Whitley Strieber - Liliths Dream: A Tale of the Vampire Life  

FICTION

The Last Vampire

The Forbidden Zone

Unholy Fire

Billy

Majestic

Catmagic

The Wild

Natures End

Warday

Wolf of Shadows

The Night Church

Black Magic

The Hunger

The Wolfen

SHORT STORIES (PRIVATE PUBLICATION)

Evenings with Demons: Stories from Thirty Years

NONFICTION

Confirmation

The Secret School

Breakthrough

The Communion Letters

Transformation

Communion

The Coming Global Superstorm

T he only sound in the neat little apartment was the ticking of the wind-up alarm clock. Paul moved through the room, impressed with how his son had set the place up. Look at this neatly made bed, clean kitchenhed surely started out in good order. Maybe Paul shouldnt have done what hed done. But he had to have the boy back, there was just no other choice. Poor Ian had been so damn humiliated, and who could blame him? He knew that the drugs had been planted on him. But why, and by whomthose were things he would never know.

He unrolled the old map he had brought with him and tacked it to the wall. The pencil lines were a little faded, but still precise. It had been made many years ago by Charles Frater, one of his earliest team members. Given that Charlie had died creating this map, it should have been drafted in blood. As they had gone through the tunnel system, Charlie had worked out the details of every lair and run that he could find, assisted by what everybody considered Pauls uncanny ability to see the vampires marks and signs.

When Charlie was killed, the Company had not offered a replacement. The Company never replaced anybody on Paul Wards team. Justin Turk, Briggsies predecessor, had put it pretty clearly: We dont kill people, Paul. Putting somebody on your project is a death sentence.

Goddammit! They were damn well back, and he didnt have shit to throw at them. Him and the woman he loved, and a few old guns. Goddammit!

If she got killed, he would feel like hed killed her, and that would never change.

He looked at the East Side tunnels. One communicated with the ruins of the unfinished Second Avenue Subway. The other angled west, then went up Sixth Avenue. That one they had named Condo Row because of all the lairs that lay along it. Thirty-four of them, as Paul remembered. The New York vampires had reacted pretty much the same waywhen threatened, they had rushed to protect their possessions. There had been all sorts of things down thereRenoirs and gold coins and clothing and rare books, jewelry and watches, you name it.

Condo Row, which paralleled and snaked beneath the Sixth Avenue IND, had numerous entrances into the subbasements of midtown hotels and restaurants. Paul had once come up and found himself in the coat room at 21. Other passages ended in seemingly inappropriate places, until you understood that theyd been created during the Prohibition era to open into the newly created basement speakeasys. The vampires had found it convenient to steal people out of places where they werent supposed to be. One branch had even gone into the pantry of Billy Roses Horseshoe Club, now a disused ruin in the basement of the Royalton Hotel. During its lifetime, no fewer than fourteen missing persons had either last been seen at the Horseshoe Club or had attended the club around the time they disappeared.

Who would ever have imagined that such a danger could lurk behind a cloakroom door, or around the corner from the famous horseshoe bar?

The other main tunnel, nicknamed the Sutton Place Express, led up along the East River. It communicated to ten or twelve escape hatches that opened into the river. Vampires were strong swimmers; they could stay underwater for an amazingly long time without becoming incapacitated. They would come up to the street out of their tunnels, take a victim, and fade back into the system, taking the remains with them. The bones would be crushed to splinters and tossed in the river.

The Miriam Blaylock house, radically different from the dirty lairs where most of the vampires lived, also communicated with the East Side tunnels. This was why theyd come to be called the Sutton Place Express by his team. It was into the East Side system that Blaylock had escaped on the day shed almost succeeded in killing him in that house of hers.

Paul sat down with his gun. The big, highly specialized pistol was a dull, gleaming blue. It carried a twenty-bullet magazine, and the bullets were fat, mean magnums, capable of blowing a humanor vampirehead into four or five pieces upon impact. Three shots would tear a vampire to bits. The French had an even better weapon, but this would have to do. Paul dropped it into his underarm holster.

Charlie was a hell of a draftsman.

Paul turned. Becky was supposed to be in East Mill with their son. Wheres Ian?

In his room with the door locked, feeling sorry for himself. He wasnt doing X, by the way.

Momma believes.

He says the tab was dropped on him during the raid, and Momma does believe.

You know something, Momma? I believe him, too.

She looked at him sharply. An instant later, realization dawned. You bastard, she said quietly.

I had to!

You She stopped herself. Her eyes flashed with rage. But then she, also, saw the necessity.

You did it before you knew about the new vampire.

I did it because I didnt want him in the same damn city with Leo. The blood attracts, you know that.

Paul, you crushed him. You just plain crushed him. She strode to the window. Jesus, you are a piece of work.

It wasnt even a real tab. When they tested it, hedve been let go, even if he got sucked up in the system.

You had no damn right to do this! You and your damn cop friends. Jesus Christ, you just cut the kids heart out!

Hes up at home instead of down here with these damn vampires, and I dont happen to think I cut his heart out at all. I think I saved his life.

She hated it, he could see it in her face. But she was also grateful. He could see that, too.

He pressed his advantage. What would we have done? Hey, Ian, theres a big old vampire here in New York, and if you see it, youre gonna fall in love, and aint that just dandy? Bullshit, Becky. Bullshit! I did the right thing.

Her silence was blue with rage. But she swallowed it. What other choice did she have? Okay.

So now Im gonna go in therehe indicated the tunnelsand Im gonna repeat the sterilization protocol. He hauled out his gun, slapped it against his palm.

Youre not going in there alone.

I am.

That vampire is going to be desperate and well aware of the danger.

He shrugged. Im gonna be just as well aware.

Paul, you stay out of there.

He loved her. But he would not do that. Unless I destroy that animal, people are going to start disappearing again. Maybe itll be somebodys kida kid like Ian, out to have a good time. He takes a shortcut down a side street, and Mom and Dad spend the rest of their lives waiting. Or a fathersome night watchman from the Dominican Republic, got three kids and a wife in Bushwick, he evaporates into thin air.

Like your dad.

And his wife and his kids are sent to hell, and they didnt do a damn thing to deserve it!

Just like you and your mom were. Paul, I love you, and I respect your motives immensely. With all my soul. But you are NOT going down there, because you cannot go up against a vampire alone and win, and you know that, and I know that, and I am not going to lose you.

I have a sworn duty.

What about your duty to me? Your sworn duty? Or to your sonthe duty to that wild blood you two have lurking in your damn veins?