Somebody knelt in front of him and started blowing him, and for the first time in his life, he just enjoyed it without worrying about who was there. He didn’t care if it was a girl or a guy or a damn gorilla; he just loved; he loved with all his blood and his hammering, crashing heart, and the little light in the middle that was him.
Then he did look down and he saw the naked woman from the limo on Houston Street. She was giving him a hard-sucking blow job in the middle of the goddamn dance floor, and it was the best damn blow job he’d ever had.
The pleasure was so intense that he could not stand, his knees started to give way. Somebody held him up, somebody strong as shit, so he just let himself go limp. The hands were long and thin and cold against his skin, but the arms were as steady as steel rods. No way was he gonna get dropped. The pleasure swept up and down him, crashing like great waves from the top of his head to the singing tips of his toes.
He closed his eyes, and in his mind he saw not the woman blowing him, but Miriam Blaylock. How could she be that beautiful? How was it possible? With this club, she was some kind of magician, some kind of demon, but God love her, she was so beautiful.
Then he noticed that he wasn’t being blown anymore. Hell, that was tough, that was intense to leave him with his gob half down the chute. “Shit!” he yelled aloud.
The music snatched him up like a wave. His balls were aching from him being hard too long with nothing happening but the music; the music just did not stop, did it? He was dancing again, they were all dancing again. When he looked over at the stage, he saw six women and six men dancing in front of the consoles, and behind them the dj had his hood off. Paul noticed that his eyes were yellow.
Miriam Blaylock was dancing, too; he saw her. She saw him and her eyes sparkled; then she saw he was naked and she cocked her head and gave him a mock-angry look and wagged her finger at him. Oh, she was just the cutest little girl he had ever seen. God love her for letting him into this wonderful place where he was dancing with the beautiful. She must actually like him. She must be impressed. Actually. He’d tell her he was the damn CIA director, if he had to. He never wanted to leave this place as long as he lived.
Then it was total dark, total silence. He stumbled, almost fell again, but nobody else moved. Everybody else just stayed still. He couldn’t hear a damn thing, not after that music.
The lights came on, and all of a sudden the magical beings were just people. They were boys and girls in their teens, mostly. Some older ones. There were famous faces here and there, not people whose names he knew, but the kind of faces you recognized from TV or the movies but you didn’t know exactly who. He’d never been in the same room with famous people before.
A guy came onto the stage. The dj. There was a faint sound like rustling leaves, and Paul applauded, too. Had the music fucked up his hearing or what? He’d listened to plenty of loud rock in his life, but this had been something more. This had been music that blew you so far out of yourself that he now felt as though some sort of internal reset button had been pushed. He felt blank, a deprogrammed soul.
In the light he could see people were getting dressed, and they were still doing drugs, right out in the middle of everything. Some of them were even still making love. Guys were still hard, thinking nothing of it. Some of these kids were not even teens. They were, like, teenyboppers. There were friggin’ children in this place, drinking and doing drugs, naked with naked adults. It was total, amazing, awful sin.
“Hell,” he said to two of them standing nearby, “this place almost got Bangkok beat!”
Waiters came through two big doors and started laying out food and wine. They brought it in on huge gold trays, in golden bowls and crystal bowls, and the utensils and the plates were all gold, too.
“Christ,” he said to another couple, “those pots must be worth a million bucks!”
He hadn’t noticed that he was the only one making any noise until a guy held his finger over his lips.
“Be quiet?”
The kid nodded.
Hell, he didn’t want to be quiet. He wanted to talk dirty to some frail. He wanted to get finished getting blown. But, hell, he was okay with it; this was what they wanted to do. He was the damn newbie, looked like.
Sarah watched Leo pull Miriam away from the dj’s stage and heard her say, “Miri, that man! He’s utterly dreadful!”
Very quietly, Miriam said, “He’s also utterly alone.”
Leo seemed not to comprehend. “Well, just get him out of here, please. He’s pissing everybody off.”
Sarah marched over to her and said,“We don’t talk to Miriam like that.”
“What? About him? She was an idiot to bring him in. He even had a gun!”
Quickly, Sarah took Leonore out of the room. The hard lights of the kitchen were a better setting for this discussion. “Listen, Leo. Do not ever make demands of her. What’s been done to you doesn’t give you the right. In fact, it does the opposite. Before, you were her friend. Now, you’re her possession.”
“You know something, Sarah? You’re a complete asshole.” Leo flounced off through the doors.
Sarah was amazed at how angry she felt, watching those doors swing behind that arrogant little ass. It was a calm, dispassionate sort of anger, a deep anger. The idea that she would have to live years and years with Leo interfering between her and Miri was just plain awful.
Before Leo, she had not been loyal enough. She had been unable to shake the scruples she’d brought from her old life. Miri had stolen her from herself. But because she was not a volunteer but a captive, something else was also true. Miri was responsible for her. Miri, also, belonged to her. She had rights in this relationship. She had her place, and did not intend to be disloged.
She went down to the office and stood at the one-way mirror, where she could see the dance floor. Everybody was eating, gobbling away at the braces of honey-dipped sparrows and other exotic foods that Vincent had prepared at Miriam’s instruction. Miriam had little interest in human food, but it wasn’t as if she didn’t know about it. Her recipes spanned three thousand years. Honey-dipped sparrows had been the hot dogs of Elizabethan England.
Sarah watched the man. He was, in a way, beautiful — huge, muscular, his eyes extremely intelligent. She’d gone out on the floor and sucked him for a little while. She imagined that his ample organ would feel really nice inside her.
“You’re drooling,” Miri said as she came in. “And get your clothes on, you’re the only one still naked except for that big slab of ham you’re drooling over. Want to eat him?”
“What’s the deal with him?”
Miriam sat down behind her desk. She tossed a small suitcase on it, clapped her hands. “Chop chop.”
“The count, already? It’s only two, Miri.”
“Rudi’s bag got too full. You’ll have two counts tonight.”
“I thought it was gonna be good.”
“You want to know what the deal is with him?”
“Yeah.” Sarah was sorting, preparing the pile for the count. It was over a hundred grand, though; she could already tell that. Money came to Miriam like metal shavings to a magnet. Ancient Keeper magic, Sarah thought. “So, what is it?”
“I don’t know if I should tell you.”
“Please trust me, Miri. It’s agony for me when you don’t.”
“It’s agony for me when you forget your place, child.”
Sarah sorted bills into neat stacks of fifties, hundreds, a few twenties.
“I’ve been thinking about that. I want to ask your forgiveness. I want you to know that you’ve got my absolute loyalty.”
“Now that there’s a replacement threatening, yes. I wish you’d come to me before I blooded her.”
“Why did you? We’ve got to endure her now forever and ever! And she’s — oh, Miri, she’s tacky and she’s quite stupid.”
Miriam shrugged. “You want to do pipe later, child?”
“I thought you were mad at me.”
“I’m not mad now. In fact, I’m going to do celebration pipe. The two-hundred-year-old opium.”
“What possible occasion could there be now?”
“I’m going to take that man downstairs with you and me and Leo, and we are going to spend a very long time with him. We’re to feed Leo with him. Her first pabulum. Do you think she can handle it, Doctor?”
She was instantly excited, instantly appalled. A “very long time” would mean hell for the poor man. “Miri, I hate for them to suffer.”
“What if I told you that he’s the one who assaulted me?”
She stopped counting. In fact, lost the count. “You mean — ”
Miri smiled slow. “I snared him, Sarah, in my very fine net. Anticipated his moves correctly. He is, at present, our prisoner.”
“He’s the one from Paris?”
“Yes.”
Sarah looked at him again. “If we kill him, is that it? You’re out of danger?”
“They’ll be set back, because that man out there is a very powerful weapon. That man is the reason they win.”
“Who, Miri?”
“There are people killing the Keepers, Sarah. Making carnage of us all over the world.”
“People?”
“And that man is their leader.”
Sarah found a chair. “And we’re going to feed him to Leo?”
“She needs to eat, dear, just like us. She has a right to her food, too.”
Paul wanted his clothes. Everybody else was already dressed. This was becoming not fun. “Excuse me,” he said again, “I think that’s my — ” But it wasn’t his. Nothing was his. “Look, hey, I’m missing a wallet, here.” He really didn’t need to lose that, for Chrissakes. There was six hundred bucks in there. The rest was safe enough inside the springs of the bed at the Terminal Hotel, except for the three c’s he’d spent on the also-gone magnum.
“Hey, ladies!” he called out to no one in particular. “I got no clothes, here! Is there somebody in charge?”
They were purposely ignoring him, all of them. That was obvious. It was some kind of joke, apparently. He was now the only person naked. The lights were so bright they might as well be on a beach. Goddamnit, this was like one of those dreams — you’re naked in a department store or something.
He spotted some guy giving him the eye and flopped his dick at him. “Like to look at it, doncha?”
“It’s pretty.”
Oh, Jesus, and he’d been having so damn much fun. Normally, he had very little fun. Getting blown and then sick drunk in whorehouses was not fun; it was a job, servicing your urges.
The management was undoubtedly back there watching the New York sophisticates having their vicious fun at his expense. Lemme put one of you turds in a vampire lair sometime, he thought, see if you find that fun.
He glared around him. Female laughter bubbled up from somewhere in the crowd, was instantly extinguished.
He went over to the food table. Little dead eyes stared at him. But there was also caviar, and his guess was that this was the most expensive thing on the menu. So he cupped his hands and got a great big glob of it, causing all the cognoscenti to gasp. Then he threw the caviar at the damn one-way mirror.
“Gimme my damn clothes,” he said quietly. “Or I’m gonna tear this place apart.” He spoke with the kind of gentle intensity that suggested that immediate compliance was essential.
Leo, who had had enough of this jerk for this evening and the rest of what might be a very long life if things went her way, said,“I’ll get your clothes.”
“Wise girl.”
The delay was because Miriam had decided that she didn’t want him to get back into his rags. She wanted him properly dressed, so she had sent Luis up to the house to get some of John’s clothes. He had just reappeared with a black silk Donna Karan suit and a bloodred shirt, also of silk. Miriam would not allow John’s things to be put into storage, not even yet. Maybe Sarah would come up with some new process someday, that would work for him. His body was still fairly intact, after all. So his things waited for him.
“It’s crazy to have this guy here,” Leo said.
Sarah, who was counting again and could not interrupt herself, did no more than glare. Now that she shared a secret with Miri that the bitch wasn’t party to, she felt better, less threatened.
Miriam put Paul’s wallet in the breast pocket of the superb jacket. The magnum, which was on her desk under some piles of money, stayed there.
“You’re to bring him to my room,” Miriam told Leo.
Leo knew that people who went in there did not come out. “Am I invited?”
“You are indeed,” Sarah said.
A chair hit the one-way mirror, bouncing off with a distant thud. He was getting physical about his nudity.
Miriam shook her head. “My, my.”
“He’s out there naked in a fully dressed crowd,” Sarah said. “I’d be pissed off, too.”
Miriam chuckled. “Show him the club, Leo. Let him play with you a little. But don’t you dare fuck him dry. Is that a promise?”
Leo came around behind the desk and kissed Miriam’s cheek. Sarah couldn’t watch it. She stared down at the magnum. She picked it up and pointed it at Leo. “Remember this,” she said. “He’s dangerous.”
Another chair thudded into the window.
“Arrange to be at the door to my room with him in half an hour,” Miriam said as Leo hurried out. Then she turned to Sarah, “Don’t point guns at her.”
“She’s rude to you.”
“She’s as she is. Accept her.”
“You want her instead of me!”
Miriam went close to Sarah, cradled her face in her hands. “Control yourself,” she said, pressing harder, compressing the jaw and cheeks until the eyes almost popped out of the head. “Will you?”
Sarah nodded. She could not speak.
Miriam could crush a human skull. She pressed harder. “Are you certain?”
Sarah nodded again. Mucus began dribbling from her nose. Her feet stomped and scuffled, her hands came up and fluttered along Miriam’s arms.
Miriam let her go. Sarah gagged, sucked air, pitched forward out of her chair. Then she came to her feet. Her cheeks were flaming.
“No jealousy,” Miriam said.
Tears pouring from her eyes, Sarah threw herself against Miriam. “Please don’t abandon me!”
Miriam had heard that cry from every one of them, and it went straight to her heart. They were tragic beings, her humans. She was ashamed of them. But she enjoyed them a great deal, and that, ultimately, was what mattered to her. Keepers caused human suffering. That was simply the nature of nature.
She kissed Sarah. “Better?”
“I’m sorry, Miri. It’s just that you’re so precious to me. I can’t live without you.”
“My love, I have a task of great importance that I need you to do.” She held out a brass key. “This is the key to his hotel room.” She tossed it onto the desk, told Sarah the address. “Go up there, take Bill or somebody with you. Go through the room, take every trace of him out with you. And especially, if you find a small, black book, very old — ”
“He has a Book of Names?”
“If we’re lucky.”
Sarah was shocked. “What use would it be to him?”
“They can read Prime. Some of it.”
Sarah was truly amazed. She had counted a hundred and eighty different symbols in a single glyph. It was the most complex written language by a factor of a thousand. Who could possibly manage to crack a code like that?
“You’re sure of this?”
“I imagine they used National Security Agency cryptographers.”
Sarah felt a coldness within her, as if her heart had been pierced with a knife of ice. “Your name is there. Your holdings. Oh, Miri!”
The Keepers were in terrible trouble if these people were able to read such records. “Where would he get a Book of Names? How?”
“When you get the
book — if you do — bring it straight here.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then we’ll just have to get him to tell us where it is, won’t we, dear?”
Sarah managed a smile. Sometimes Miri made them scream, which Sarah normally hated. She would not hate it if this man screamed.
“We’ll make him tell us,” she said. She put her arms around Miri. “Thank you for trusting me again.”
“Now go, child. Go like the wind.”
Paul pulled on the pants, got them sort of closed. “This guy must be thin as a rail,” he said. He managed to get into the shoes, too, which were of leather so soft it made his skin crawl. Could these people have somehow gotten something from a vampire? From what he’d seen in Paris, the vampires were much more capable of mixing with humans than he’d believed. His sense of it was that the Asians were more ancient than the Europeans and far less able to be seen on the streets. Maybe the Americans were younger and more humanlike still. Hell, maybe they would even fit into a hip crowd like this.
He looked more carefully at the shoe. Gucci sure as hell didn’t make them out of human skin, so that theory was out.
The clothes actually fit pretty well, although they seemed decades out of date. The jacket had a wide collar, and the trousers were subtly flared. They belonged to a man with big shoulders like Paul’s, a tall man and a strong man. But a slimmer one.
He regarded himself in the mirror. “Jesus,” he said, “I look like a million bucks.”
Leo decided that she utterly loathed him. “You look just fabulous,” she lied.
“Whose clothes are these, anyway?”
“A friend of ours. Listen, I’ve got an idea. The next set doesn’t come up until after dinner. Want to see the rest of the club?”
A guided tour from this babe? “You better believe it.”
She walked through another wall. Expecting to be blasted by music again, he followed her. But he was not blasted. In fact, he wasn’t in a room at all. He was in a Japanese garden, outside — at least it seemed like outside. The sky was velvet swarming with stars, a sickle moon just turning yellow as it slid toward the horizon. Bamboo chimes made restful sounds; water hurried over stones. Crickets chirped; a bat whispered past his face. Here and there in the dark, he could see pale bodies. There were at least a dozen people here, all covered by black cloaks, lounging on benches or on the grass. A guy with glasses and an old-fashioned doctor’s kit went among them like a waiter, discussing in quiet tones, then ministering to them out of his case.
The Last Vampire Page 26
