"We've gotta get moving," he said.

The little band of them ascended slowly, everybody trying to keep their suffering from everybody else.

Despite the waves of searing pain that swept his whole body every time he took a step, Paul felt like laughing. The d.a.m.n queen of the vampires, or the traveler, or whatever she was - was somewhere in that pile of broken bodies. No more perfumed innocence walking the streets.

Between this and what the Germans were doing, Europe was likely to be free of the pest. And the book under his arm would soon free the Americas - if they acted fast enough.

He coughed long and hard, experiencing such great agony as he did so that Becky had to hold him up. "There's blood aspirating into the lung," he said as she helped him to the car.

All the way to the hospital, she held him tight to her, so that the b.u.mps would cause him as little pain as possible. It was still a lot. But he didn't mind all that much. This was not a bad place to be, not at all.

ELEVEN.

Queen of the Night In the hours since she had first looked into the haunted eyes of Miriam Blaylock, Sarah Roberts had become more and more afraid. Now she held Miriam's hand; Miriam lay against her friend's shoulder.

Sarah had never seen her like this and so far had not been able to find out what was wrong.

Incredibly, they were using the Concorde, a plane Miriam had vowed she'd never fly again. Groaning and thudding came from under the floor where the four engines lay embedded in the wings close to the fuselage. For the first ten minutes of the flight, the cabin smelled of jet fuel. They'd taken this plane for years, believing it to be safe. Then had come the crash and a morbidly careful period of evaluation on Miriam's part. She'd gone over every detail a thousand times, imagined herself in the cabin of a plane she took often, looking out the window at the fire, hearing the awful roaring, feeling the vibration and then the sickening moment of free fall.

For the human beings in it, death would have been instantaneous. Miriam would have lost consciousness only slowly, as she was inch by inch consumed by the flames.

She'd had Sarah get every doc.u.ment there was about the refit. Despite all that had been done, she was still in a fright over flying on it. But she had insisted, absolutely.

Sarah thought perhaps the other Keepers had a.s.saulted her. If so, it would be an anecdote for the book she'd been secretly writing about the Keepers for these twenty years of her captivity.

Sarah could tell that Miriam was awake. She was always awake unless she'd fed or done opium in extraordinary quant.i.ties. Miriam's hand was soft and cool. Sarah lifted it to her lips, enjoying the heft of it, the taste of the skin, the softness against her lips. She inhaled the sweet smell of her friend's skin. Miriam sighed and laid her lips upon Sarah's neck, sucking until it almost hurt.

Sarah closed her eyes, listening to the howl of the engines, feeling the great soul beside her, loving her deeply and dearly . . . and feeling the evil of her at the same time.

Sarah told herself that a wolf might kill a deer, but never would it be murder. She told herself that. As a doctor, though, she was committed to human welfare, and that certainly did not include killing. The creature beside her had eaten children and fathers and mothers - had eaten eaten them. As had she herself . . . in the shame of her secret life. them. As had she herself . . . in the shame of her secret life.

And yet, this was the agony of it: nature uses predators to ensure balance. One reason that human overpopulation was destroying the world was that the Keepers had failed in their natural mission. There were not enough of them to make a difference.

Miriam called herself part of the justice of the earth. And Sarah could not deny that. She had looked into the teary eyes of victims, seen them fade as she did her own clumsy sucking. She had known what it was to be engorged with human blood. Afterward, you felt as light as air. Any small imperfection disappeared. You became supple. Your skin regained a girl's flush and milk. And your heart - it beat with a happiness that seemed founded in something that was deeply right. You had dared the abyss, to do the bidding of nature. What an addiction it was, the addiction to death.

Sarah knew that she was using her strange new relationship to the laws of nature to justify herself. But she had not been given a choice. Miriam had fallen in love with her and had infused her own blood into Sarah's veins without her permission, putting her to sleep to do it. Sarah had awakened exhausted, aching in every bone, not knowing what had happened.

There had begun an awful struggle. She had tried to live on blood bought from commercial blood banks. She had tried to live on animal blood. Then she had refused to live at all. She had actually died and been put in a coffin and slid in among Miriam's other expended lovers in her attic.

But Miriam had used Sarah's own research to bring her back. Sarah had eaten, then. She had not been strong enough to return to the terror of the coffin. Because, when Keeper blood flowed in human veins, you could live for centuries, but you could never really die.

Sarah had experienced the silent, trapped sensation of being unable to move, to breathe, to so much as flutter an eyelid in that coffin. She had been aware of the dark around her, of the lid above her, of the rustle of insects along her skin and the murmur of street traffic outside.

She'd heard Miriam playing her viola, had heard jets pa.s.sing overhead, had heard the lapping mutinies of the East River and the hiss of the FDR Drive. She gone mad a hundred times, mad in the locked-up remains of her body. All around her, there had been other such coffins, some of them thousands of years old, that contained other trapped souls.

Then she had heard the tap of heels on the wide attic boards, and light had swept in, and her vague eyes had seen a smooth shadow, and life, life, life, had come marching up her arm like a grand orchestra pounding a grand tarantella. had come marching up her arm like a grand orchestra pounding a grand tarantella.

Miriam had read Sarah's studies and her papers, and devised an experiment that had worked. For the first time in two thousand years of trying, she'd brought a lover back. She'd tried with the others, too, but it had been too late even for the most recent one, John Blaylock.

Alive again, Sarah had wandered the streets of a new world. She could be entranced by the play of sunlight on the edge of a spoon. A child's rude singing sounded the carillons of heaven. Each breath that swept her freshened lungs felt like the caress of an angel. She had learned to live in the cathedral of the moment, for the supple touch of fine leather and the sweet of morning air, for the fluttering of a bird in the birdbath or the drip of water in the kitchen sink. She had given away her doubts and her fears with her lost past (where there had even been a lover and a little apartment and a spreading career). She had given away her terror of the coffins upstairs, to the extent that she would sometimes go and lie in her own and draw the lid down and stay there until the rigors of asphyxiation thrilled her throbbing s.e.x and made her frantic. It was sick, she knew that. Miriam's love had transformed her from a healthy young physician into a decadent, murdering libertine with a sick and sorrowing soul. But it was so beautiful . . . or it had been, until this awful thing happened, whatever it was.

When, just after being resurrected, Sarah had looked upon her savior for the first time, she had spontaneously dropped to her knees. She was Lazarus, was Dr. Sarah Roberts, enslaved by grat.i.tude to she who had returned her to life. To try and find some sense in the servility that she now felt, she had read long and carefully in the literature of s.e.xual enslavement and finally into the lore of zombies. She worked hard to free herself, even going to Haiti to interview a man who had been killed in a zombie ritual and brought back by a witch doctor. He, also, was mysteriously bound to the man who had dug him up and resurrected him by rubbing him with a foam made from the blood of rats. The moment this man's teary, pa.s.sive eyes had met her own, she had known that they were kin.

Miriam drew back from her, whispered to her, "I ought to really punish you, you devil."

Sarah turned to her, looked into her amazing eyes, with their child's fresh intensity. You would think she was just a girl, to look at those eyes. There was not the slightest trace that this was an ancient being. If you were observant, you would see that the lipstick was painted on a strangely narrow mouth, and you might suspect that some inner thing had been done to fill out the cheeks. But that would take a very acute observer. To most people, Miriam appeared to be a ravishing, wonderfully dressed, wonderfully affluent young woman, still dewy from girlhood.

Miriam sighed, her breath's heavy sourness filling Sarah's nostrils. "Bring me vodka," she said.

Sarah got up from her seat, moved down the aisle toward the steward, who was serving meals in the second cabin. "Oui, mademoiselle?"

"Madame in Seven-A wishes vodka, very cold, served without ice."

"Oui, mademoiselle, a moment."

"Immediately, please."

The steward understood her tone and poured the drink, a large one. Sarah took it to Miriam, who emptied it in an instant.

It was clear that Miriam had been through absolute h.e.l.l over these past days. Sarah had suspected that her odyssey to the conclaves would be a disappointment, but whatever had happened was far worse than that.

"Another?"

"Perhaps in a few minutes."

"I know how you hate this thing."

"I just wonder if the repairs are satisfactory."

"We have to hope."

"Another vodka. Bring the bottle."

Sarah went back to the steward. "She wants the bottle."

"A service of caviar, perhaps?"

"No, only the vodka."

"Mademoiselle, is madame afraid? Would she like the pilot to come and speak to her?"

"That I cannot ask her."

"I understand," the steward said. He had concluded that Sarah was a personal servant, and that madame would be taking all her service from her, and gave her the vodka on a small tray. "Will you want me to call you for her meal?"

"Madame will not be taking a meal."

"Very well." He returned to his pa.s.sengers. The service in the three cabins of the Concorde was exactly the same, but by tradition the third cabin was for tourists, the second for business people, and the first for personages. Air France might not know just how distinguished this particular pa.s.senger was, but Sarah had made sure, as always, that Miriam was treated with the greatest respect.

The fact that Sarah was not privately reconciled to Miriam's way of life and even doubted her right to her prey did not mean that she did not respect her. Miriam was a creature of G.o.d, also, and a triumph of nature. To a scientist, which Sarah most certainly was, her blood was one of nature's truly remarkable organs. It had six different cell types, including one that Sarah had watched under the electron microscope trapping and destroying virus particles, transforming them back into the chemicals out of which they were constructed.

The blood sometimes seemed almost intelligent, the way it laid traps for bacteria. And the cells were remarkable, too. Unlike human cells, they did not scavenge for free radicals with mechanisms that grew stiff and unresponsive with age. Instead, the blood converted them into nutrient components, actually changing their atomic structure.

Sarah had allowed herself to imagine that Miriam was was her blood, that the body was only a receptacle for this brilliant organ. her blood, that the body was only a receptacle for this brilliant organ.

She had watched it as it worked in her own veins, how after a period of acclimatization, it had adapted itself to her needs, preserving those parts of her own blood that were essential to her life and adding most of its strengths as well.

It could not change the structure of her cells, though, which continued to try to destroy free radicals. What Miriam's blood did in Sarah's veins was to destroy so many of them that little more was necessary. Still, Sarah aged. Just very, very slowly.

Sometimes, she would go to the attic and whisper to the others, "John, I'm coming, Lollia, I will be here soon." She would tell them of Miriam's doings. She would tell them of her own work, trying to find a way to bring them back to life. How it must be in those coffins, she could scarcely imagine. To have been like that for even a few days had been so extremely awful that she still had nightmares about it. But Lollie had been there for three hundred years. And there were others who were little more than teeth and long strings of hair, who had worshiped at Miriam's feet when she was pharaoh's daughter.

The selfishness of Miriam's making herself gifts of these "lovers" had crossed Sarah's mind. This was an unambiguous evil, and for a time she'd believed that she could find in herself moral ground to sabotage Miriam, on this basis.

But the nights in that bed of theirs, the nights nights . . . and living Miriam's exquisite life with her, playing their violas together and going to the club, and seeing the world through a Keeper's eyes, as if everything were always new-washed with rain - she did not have the strength to say no. . . . and living Miriam's exquisite life with her, playing their violas together and going to the club, and seeing the world through a Keeper's eyes, as if everything were always new-washed with rain - she did not have the strength to say no.

She wanted Miriam right now. To lie naked in her steel-strong arms, to taste of the kisses of a mouth that killed - for her it was an ecstasy more appealing, she suspected, than that of being lifted in the arms of G.o.d.

The truth was that she revered this creature, whom she ought to hate. She had not the moral strength to hate the pleasures of being Miriam's possession. Had she been the maid of Hera or Proserpine's sotted girl, it would not have been different. A human being had fallen in love with a terrible G.o.d.

When Miriam traveled, Sarah made all the arrangements. Normally, she stayed beside her lady, making certain that everything was perfect, that all was as she desired and deserved. It filled her heart with a deliciously awful joy to serve Miriam. She understood her history and her sig-nificance to mankind. Miriam's family had invented Egyptian civilization. Her own father had moved the Israelites into Canaan. As far as he was concerned, he was only expanding his holdings, but the significance to human history was, of course, remarkable. Miriam herself had created and nurtured dozens of different aspects of western civilization. Her image haunted our literature. She was the Shulamite maiden, she was Beatrice, she was Abelard's Heloise and Don Quixote's Dulcinea - or more accurately, she had once sung a song for a hopelessly smitten Miguel de Cervantes, and become the model for his character.

She wasn't Shakespeare's Dark Lady, but she had known the girl. The story of her mother, Lamia, had inspired Greek mythology. It had emerged in the seventeenth-century Anatomy of Melancholy Anatomy of Melancholy and the whispered legends of Lamia had inspired John Keats's and the whispered legends of Lamia had inspired John Keats's Lamia and Other Poems Lamia and Other Poems in 1820. in 1820.

There were many Keepers, but Miriam and her parents had been more influential in human affairs than any of the others.

And now she was the friend and lover of a humble doctor from Queens, whose highest ambition should probably be to make her happy and keep her safe. Instead, Sarah was caught in an eerie web, unable to believe that Miriam had the right to kill, but also unable to do anything but serve her.

In a year, a Keeper took perhaps twenty lives. Sarah herself took ten . . . and each squirming, weeping victim consumed part of her heart. After a murder, she would weep for days. She would resolve to quit. She would renew her efforts to find a way of feeding on blood-bank blood.

Sarah returned with the vodka and served Miriam a second drink. "I wish I could comfort you," she murmured. "I know something's wrong, something more than just the flight. Please tell me what it is."

Miriam knocked back the drink. "Five thousand dollars a seat and still I cannot smoke."

"You can in the car." She glanced up at the map that was set into the bulkhead. They were traveling at Mach 2, just pa.s.sing over the Irish coast. "Just two more hours, madame."

"Why are you calling me that?"

"Because you seem so regal today."

Miriam took her chin and turned her head until they were sitting like two intimate girls, face-to-face, their noses almost touching. "I have been through unbelievable h.e.l.l. And I am angry, Sarah. I am angry at you."

"I know you are." She'd gone to spend a few days in the Berkshires, away from the club, away from Miriam's demands. She had not taken her cell phone.

"Love, if I can't count on you, who can I count on?"

Sarah felt her cheeks grow hot, as they had in the hotel room when she'd been bathing Miriam and had seen the rough areas and angry blushing of her skin. That was healing trauma. Because Sarah knew the power of Keeper blood to overcome injury, she was aware that Miriam had suffered fearsome damage.

"Tell me what happened, love."

Miriam turned her face to the window.

Sarah touched the black silk arm of her blouse, but Miriam said nothing more.

Very well. Sarah had learned to accept Miriam's moods. "You look so extraordinary in those clothes," she offered, gently flattering her, hoping to win a more full response. There was none.

Whatever had happened in Paris, at least it had brought those archaic Chanels to an end. They had gone to Maria Luisa and gotten some delicious Eric Bergere designs. Miriam had been extremely compliant at the shop, spending twenty thousand dollars without complaint, and revealing truly wonderful taste and an extraordinary awareness of what might flat-ter her the most.

Sarah gazed at her. She was so splendid that you never got tired of looking at her, and in that fabulous black blouse of sheer silk with a bloodred satin body shirt beneath - well, the effect was almost perfect. The way it held her b.r.e.a.s.t.s high and suggested her curves was marvelous. This ensemble had been created by a hand that loved and understood the female form.

"I was nearly killed."

Sarah leaned close to her, kissed her cold cheek, laid her lips there a long time, until she felt her body tickling within itself, l.u.s.ting for the quick finger, the deep tongue. "Don't say that if it isn't true."

Miriam bridled at the statement. "How dare you!"

"I'm sorry! I - just - please forgive me."

Miriam leaned back,closed her eyes."Is the pa.s.sport going to be all right?"

"Perfect."

"Why so?"

She had asked this about the pa.s.sport ten times. It was a perfect pa.s.sport because it belonged to a real person. "Leonore is a master of disguise," Sarah said.

"Leonore," she said. "Do you think she would be a good meal?"

"Miriam, you know I don't find that sort of thing funny."

"Maybe she'll replace you, then, and you'll be the meal." She smiled that slight, fetching smile that looked so innocent and concealed such danger. "That might be best."

She was truly a mistress of verbal torture. "I would open my own veins for you," Sarah said.

"I suppose so." Miriam's voice was leached of emotion. "You're certain of the pa.s.sport?"

"Look at it. It's you."

The instant Sarah had understood that Miriam was without a pa.s.sport, she'd gone down to the Veils, where Leonore was supervising the cleaning crew, and gotten her to make herself up to resemble Miriam. A slightly fuzzy pa.s.sport photo had been taken to an expediter with a two-hundred-dollar fee and a thousand-dollar bribe. Miriam's new pa.s.sport - in the name of Leonore Patton - was in Sarah's hand by five that afternoon. The next morning, Sarah had come over on the Concorde to rescue their distressed lady. That was yesterday.

Word had pa.s.sed through the upper echelons of New York society that something untoward had happened to Miriam in Paris.

The whole club was in vigil, CEOs, aristocrats, celebrities, the brilliant and the beautiful. There would be a hundred of the most fashionable people in New York waiting to greet the queen when her plane landed.