The door was suddenly flung open by a male in resplendent clothing, obviously a human of great importance. She was guided out as others placed her bags on a rolling platform. So the ritual was to be repeated here. Man had always enjoyed ritual, but this business of being unable to so much as walk three steps without yet more of it was absurd.
She was conducted to another altar in the opulent new temple, and again did the ritual with the card. “I am already a ‘cab,’” she explained to the priest when he began to swipe the thing through the various magical sigils that were employed here.
He glanced at her in such an odd way that she decided that she was growing overconfident, and stopped speaking.
“I don’t see your reservation, Mrs. Perdu.”
“Ah, good.”
“No, I don’t have a reservation for you. Let me—” He signaled another priest, who came majestically forward, his eyebrows raised, his chin high. If she understood anything at all about religion, her response had caused a higher priest to be engaged in the ceremony, which was all to the good.
“Yes, Mr. Friedman?”
The first priest replied in an incancatory undertone. “We don’t have a reservation here.”
The other murmured. “She looks like she’s dressed for a party.”
Now they whispered. Lilith heard every sound, of course. “The cabbie told the door that she’s going to the Patterson do.”
“Oh, Jesus. Put her in a suite.”
Now they both turned to her with great smiles on their faces. “Welcome to the Sherry-Netherland, Mrs. Perdu. You’ll be in the Rose Suite, very nice.” He rang a little bell. More of the creatures swarmed over her trolley of bags.
“Leo is here?”
“Oh, I believe that she’s rehearsing over at the club.”
“Ah. I will go there.”
“Would you care for the hotel to provide you with a car and driver for your stay?”
“Yes.”
“Very good. And when will you be leaving this evening? I think that the club’s only—oh, ten minutes at most. Fifteen. Perhaps seven-thirty?”
“Seven-thirty.”
They went into another of the rising and falling compartments, this one far more opulent than the Royalton, as was the entire place. She was beginning to see that the entry and exit rituals were the only religious aspect of the place. These were really apartments of rooms where people stopped to rest. She wondered if they all carried their possessions about like this all the time. What sort of arcane lives must they live if they did this, darting about like flies, never stopping in any one place for long?
The chambers they gave her had sun pouring in the tall windows, illuminating the rose pink decorations, the tables and chairs, and the stuffed couches and such very nicely. Instead of one room, there were a number of rooms. In this one was placed sitting furniture, in another a broad table. At the far end of the wide, tapestry-thrown floor was another chamber, this one containing a large couch made of gleaming brass. She had not seen so much space, or such nice space, since she was at home.
The inevitable young man who had come with her laid the bags upon the couch in the other room. “How long will you be with us?” he asked.
“For eternity,” she replied.
He laughed slightly. “I know what you mean. This is such a great suite.”
She saw the water room. It actually had a pool in it. Almost automatically, she stood awaiting service, but he did not comply. She did not know how to order a slave in English, so she said, simply, “Bathe me.”
He came in. “Uh—you want to know how to use the bath?” Grinning, his face flushed, he twiddled levers.
Water came out in copious flow, dropping into the pool. She awaited his ministrations, but he backed out of the room. Immediately thereafter, he had withdrawn altogether. “I’ll send you a maid,” he shouted as he left.
Soon another slave arrived, this one a female, a short, dark Nubian, not one of the tall blacks from Punt. “May I help you?” she asked.
“Give me a hand, sister,” Lilith said. She was feeling helpless and frustrated. She had the uneasy feeling that nothing was quite as it seemed.
“That’s gonna run over, sweetheart,” the Nubian woman said. She made the water stop flowing into the bath. Lilith could have done it, but she was determined to make these slaves act in the way she wanted them to. Surely she could still command a slave.
“Bathe me,” she said.
“You want me to give you a bath?”
At last, that response made some sense. She was finally getting through to these idiots. “You got that right, kiddo!”
“Well, lady, I don’t think I got hired for givin’ nobody no bath. Look, you take your own bath, and I’ll put up your clothes. How’s that?” She went and busied herself with the bags and the cupboard.
Lilith wasn’t going to whip a slave belonging to a temple, but this was getting ridiculous. She removed her clothing and had the bath, soaking until the water grew cool, then cold. The Nubian had left long before, left without a word.
She arose then, and dressed herself, this time in coarse, black leather that reminded her unpleasantly of the beautiful cloak that she had lost.
She went to a window. The light had gone. She knew that she had spent a whole day in the bath, or the better part of it, but she often did this. Or even more time. In Rome, she had once spent a very long time in the baths of Hadrian, at his villa, perhaps a week it had been. He’d had proper slaves that were properly trained.
A box on the wall near to hand commenced ringing. A voice said, when she finally got it properly fitted to her ear: “Your car is waiting.”
* * *
Ian hurried through the streets, heading up from Grand Central to the Music Room. There was a big crowd of fans, of course, but that didn’t bother him. He’d done this before, at premieres and openings of various kinds. He loved to attend, and he knew the ropes. There were even some familiar faces. The expectant tension in the air told him as he walked up that Leo had not yet arrived.
As soon as he’d began working forward, he noticed an unaccustomed nervousness in the crowd. He saw Ruthie R., a pro autograph collector. “What’s the story?”
“Word is she’s already inside.”
“She’ll come out.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Ian was confident. “She will. I know Leo.”
He watched some shadow arrivals, so called because the TV crews killed their lights as soon as they saw it was a nobody. It was kind of fun to watch the nobodies think they were getting the big entrada, then having their lights cut. Mean fun.
Then, electricity. A second later, excitement. The E! crew hurried out onto the mat. This one was for real. Huge excitement. Autographs jostled to the rope. The limo door was drawn open by a flunkie, and out came Penelope Cruz. She was splendid in a white silk dress as slight as a breeze. After a few seconds with E! she made a fabulous entrance, glowing under the lights like the goddess that she was. She actually stopped on the other side for a couple of seconds. She was signing, God love her grace, Penny.
Ruthie R. made her move, Ian giving her the help she needed. And then the actress was right there, looking absolutely amazing up close, so perfect, so rich, so…human that Ian felt for a moment levitated by her mere presence. This was star quality, this was what it was all about.
They began to come in thick then, one after another, the most stunning array of genuine bigs that anybody even in this jaded NYC crowd had ever seen. Bowie, Clooney, Gibson, Paltrow, Roberts, Zellweger: it looked like the academies. But no Leo. So they waited, making a recognition game around the passage of moguls. Ian saw his parents go in, watched them with hungry eyes. How he would love to be with them, to be going in there, to—oh, shit, it was an awful moment for him, no other way to describe it. He kept well back. Dad was terrifyingly observant, like some kind of juiced-up eagle or something. He could count the hairs on a speeding rat, Dad could.
Then he noti
ced—as they all were noticing—that a car had pulled up at the front, a particularly magnificent car, and that it was quiet and dark, nothing moving. E! started its setup. More cameras arrived. “Michael Jackson,” the whisper ran.
“Here we go,” Ruthie murmured.
The driver came around and opened the door. A woman began to emerge, blond, tall. The crowd seemed to utter a sigh. This was not Leo.
But this woman—Ian had never seen anybody like her. She was oddly but fabulously dressed, in a black leather business suit with no shirt and apparently no damn bra. Her hair was blond and soft, lingering like smoke around her head. She looked about twenty, twenty-three, no more than that. Her eyes were powder blue.
“Who is that?”
“It’s the most beautiful woman in the world,” somebody said.
As she came forward, Ian had the strange feeling that she was connecting with him. Then an actual, physical shock went through him, as if she’d reached out across the thirty feet of space and people and brazenly put her hand on his crotch. The sensation was so real and so pleasurable that an erection shot up like the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima.
She stopped. She was directly opposite him, just a few feet away. When their eyes met, he felt a kind of delirium, as if a hundred voices were all shouting at him, demanding something of him, something that he did not understand but wanted to understand.
Who was this woman, and why in the world was she singling him out like this? She said something—uttered what sounded to him like a command—using a language he’d never heard before. She waited for a response. Her face was so incredibly perfect, he almost passed out. She was the most pretty, the sweetest, girl and the sexiest woman he had ever seen all wrapped up into one. Her eyes shone like a perfect blue sky, her lips, complex with laughter, innocent and yet…not…her lips parted a little. And she was interested in him—him! Why was she doing this? What was going on here? He felt himself start to shake. Then the eyes captured his eyes—literally captured them, there was no other word for it. A tide of some kind of fire poured into his brain, like lava flowing out of her and into him.
Then he felt pain—a cuff around his wrist. He looked down. Her hand had darted forward like the head of a snake. She’d grasped his wrist so fast that he couldn’t believe it, that her hand could be there, and that her hand could feel so much like steel. She drew him toward her, knocking over the precious ropes beyond which you did not go unless you wanted to get booted. She dragged him right out into the entry aisle. Turning, pushing aside William H. Macy and Meryl Streep, she strode into the lobby of the Music Room, Ian in tow behind her. He stumbled along in his jeans and sweatshirt and fannish sneakers, in a kind of ecstasy of amazed fear.
The lobby was blazing with celebrities, officials from the Environment Fund, bigwigs of every stripe—and him, a kid in street drag being towed along by some kind of a he did not know what.
“Hey, you—”
It was Big Joe Peak, a famous celeb guard. He knew all the groupies by sight.
“She’s got my arm!”
“Out. Now. Or you get the cooler.”
“Look, I don’t want to be here—”
She dragged him off like a puppy on a leash. Big Joe Peak’s huge hand closed around his shoulder.
But there, resplendent in green silk, was Leo. Big Joe, Ian—they both froze. Incredibly, Leo did the same. She looked into the woman’s eyes just like Ian had, he saw her do it, and he saw an explosion in her, too. But it was different from what had happened to him, it was more. Because Leo seemed to go into some kind of shock. Like, she was trembling. Like, she was going pale. Like, tears were filling her eyes.
Big Joe instantly calculated that this did not add up to what he had been expecting. His hand dropped off Ian’s shoulder, but he remained right there, his sour breath washing the back of Ian’s neck.
Leo wore emeralds matched to her eyes, and a grand cloud of a dress of the richest, most gorgeous silk Ian had ever seen. Her face was a vision of the purest beauty that there was or ever could be, the chin pointing a little, just enough to make it a heart, to emphasize the innocence that flickered in her eyes and the sensuality that touched her smile like a dangerous shadow.
The eyes widened. The lips dropped open. Then she blinked fast, surveying the woman before her from inside a rain of tears. The silence of the two women spread to the surrounding celebrities. It extended for a beat, then another, and now the whole room fell silent.
“You’ve come,” Leo said. Her voice was faint, trembling.
“I want to see your Keeper.”
“My Keeper—my Keeper…oh…I’m sorry.”
The strange woman drew Ian forward, gathered him around the shoulder. Big Joe tried to pull him back.
“Get outa here, fella,” she hissed at him. “Take a powder, and fast.”
Why in the world was she talking like some film noir black widow or whatever? Whatever, he evaporated like so much sea foam, Big Joe did. She thrust Ian into Leo’s face. He could see her chest rising and falling with what must be a thundering heart. Her makeup was running down her cheeks, running in the tears that were spitting from her eyes. “This one,” the lady said, “he will be your Keeper.”
“H-him?”
“Of course, he is of my blood! Can’t you see it?”
Leo looked at him, her eyes now frantic.
“I—don’t—get—it,” he said through clenched teeth.
But Leo apparently did. She looked him up and down, then said to the woman who held his shoulders, “He’s so beautiful.”
“Of course he is beautiful. He is of my blood.”
Leo reached toward him, her face filling with worship, adoration, even. Her trembling fingertips caressed his cheek. He did not react, could not. He knew that what he was feeling now was shock. He couldn’t even begin to imagine what was happening here.
Leo said, “W-will you love me?”
Frantically, he inventoried the past twenty-four hours. Some damn asshole had slipped him LSD at the rave. Because this was not happening. This was not possible. Leo Patterson was not begging him to love her.
The lights flashed. Leo said, “Come with me.” She moved off down a side aisle, Ian and the woman following, a very confused Big Joe a few steps behind.
A man rushed up to her. “We’re overbooked,” he shrieked, “there’s been a computer glitch! Jack Nicholson brought six people, and I don’t have space!”
“Put these people down in front.”
He looked them up and down. “Excuse me, but that’s impossible.”
“The center table.”
“You gave that table to Kitty Carlisle Hart!”
“Put her in the men’s room.”
“It’s full!”
“Then put her in the basement. And Nicholson.”
“There’s no seating in the basement.”
Leo strode off. “Just fix it,” she said.
The man looked them up and down. “Who in God’s name are you? And what are you doing in that—didn’t you read the invitation?” The man was looking directly at Ian—glaring, his eyes crazed.
“I—I—don’t know. Uh—”
“Oh, God, come on!”
The woman followed him, never varying her regal motion as she progressed through the crowd. Dad and Mom were probably somewhere off in the balconies with the other no-names. He allowed himself a small thrill of pleasure when he considered what they might think when they saw him down here in the glitter and the pomp. Very different from getting caught outside. This was, like, incredibly impressive. Was Dad ever going to wonder what was going on! Thing was, he didn’t know either. He had no damn idea, way no damn idea! All he knew was, he was with one incredible woman, and he had just met a star who was like a goddess to him, and this star had acted like he was her lord and master.
It was a dream that felt real. He could pinch himself, and it would work, but this was still—well, it just wasn’t happening. So okay, let ’er rip.
&
nbsp; They got to their table, sat down. There were little caviar thingies on the table, and the waiter brought champagne.
“So,” the woman said, “where’ve you been keeping yourself?”
“Uh, at home.”
“I got it. Hey, my handle’s Lilith. What’s your moniker, buddy?”
“Uh, I’m Ian. Ian Ward.”
She lifted her champagne. “Here’s lookin’ at you, kid.”
Chapter Twelve
Stripped
Leo was fighting hard to stop being sick, and George was helping her, holding her as she retched again and again. She’d never had stage fright, and this wasn’t stage fright. She had never, ever seen anybody like that woman, never felt anything like she felt right now. Her blood was ringing in her ears, her heart was thundering, and when she shut her eyes during a heave, she saw her again, the most perfect being she had ever beheld.
She shuddered all over. The vampire was a woman, but that was okay. She was completely fabulous, more so even than Miriam. Leo could see now why she had been so careless as to leave a remnant on the dock: she was imperious, an empress of vampires, if they had that. God only knew where she had come from, but Leo absolutely adored her and wanted to serve her and give her happiness and be for her what she had so briefly been for Miriam, that and more. And the boy—of her blood, she had said. He looked it, too, shining, a young Apollo with wisdom and hardness in his eyes. Leo thought: I am going to feel him inside me, and she screamed a little and staggered, then forced herself to soldier on.
“The blood is a magnet,” Sarah had said. “Other vampires will drive you wild.”
She had wanted so badly to be loved, and she was going to be loved. She was, her. She imagined him. He’d be huge, a wild, savage post sweeping upward, and his muscles would glow in the candlelight, and he would just plain break her in two, he would be so powerful and take so so so long.
“We’re on ten minutes ago,” George said.
“Oh, Christ. Makeup. Hair.”