The Last Vampire (35 page)

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 waited 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.

He was too exhausted to move a muscle. He could only watch as it opened his pants and sat on him. He felt himself being inserted into its vagina, and he struggled to prevent that, but he could not prevent it.

The creature raped him. There was no other way to describe what was done. What was worse — more humiliating, more angering — was that the sensation was not like the dull, empty horror of a true rape. There was something else there, another emotion, one that he did not want but could not deny.

It wasn’t only that she was incredibly beautiful, even without her makeup — maybe more so without it. It was that she just
felt so right
. That was the reality of it. In her makeup or out of her makeup, she was the most wonderful woman he had ever been with.

He realized that he had been tricked into making his move. This was no battle to the death. It was a damn seduction!

And, oh, my, but it was a good one — so smart, so deeply knowledgeable of Paul Ward. It made his very soul ache to see her trying so hard to win him and to love him through his hate, to draw him to her side and the side of their son.

She stopped. He realized that he had climaxed, but also that she had taken a lot of blood out of him, so much that he was surprised that he was still conscious, let alone capable of coitus. But she knew the human body with incredible precision. The borderland between life and death was where she was most comfortable.

“So,” she said as she got off him, “what do we call him? I think it ought to be Paul. Paul Ward, Jr.” She smiled the smile of a sultry Venus, the most amazing expression in the most amazing face he had ever seen. “Agreed?”

She lifted him to his shuffling feet and led him through the house in triumph. They had to help him, but he went upstairs. He went into her bedroom — their bedroom — and fell upon their bed.

“It’s only a quart,” she said. He’d tasted lovely. It had been hard to stop. “You’re not
that
weak.”

His eyes almost twinkled, and he seemed to revive himself. “Okay,” he said, “maybe you’re right. So let’s finish this in bed.”

She was heavy, just like him, and lean and strong . . . but also soft, soft in wonderful ways that seemed to fit him just about perfectly.

She lay in his arms, gazing at him with such adoration that he almost wanted to laugh from the pleasure it gave him. All the love and tenderness that he had been trying to suppress, that were part of his nature and one with their bonded spirits, now blossomed forth in him.

“I never will leave you,” he said.

“I never will leave you.”

This, he felt, was their marriage vow. “You’re my wife,” he said.

“My husband.”

Leo and Sarah, who had come with them, now withdrew from the room. “I think she made it,” Leo said.

Sarah just shook her head.

When they had been in bed together for a little time, however, she felt it her duty to be sure that they were entirely comfortable . . . and that all was indeed well.

Miriam gave her a very large smile, her lovely face almost buried beneath Paul’s big, plunging back.

Sarah laid her hand on Paul’s shoulder. Then she went softly out and closed the door.

Paul finished, a second time within just a few minutes and with a lot of blood lost. He sank down upon her, then slid into the softness of the bed.

What had he done? He’d capitulated. Maybe it was the damn blood loss, maybe it was the brilliance of her seduction by violence, maybe it was the staring eyes of the baby — but one thing was certain: He was not going to kill this vampire.

She lay beside him as still as still water, her eyes closed, upon her face a narrow smile. He slipped his hand into hers, and she made a startlingly catlike purring sound.

It was while she was purring that he heard another sound, very soft indeed. Curious as to the origin of this very slight thud, he turned his head and looked toward Sarah’s office.

As if by magic, the door came slowly open. First he saw a blond head, then a pale face in the gloom of the curtained bedroom. A small figure came in, moving quickly, almost as catlike as Miriam herself.

What the hell? It looked like Peter Pan. As much as his mind wanted to believe that it was part of a dream, he had to face the fact that it was real. He stared. It came, catlike, closer to the bed.

It was small but it seemed extremely dangerous. Paul’s struggling heart started to struggle harder. He did not understand. There was nobody else in the house, and they were incredibly careful about that.

When the figure reached the bedside, he almost leaped out of his skin with surprise. It was Becky. Cocking her head, she gave him a look that said,
Naughty boy,
and the slightest of smiles traveled across her face.

In that instant — seeing her so unexpectedly — Paul came back to himself. It was a homecoming to see her. His very soul rejoiced. She reached out and touched his cheek, and he was so incredibly glad that he would have cried if he hadn’t been such a tough sonofabitch.

She smiled, then, more broadly. She pointed a finger at the vampire and mouthed, “Bang bang.”

Paul nodded.

Miriam burst out of the bed, leaping almost to the ceiling. She came flying across Paul and tackled Becky, who was sent crashing all the way back into the office, where her rope still hung from the open skylight.

Paul wasn’t as fast, but Becky recovered herself. She dragged out a pistol — and it wasn’t a damned magnum. It was one of the French babies. Good! This thing was going to be decided at last.

Miriam snarled when she saw it. She snarled, and then she backed away. In two lithe steps, she was beside him. “Shoot us,” she said. She knew damn well how it worked. It was meant to clear a room. Becky could not kill Miriam without killing Paul.

“Hey, Beck,” Paul said aloud.

“I thought we were a thing, you prick!”

The natural goodness of a love like that was fresh water in a desert that Paul had not even realized was dry. “Becky,” he said, “oh, Christ — ”

“Men. They’re all the same,” Miriam said. She had that little smile on her face that was always there when she felt in control of a situation.

“She’s an ugly cuss, Paul! Jesus, you must be drugged or something, man!”

“Becky, I thought you were with Bocage. I thought — ”