The engines of the airplane began to whine. She hated to fly as much as or more than she had hated to sail, but she did it anyway, just as she'd always traveled. Her thirst for knowledge had made her take the spring galley from Rome to Alexandria to read in the library, and the summer galleon from Spain to Mexico to plumb the secrets of the Maya.

There was a problem, though. She'd often ended up eating every single soul on those slow old sailing ships. She never meant to do it, but it was just so tempting, all alone in close quarters with a gaggle of sweet-blooded humans for weeks and weeks. She'd do one and then another of them, starting with the low slaves and working her way up. She'd create the impression that they'd jumped or fallen overboard. Come a storm and she'd do five or six, gobbling them like bonbons.

Ships she took would arrive empty . . . except for one seriously overweight Keeper well hidden in the bilges. One of her most particularly self-indulgent trips had been aboard a Dutch East Indies spice trader. She'd consumed a crew of fifty and all six of their pa.s.sengers in just two months. She was so packed with blood she feared that she must look like a big blue tick. She'd come into Surabaya at night on the ship's sailing dinghy. As for the ship, it had sailed on alone for years, still a legend among humans, the Flying Dutchman Flying Dutchman.

Shuddering, the jet rose into the air. Fog, touched golden by the sun, hung over the ancient Thai city below. Miriam gazed down at the temple district, at spires just visible through the billowing fog, and wondered.

The hunger was beginning to claw at her belly. Her muscles were tensing, instinctually getting ready for a kill. Her mouth was filling with the sour flavor of need. The scent of people swept through her with every breath.

She turned on the air nozzle above her head to full force, but there was no escaping the succulent odor of her fellow travelers, not packed into this tin can.

You certainly couldn't feed on a jet. If you stuffed the remnant down the toilet, it would be found later in the plane's holding tank. Remnants had to be completely destroyed - ground up and burned, usually. Humans had found just a very few of them over the generations, generally taken for mummies. In fact, she'd once wrapped a news hawker in tape and put him in a mummy case in the bas.e.m.e.nt of the British Museum. That had been when - oh, a few hundred years ago. He was probably still there, her old hawker. It had been the St. James's Gazette St. James's Gazette that he'd been selling. Pretty good paper in its day. that he'd been selling. Pretty good paper in its day.

Look at the humans around her, she thought, all happy and fluttery and unconcerned about the thirty-thousand-foot maw of death beneath their feet. How could anybody be as careless of their lives as humans were? They flew all the time; they raced around in automobiles; they went on roller coasters and fought wars. Miriam's theory was that humans did indeed have souls, and inwardly they knew it. That was why they came to her for s.e.x, thrilled by the danger they sensed. They weren't really afraid of death, the humans. For them, it was nothing more than another thrill ride.

For the Keepers, death meant leaving the cosmos forever.

The plane leveled off. Miriam knew by its motion and sound exactly what it was doing at every moment of the flight. Actually, she could have flown it herself. She'd trained herself on her PC with a flight simulator, just in case some pilot died from the airline food or something. If some fool were to attempt to hijack the thing, she'd hypnotize him immediately and simply sit him right back down. They'd have to try to figure it out later.

Two shy children peeked at her over the seat ahead. They gazed steadily at the European, but it wasn't only curiosity in their eyes. She knew that the longer the flight, the more uneasy she would make her seat-mates. The presence of a Keeper evoked instincts that humans, being so near the top of the food chain, were as unfamiliar with as she was with fear. What a human felt in the presence of a Keeper was what a mouse felt in the presence of a snake - a sort of horrible question.

They would grow unaccountably suspicious of her, be strangely drawn to her, grow sick in her presence, and if they slept, they would have nightmares about her, every single soul in this airplane.

The stewardess came, her smile fading as she laid eyes on Miriam. She had a cart full of boxed food and piles of plastic chopsticks. She stood close, handing food to the people jammed in the nearby seats.

Her blood had a soft, plain scent, like Beaujolais from an uninteresting year. Even so, it would be smooth and warm and wonderful as it went down. Miriam kept her eyes closed, barely breathing.

Never guessing that Miriam could see through her own eyelids, the stewardess took the opportunity to look long at the tall European in the old suit. Miriam worried that her makeup was too light. By now, her skin would be terrifying to a human. She'd appear as pale as a corpse. But she was also thirsty, so she had to interact with the girl, risk a moment of the creature's attention. "Excuse me."

The stewardess stopped. She organized her face into a carefully professional smile. "Yis," she said, uttering what was probably one of her few English words. Yis. Nah. Okeh Yis. Nah. Okeh.

"Water," Miriam said, pointing to a bottle with blue Thai writing on it.

The girl gave her the water and moved off nervously. The plane shuddered, the tone of the engines changing. Miriam fumbled with her water bottle. She knew that the sounds weren't abnormal, but they still made her uneasy.

Again, the plane shuddered. It was heading down, definitely. Surely there wasn't a situation. The engines were fine; she could hear that. But what if they were having control problems?

She took in breath, prepared to tighten the muscles that might be needed if she had to tear her way out of a crumpled fuselage.

But no, the plane was was landing. Or more accurately, beginning its descent. She fumbled her itinerary out of her purse. Yes, the flight was forty minutes, and running exactly on schedule. landing. Or more accurately, beginning its descent. She fumbled her itinerary out of her purse. Yes, the flight was forty minutes, and running exactly on schedule.

The flaps went down, making a terrific racket. Her startle reflex made her suck her water bottle so hard that it became involved with her teeth, and she accidentally shredded it. Water gushed down her front. Wiping her breast, she stuffed the ruined bottle down into the s.p.a.ce between the seats.

She sat facing straight ahead, ignoring her accident. They didn't notice, anyway. They were too preoccupied with their snacks.

The plane was so thick with the smell of human blood that she would have liked to have gone into some sort of feeding frenzy like a shark. Total indulgence.

She'd never been on an airplane while this hungry before, and she resolved never to do it again. She should have eaten that samlor samlor driver. She closed her eyes. Time pa.s.sed, one minute, then another. She found herself inhaling the smell of her seatmate. He was a plump little thing, just popping with sweet blood. driver. She closed her eyes. Time pa.s.sed, one minute, then another. She found herself inhaling the smell of her seatmate. He was a plump little thing, just popping with sweet blood. Delicieux Delicieux. The odor of his skin was lively. This was a tasty morsel, sitting here. She sucked in more scent.

She began to imagine how she'd take him. She'd pretend to be one of those European wh.o.r.es who did such a lively trade in Asia. They'd get off the plane together, and then - well, sooner or later the moment always presented itself.

She could get a very nice feed out of this creature. He had noticed her glances and was scanning her. She could smell the spicy scent of his interest.

"Lovely flight," she said.

"Oh, yes," he answered. His English was good, which was a nice convenience.

She gave him a smile, very slight, a bit arch.

He squirmed in his seat, his eyes flickering between her folded hands and her face. Male victims always felt as if the strange woman who had taken notice of them was the most beautiful, most desirable creature on earth. Females found her personable and engaging. They never knew that they'd been bred to react this way to interest from their Keepers.

He crossed and uncrossed his legs, tossed his head, then leaned a little forward. "You spending some time in Bangkok?" So, he was available for consumption. She considered. She might miss her flight to Paris, and the rest of the world had to be warned about what had happened here, and at all speed. But by the moon and the stars, she was so hungry! so hungry!

"Perhaps," she said softly.

His smile widened to reveal a gold-capped tooth. She glanced down at his fingers, at the shimmering of his wedding ring. There would be a complication right there - a disappearing husband.

He followed her glance, shrugged.

Her gut hummed.

The pitch of the engines changed again. She evaluated the sound, concluded that all was still normal.

She lifted her fingers, poised them above the back of his hand. To touch him now was an ancient act of possession, by which the Keepers had claimed their prey from time immemorial.

She lowered the cool tips of her fingers until they came into contact with his skin. "I'm staying in Bangkok for a few days." She laughed, a musical trill. "At the Royal Orchid," she added, drawing the name of the hotel from somewhere in her memory. She knew only that it was a very fine place.

"As it happens, I'm staying at the Royal Orchid, also, miss." He smiled from ear to ear.

She hoped they had a room. She had no reservation. Doubtless he didn't, either.

A moment later the plane hit the runway, then went jolting along the much-patched tarmac. Despite Miriam's grim worries, it slowed steadily. Still, she was tense, waiting for the d.a.m.ned thing to get off the runway. For an unspeakably long moment, it hesitated. Were the pilots lost? Had the surface traffic controllers made some stupid mistake?

She pictured a 747 landing on top of them, its entire flight crew dead asleep. Years ago, two Keepers had been killed in a catastrophic runway accident in the Canary Islands. But the engines revved up again and the plane moved forward. A few twists and turns and it came to a halt. The seat-belt chime rang.

Immediately, Miriam's mind focused on her victim. Now she must ignore him a bit, play the coquette, the Occidental woman who was just a little indifferent to the Oriental man.

As they filed out of the plane, she stayed behind him, evaluating moment by moment every subtle change in his manner. A musty smell flowed from between his legs, a sharper odor of sweat billowed off his skin.

There was something just a little odd in these odors. He should have smelled far more of s.e.x and less of . . . well, it seemed that he was afraid. Probably, it was because they'd been in proximity too long. You wanted to move quickly when you hunted, not sit cheek-by-jowl with the prey for an hour before proceeding.

In the airport, they were hit by the wall of filthy air that enclosed and defined life in Bangkok.

No matter his perversion, here the wanderer could find satisfaction. The Thai had originally been bred by luxury-loving Keepers, and they preserved the remarkable zest for pleasure that had been bred into them. But then, every herd in the world bore the mark of its Keepers. You could see the stark love of order and the obsessiveness of the northern Keepers in the Germanic peoples they had created, and the pa.s.sion and subtlety of the southern Europeans in the French, the Spanish, and the Italians. She loved the wild mix of the Americas, never knowing exactly what to expect from that mongrel herd.

As Miriam and her victim moved out into the main hall of the airport, she laid her hand on his shoulder, the second time she had touched him. Each time she did it, she felt more of a sense of possession.

She felt not the rippling whisper of desire in his muscles, but the tense vibration of fear. This was going to take a great deal of care and attention. This man must be very sensitive indeed to feel as he did now. Perhaps she should turn back.

He plunged into the chaotic cab rank, a ma.s.s of bills in his fist, and they were soon in a taxi.

She disliked being driven by others in motorized vehicles, and this driver was typical of these wild folk. In addition, he would certainly remember a run with a Thai man and a European woman.

Her victim sat rigidly, gripping the handhold above his door. When he offered her a cigarette, she did not like what she saw in his eyes. Did not like, did not quite understand. Their instinct was to be drawn to the predator, to be fascinated.

She let him light her cigarette, inhaled deeply. Cigarettes didn't matter to Keepers. Their immune systems swept cancer cells away like crumbs.

An impulse told her to give his cheek a sudden kiss. "Asia," she whispered, "Asia is such a mystery."

"I'm in outsourcing technology. No mystery there."

"Your accent isn't Thai."

"My father was a diplomat. I grew up in London and then Burma."

She remembered the days of the British in Burma, when they used to grow opium poppies on huge Crown estates. They had looked upon their laborers in much the same way that Keepers looked on humans. You could go out into those opium plantations and chew seed and take one picker after another, like an ape gobbling fruit. And then you could engage in the social life of the planters with their whites and their billiard rooms and their gin and tonics. Sometimes, you could even take one of them, for there were still tigers in Burma then and the corpse could be left suitably mauled.

Sweet nostalgia.

They arrived at the Royal Orchid, the cab at sea in an ocean of limousines. She went forward into the broad, echoing lobby. Women stared in open amazement as the fabulous clothes strode toward the check-in desk.

"I'd like a suite please." She presented her - or rather, Marie Tallman's - Visa card. The clerk ran it and gave her a keycard, his polite glance moving toward the next customer in line.

She had made no effort as yet to seduce her victim away from his uneasiness. He needed more subtle handling, and she had to accept that this might not be a successful hunt. She'd be d.a.m.n mad if it failed, though, and the long journey to Paris would be h.e.l.l.

She held out her hand to her victim. As sweetly, as innocently as she could, she smiled at him. He looked down at her hand. In it was a keycard. "Twenty-five-oh-seven," she said.

When they were alone in the lift, he finally smiled up at her. His odor had not really changed, though. He was not happy to be here. He was acting.

She kissed him on the forehead. Now that she was committed to what was probably a very foolish kill, she decided that she might as well enjoy herself thoroughly. She would take him slowly and drain him to the very last drop. She gave him a stern look. "How much am I worth to you?"

"How much do you want?"

"A thousand dollars."

His eyes widened, he reared back as if astonished. The lift came to a stop on the twenty-fifth floor. "Two hundred, miss. H.K. dollar."

They got out. She would not bargain all that hard, but also she must not raise his suspicions. "Three hundred, U.S." she said as they walked down the wide hallway.

"Five hundred, H.K."

"It isn't enough to cover my expenses, handsome."

"You'll do twenty men before the night's out."

She slid her keycard into the lock. Here she was, as magnificent a beauty as the earth might know, and this greedy little roach actually believed that she was going to give herself to him for the equivalent of about sixty U.S. dollars. He'd been afraid of her price, that was all. Wretched thing.

Sunlight poured in from the wall of windows that faced the door. There was a couch upholstered in yellow chintz and a huge vase of exotic flowers on the coffee table.

Far below, the wide Chao Phraya River shimmered in sunlight that shafted down between great banks of clouds. Tiny river taxis and long-tails wove the river with their wakes. Up the bank, she could see the spires of distant temples, Wat Phrathukhongka and, just visible along the Klong Phadung, Wat Trimitr, the temple of the Golden Buddha. Farther away, awash in glowing air pollution, were the graceful tile roofs of the Grand Palace and the pencil-narrow spire of Wat Po.

The two of them gazed in silence, both awed for different reasons. He no doubt thought it glorious; she was horrified and fascinated, as always, when she saw how vast were the works of man.

She sat down on the bed, drew her prey down beside her. Too bad she had to eat and run. Normally, she would have gone into the sleep that followed feeding, but this time she'd have to load herself up with amphetamines and do her sleeping on the plane. She'd book a first-cla.s.s seat for this twelve-hour journey, no matter that the seats were in the most dangerous part of the plane. Still, the idea of entering helpless sleep amid a ma.s.s of humans was not pleasant.

She caressed her victim. He stirred, his clothes rustling. A moment pa.s.sed, another. He had become still in the way human beings did when they were subconsciously aware of danger.

They were sitting on the foot of the bed. She took his chin in her hand and turned his face to hers. She looked into his eyes, looked deep.

What did the gleam in those human eyes mean? She always wondered that, right before she fed.

"Kiss me," she said to the creature. He smiled a drawn smile, then lifted his face to hers, his lips going slack, his eyelids fluttering down. She laid her lips upon his, careful to keep the anatomy of her mouth concealed. Their tongues met, and she felt his muscles stiffen a little as he detected that hers was as rough as a cat's. If he bolted, she would be ready. She was ten times stronger than the strongest human being, ten times faster.

A cat worries its prey because pain flushes muscles with hormones that season the meat. This was true also of her kind, and some of them were casually cruel to their victims.

Stroking his head and purring, she laid him against the pillows and opened up his pants with her deft hands. She took his member out, smiled, then kissed it.

Then she stood before him. She removed her blue silk jacket, twirled, then unb.u.t.toned her blouse. He watched with steady concentration, a slight smile on his face.

Instinct made her sway into the death dance, her arms undulating, her hips moving gracefully. Each time she twirled, her body became tighter and harder, more and more ready. As she danced, she threw off her clothes.

She stood before him naked, like a wound spring, her hands ready to grab him. There was in his eye a sort of curiosity, for she was very pale indeed, as pale as a ghost and as slick as gla.s.s, more like a statue than a being of flesh and blood.

He would soon discover that she was also cold, very cold. She sat down beside him and kissed him. But something was not right. As she had kissed him, he had returned himself to his pants.

No matter, she was s.e.xually excited now herself. That was part of her reality and what made her so very different from the others of her kind: humans excited her. She liked their bodies, the way they tasted and smelled, the way they looked, the curves of the females, the pert rods of the men. Perhaps this was because she had discovered that she was capable of taking them to states of pleasure that Keepers could not reach with one another. s.e.x between species could be a stunning aphrodisiac, if executed with skill.

She lay down upon her little man, snuggled him into her. He seemed to be struggling with himself, fighting an inner battle. She reached into his pants, to see if she could resolve the conflict for him. A few deft strokes, and he was ready.

The human male was not blessed with a large p.e.n.i.s, and it probably felt strangely lost in her v.a.g.i.n.a. He would also be noticing the cold. In fact, she could hear him making little exclamations in his throat. He was becoming aware that something was wrong.

"There, baby," she cooed, "little baby boy, all is well."

He started heaving. He wanted out from under her. She was, of course, far heavier than she had appeared. She tightened her v.a.g.i.n.al muscles, over which she had exquisite control. When she began undulating them, he yelped with surprised pleasure. He'd probably never felt anything like it before, not even in Asia.

Her mouth was pressed against his neck, her mucus flooding his skin with anesthetic. Her sharp teeth parted the skin so easily that he probably felt nothing at all. There was a bit of resistance from the wall of the vein. She made love furiously as she exhaled, made herself ready for the ferocious sucking motion that would consume his life.

His muscles worked, he twisted and turned. He would be feeling both the pain of penetration and the pleasure of s.e.x. He grimaced, his eyes shut tight.

She stayed like that for a while, making love at first fast and then slow, bringing him close, letting him relax. She left her mouth wide open to the wound, letting the blood tick past, tasting it just a little, enjoying herself.

When he began to really squirm, trying to reduce what must be by now a quite noticeable pain deep in his throat, she pinned his arms to his sides and enclosed his legs in her own. Her strength was so great that it felt to her human lovers as if they were being encased in iron, or so they had always told her.

The p.e.n.i.s, on the other hand, would feel as if it were being ma.s.saged by thousands of tiny, careful fingers. One man described it as the most divine sensation he had ever known. He begged her for it, even while he was dying.

She worked him to the edge twice more. His body was a roaring furnace; his blood was singing. She was deep in him, her drinking beginning to kill him. It was now, at this moment, that she was sure that she felt his soul.

She sucked ma.s.sively and fast, the sound of it roaring through the silent, sunny room. He did not even have a chance to cry out. As he died, the pumping of his loins became disorganized, then stopped.