The Last Vampire

by Whitley Strieber

“I begged for death, many times. But it did not come. Would not come.” He smiled a little. “I was turning into one of those . . . those things that you make.”

  He was referring to her humans, to what happened to them when her blood in their veins stopped keeping them young. Keepers might not communicate with each other much, but it seemed that everybody knew of Miriam and her humans.

  “It’s nothing like that. You would have died in the end.”

  He nodded.“No doubt.” He raised his eyes to hers. She looked deep into the burning, black pools. Martin was thousands of years older than she.

  “We are coming to our end, Miriam,” he said.

  “We aren’t!”

  He nodded slowly, not as if he was agreeing with her, but more as if he was humoring her. “You need to find a way to destroy that,” he said. “They’ll miss that man soon, and they’re bound to come here searching.”

  “Why here? We’ve always been safe here. This is my mother’s house.”

  “The City of Paris owns this structure. There are plans to make it part of the Musée des Gobelins, starting next year.” He made a dismissive gesture with his hands, a gesture that expressed vast defeat, vast sorrow. “They’ll clear all this rubbish out.”

  “Martin, you were thriving just — well, just a few years ago.”

  His face, which had filled out and now bore a smeared, filthy resemblance to the narrow-lipped elegance she remembered from the past, opened into a smile. The smile quickly turned bitter and ugly. “During the war, the Resistance built a secret headquarters in the Denfert-Rochereau ossuary. They heard us, deeper down, in the old labyrinth.”

  This had been the traditional shelter of the Paris vampires, a honeycomb of tunnels that wound beneath the city, from which its stone had been quarried since the time of the Romans.

  “They noticed us. They thought that we were spies working for the Germans, and they pursued us.”

  “But . . . how?”

  “With sound! They have those little tins full of carbon black —”

  “Microphones.”

  “Yes, those things. They put them about, and our voices were conducted to their ears through them.”

  “But they can’t hear our speech.”

  “Ah, Prime is such a trial, isn’t it? So complex, so many words needed for the simplest expression.” He shook his head. “We spoke French, which requires the central register of tones.”

  “You’re speaking Prime now.”

  “Am I? Yes, I am. How lovely. I’ll try to keep it up. Anyway, they did not really do anything at first. They were perplexed. But you know the French, they are a careful and patient lot. They did not give up on the strange stories collected by the Resistance, of a band of hommes sauvages living in the catacombs. When you were last here, we knew nothing of this. But they were working, you see. Always watching, always working. There began to be deputations from the Service Sociale going through the catacombs calling, ‘come out, come out, we are here to help you.’ Then a stupid fool, that idiot Emeus —”

  “He and I grew up together. He was with the Thebes gang, me and Sothis out of Amma, Tayna of Tothen, that crowd.”

  “Tothen now calls himself Monsieur Gamon. He is here. The others, the wind has taken.”

  “Tayna was in Shanghai, living as a Mr. Lee.” Destroyed, now, Miriam supposed. She did not say it.

  “Emeus ate one of the damned Service Sociale people. The hell that resulted has not stopped.”

  So humans knew, also, here in France. “How much do they understand?”

  “I don’t know what they know. How they find us. Only that I could not safely feed these years past.” He gave her a look that she had never seen from a Keeper before, almost of despair. It made her most uneasy to see such a weak and human expression in the eyes of one of her own kind.

  “Why did you have to stop? What exactly did they do?”

  “They came! I had just fed — in the Twelfth, coming up out of the labyrinth. The usual method.”

  “When you say ‘They came,’ what do you mean?”

  “I had chosen a very nice one, smelled great, skin tone said it was first class all the way. I took it into a — oh, some little covered place, a toilet, as I recall. I ate it and put the remnant in my little case that I carry, and suddenly — there they were, the police! Running after me. Coming in autos. Jumping out of doorways. It was phenomenal. I only escaped by leaping a wall, then to the sewers.” She pulled out her cigarettes, lit one. How tired she suddenly felt. She sensed that more had happened to him than he had as yet said, and she wanted to hear it all.

  “Go on, Martin.”

  “You look so beautiful.”

  She thought, I don’t want to bear the child of a weak creature like this. I need the strongest blood now. She said, “But you haven’t finished your story.”

  “Miriam, I have been captured.”

  The words vibrated into Miriam’s shocked silence.

  “They examined me, Miriam. They opened my jaw, they weighed me, they extracted fluids!”

  “But you escaped?”

  “They tried to make me think I had. It was a silly business, though — unlocked doors and such. I knew they had let me go.”

  She could feel her heat beginning to rise. Her blood was flowing faster. If he had been let go, then there was danger here.

  “What happened next?”

  “I waited months — a full season of moons. Then I took something — a rat of a thing, half-starved, living under a bridge in the trackless neighborhoods beyond the Périphérique. I had not even opened a vein before they were there, falling on me from the roadway above, rushing up in automobiles — it was horrifying. I ran. All I could do.”

  “But you must have been terribly hungry.”

  “I tried again a few days later. This time I took the RER to the outskirts, to an area where live the brown ones that they call ratons. Again, I singled one out, cut it out of a little herd in a cinema, then started to have my dinner.”

  “They appeared again.”

  “Dozens of them! All around! This time I barely escaped. I came back here. I have remained within these walls ever since.”

  “But, Martin, how could you have not eaten for — what — at least a year? It’s impossible.”

  “ ‘Nothing is impossible when you must,’ that is the motto of my family. Miriam, I have drunk the feral cats, the mice, the rats. I have eaten the very flies that are spit by the air!”

  No wonder he stank so. A Keeper could not live on such blood, or could barely live. She did not want to pity one of her own kind, especially not one she remembered with such respect. He had been a charming lover in his day. She remembered him in the flashing brocades of the last age, a powdered wig upon his head and a gold-knobbed stick in his hand. He knew the fashions of the age; he dallied with duchesses and played cards at the table of the king. Among the Keepers, he was known as an expert on the ways of man.

  “You and I have always been kindred souls, Martin.”

  “I have thought of you often, child. You still live among them?”

  “I have a club in New York that is quite façonnable. And a human lover called Sarah.”

  “That business of yours.”

  “A human to serve you is most useful.” Or could be, if only she would answer the damned phone.

  “I don’t even know the names of those who pursue me.”

  They had left him alone for these years, interrupting him only when he was — according to their idea — about to “murder” one of their own. There could only be one reason why he had been left like this: He was bait, and the house was a trap.

  They must even now be rushing to this place. For they had undoubtedly bugged the entire building. God only knew, maybe there were even cameras. They could make cameras the size of a fingertip, microphones no bigger than specs of dust. Sarah used such things in the club’s security system.

  “We have to leave here,” she said.

  “But
I — where?”

  She stood up. “Is there any fuel?”

  “What sort of fuel?”

  “To make a fire! Chemicals! Petrol!”

  He gestured toward some steel drums.

  She went to them, ripped off the soft metal cover. It was some sort of chemical, but it didn’t smell flammable. Another was the same stuff.

  But a third stank gloriously of the esters of earth-oil. It had been sent through their great retorts until it was a volatile. “This makes the auto go,” she said.

  “I know what petrol is.”

  She threw the barrel into the middle of the room. “Is the hidden route the same?” Every Keep had one, usually more than one. There were escapes for fire, escapes for attack, escapes for everything.

  “The same.”

  The petrol had finished gushing out, and now stood in a puddle on the floor. Miriam took the empty drum and rolled it back and forth over the remnant until it was nothing but a sack of powdered bone. Then she tossed it into the petrol, making sure that it was thoroughly soaked.

  At that moment, she heard a sound, the creak of pressure being applied against the door. She took Martin’s shoulders, leaned against his ear. “They’re just outside,” she said. “About to burst in the door and all the windows at once.”

  His lips twisted back in an ugly rictus. He really, really despised them, this hunted creature. Taking his still ice-cold hand, she led him to the far wall, where once the waste from the tannery had poured into the little river Bievre, long since covered over. She counted one, two, three stones up from the floor. Now she pressed the one that was under her hand.

  A brutal shaft of sunlight shattered the darkness. The doorway was a white blaze filled with darting shadows. Martin screamed, the shuddering ululation of a Keeper in absolute fury. So rarely had she heard it that Miriam screamed, too, throwing back her head and howling to the rafters.

  “Essence!”

  The human cry stopped her. They came out across the great room. They had nets, nets and guns. She felt tears of anger streaming down her cheeks. She was almost immobilized, such was her rage at being threatened by them. She did not let herself succumb to these feelings, though. No, she must not. Instead, she drew a book of matches from her pocket.

  “Madame, si’l vous plaît!”

  Lady, please, indeed! She struck one and lit the others and threw the whole flaming book. Instantly, fire roared up everywhere. The men began to shriek. They leaped and jerked in the flames, as her mother had leaped and twisted in her pyre.

  Miriam pressed the stone that would open their route into the sewers of Paris.

  Nothing happened.

  SEVEN

  Deathtrap

  Paul called Becky’s cell phone for the fifth time in an hour. Her recording came back for the fifth time in an hour. He’d already requested that Communications in Langley track both officers, but their cell phones were off or the signals were blocked, so the GPS system could not find them. Just for the hell of it, he tried Charlie again, also. Same shit.

  It was now ten A.M. By his estimation they were two hours overdue, maybe more. He thrust another stick of gum in his mouth and chomped on it. Thank God he hated French cigarettes.

  The cell phone rang. He grabbed for it. “Ward here.”

  “Paul, this is Justin.”

  What in hell was Justin Turk calling him for now? It was five A.M. in Virginia. “Yeah?”

  “I’m getting back to you.”

  “Look, man, I gotta have more support personnel.”

  “Shit.”

  “One of the damn creatures escaped from my net. I’ve followed it to Paris and lost it. I need more people and more equipment real fast.”

  “How fast is real fast?”

  “Yesterday would’ve been good. I need at least five more field ops.”

  “I can’t just put people in this thing. You know the kind of problems we’re having. The discussions.”

  “I’m losing a vampire. One that travels, for Chrissakes!”

  “It takes weeks to clear people for you. A whole new background check, all kinds of shit. Even when I don’t have the director on my ass. Which I obviously do.”

  “At least authorize the people I’ve still got in Kuala to follow me.”

  “That’s a no-go.”

  “Come on, man, help me, here.”

  “This whole operation is under study. Until I have fresh orders, you’re all frozen in place.”

  That sure was shitty news. “I need those people, man. This thing is going south fast.”

  “I’ll work on it.”

  “Don’t sound so convincing.”

  The conversation ended there, with muttered good-byes. Justin was a sort of a friend. That is to say, he’d be there for Paul as long as Paul wasn’t a liability.

  One thing was quite clear: There would be no new people, not with international human rights questions beginning to hang over the operation.

  He saw somebody getting dropped down a shaft, and that somebody was him.

  He hammered Becky’s number into his cell phone, then Charlie’s. Same results as before. “I’m in trouble,” he muttered to himself.

  Still, it was possible that the kids were okay. He just wished that they’d followed procedure with this break-in. There would be a hell of a stink if the French found out that CIA personnel had invaded the records office of their security service. He’d be recalled, of course. He’d have to explain what he was doing in France, and why he’d gotten here by commandeering an Air Force general’s private jet.

  He sat and stared up at the blank, sunlit wall of the office tower and listened to the water drip in the sink. He looked at his watch. “Ten-fifty,” he muttered to himself. “Damn and god damn.”

  And he decided to use the time well. A situation like this could burst into flames at any second. He was as prepared as he could be for the Sûreté and the White House. What he needed to do was to get ready for the really hard ones — the vampires. And there was actually something he could do right now, something damn useful.

  Becky had mentioned two areas of Paris: the Ninth and Thirteenth Arrondissements. He opened his laptop and went to the CIA’s database. The site didn’t offer any magical insights into the workings of the world, just some very good information and lots of detail. You could find practically anybody here, and at his level of clearance, he could input requests for Echelon searches on keywords of concern to any operation approved for the system. Echelon would then look for those keywords amid the billions of phone conversations, e-mails, radio transmissions, and faxes that it monitored.

  Problem was, you had to be damn specific to get anything useful. What words might the traveler use on the telephone — what special, unique words? He didn’t know who she might call or where she might go, or even if Paris was her final destination.

  The CIA database also had a wealth of maps, better ones than could be bought in any store, including maps of Paris that had been drawn by the German military during World War II. Originally intended to be used in house-to-house warfare, they included detailed floor plans and plans of the sewer system that offered information down to which tunnels and pipes were big enough to admit a man.

  The Germans had done this for most of the large cities in Europe. Many of the maps were outmoded, of course, and many like Paul had knowledge that the disastrous bombing of the Chinese embassy during the Kosovo conflict in 1999 had been caused by reliance on an improperly updated Werhmacht street plan of Belgrade. Since then, all maps in the CIA database been clearly marked with the last year of update.

  He saw that the Ninth Arrondissement had not been touched since 1944. The map legends and street names were still in German, which wasn’t very reassuring. By contrast, the Thirteenth had been revised by the French in 1998, and there were annotations that it had been updated yearly since.

  He settled down to stare at the screen. He had to memorize every street, every sewer pipe, every building plan.

&
nbsp; The vampire would know its world down to the tiniest corner. It would be able to pick every lock, use every shadow, climb all the walls and cross all the roofs. It would use the sewer system like a railroad. It would be able to navigate the ductwork, the window ledges, the eaves.

  Paul hadn’t believed how smart and capable the vampire was, at least not at first. He hadn’t believed it when he first saw one staring back at him with dark, still eyes, looking small and helpless. There had been a slight smile on its face, a drifting little smile that communicated a sort of casual amusement. Jack Dodge said, “Hey,” and stepped toward it — and a knife shot out and sliced Jack’s head from his body like a blossom from a stem.

  Paul could still hear the sounds: the rip of Jack’s skin, the crackle of his bones, then the shuss of the fountain of blood that pumped out of the stump.

  Those sounds came to Paul in his sleep, in the whine of the jets he took through the night, in the whispering of the wind in the ancient cities where he worked.

  The creatures drifted through the cracks and corners of their world, leading him on an infinitely careful chase. They played a kind of chess with him, appearing here and there, slipping away, only to reappear somewhere else.

  His pursuit of them had taught him how brilliant they were. They always stayed ahead of him. His only useful weapons were surprise and technology. Brilliance and speed were their tools, but they had no technology. They had been neatly outclassed by a computer database and infrared sight.

  The death of the vampire was appalling. It haunted Paul, and he knew it haunted his people. The vampire fought harder for its life than it was possible for a human being to imagine. They hid like rats, because their lives were just so damn precious to them. When you saw their death struggles, you could almost, at moments, sympathize. The vampire died hard. “Real hard,” he said aloud.

  He sat staring at the map of the Thirteenth Arrondissement’s sewer system. There had been structural changes made as recently as a year ago. He tracked his finger along a tunnel that had been blocked up. Probably something to do with containing old waste from the tanneries and dye factories that used to be in the area.