so rich a brown in mother’s day now were glowing black, as if they had turned into iron. The tanning vats were empty.

She went across the echoing floor of the factory to the narrow stair. Mother had hauled their victims up these very treads, Miriam following along to watch and learn.

How silent it was here, more silent than any human place. This was still a lair, oh, yes. But where was its inhabitant? Would he not be at least a little curious about the stealthy noises down below, the unmistakable sounds of another Keeper entering the sanctum?

“Hello,” she said, her voice uttering the sibilant, infinitely subtle sound of Prime for the first time in many a long year.

He was much smaller than she remembered, and as dirty as a coal-scuttle, a creature that had not bathed since the French court had filled its tubs with milk. His eyes were tiny and narrow, and he had the pinched face of a bat. He came forward wearing the tattered remains of a hundred-year-old frock coat, otherwise as naked as at his ancient birth. He was hungry, hissing hungry, as shadowy and insubstantial as a ghost.

A wound opened in his ghastly face, bright red and dripping. He uttered a sound, horribly eager, and she realized that he thought her human. She was so radically different looking from other Keepers that he believed her one of the kept.

His skeletal hands snatched her wrists, enclosed them in a Keeper’s iron grip. Then his eyes met hers. The bright glow of eagerness flickered, faded. He had realized his mistake.

He dropped his hands to his sides, then slumped at her feet.
“M’aidez,”
he whispered, not in Prime but in French.

As she looked down at this filthy, groveling, helpless creature, she stuffed her fist in her mouth. But he was not deceived. He knew that he revolted her. Because he laughed, bitterly, angrily, laughed to cover her screams.

P
aul had missed the traveler by ten seconds. He’d glimpsed the creature — tall, wearing normal clothes (an old-fashioned-looking woman’s suit), a blond spray of hair, that was all he’d seen.

Rain roared against the skylight; thunder echoed across the roofs of Paris. He shouted into the phone, “Your people lost her. You and the French.”

He listened to Sam Mazur’s whining, complicated reply. He was CIA station chief at the U.S. embassy. Cupping his hand over the mouthpiece, Paul whispered to Becky Driver, “That’s a paper cup. I said
bucket.”

“A paper cup is what we have.”

Sam continued whining away about how the French had not cooperated and were not going to cooperate, that unless they knew chapter and verse exactly what the operation was about, it would absolutely not unfold on French soil.

“Tell me this, Sam. I’m curious. Why the hardening of the heart? I mean, the French don’t like U.S. intelligence. But we aren’t the enemy. They’ve always recognized that in the past.”

“Cold War’s over, my friend. Europe is sick of us, and France is sickest of all. They hate the way we and the Brits use the Echelon system to spy on them electronically. U.S. intelligence has had it here, man. Time to pack up our silencers and go home.”

The paper cup into which the entire thunderstorm appeared to be dripping had filled up. “Becky, do you think you could empty this? These are Burmese shoes. I can’t risk getting them wet.”

She cast her big brown eyes down toward his feet. “You got those in Myanmar?”

“Had them made. I’m suspicious that there’s cardboard involved.”

“They look like funeral shoes.”

“What the hell are ‘funeral shoes’?”

“The kind guys wear to funerals. Shiny, black, and from about 1974.”

Charlie Frater snickered. Paul glared at them both. He’d brought dumpy, bespeckled Charlie and lithe, lovely Becky because they were the most ferocious close-in workers he had. Charlie was one of those people who just did not stop, not ever. He walked into danger like a priest walking into his church. The wonder of it was he looked like a guy who lived behind a desk deep in some civil service nowhere.

Becky, on the other hand, fancied herself a lady spy from the movies. She cultivated the effect with her dark, flowing hair and her long coats. She was only twenty-three, but she was the most cheerful and fearless warrior he had. And quick. So breathtakingly quick.

Not a man on the team hadn’t thought about Becky, probably dreamed about her. Paul had. But she kept to herself emotionally. Paul didn’t pry.

The rest of the team would assemble in the States. Paul’s highest priority was to eradicate the vampires there, always had been. Asia had been done first because it was available. Now he had to stop this traveler, lest she get to the U.S. and organize opposition. He had to stop her here.

He returned to Sam. “Bottom line is this: We lost that damn thing and it is now running around Paris telling all of it’s fuckin’ friends that somebody’s onto them. I regard that as your fault. I’m sorry.”

“May I hang up?”

“You may not.”

“’Cause I have something to do. Important. Secret.”

“Tell me, does a ritual chewing out
always
make you need to take a dump?”

“Yes, it does.”

Paul carefully replaced the receiver in the cradle.

Becky and Charlie were staring at him.

“What?”

“What do you mean, what? What the hell did he say?”

“He’s a CIA bureaucrat. He said nothing.”

The skylight was now leaking in five places. As night fell, the immense skyscraper across the street began to light up. Whatever slight sense of privacy the room might have afforded was gone. Worse, there was no way to curtain off the skylight. At least two thousand office workers could look directly down into what was supposed to be a secret CIA safe house.

Paul stared up at the office building. “Let’s put together some dance numbers,” he said.

Charlie, who was, for some reason, practicing rolling cigarettes with a little machine, responded. “Stick a hat up there and maybe they’ll throw change.”

“Goddamnit, how are we gonna use this sty? Do either of you have a room that has a little privacy for us to work in, at least?”

“They’re way too small, boss,” Becky responded.

“Bullshit. We can manage.”

“More than one person in my cell and the zipper gets stuck.”

Paul thought,
sounds like fun
. He said, “Goddamnit!”

“Is this the cheapest hotel in Paris?” Charlie asked.

“Our employer is not in the habit of billeting its personnel in the cheapest anything. The
Sans Douche
is the cheapest inconveniently located piece-of-shit hotel in Paris. It’s conceivable, although just barely, that there exists another hotel with a marginally lower price. But it will not be as bad as the dear ol’ S.D. Would you care for some cat hair?” He slapped the bed, which was making him break out. “I’ve got plenty more than I need.”

“What we need is a plan of action,” Becky said, stating what was painfully obvious.

“What we need is a way to prevent the minister of the interior from calling in the ambassador and asking him why there are CIA personnel in Paris searching for the goddamn Bride of Dracula!”

“There was no Bride of Dracula, boss.”

“There damn well
was
a Bride of Dracula.”

“No, I don’t believe there was, actually.” Becky clicked the keys on her laptop a few times. “Nope. No
Bride of Dracula,
says the Internet Movie Database.”

“Take a letter. Steven Spielberg: ‘Stevie! Have I got an idea for you. It’s Dracula, except she’s a woman!’ Ladies and gentlemen, I will now retire.”

“Thing is, boss, how’re we gonna find her?”

“To fuck around with the French or not to fuck around with the French, that is the question.”

Charlie began to shuffle along beneath the skylight. “The problem is, we need to get this done.” He started singing, and that was terribly sad.

“ ’Cause she’s spreadin’ the news, she’s doin’ it today, ’cause she wants to be a part of it — ”

“Don’t they test for people like you anymore, Charles? I mean, when we signed on, the first thing they gave us was a test to see if we were ass-holes. In my generation.”

“Cold War’s over, boss. They’re putting the old assholes out to pasture, not hiring new ones.” The phone rang. It was Sam, back again for more punishment.

“Hey, bro.” They’d been in Cambodia together, in Laos. Paul Ward and Sam Mazur were allies of the blood and soul.

“Tell me something. Where’s a good place to get sick on the food in — where are we, again, Beck?”

“Montparnasse.”

“Montpissoir.”

“There’s thousands of restaurants out there.”

“Good.”

“Very.”

“Cheap.”

“Not very.”

“McDonald’s?” “What’re you doing in Montparnasse, anyway?”

“We’re billeted in one of the shitty little hotels.”

“God, you’re low. You’re so low that it worries me even talking to you. I have ambition. I want to be a big-timer back at Langley. Got my sights set on the Lesotho/Chad/Botswana desk. Can’t swing something like that if people realize I’m tangled up with a liability like you.”

“The French said Mrs. Tallman was believed to have taken a taxi into the city. They give you any details?”

“Well, actually, yes.”

Paul tried not to hope, but did.

“The taxi is believed to have been French.”

Had he not hated the vampires so much and been so obsessed with them, he would have been ready with a comeback. All he could do was plead. “I need French cooperation, Sam. You gotta get it.”

“Whatever this is, they think it’s some kind of crazy American bull-shit, or maybe we’re trying to make assholes outa them or whatever. What’s that noise, anyway?”

“The rain.”

“Really!”

“Really.”

“’Cause it’s beautiful here.”

“Oh, shut up. Something’s bothering me, and lemme tell you what it is.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Well, this should look to the French like an Interpol operation. So why are they being so damn shirty?”

“Because they know it isn’t.”

“And why would they know that?”

“Because Interpol told them.”

“Clever boys. Okay, Sam — and guys, both of you listen up. Because I do have a suggestion. I think that we ought to detail a fluent French speaker to liaise with the police on the pretext that we have a missing national —”

“All hell will break loose.”

“No, listen to me. Tell them it’s a matter of the heart. We just need to search around a bit — very discreetly — because this lady has run away from home, and it’s politically sensitive. The French will buy this. It’s the kind of thing they understand.”

“The French will buy. They will not understand. They’ll want the name, rank, and serial number; then they’ll tell you whether she’s d.o.a. or not. That’ll be the extent of their cooperation.”

“What we need — look, Charlie, quit fucking with that — what is that?”

“A cigarette maker I bought in Bangyercock. It’s neat.”

“Bangkok, you sexist bitch,” Becky said.

“Put the toy away. What we need — are you still there, Sam?”

“Patiently waiting.”

“What we need, and I am talking about right now, the next few minutes, is we need to find the vampires she has come to see. We’ve lost her. No description except what looked like a Chanel suit circa about 1975 and real blond hair that was probably a damn wig. With no cooperation from the locals, we gotta shift gears. We use the same basic technique we’ve been using since Tokyo.”

“Which is?”

“We cull police records for patterns of disappearance. My guess is that they’ll cluster around the lairs, just like everywhere else we’ve been. Here in Paris, we’ll be able to get good maps — sewer lines, wire conduits, building plans, drainage pipes, all of it. It’ll be easier than Singapore. A hell of a lot easier than Shanghai.”

“Boss?”

“Yeah, Beck?”

“Ask him, who keeps crime records here? Is there a missing persons bureau?”

Paul found a button on the phone next to a grill that was hidden on the side. When he pressed the button, he discovered that he had a decent speakerphone.

“Sam? You’re on speaker.”

“Hey.”

Becky asked her question again.

“Prefecture of Police, Hall of Records,” Sam replied. “There are going to be ordinary murders and disappearances mixed in,” he continued.

“Meaning?”

“You’re gonna have to read the description of each crime to find out if it started as a disappearance. You read French?”

“I read French,” Charlie said.

“Sam,” Becky asked, “when is a missing person declared dead in this country? If there’s no presumption of foul play, say.”

“Nine years.”

“Are those records held separately?”

“I don’t truthfully know. We’ll need to ask the French.”

“Shit,” Becky said carefully.

“What if we tell them it’s a historical survey,” Paul suggested. “Becky’s a student from Harvard. She’s got a powerful daddy, and the embassy’s been asked to help her do research for her thesis.”

“That’ll work,” Sam said. “I can have her in the Hall of Records within the week.”

“Tomorrow, Sam, first thing.”

“There’s bureaucracy, man. This is France.”

“Do it, Sam.”

“Is this stuff computerized?” Becky asked.

“You’ll be looking at everything from the best databases you ever saw in your life to big black books that weigh forty pounds and make you sneeze.” It was agreed that they’d meet at a bar called Le Lapin Robuste on Rue du Sommerard tomorrow at noon. By then Sam would know exactly how the records were organized. From there, they’d go to the Prefecture of Police, which was nearby, and see how far they could get.

As soon as the conference call ended, Charlie and Becky began looking through a Paris Zagat’s guide for a restaurant for dinner. Paul watched them. He felt once again the awful, frantic feeling that had been coming over him from time to time ever since he’d seen the grotesque remains of poor Kiew Narawat.

For a while, the knowledge that vampires were real had depressed the hell out of him. He’d tried to find some special meaning in the fact that it had happened to his father, but all he’d found was special hate.

There was something ghastly about discovering that you weren’t at the top of the food chain. It was like discovering that you had a hidden and fatal disease. You were left feeling horribly out of control. It entered your dreams . . . it was a cancer of the mind.

“Uncle Paul,” Becky said, “since there’s nothing we can do tonight, could me and Charlie please, oh please, take you out to some cheap-jack hole-in-the-wall for some onion soup and wine?” That snapped the twig that had been about to snap ever since he’d lost track of the damn vampire. He looked at them — two kids made arrogant by too many easy victories.