As Lilith spoke, her voice changed, and suddenly Leo was hearing what was behind that façade of driven-snow beauty—a scared little voice, the voice of an actress playing a role she thought was way out of her league.
“I am indeed going to show him how to drink blood,” Lilith said. “And you’re going to help me.”
“No.”
“No? You say that now?”
“Kill me. Do it. Set me on fire inside. Anything would be better than helping you do that to him.”
“Come,” Lilith said, but Leo could not come, she could not rise from the floor, not with the punishment she’d taken. Lilith muttered something in her own language. Once, Leo had wanted to learn Prime. Now she loathed the very sound of it, the gutturals and the leaping, bell-like overtones. No human throat could utter such sounds, anyway.
Lilith took her under the shoulders and dragged her. She scuffed along, moaning. They went down a narrow, dark tunnel and then into a wider area, equally dark.
Lilith threw her off into the blackness. She landed in a heap of what felt like lumber. It was hard and it hurt, and she cried out. There came a small laugh, not quite a chuckle—more intimate than that. Then she felt tickling, as if some sort of tick or mite was rushing over her skin. She slapped at it and encountered something that filled her hand like a cluster of wet pencils.
There came a long sigh. Leo listened, but it was not repeated. “Lilith?”
Nothing.
Leo backed into the dark. But she did not come up against a wall, not at all. Instead, she ended up in a confusing tangle of long objects, heavy and covered with dust—dust that ran on her, seething at her lips and the edges of her eyes, making the undersides of her fingernails itch and her vagina and anus burn. She opened her mouth, instinct crying out, and the itching, burning sensation invaded her throat.
The taste was fuzzy and stinging and oddly crisp, like the fried pork rinds they sell in bodegas, if you got some that were moldy. An involuntary cough sent a gust of it out into the air. She gagged, her throat going taut as the extreme dryness of the material absorbed every trace of moisture in her mouth. And then she felt a tightening against her breast, then pain, and looked down and saw there a skull, one wrinkled eye staring up at her out of its gaping socket, and a long, pointed thing like a cuttlebone thrusting out of its round, toothless orifice into her skin.
The drop of blood that appeared there seemed to send an electricity through the whole chamber, and all the bones began to rustle, and the dust to sift and flow. “Never let them touch you,” Sarah Roberts had warned her. Now she knew why. She had been thrown into a dungeon of dead vampires, creatures who had wronged their pale mistress.
Leo gagged and struggled, feeling her own urine hurry down her legs, as she dragged her fingers through the living muck that was filling her mouth, burning her sinuses and eating her eyes.
Then Lilith stepped back. As the door closed, the light began to dim. Leo cried out, a jagged gargle, and writhed and twisted, then came to her feet and pranced in the surging bones and skulls, feeling herself being devoured away by inches. She begged God for help, she begged Jesus, she begged and tore at her cracking skin, at her bleeding privates, as she fought her way to that door.
When she got there, she banged and clawed and pleaded and lost hope in the secret way of those who know that they are without an avenue of escape, and her cries became the hopeless tears of the frightened little girl she really was, the lost little girl who had only in these past few days, now, for the first time in her life, felt the comfort of love.
The door clicked. She hammered, she pleaded, she felt runnels of blood speeding down her thighs. The door opened a little. A whisper: “You will obey me.”
Before she could answer, the door slammed again. Bones, bits of flesh, corpse dust—it was all sliding toward her, the famished remains of the undead clinging to her, eating into her, devouring her alive. She hammered at the door, she clawed, she howled, driven in just these few seconds to a state beyond the known world of fear, to a place where even in darkest dark, human beings do not go.
Where she bled, where her skin was torn and pulled away, a particle of awareness followed. She was not being killed, she was being transformed into a mass of bones and blood and particles that would still have awareness and life, that would be consumed and then lie here with these others, melded with them forever, in perpetual agony and longing.
Hands—cold, like steel—clasped her waist and drew her out of the morass. With a hermetic thunk, the door was shut behind her.
She was thrown—then she was in water, deep, black water. She was tumbling in it, unable to tell which way was up, tumbling and spitting, her hands pushing at the filth that caked her body.
She struggled, she flailed—and suddenly her hand rose into air and came back down to the surface of the water with a bright snap of sound and a stinging thrill to the palm. Her face broke clear, then, and she sucked in the air of darkness, sucked it with more gratitude than she had ever felt in her life.
There came then the thought: If I do not live endless life, I have to live endless death. The horror of it was beyond her capacity even to consider. No matter how evil, she had to do whatever was necessary to avoid this. She pulled herself up onto the bank of the freezing underground pool. Breath swept her grateful lungs, clean breath, as pure as the dead, ancient air of this hell pit could offer. Shivering, her naked body still tormented here and there by clumps of sodden undead material, she lay on the bank. She said, “I’ll help you,” and her soul wept.
“You will be bright, cheerful and enthusiastic.”
“Yes.”
“You will encourage him and support me.”
“Yes.”
Lilith lifted her, brought her off her feet, face to face. “Let’s be clear. I let you out because I need you. But remember, I’m on a mission, and I have no mercy. Remember what it means.”
“Yes.”
“Smile.”
How could she? How could she ever? “I—”
Lilith grabbed her hair and began yanking her toward the door.
“No!”
“Smile!”
She forced a grin—and Lilith slapped it away.
“One more chance. Right now.”
From somewhere inside she hadn’t known was there, Leo found a fraction of joy—the invincible center of her humanity—and somehow lifted it into her face, and she made from it with a craftsman’s patient care, a little smile.
“Let’s get you cleaned up. He’ll be wondering where we are.”
She hurried her along yet another corridor, this one winding steeply upward.
“Lilith?”
“Yes, child?”
“Who were they?”
“That is an execution chamber. They are put in and left.”
“Why were they executed?”
She stopped, turned on her. Her dark eyes bore into Leo’s. “They violated my will,” she said. Not so much in the words but in their tone, Leo heard the most power she had ever heard conveyed in a voice.
She went off then, and Leo followed. Never had she hated herself so much, hated her blood, hated Miri for giving it to her.
She had millions. She was famous and powerful. Maybe somewhere on this earth, there would be a cure.
Twice, Lilith opened doors that were like black submarine hatches. Each one they passed offered a wider corridor, more light, and sweeter air.
“Lilith! Please, Lilith, wait.”
“What is it?”
“Is there any way—if you would reconsider. If you need him to get you pregnant, then he can do it the way he is, surely.”
Lilith gave her a kindly look. “My dear child, he belongs to a higher race than man. He can’t continue living as they do! You cannot imagine what he’ll be like in his glory. For both of us, child!”
They came into an area of stone pools. The air was sharp with sulfur, and the water was wreathed by steam. This was not far from the living quarters, w
hich could be seen as a pool of dim light at the end of a near tunnel.
“This is my bath,” Lilith said. She helped Leo into the embracing water, then sat back on some cushions that Leo noticed were clouded by mildew. She began to sing. Her voice was soft but penetrating as she uttered the sighing words of love or death among her kind—who knew what they meant?
Drawn by the haunting beauty of the melody and Lilith’s miraculous voice, Ian appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a white linen tunic over his gleaming, well-muscled young body. Leo loved him with her eyes. She wanted the best for him, the best of all the world!
“Come in,” Lilith said, “we’re going to give each other baths.”
Lilith went behind Ian and drew off his tunic. She slapped his backside, which made him jump and laugh. “In with you,” she said.
“You be careful, you’ll get it worse.”
“Oh, I’m so scared.” She popped him again on the backside, and he scampered down beside Leo.
“Oh, my,” he said, stretching himself out, “oh, this feels—damn, Lily, what is this?”
“Just water. My water. It’s what keeps me young.”
She came in, also, swam lithely out into the deep orange center of it, then treaded water, smiling at them. “Smile, Leo,” she said, “you’re not smiling.”
Ian grabbed Leo and made her yell in surprise. Then she felt his knuckles digging into her ribs. She squirmed and heard as if on some vast distance—across a black ocean, down a yawning cave—the tinkle of her own laughter.
“She’s smiling now,” Ian yelled happily. “She’s laughing!”
He dunked her, and in the haze of the sulfurous water, she could see Lilith’s long, white legs, and then, right before her face, Ian’s penis, half-awake.
It broke her heart to see it, for it brought back to her, all at once and in an instant, all the happiness of the past few days, that had been so great and seemed so eternal, and had just ended so completely.
Her hand went out, touched it. She looked at her own fingers on it, knew by his sudden stillness that he was ready to go again, God love this boy. She stroked it, and that familiar, velvety penis skin felt so nice beneath her touch. It came up, and her eyes began to sting and she lifted herself above the water and shook them out, relieved that she would also shake away any sign of the tears that were there.
Lilith was right in her face, treading water, smiling. She also smiled, grinned from ear to ear, and belted out a laugh.
Leo laughed back, a crackling sound like a crow. Didn’t he hear the coldness of it? Was he deaf?
The three of them embraced on the wet, sulfur-smelling floor, in the steam and the heat and the silence of inner earth. Then Lilith said, “Tonight, Cairo.”
“Cairo,” Ian said.
“Cairo,” Leo agreed. Her voice lilted because she made it lilt, but her heart was weeping, and her soul screamed silently in its secret hell, The horror, the horror.
Chapter Fifteen
Innocence Lost
Paul counted the seconds as the satellite image was slowly produced by the printer. The four of them were clustered around it, eager for this crucial picture to appear.
“Perhaps there,” Karas said, “just south of Al-Wasta.” He went to the telephone, spoke quickly in Arabic, listened, hung up. “It’s got three parties in it, according to the police.” He paused. “Maybe four.”
Becky turned to him. Jean Bocage looked up from the satellite image. Paul said, “What does that mean?”
“Perhaps it’s the wrong vehicle.”
Paul looked at the Range Rover, hardly distinguishable from above. But the computer had circled it. It was the same vehicle that they had tracked from near the Monastery of St. Anthony in the Arabian Desert. Now it had turned south, though. Why would they go south?
“Beni Suef,” Becky whispered. “Oh, God, they’re leaving.”
“Trying to,” Jean Bocage responded. “Remember, their pilots are in Cairo.”
“Unless they called them. What if they’re on their way?”
“They are in their hotel at this moment,” Karas said. “They have not been called, and they have not left.”
Becky’s brow shone with sweat. Paul touched her hand, was not reassured by the quick jerk of movement with which she drew away. How profoundly did she blame him?
“Let’s put the drone up,” he said. He stepped down out of the reconnaissance van and pulled the plane’s long case out of the rear stowage. Jean helped him carry it onto the desert as Becky and Karas descended from the truck to watch.
Jean said, “That’s an impressive unit.”
“Let’s hope.”
They were out beyond Sahara City in the ancient desert, positioned to pounce on the Range Rover when it appeared. It was the only one the satellite had found that the Egyptian police had—supposedly—confirmed as containing just three passengers. They knew that Leo had rented a Ranger Rover in Beni Suef, where they had landed. It had been carefully and intelligently done, the rental, from a small local firm rather than an international company, and for lots of delicious U.S. dollars. But the owner remembered very definitely the three Americans who had rented it, and how odd he found it that they didn’t want a driver. He had been persuaded not to check their documentation, no doubt by more of that sweet money of Leo’s.
Since the rental had been discovered, the Egyptian police had been under instructions to report the vehicle if they saw it. They had not been given arrest orders, any more than they would have been asked to pick up a cobra and bring it in. Ordinary police did not have the expertise to deal with a vampire.
The printer came to life again, its whining just loud enough to be heard over the communications van’s roaring air-conditioning. Becky went back in as Paul struggled with the wings of the drone.
“Help me with this thing,” he said to Jean. Working together, they got it screwed and snapped together. Its wings were eight feet long, enabling it almost to hover. The stall speed was just thirty-two miles an hour. They carried the drone out onto the desert. Paul turned on the cameras, made sure the telemetry was working, then used the remote control to turn on the engine, which made a high-pitched hissing sound, like compressed air.
The plane, sky blue, rolled quickly across the desert and bounded into flight. Gaining a feel for the remote control, Paul dipped first one wing and then the other, almost stalled it, then got into controlled flight. He set the autopilot for fifteen hundred feet. The device began going up in slow spirals, but before it had risen five hundred feet, its camouflage had made it completely invisible against the desert sky.
“Give me the coordinates,” Paul yelled into the half-open side door of the truck.
Becky came out. “This is hot off the printer,” she said.
He took the sheet of coordinates from the satellite and input the location, direction, and speed of the Range Rover into the system. Far above, the silent and invisible craft stopped spiraling and took off in pursuit. The screen on the navigator displayed a detailed image of the terrain the drone was covering superimposed on a map.
“My God,” Karas said.
“You’re not supposed to see this damn thing,” Paul replied.
“Do the Israelis have this?”
“Come on, General, give me a break.”
“Just kidding, Paul. Of course the Israelis have it. They get all your toys, whether you offer them or not.”
“Not my department.”
He laughed suddenly. “We have it,” he said.
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Paul said.
“Egypt has this?” Jean asked. “We don’t have it.”
“Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Karas said.
They watched the screen as the land unfolded below the drone. Soon the outskirts of Beni Suef appeared, looking from above as if they were bombed out. The highway was easy to find but hard to observe, because it was close to the Nile and lined by palm trees.
“At El Maharaqa it becomes a
motorway. It’s wider, much easier to deal with.”
“That’s in the direction of Cairo?”
“Unfortunately.”
Paul took the drone down to an altitude of three hundred feet, then out over the Nile. He dropped it farther, until the side-looking camera’s view was almost parallel to the roadway. With magnification, they ended up with a useful image of the traffic. Slowly, he increased the speed of the drone until it was moving faster than the traffic.
“There,” Becky said.
It was a Range Rover—but it was going north. Paul turned the dial that increased the magnification, but the vehicle shot past the southbound drone. “Goddammit, now I’ve gotta make a turn.”
As he struggled with the controls, the image on the screen gyrated wildly. Something on the control panel buzzed. Using his pilot’s knowledge, he straightened out the stick, got his bearings, concentrated on his instruments. “Okay,” he said, “piece of cake. Sort of.”
They were going north now, catching up with the traffic headed toward Cairo. And there was the Range Rover again.
“The Egyptian and his battle with the sun,” Karas said. “Which explains the police uncertainty.”
His point was that the windows were tinted deeply. Another Range Rover passed the first, also with tinted windows.
“Great,” Becky said.
Paul’s heart sank. He couldn’t see the license plates, and so had no way to tell anything useful about either vehicle.
“We’re in trouble,” Jean said needlessly. He was there for the extraordinary weapons that he brought. Alone in the world, the French had developed a purpose-designed gun for vampire hunting. It fired a bullet that split into five separate explosive heads in a tight pattern. A direct hit by even one of those heads meant instant and total control over even the quickest and most powerful vampire.
But to use a weapon, they needed to find a vampire. Above all, they needed to find Ian. He’s an intelligent boy, Paul kept telling himself, he’s careful and he’s smart. But he was also seventeen and horny, and Paul had seen the damn thing in that theater, the awesome beauty of it.
Lilith’s Dream: A Tale of the Vampire Life Page 30
