She had fought the current for hours. The stars told her that she was making barely a league in two hours. She did not know where this land was—perhaps an island of the ocean, or some remnant of a sunken continent.
No matter, after four days she had grown tired, and the sea was coming to seem more like a friend. She had closed her eyes, and at once a druggy sleep had come upon her. What had awakened her was the pressure of the water as it bore into her ears and crushed her eyes back into her head.
She’d opened them to darkness absolute, and known that when she breathed, it was going to be water. Drowning would not kill her, but it would choke her and weigh her down, and down in this darkness she would sink until the ocean’s weight smashed her to pulp. But still she would linger on, consciousness clinging to every wrecked atom of her body—to the pain and the emptiness, until eventually she was consumed by ocean creatures or dissolved in the chemistry of the deep. But when would that be? A year, ten, a thousand…a million?
She had lashed out, grabbing water, her legs going like palm fronds in a screaming gale, and been about to scream when she had drawn her mouth shut and closed her hands over it, and held the air that was in her lungs.
No matter how much it hurt, she had to keep her air, because in this blackness there was no up or down, and floating was the only way she had of returning to the surface.
There had been no sense of motion. She’d felt the frantic hunger for air that would be with her forever if she drowned, the awful, cloying urgency that made her gobble for breath, and the idea that this torment might never end had so frightened her that her guts contracted, causing Kurt’s still undigested blood to gush out of her in both directions.
Time began moving slower, and the pain went on and on. Every orifice had emptied its contents. Her hands twisted into fists, her legs drew up under her. Still, though, she did not breathe. There had to be enough air left in her to allow her to rise. That was what she had, and all she had. Otherwise, she was drowned.
It was at that moment that something passing strange happened, something that continued to resonate even in this present hell of fish and stench and deadly crewmen. It was so vivid that it seemed even now more like something that had happened in a dream.
She had suddenly not been in the water, she had been lying in a shady, fragrant bower. Close by, it was very quiet. She could see that the sun was bright beyond the flower-heavy branches that drooped to the ground all around her. Far off, she heard ringing—a bell, it seemed, that had been tolling all of her life. Her whole being and soul were set to longing by that bell.
She opened her eyes. She even sat up. She looked down her chest, which was covered by a bodice of the most intricate lace, as soft as a cloud. Touching it with wonder, she had a vision of a woman sewing by the warm light of a candle, sewing and singing, and outside the summer wind was singing in the trees.
Then she was back in the water, just like that. Her head raised as she torsioned her back in an agony of suffocation and sheer disappointment—and she glimpsed the moon bounding in the sky, and took in a massive, gulping breath of the best air she had ever smelled in her life, and she cried out in triumph and relief, and began to tread the surface, and her hungry eyes gazed at that moon like the eyes of a prisoner freed.
As she rose along one of the long, predawn swells that were sweeping past, she had seen another light—quite a bright light, low to the water. Swimming toward it had caused an outline to appear against the moonglow. She’d heard voices, the rattle of machines.
It was a fishing boat. She’d struggled slowly closer, begging her lucky stars that they wouldn’t start their engine and plummet away. Then she had seen their nets overhanging from spars. The moment when she had reached out and closed her nearly numb fingers around one of their many ropes had been one of the holiest she had ever known.
She had drawn herself up the net, so exhausted that she could barely put one hand above the other. Sick from a stomach full of salt water, as naked as a baby, she had dropped into the hold of the ship, splashing into the seething fish and plunging down among them to hide herself. She lay, just breathing, waiting to be dragged out by the crew. But the crew did not react. Somehow, they had not seen her.
She had spent two days here, trying and largely failing to avoid being gouged by the vicious fins of the fish. But now the motion of the boat was changing. The voices of the crew were loud and excited. The sea on the other side of the hull was restless with hurrying chop. She longed to raise herself up, to look out and see what was happening. But she dared not. Her idea about man had changed entirely since she’d begun this journey. Man was much too dangerous to confront. No, she must become a creature of night and shadows, and the time to start was right now.
With her superb ears, she could hear not only the voices of the crewmen up above but the thutter of their hearts and the whisper of the blood in their veins. Over the grumble of the engines, she could hear other sounds that she thought might be coming from a nearby shore.
What she could see by looking in the only direction she could—straight up—was a rectangle of sky, glowing dully in the early hour.
She was trying to get her bearings when the few visible stars were suddenly blanked. At first, it was shockingly unclear what had happened. Then, as its trailing edge slid past, she realized that they had been passing under a massive object. There was silence from the deck above. It did not seem to have alarmed the fishermen, who continued to move about, doing their work in their black slickers. Her mind was so filled with question, though, that she went to the access ladder at the far side of the hold and risked a quick climb out of her hiding place to see more.
She lifted her head into a vision of human construction so great that it sent a cold steel spike of horror deep into her heart. At first, it seemed as if she was looking at the wing of a gigantic bird.
But no, this was not a wing, not the way it hung there between dark ridges of land. Also, the rows of lights like shimmering beads strung above it, and the brighter lights moving across it spoke eloquently of the fantastic truth: this was a gigantic bridge that spanned the neck of a broad inlet to the sea.
At that same moment, a shaft of light struck the top of the fishing boat’s mast. She turned and saw, burning through a forest of what she took to be immense tree trunks, the first rays of the sun. Small waves raced before a fresh northerly breeze, and golden clouds filled the eastern sky. But instead of the sound of the wind and the calling of gulls, there arose from all sides a great, indefinable roar, as if a giant was bellowing at the dawn.
They were entering the largest bay in the world, spanned by a bridge that must be the wonder of ten planets. Surrounding this bay was a sea of light that made Cairo—great Cairo—appear dim. Overhead, blinking sky-ships pushed their way through the air.
When the boat altered its course a little, Lilith’s view changed. She saw before her a statue of such splendor that it made the Colossus of Rhodes appear a dark and pitiful dwarf of a thing. This fantastic object was flooded in light so bright that it must defy the darkest night. It held aloft a torch with a golden flame, and upon its head was a diadem crown. This must be the goddess of this place, fittingly tremendous.
There came then into view a construction so unimaginable that for a long time she perceived it only as a soaring, shimmering jumble of light. When she realized that she was looking up a majesty of cliffs that had been made into palaces with thousands upon thousands of windows, all glittering with light, she almost wept. How mighty had become the works of man! Coming to this place naked in a sodden pile of fish made her clench her jaws with frustration and anger.
Glaring defiance at the goddess and the palaces, shaking away her tears, she slid down into the shadows again and hid herself.
Leo had come back last week, just to see that absolutely all the evidence was gone. She had a fear of forgetting some small thing that would land her in prison.
She’d found nothing out of order—at least, not at first.
She had come down into this cellar, looked in the furnace, and found its interior to be pale gray, just as it should be, empty even of ash. But then, standing there with the door open, she had begun to think that perhaps she hadn’t had to pull back the bar just now to open it. Or had she?
She’d stood there thinking and wondering, trying to recall each tiny movement. And no, she did not think she’d had to unlock the furnace.
Since it had run, and it had to be locked to run, that meant that somebody else had been here and had opened it, then not closed it down completely. It was an easy mistake to make. The handle was not large.
Her immediate reaction had been straightforward: get out of the house. She’d left by the back and gone down the tiny alley, coming out in Sutton Place and hurrying away. She’d planned never to return.
But—and it was a large but—
Then had come another disturbing event, the disappearance of Mr. Leong.
She’d hired a private detective, only to find that his social security number belonged to a dead man. So maybe he was an illegal immigrant who had skipped. Or maybe not. Maybe he’d been something altogether different.
Paul Ward’s name had come to mind. More than anybody alive, she hated Paul Ward. She knew that he was a CIA agent. Sarah had told her. She didn’t know much about the CIA, but planting somebody on her staff seemed the kind of thing they would do.
So, had she been under surveillance that night? Had sneaking past her drowsy little cook been a sucker’s game? She hadn’t felt followed, but maybe she was wrong.
So here she was again, scared to death, trying her best to find out once and for all whether or not somebody other than her had touched this furnace. It hadn’t been easy to get what she needed. Provided with limitless resources but crippled by limitless recognition, she could not do something as seemingly simple as buy a fingerprint kit in a spy store. She’d had to go to the website of the Lightning Powder Company and order the things she thought she might need, hoping that her L. Patterson credit card wouldn’t cause them to get all excited. She’d had it all sent to the Mailboxes, Etc. on Sixth Street where she kept a box, then gone in and gotten it wearing her brown wig and dark glasses, and hoped that they weren’t just pretending not to recognize her. She’d also gotten the Manual of Fingerprint Development Techniques from them.
The oily, adherent fingerprint dust was almost invisible as it went on, but when she turned on the black light that had come in the kit, the prints blazed forth.
The furnace door was covered with smears. They didn’t even look like fingerprints. But then, as she kept examining them, they began to make some sense. Miri’s were there, easily distinguishable because there were none of the whorls associated with human prints, just a series of vertical ridges. They were old, though, you could tell. The book said that fingerprints might last hundreds of years, so they could be from fifteen years ago or fifty.
What she was looking for were prints that had been laid on top of her own. But which ones were hers? She had printed herself before coming here, and now compared the card to what she was seeing. One after another, she found prints of her own. Again and again, they were unsmudged, obviously recent. She dusted the edges of the handle. Looked fine.
This was good, this was a relief.
And then she saw it. It wasn’t a clear print on top of hers, but rather two of her own prints that had been partly smudged away. Her stomach felt as if it would crawl up her esophagus. A flush went down her, and she knew that she was red from her forehead to her chest. Her breathing became harsh. “Don’t let them lock you up,” Sarah had told her. “Because starvation for us is worse than the worst hell they can imagine. Eventually, you cannot move. Your body digests everything but bone and skin. But your life, Leo, it will go on, even in the skeleton.”
She looked again at the smudges and knew, again, that they had been left by gloved fingers.
“Goddammit!” When she slammed the iron door, the clang echoed up through the house. She’d known it, oh, yes. She had smelled him out, the murderous bastard. He was right on top of her, just as she had suspected, breathing his vile breath down her neck. The bastard.
So, he’d be next. Fine. She’d take Paul Ward down. Son of a bitching bastard. She was a damn good hunter, the best there was. She probably should have done him a long time ago. But she’d thought, Leave him alone. Put him in the past. Miriam had loved him, and he had killed her and torn her baby from her. He was a monster. No other way to look at it.
She had better get him, or he would get her. If he’d really come in here and seen this furnace, then he suspected—or knew—something. She had to assume the worst: that he knew everything, and he would try to kill her.
What had she done to attract his attention? She thought for a moment. Another moment. She couldn’t know. Maybe the night cook was indeed the answer. Little bastard.
She’d been a fool to have that extra person on staff. She hardly ever ate anything anymore, anyway. She’d compulsively gobble egg rolls or peanut butter or suddenly want a Cornish game hen or some crazy thing like that. The hunger had turned her into a damn bulemic, that was the truth of it. She’d stuff herself with human food, then vomit it all up. The hell—her body kept sending these messages—“I’m starving, I need to eat lettuce, steak, peppermint candy, yogurt.” So she would eat and throw up and eat and throw up, especially at night, and that was why she had let that damn Chink spy into her life!
Okay, now, calm down. Take it easy here. You’re not in jail and you’re not dead, and this is for two reasons: first, he ain’t certain; second, he doesn’t know that you know. That’s your edge, and at all costs, you have to keep your edge. So, think. Think, woman!
She grabbed her bag, dragged out a cigarette, and lit it.
She returned to the door. Yeah, it was definite—a gloved hand had obliterated some of her prints. She looked around the room. The question of how he got in was the next one to answer.
Okay, lady, how? She strode into the old infirmary and turned on the light above the operating table. They’d had the sucker on this table, once. They should have opened up his guts and then brought him back to consciousness and let him smoke that particular pipe. Bastard.
He’d come in past the alarm system, which was still secure.
Oh, fuck. Now think, woman!
Conceivably, Paul Ward wouldn’t need to breach the alarm. No, there was another way into this place, as there was into any house owned by the Keepers. But a human being would never be able to find it—at least, not a normal human being.
Back in Paul’s ancestry, though, there was a Keeper, back hundreds of years ago when they had been trying to create a new species, a genetic mix of humans and themselves. The effort had collapsed in bloody failure, breeding a race of superintelligent humans that the Keepers could never allow to continue. All of the families of mixed blood had been killed. The way Miri told it, they had believed that the destruction of Ward’s father had ended that line, but it hadn’t. The boy had been mistakenly left alive.
His blood was what drew him irresistibly to Miri, what made him fall so crazily in love with her, what made her able to conceive a child by him.
Dr. Sarah had typed it: He was 16 percent Keeper, Paul Ward was. He had the intelligence and power of the master species, along with a huge dose of male aggression. She’d never met a Keeper male, but Miriam had told her that the gods Apollo and Amon-Ra were mythologized Keepers, which gave her some idea of just how powerful the genes Ward carried must be.
If he could detect Keeper sign, then this house would be wide open to him. He would have come in across the garden, moved some bricks near the fountain, and descended into the entrance tunnel, or even come up from the deeper tunnels that crisscrossed the city. She crossed the basement, ducking her head beneath the pristine, white-painted brick arches that held up the house. Then she descended the three steps into the corner where the tunnel door stood. It was made of ancient iron, Keeper iron. She wouldn’t go as far
as a single step into the tunnels, no, never. Many Keepers had been incapacitated or destroyed in them, and what crawling, twilight horrors might remain of them now, she dared not imagine. Sarah had told her, “You must never let them touch you, never.”
Sarah had herself been destroyed before she could explain what she’d meant. Leo had been left knowing only that the entrance to the tunnel must be kept locked at all times.
She put her bag down and took out the feather duster and the lycopodium-based powder. She dusted the door. Sure enough, there were the glove smears again, just slightly smudged where he had pushed at it.
She stared at them…and almost felt that she could hear him breathing off somewhere in the house. She looked outward through the infirmary, toward the dull light that filtered down from the high basement windows. How the stillness of this place oppressed her. She remembered the days of music, and thought sometimes that she wouldn’t mind all that much following Miri and Sarah into the twilight. But what was it like to be like that? Did you think? Get hungry? Did you hear or see?
Maybe she’d like it—the peace, the silence. But she didn’t really think so. What she thought was that it would be the most horrible, claustrophobic torture imaginable, and it terrified her beyond words.
Miri had assured her that the furnace burned away every trace of forensic evidence, that the heat it generated was almost that of an atomic fire. But Miri had lived halfway in the past. She could be dangerously overimpressed by what was now simple science, and Leo wasn’t at all sure that the eighteen hundred degrees that the furnace attained was enough.
She went up the iron circular stairway that came out in the pantry. There was a bottle of 1832 Napoleon standing on the sideboard. She yanked out the cork and drank from its lip. Her Keeper blood hadn’t ruined her taste for liquor and drugs, thank God. It had made her almost impervious to them, though. It took a lot, and she sucked back another big swallow, coughing away the fumes when she finished and wiping her lips.
Lilith’s Dream: A Tale of the Vampire Life Page 16
