“What do you think, Leo?”
“I think he’s a really cool looking guy.”
On the afternoon of the release, they came down with a cake. They made a party of it with a thirty-year-old Yquem and the Lane cake, made after a sumptuous eighteenth-century recipe, with macerated fruits and cognac. Miriam joked by carrying a cherry to Paul in her mouth. He took it with his teeth and chewed it sensuously.
Miriam gave him the run of the house, all except the attic.
Sarah waited and watched. She tried to enlist Leo, but Leo was little more concerned than Miriam. Leo was a young fool, in Sarah’s opinion. Sarah noticed a subtle change in her own personality. A certain realization came upon Sarah that was similar, she thought, to the kind of assumption that comes to dominate a man’s mind in a terrible battle. It was the assumption that there would be no escape, that what Miriam was doing was so foolish that it could not lead to anything but destruction.
How could it be, though, that somebody who had clawed their way through so much life and so much danger to have a baby would, upon becoming pregnant, put at risk both her own life and that of the child?
Miri was a dear and familiar friend. Sarah knew her every mood, the meaning of every expression that flickered in her eyes, had lived with her in deepest intimacy for two decades and more. She knew Miri’s fears and her joys, had drawn her to extremes of sexual intensity and observed her with a lover’s fascinated dispassion as she lost herself in pleasures. She provided friendship and love and loyalty. But Sarah thought now that they had come to an extreme edge, a strange country of the Keeper mind into which her understanding could not penetrate.
There was only one conclusion to be drawn from her actions: Deeply, profoundly, Miriam wanted to be destroyed as much as the rest of her race did. They had a death wish, otherwise why would beings so brilliant and wise be so easy to kill? The Keepers might not know human science, but they knew the human soul, and that was the key knowledge, what was required to defend yourself.
That they did not defend themselves was, as far as Sarah was concerned, an act of willful self-immolation. They must have recognized this in themselves eons ago, probably as soon as man became intelligent. This was when they began to experiment with melding the two species. They had been trying to escape from their own nature.
Miriam looked forward to feeding, though. She relished her kills, especially the ones that put up an interesting fight.
Every time Miriam stood close to Paul, Sarah waited, her insides cringing, for the end to come. Didn’t she see what he was — a loaded gun, a trap ready to spring?
Eventually, Sarah and Miriam had to feed, and nothing she said could convince Miriam to make her meal of Paul Ward.
So they did it at the Veils. There must be absolutely no chance that Paul would see. At least Miriam agreed to that. So far she had not allowed him back to the club. That, also, meant that she had not yet become a complete fool.
They left Leo with him. Privately, Sarah instructed her to carry the gun, and to never get closer than twenty-five feet to him. If she saw the least sign of his trying to leave the house, or if he tried to come too close to her, or even to use the telephone, she was to blow his brains out.
Sarah hoped that it would happen. They would deal with Miriam’s fury. But Miriam threatened Leo — if you kill him, I will kill you. Wound him if you must, but do not kill.
When they came back after taking two Korean businessmen, they had to sleep their deep and helpless sleep.
Sarah told Leo, “If he makes the slightest move toward our bedroom, kill him. No matter what she says.”
“But — ” “I’ll deal with her! You’ll be in no danger.” “Sarah, can you think of any reason not to kill him?” “No.”
“What about the fact that Miri loves him?”
“She doesn’t know her own mind right now — and her name is Miriam, not Miri.”
“You call her Miri.”
“And you don’t.”
Despite the many tensions, life in the household had returned to something approaching its normal pattern, at least on the surface.
Sarah and Leo managed the Veils. Miriam went occasionally. Paul kept asking to go, and every time he did, Miri was a little more tempted, and Sarah trusted him even less.
She and Miri played their music. Miri began teaching Leo piano, then took her on as a student in a way Sarah had always wanted but had never gotten.
Leo began to receive a classical Keeper education. It began with the Ennead of Ra, the first tier of the Egyptian pantheon of Gods. She started to learn spoken Prime. Sarah doubted Leo’s ability to learn the written language, but Miriam was optimistic.
Sarah was surprised that Leo was such a good student. If Miri had wanted a tabula rasa who did not need reeducation because she had nothing to unlearn, she had chosen well. What was amazing to Sarah was that Leo turned out to be a very quick learner. She was actually quite brilliant.
Miriam had picked her out one night at the club with a mere glance. They had been looking for somebody else to blood. They needed more personnel to keep ahead of the burgeoning of their business affairs. Sarah had assumed that they would take a man. But then, almost as an afterthought, Miriam said, “That one.” Leo had been in the Japanese garden with some friends, calling on Rudi’s skills to get them really, really high.
Slowly, Leo had left her old life behind. Now, all that remained of it was an occasional nervous visit to her parents, and soon even that would end.
Sarah knew that she was being prepared for something, and she came to think that it probably involved her own eventual removal from grace.
So Sarah was waiting for the coming of Leo. She was also waiting for Paul Ward to take whatever action he was planning. She was waiting, in other words, for the end of her world.
* * *
When she had been with Eumenes, Miriam had been too young to understand the rarity of happiness. She treasured it now. The overriding reality was that she had a baby in her, her very own baby after all these long years. The trouble was, her husband was turned against himself — a Keeper who had come to hate his own kind. True, he didn’t have life eternal and he didn’t feed on blood, but he was still a Keeper, and she was still working on him. She longed to draw him into the magic ring of her joy, and she thought that she could. What she was planning was a seduction. Back in the old days, Keeper men had found her hard to resist. She had lost none of her ability to seduce.
But that was all for later. First, there was a door she had to pass through, an essential door. As the days had passed, she had grown steadily more uneasy about it. She’d wanted to roll back the days, to prevent them from dawning. But they did dawn, one and then another, and her baby grew.
Now, Sarah told her, the baby would be sufficiently developed to see. In the way of Keeper mothers, she already knew that she had a son. But what was his condition? It could be that he was deformed. Nobody could be sure what would happen when a Keeper was fertilized by one of these exotics like Paul.
At noon on the appointed day, Sarah came to her. She was in the library teaching Leo. Sarah said, “It’s ready.” She smiled down at her. These days Sarah was very warm and very grave. There was about her a sadness that Miriam found distressing to be near. Sarah thought that their life together had come to its burnt-out end.
She thought wrong, of course. She must midwife, then become a pediatrician and gynecologist for another species. Sarah thought that Leo was replacing her. She could not understand that Miriam’s needs were expanding.
The group of them went down to the infirmary together.
Sarah had bought the very finest new ultrasound machine, so the baby would appear almost as clear as a photograph.
Miriam got up on the examination table. Sarah started the machine, which made a high, whining sound.
“Is it radioactive?” Miriam asked nervously.
“Not at all. It sends out sound waves, then reads the reflections. It’s entirely benign, b
ut just to be safe, we’ll only use it for a couple of minutes.”
Miriam lay waiting, her eyes closed, her body trembling. If it was bad news, she did not think that she had the emotional reserves to bear it. She did not think she could live past the loss of this child, but she didn’t know how to die.
She felt the cool instrument sliding on her stomach, which was ever so slightly larger now . . . or was that her imagination?
She put her hand out and Paul took it. They had kissed a few times recently, but he was still being very cool. He wasn’t dangerous to her, though, not since he’d understood that he was partly a Keeper. At least, this was her opinion.
“Miri, look.”
There on the screen was a ghost. It had a small mouth and tiny, still-unformed hands.
She opened her eyes. She stared at the image on the screen. She always had trouble decoding pictures generated by machines, and at first all she saw were red smears.
“There are the hands,” Sarah said, pointing to a slightly less smeary part of the screen.
“Oh, hey,” Paul said, “that’s my boy.”
Miriam still didn’t see . . . and then she did. A tiny face swam into focus. “He’s — oh, he’s beautiful.”
Paul asked, “Does he have teeth?”
“His mouth is human,” Sarah said.
Miriam felt a tingle of concern. “How will he feed, Sarah?”
“Not like you do.” Sarah had tested the blood of the fetus. He was ninety percent Keeper.
“Won’t he starve?”
“Miri, he has what look like normal human organs and something close to pure Keeper blood. He’s going to live — well, maybe forever.”
“As a predator,” Paul said.
“I don’t see any evidence of that,” Sarah replied. “This child has an entirely human mouth and organs.”
“How can you tell? It’s a tiny embryo.”
“I can tell because I’m trained to tell.”
“You’re a gynecologist?”
“I’m a gerontologist. But you’re talking basic medicine.”
Paul’s face went white. He sucked his cheeks in, a sign in a human being of great rage. Miriam watched him, her heart on a shivering edge. She wanted so to love him, but if he threatened her baby, well, she would have to do what she had to do.
When he spoke, his words were knives. “It’s important to me, Sarah.”
“I see a human embryo.”
“Damned, damned important!” Miriam tried to conceal her smile. In that instant, she had understood something new about Paul Ward.
Leo, fearing his tone, dragged her ever-present pistol out of her belt. “Okay,” she said, her gum cracking. She didn’t like Paul any more than Sarah did. She wasn’t afraid for Miriam, though, not like Sarah was. Her concern was that Paul was a rival for Miriam’s interest and affection.
Paul looked at the gun. “Thank you,” he said.
Sarah, who had been examining the embryo, was the first to see an extraordinary phenomenon. For some moments, she watched, her attention captured by what she was seeing. She moved her hand back and forth in front of the monitor. She found it difficult to believe what she was seeing.
Sarah was a scientist. She didn’t believe in the supernatural. She only half believed in the human soul that Miri was always talking about. “You have souls, we don’t.” Uh-huh. “You humans are the true immortals.” Okay.
But this was something very extraordinary. This was a genuine miracle, unfolding before her scientist’s eyes. “Look,” she said, her voice gone soft with awe.
Miriam immediately saw that the tiny, unformed eyes, little more than blanks to which the art of seeing had not yet come, were somehow looking straight out of the monitor. It was as if the fetus were staring at them.
“Can he see us? Is that possible?”
“Miriam, I don’t know.”
Then the eyes flickered again, and they were looking at Paul.
“It’s an optical illusion,” he said.
But the eyes did not look away. Paul said, “My God.” Then he, also, fell silent beneath their eerie gaze.
Miriam’s heart seemed to her to open in her chest like a flower. “Our baby is a miracle, Paul,” she said.
He smiled the way he always smiled, and that made her sad. Why wasn’t he the beaming father he should be? He had a magnificent son. He should be so proud that he could hardly bear it.
Sarah brought the ultrasound examination to a close. Then she presented Miri with her first picture of her child. “His face is aware,” Sarah said laconically. “It’s impossible, but there it is.”
They all gathered around. The photo was detailed. The soft, half-formed face with its black eyes and its slight smile was just luminous.
Miriam drank in the picture. She felt the presence in her belly. Her heart beat with love, her blood flowed with love. And he wouldn’t be like her, he wouldn’t have to suffer the curse of being a predator. Her son would be great, but he would also be free.
She was not a weeper, but she wept now. Sarah noticed the tears and laid her arm around her shoulder. Miriam did not respond. She wanted Paul to hold her. She wanted him to embrace her and cry and laugh with her, and ask for a copy of the picture for his wallet, to treasure just as she would treasure hers.
Still, he made appropriate noises of admiration, and maybe that was a beginning.
“Let’s go upstairs,” Miriam said. She took Paul’s hand. “I think I’d like us to be alone together.”
“Me, too,” Paul agreed.
She led Paul into the music room, closed the door. “Do you like my playing?”
“I love your playing.”
“Then I’d like to play for you. You know this piece?”
“You’ve been working on it for weeks.”
“Sarah’s working. I’ve known it for three hundred years.”
He laughed a little. “It sounds so strange when you say something like that.”
She shrugged. “I’m just me.” She got her viola out of its case. She set her bow, tuned the instrument for a moment, then began to play.
Miriam was not completely surprised when Paul launched himself at her.
To see that thing grinning at him over the health of the monster in its belly was more than Paul could handle. He knew as he flew toward it that he had snapped, that this was wrong, that he was making a huge mistake.
He slammed into the creature, certain only that he had to stop it from making a sound or the others would come in and he would die. Even though they were human, the other two wanted to kill him a lot more than the vampire did; he was certain of that. They would blow him to pieces without hesitation.
It was smaller than he was. But for all its grace and beauty, it had even denser bones. So it was the heavier of the two. It staggered with his weight, but absorbed the blow.
He clapped his hand over its mouth. Its steel-strong arm came up and grabbed his wrist. They fought a silent battle, strength against strength.
He locked his elbow, tightened his muscles. The two of them twisted and turned, falling against the piano, then against the chair where it had been sitting. Its viola crunched and twanged beneath their slow dance. Paul caught the instrument with his shoe, purposely driving his heel into its body, making certain that what the creature loved was destroyed.
Its free hand came between his legs. It got a grip on his balls and began crushing them. They compressed harder and harder, until his deep guts were awash in pain. He used breathing techniques he’d learned in the war to try to control the pain. But he could not control the pain; the pain was astounding.
He started to lose the use of his legs, began to buckle.
Then he got his teeth into the flesh of its neck — its own favorite place. Too bad he couldn’t suck its blood. He bit, grinding down with all his might, his incisors ripping into the hard muscles.
Check.
They broke away.
He waited for it to call to its people. He wa
ited to die.
It stared at him. He stared back. It did not call anybody. They began to circle, and while they circled, he wondered why not . . . and because he did not know, he began to get scared.
It turned its head to one side, lowered it, and looked at him out of the side of its eyes. He knew that it was made up, that it didn’t really have those perfect lips or those beautiful, soft eyes, but he could not help reacting to it as if it were the most wonderful woman he’d ever known.
Why didn’t it call out? Was it here to die, or what?
He leaped at it again. He grabbed its throat, preparing to give it the most fearsome uppercut he could manage. He would stun it; then he would take the shattered neck of the viola and rip out its throat with it.
It stopped the uppercut in the palm of an iron hand. Then, very suddenly, his own hands were trapped at his sides. It was riding him, using its knees to pin his arms. It smashed its fists into his chest, using him like a punching bag. He toppled back, his chest wound making him cough hard.
It lay on him full length. He felt its weight, felt its vagina pressing hard against his penis. He fought to free his arms, but he couldn’t. This was a death grip.
Its head came up; its lips contacted his neck. He threw himself from side to side, but it was no use. The creature’s mouth locked onto his neck.
He could feel the tongue then, probing against his skin. At the same time, its wriggling, squirming body brought him to sexual life. His erection grew until it felt as though it would rip out of his pants. Faster it rubbed back and forth, harder it drove into his neck.
This was the death they gave their victims — an evil sexual charge and then the penetration — and he felt it — the cold, slim needle that was normally enclosed deep inside the tongue — as it came out and pricked delicately against his skin, seeking the vibration of the humming artery.
As it penetrated, the delicate, persistent pain made him gargle miserably. He was as stiff as a steel rod, its haunches were pumping, but he could also feel his blood sliding out of his neck, leaving him breathless and faint.
This was death by vampire, what his father had known.
And then, suddenly, it was on its feet. The lens was gone from one of its eyes, and it glared at him out of one red eye and one ash-gray one. Its face was smeared, the prosthetics gone from one sunken cheek. Along its lips was a foam of blood — his blood.