Miriam’s world had gathered her in, shielding her behind its walls of money and power. Only a few of her admirers really knew — or, if they had been told, actually believed — how she sustained her life. They preferred to view the frisson of danger that clung to her as part of her extraordinary personal style — an intoxicating mixture of sin and savagery and high culture. Had they known for certain that the whispers were true, most of them would have abandoned her to the police. Or so they told themselves.
During the watchful, uneasy night, Sarah’s hunger had increased. Miriam did not offer Sarah the comfort and support she was used to getting from her. Instead, Leo was given the responsibility of attending to Sarah’s suffering, giving her aspirin, then preparing a pipe for her. Leo’s presence, since they had returned from England, had obviously become more important to Miriam, and Sarah found this disturbing. She did not like Leo. She did not want her in their lives.
Sarah smoked in the library while Miriam paced and consulted an old Keeper tome. She seemed to be looking for something in her books, paging carefully through their heavily illuminated pages. Sarah had been unable to crack the incredibly intricate hieroglyphics, and when she asked to be taught the language, Miriam had said, “Your species isn’t intelligent enough to learn it. I might possibly be able to teach you to read a list, but who wants to do that?”
Of course, all of the important information about the Keepers was recorded in long lists in the Books of Names. If Sarah was ever to complete her own book, she needed to know that language. But she would need professional linguists and cryptographers to help her, if Miriam would not.
Miriam was now wearing one of her many wigs, a darling bobbed affair, pert and blond, that made her seem even younger. In it, she appeared her usual resplendent self. But she had been burned. Who would have done that? Even if it had been Keepers, why was she still afraid? Keepers didn’t hunt each other down. They argued and fought, on occasion, but their battles were never to the death.
Could it have been a human being? If so, then what manner of human could have managed it?
Near dawn, Sarah had awakened from a sleep made gaudy by opium. She felt awful, her stomach full of acid, her body aching, her heart hammering. She knew the symptoms perfectly well: Miriam’s blood — that strange otherness within her — was literally devouring her in its hunger.
The symptoms were not unlike those of a severe bacterial infection, as her immune system fought the part of her that was turning against her own flesh. Soon, she would be feverish. Then later, she would grow delirious. In the end would come death. Sarah had to feed. She had to do it now.
She was surprised to hear more than two voices coming from the direction of the kitchen. At this hour — about six in the morning — it was most unusual for there to be a stranger in the house.
Sarah hurried toward the kitchen. She found Miriam and Leo attending to the needs of a shabby, heavy woman who wore a tattered coat and scarf and smelled of ammonia and sweat. Sarah the doctor saw immediately that she ate badly and drank — was, in fact, somewhat drunk right now — had untreated skin cancer, and, from the droopy look of her right eye, an undiagnosed stroke.
Beneath her feet Sarah could feel the rumble of the big furnace, which was used to incinerate remnants.
She continued to look upon her — perhaps sixty, obviously a street person, eating a piece of Leo’s rhubarb pie. Leo could bake. She could make fried chicken. Now, her sleeves were rolled up. There were handcuffs in the hip pocket of her jeans.
Sarah was appalled. Leo was being allowed to participate in this. Leo! Had Miriam lost her mind? This sort of business was for the Keepers and the blooded only. Never should Leo have been involved.
“Hi,” Leo said brightly. “I got you what you need.”
Sarah looked at Miriam, who leaned against the drainboard, watching with those crystal eyes of hers. She murmured, “Do it now.”
Leo said to the woman, “More milk?”
She replied, “Sure, lady.”
“Miri,” Sarah said. She nodded toward Leo. You didn’t feed in front of one of those. No way!
Leo went behind her as if to go to the refrigerator. As she pulled open the door, she also drew a sock stuffed with ball bearings out of her tight jeans pocket. She positioned herself behind the busily eating woman.
Miriam had obviously instructed her. She had instructed an ordinary human in this terrible secret. What if Leo went to the police, tried blackmail — there would be no way to stop her unless she was imprisoned like Sarah, in the bondage of Keeper blood.
Leo hit the woman. It was a gingerly, inexpert blow. She barked with surprise, pie flying out of her mouth.
“Again,” Miriam said. She was completely at her ease.
The woman started to her feet, her eyes bulging with surprise. Leo struck her again, but she was in motion now and the blow was even less effective. She stumbled forward against the table. She said something, perhaps in Russian.
Miriam answered her in a harsh voice, in the same language. The woman shoved the table aside, began to run toward Sarah and the doorway behind her.
“Keep after her, Leo,” Miriam barked.
This blow came down right on top of the cranium — not well placed, but there was plenty of travel in it and the woman went down like a bag of lard. Her forehead hit the granite tile floor with a jarring crack.
“Now,” Miriam said, “Sarah will prepare her with a little bleeding knife, won’t you, Sarah? Get your kit to show Leo.”
Sarah looked at the body, the slow rise and fall of the chest, the strange repose on the face.
“It’s in my office,” she said.
“Then get it. But be quick.”
She went up to the bedroom, through it, and up the narrow stairs to the tiny space that was her own. Its window looked out on a wall, but it had a lovely skylight. On fine days, she would sometimes lean back in her chair and let her thoughts wander in the sky that unfolded overhead.
Her desk was stacked with papers, and a frame from a statistical analysis program she’d been using glowed on her computer screen. She had been analyzing the effect of a new plasma solution made from Miriam’s blood on the decayed cells of her former lovers’ bodies. So far, the results were ambiguous at best.
She knew she shouldn’t, but she sat down. Her hunger was calling to her, screaming to her. But she still sat down; she still looked at her figures, thought a little about the deliverance she was working on.
A life was about to be wasted, and this was comfort, because somewhere in these statistics and the cellular structures they reflected, there was a way to eject Miriam’s blood from your body . . . maybe even a way to rescue those who had faltered while it still flowed in their veins. Faltered, but not died . . .
She clicked her mouse a few times, and a photo appeared on the screen of somebody who had most certainly died. This picture had been strictly forbidden by Miriam, not allowed anywhere in the house.
She gazed into it, into the smiling face of her beloved Tom. She and Tom Haver had discovered Miriam together. It had been a heady time for them at Riverside Hospital, uncovering together the fact that this was a new species of intelligent creature, sharing the earth with mankind.
In the picture, Tom was smiling. It had been their last carefree moment together. In fact, the last carefree moment of Sarah Roberts’s life.
Behind him was the South Street Seaport Maritime Museum, in the days before all the new restaurants and attractions. They’d just come down off one of the old sailing ships. It had been a sunny autumn afternoon. He was wearing a windbreaker.
She knew every detail of how he had been when she had snapped that picture, remembered even his aftershave. It had been something called Jade East. They had walked hand in hand up South Street, bought some oysters at the Fulton Fish Market, gone home and eaten them on the tiny deck of their apartment. They were so in love.
Eleven days later she had killed him. She had killed Tom, and now his soul
rested within her. She never spoke of him, hardly dared think of him because sometimes it seemed as if Miri could read thoughts. But he was part of her, and it was to him she would go, if ever her soul was released from the prison of this life.
Working quickly, she returned the picture to its hidden file. Miriam never touched the computer. But she might, and she was certainly smart enough to understand it. Sarah could not imagine what would happen if she discovered the picture.
If Miriam understood the depth of Sarah’s rebellion, she might be returned to the attic.
She looked toward the small door in the side wall. It led up.
She knew that she should get her fleam from the desk drawer and take it down immediately, that she was already overdue, but instead she gazed at that door.
It did her soul good to go up there. But it was hard to do it, to see them . . . and to see the other thing that was there.
She laid her hand on the knob, twisted it. The dark stairs rose steeply. She mounted them, hesitated, then walked quickly up.
Before her was a room dimly lit by small oval windows. There was something almost noble about the wide space with its sweep of gray floor. The attic ran the length of this large house, and thus was its largest room.
Bats roosted in the upper timbers. Ancient brass lanterns hung from crossbeams. This room had never been electrified.
Here were the coffins and boxes that represented her mistress’s incredible greed, her invincible belief in her own rights over the rights of others. Here, also, was a humble coffin made of gray steel, still looking quite new.
Sarah went to it. She drew it open. It was here that Miriam had laid her after she had attempted to destroy herself. She ran her fingers along the white satin facing, touched the little pillow where her head had rested.
Here she had passed through death and here been brought back. This coffin, she felt, was her true home. This was the center of her reality and her being. It was where she must one day return. And she did return, when Miri was deep in the dead sleep that followed her feedings or — as now — otherwise occupied. Sarah would get in and draw down the lid, remaining until the air ran out and she finally had to open it to breathe.
There was a deep, profound satisfaction involved in doing this. When she pulled that lid down, it was as if fresh water was soothing her burning, tortured soul.
She wanted to right now — especially now — so very badly. But she had to get back. She had to take the fleam. Her victim was waiting to be robbed of her life.
Through tearing eyes, she looked along the far wall, to the coffin that Miri so frequently came to see. This was John Blaylock. What Miri did not know was that Sarah would sometimes open this coffin . . . as she was going to do now.
She went to it, unlocked it, raised the lid. A familiar dry, spicy scent came out — the potpourri that Miriam kept there. The corpse was narrow, dressed in a tail suit with a wing collar. The neck had grown thin, and the face was distorted by the profound necrosis of a body dead and from drying out for twenty years.
The lips had slid back from the teeth, and the cartilage in the nose had dried out. The corpse was grimacing. But there was something about the grimace — some, strange living essence that made it hard to look upon for long. For this was no ordinary corpse. This was a living corpse.
She laid her hand lightly in the corpse’s delicate hand. Then she leaned into the coffin and touched her lips to the dry, rotted cheek. She whispered, “I’m making progress, John. A little at a time. But it’s there, John. It’s there.” With the slowness of an hour hand, the fingers of the corpse were closing. If she had an hour or two or three, John Blaylock would gradually grip her hand with an appalling grip. His fingers would feel like corded steel. His nails would dig as if seeking to break through to her blood.
But now, there was only the subtlest of changes — a slight tickling of a bony finger in a soft palm, the sighing pressure of a long, hard nail upon the tender inner edge of one of her fingers.
She drew away from him. In his eyes, she could see fire. See it — but was it there? Then she heard the sound of the corpse — for it made a sound when she came. It was moving — dry muscles, dead skin, every part of it. This created a rustle no more than the whisper of falling leaves, but it was unmistakably a sound of life.
In her clear, gentle voice, as soft as the tender airs of the night, she sang to him a song that was familiar to all of Miriam’s people:
“Sleep my child and peace attend thee,
All through the night. . . .”
With that she left him. Miriam would not be pleased with this delay. But Sarah had a relationship with John and the others. One day, she would either bring them back to life or give them the release of true death. One day.
Her research had proceeded much farther than she had told Miriam. In fact, she was probably farther along in understanding the physics of the soul than anybody else in the world. This was because science rejected its existence. But she had been a soul, one trapped in its own corpse. So she knew that the soul existed. She had discovered that this rich electromagnetic being was accessible to technology, for it was part of the physical world, not some strange supernatural essence. The soul was a living plasma composed of trillions of electrons, each one cast with a slightly different spin, and each spin expressing a tiny part of the harmony and memory of the whole incredibly detailed being.
There must even be a medicine of the soul, she felt, for it could be sick and it could suffer. Oh, yes, it could suffer.
As she crossed the attic, the rustling grew faint, fading on an unmistakable note of dejection.
She drew her spotless sliver fleam out of its case of human leather and hurried downstairs.
They had cuffed the victim, who was laid out on the white enamel kitchen table.
“Pull up a chair,” Miriam said to Leo.“It’s quite a spectacle.” She glared at Sarah, but made no other comment on her slowness.
Sarah tried to control her shaking hand as she felt the pulse. With her doctor’s precise knowledge, she could determine exactly which neck artery would offer the best flow.
“What is that instrument?”
Sarah looked at Leo, who was sitting with her chin in her hands, watching from two feet away. She was going to watch an innocent human being die, and all she could bring to it was this ugly fascination. Sarah went from disliking Leo to despising her. She was actually tempted to go after her with the damned fleam.
When she did not answer Leo’s question, Miriam said, “It’s an antique surgical instrument, from when they used to let blood. That hooked end nicks into the vein, then the blade opens it. It’s very neat.”
“You don’t use one, though.”
With a dry sound, Miriam opened her mouth. Leo gasped at the funneled cavern with the pointed, black tongue at its center. “I don’t need one,” Miriam said, chuckling.
“Fleams were used by vets to bleed horses,” Sarah said.“It’s a brutal tool.”
“It looks beautiful.”
“That’s because she keeps her instruments so clean. She’s a doctor, remember.”
“How does this make you feel?”
“How does it make me feel?”
“Hurry up, Sarah,” Miriam said quickly.
Her throat was closing, her eyes tearing. But she tried to be proud, to do well what she must do to survive. She was weak; she should let herself die. But she couldn’t stay in that coffin of hers, no more than you can kill yourself by holding your breath.
“Aren’t you going to wake her up for it?” Leo asked.
Miriam burst out laughing.“She likes them out cold! She has no taste!”
What Miriam meant was that the blood of a suffering victim tasted better. The adrenaline gave it a delectable piquancy.
Sarah hooked the fleam into the carotid on the right side. Leo came around the table so she could see the sucking process up close. Sarah’s cheeks were hot with embarrassment; her soul was wretched with shame. But the blood
that dripped out — oh, God, oh, it smelled so damn good!
There was a small struggle. The woman shifted on the table, moaning dryly.
“Do I hit her again?” Leo asked Miri.
“Please,” Sarah gasped.
Leo hesitated, looking at Miriam.
The woman stirred again.
“Leo, please!”
Miriam stayed Leo’s hand.
The victim’s eyes opened. Sarah glared at Miriam. “Miri!”
“Leo, don’t you move!”
The woman said, “What the heck?” She started to sit up. Sarah pushed her down, nicked again with the fleam and locked her lips to the dirt-ringed neck. The woman said, “The fuck!” Then she rattled along in her own language, obviously cursing. She squirmed; she tried to free her hands.
Sarah forced every iota of air out of her lungs. She distended her belly. She locked her lips tight to the neck, making the best seal she could. The woman flounced and struggled, but Miri held her head and made Leo lie across her midriff. The woman made rasping sounds — desperate attempts to scream.
Sarah sucked. The artery wall resisted, then gave way, spurting a flood of fresh, hot, salty blood straight down Sarah’s gullet. The effect was a thousand times more powerful than a hit of the purest heroin ever made. From her toes to her head, her skin rippled and shivered. An orgasm came, spreading through her until her whole body was a single, pulsing, vibrating dynamo of sexual genius. Somewhere far away, she could hear Leo laughing and crying at the same time, and Miri’s voice comforting her, saying soft things that she did not mean.
She sucked and she sucked, and the old voice went down to a growling babble. She sucked and the old heart came to a stop. And then the body went slack, and the flow went down.
Sarah drew back. Blood, very black, dribbled onto the table.
Leo was standing at the far end of the room, her eyes round, her face covered with tears. Miriam said, “Come here to me.”
Leo shook her head.
Miri went to her and drew her by the wrist. “Watch!”
With one huge drag, Miriam did what no human being could ever do, no matter how evolved their technique. She emptied the woman of every trace of fluid that was in her. The skin sank back against the skull, drew tight, crackling as it turned to dry parchment. The eyeballs withered, the clothes went slack around the body. And then Miriam came up, the corpse still popping and crackling as cartilage snapped and muscles twisted themselves into hard, narrow ropes.