She began to look for a spring. There was certainly one nearby. She could smell its wonderful, stony freshness. Ten steps along, twenty, and she found it, its water bubbling cheerfully out of the ground. Above it, somebody in the long-ago had made a little grotto and set a cross, which now stood encrusted with rust. She lay herself down in the water and let it flow over her, let it kiss her wounds with its clean coldness.
The pain grew somewhat less. The cold was helping to heal the burns, the clean water to reduce the need of her blood to ward off infection. If the process was to speed up to a normal rate, though, she had to have food.
She lay in the pouring spring, twisting and turning slowly, allowing the water to clean every part of her, to sweep away the ashen skin and the burned flesh, and the debris that had collected in the wounds. The thick stink of it all washed away with it, leaving behind only the smell of the water and the smell of her.
Finally, when those two odors had not changed for a long time, she rose from the stream. She began moving along the riverbank, a naked, burned creature, svelte and, she supposed, pale. She was looking for a manhole, some means of getting up into the city again, to the food supply that swarmed in its streets.
What she found instead was a door. It was steel and set high up in the wall, at the top of a series of iron rungs. The door was half the normal height and had a lever rather than a handle. She climbed the rungs, pulled the lever, which dropped down with a thud. She drew the door open and found herself looking into a dark room full of humming machinery.
She climbed into the room. In contrast with the wet cold that had surrounded her for hours, it was warm and dry. It felt fiercely hot, although she knew that this was only the effect of the sudden change.
Her nostrils had been seared, but her sense of smell seemed unimpaired. She smelled machine oil, the fumes of burning, and the scent of lots of electricity. This was a furnace room. She knew boilers and furnaces well. She had special uses for them. This one reminded her of the Ehler that she had in her house, a good, hot system with an ample firebox.
Beyond the furnace, she saw stairs. She mounted them, stopping at the top to listen and catch her breath. She laid her ear against the door that was there. On the other side, she heard the tap of footsteps. They moved slowly about, tip-tap, tip-tap, tip-tap, tip-tap, pausing here and there, then moving on. Suddenly a voice began to speak, using English. It spoke about the manufacture of tapestries. pausing here and there, then moving on. Suddenly a voice began to speak, using English. It spoke about the manufacture of tapestries.
This work had been going on when she was last here. Across the street from her mother"s house there had been a manufactory of tapestry. So it was still in operation, but there were also observers now, people from the English-speaking world being taken on tours of the works.
She turned the handle of the door. Locked. This was of little consequence. They had not learned the art of the lock, the humans. Shaking it a few times, she dislodged the tumblers. She knew exactly what she sought: a female creature of about her own size, preferably alone.
The tour group consisted of about twenty people being led about among the tapestries, which hung on large looms. She stepped out onto the gloomy area before the door, then slipped behind the nearest loom. On the other side, the weaver worked, stepping on her treadle and sliding thread through her beater.
Beneath the smock, the girl wore dark clothing of some sort; Miriam could not see exactly what it was. The casual dress of the modern age. She peered at the creature. It was intent on its work. She listened to the talk of the guide. The tourists drifted closer. In another moment, they would see this person, observe her working at her loom.
Miriam stepped into the girl"s view. She didn"t notice, such was her concentration. Miriam moved closer. Now, the girl stopped working and glanced her way, then looked harder. Her mouth dropped open. She looked the naked apparition up and down. An expression of pity crossed her face, mixing with horror as she realized that the woman she was seeing was severely burned.
Miriam stepped toward her. She swayed as if falling, causing the girl to instinctively move forward to help her. Miriam enclosed her in her arms and drew her behind the loom, then opened her mouth against the neck and pulled the fluids in fairly easily, requiring two great gulps to fin-ish the process.
Her whole flesh seemed to leap with joy; it was as if she were going to fly up to the sky. She fought against crying out, such was the pleasure. Her body from the top of her head to the tips of her toes filled with an electric tickling as her newly refreshed blood raced to repair her wounds.
The shuddering, tickling sensations were so overwhelming that she was dropped like a stone to her knees. She pitched forward, gasping, her body deliciously racked with a sensation very like climax. Again it came, again and again, and the voices came closer, and the tip-tapping of the shoes.
She grabbed the remnant, invisible in its heap of clothes, and pulled it behind the loom. As she untangled the dry, emaciated remains from the clothing, she heard a ripple of laughter. The tour guide had said something that amused her audience. The click of other looms went on. Quickly, quickly, Miriam put the clothes on - black jeans, a black turtle-neck, shoes that fit her, unfortunately, quite badly. Then the blue smock. No hat, and that was not good because her hair would take time to regrow. She needed a wig, but that could not be had here. She stood up.
"Noelle?"
It was the guide, curious about why she was not at her loom. They would know each other perfectly, of course.
"Noelle, what are you doing? Why are you back there?"
She could not speak. She had no idea what Noelle"s voice sounded like. If the woman came around the loom, she would see something impossible - a skeleton covered with skin, and standing over it, a hairless and eyebrowless creature, its skin flushed bright pink. The burns were probably still very much in evidence as well, making her the stars knew only how grotesque. She picked up the remnant and crushed it. The cracking, splintering sounds were appalling.
"Noelle!"
"I"m fixing it!"
"Who is that?"
"It"s me, please."
The guide began her spiel again, but her uneasy tone told Miriam that she was not satisfied with what she had heard, just unable to understand what was going on. She"d send a guard around in a moment, almost certainly.
Staying behind the looms, trying to avoid being glimpsed by the workers or the tour group, she went quickly back to the door. She slipped through and down into the bas.e.m.e.nt. She went to the furnace and opened the grate, stuffing the remnant inside. Never again would she be so foolish as to leave one of these little calling cards behind. In this new world of aggressive, smart human beings, one more mistake like that would be her last.
She looked around for a doorway to the outside, saw one marked Sortie, Sortie,with a red light above it. She went out, finding herself in an alleyway. In one direction, there was a blank wall, in the other, an entrance into a rather quiet street. It was early evening now, and the shadows were growing long.
She immediately noticed a curious flickering effect against the walls and roofs of the street ahead. Each time the flickering got brighter, there would be an accompanying roar.
She moved forward cautiously, knowing that she had to go out into that street in order to escape. The closer she got to the opening of the alley, the brighter the flickering became, the louder the roaring. Now she could also hear crackling and smell a smell of burning petrol. The flicker-ing reflected against her black clothing. She held out her hands, looking down at them, at the orange light dancing on them. Then she stepped forward and immediately looked to the left, toward the source of the light.
The first thing she saw was the gutted ruin of her mother"s house. The Castle of the White Queen was streaked with soot, its every window black and dark, its roof collapsed into the sh.e.l.l of the building.
Before it there were dozens of police and fire vehicles and milling gendarmes. The light was not coming from their vehicles, though, it was coming from a bonfire in the middle of the street, which was being fed by men with flamethrowers. At the mouth of the Rue des Gobelins a high barrier had been erected. No member of the public could see over it. She did not think that she could easily get around it. In fact, going out into the street would cause an immediate reaction, given all the police and the care with which they were preventing sight of this place.
In the center of the fire, she saw black bones and bones glowing red. It was Martin, of course. Obviously, the humans knew enough about the Keepers to take extreme care that they were really dead. A gendarme glanced at her, made a clear gesture: stop there, come no closer stop there, come no closer. His glance lingered for a moment, then he turned away.
The ring of people around the bones were different from the gendarmes. They were dressed casually; they looked brutal. Nearer, stood a small knot of others whom she took to be the supervisors. These people around the fire, making sure that the very bones of their quarry were reduced to ash, were the killers of the Keepers.
It was possible, if she listened intently, to make out s.n.a.t.c.hes of conversation - a gendarme muttering about overtime, one of the murderers saying something about the temperature of the fire. Then the voice of a tall supervisor boomed out. "Fine ash," it said, "then hose down the street." That was to be the fate of her kind, then, to be reduced to ash and sent down the sewer.
Silence fell. More orders were given and one of the pompes pompes was started up. Soon, water was pouring from its hoses and sluicing along the street. She watched it come toward her feet, watched as it reached the drain. It carried floating bits of burned material and chips of bone. A b.u.t.ton came tumbling and bobbing along, and she saw that it was her own b.u.t.ton, from the suit she"d had to leave behind in order to squeeze down the pipe that had saved her. was started up. Soon, water was pouring from its hoses and sluicing along the street. She watched it come toward her feet, watched as it reached the drain. It carried floating bits of burned material and chips of bone. A b.u.t.ton came tumbling and bobbing along, and she saw that it was her own b.u.t.ton, from the suit she"d had to leave behind in order to squeeze down the pipe that had saved her.
"Excusez-moi, mademoiselle."
One of the gendarmes was coming toward her. He smiled slightly, then took her arm, but quite gently. "I will conduct you out." He drew her forward. He blinked, seeing her bald head.
"What has happened?" she asked, trying to deflect his concern.
"Vagrants set fire to the White Palace. There were deaths."
"Why were they burning the bodies?"
He shook his head. "It"s what the authorities said. Who knows why."
She let the gendarme conduct her along. His body was loose, his breathing soft, his expression indifferent. Obviously he knew nothing of the Keepers and only a.s.sumed that she was a rather unusual looking woman. Her eyes were on the men who knew.
Closer she came to them, marching beside her policeman. They were engaged in intent conversation. She pa.s.sed just behind the two supervisors. Then she saw one, a female, suddenly turn and face her. The creature was beautiful, with swaying blond hair. But its eyes, almost black, appeared as hard as chips of obsidian."Excuse me,"it said in American-accented English.
As instinct prepared Miriam to fight, her body became tight beneath the restricting clothes. There were still many burned and injured areas, especially in her limbs, and the pain tormented her like the persistent hacking of slow, dull blades.
The creature followed her a few steps. "Pardonnez-moi," "Pardonnez-moi," it said, now in French. This creature was concerned and it was curious. It was not sure, though, of what to do. So it could not be certain of what she was. it said, now in French. This creature was concerned and it was curious. It was not sure, though, of what to do. So it could not be certain of what she was.
Then the gendarme was letting her out onto the street. He asked her if she felt well enough to keep on. Instead of answering, she slipped into and quickly through the spa.r.s.e crowd of onlookers. She did not look back, did not want to delay another moment her escape from the deathtrap.
Now that she had fed, her body wanted to sleep. She knew that it would be the deep, deep sleep of her kind, and that she had to find a place in which to lie safely for the helpless hours it would bring. But she could not afford it. She had an urgent mission to perform. The French Keepers must be warned, their Book of Names protected.
She walked quickly along the busy Avenue des Gobelins. She would go to a hotel somewhere, using the credit cards in this woman"s pocketbook. Or no, there was a better idea. She would go to the woman"s flat. It was a risk, of course, but she had the keys and the driving license with the address.
A little farther down the street, she saw a taxi at a stand. She hailed it with the same sort of casual gesture she had seen others using. She would also update her language as best she could. Any fool would remember a pa.s.senger who spoke like Voltaire.
As she got into the taxi, she opened the pocketbook. Noelle Halff, 13 Rue Leon Maurice de Nordmann. "Treize Rue L. M. Nordmann," she muttered, slurring her words like a modern Parisian.
The driver made a strange sort of a face, then drove on. He rounded the corner into Boulevard Arago, and then they were there. It had been idiotic to take a taxi. The place was barely a quarter of a mile away. "I injured my foot," she said as he stopped in front of a lovely artist"s atelier.
"Too bad," he responded as he took her money. She seemed to have done perfectly well. He hadn"t noticed anything about her. Perhaps baldness was not unknown among women in Paris. Some outre outre fashion, perhaps. fashion, perhaps.
She went through the bag, looking for keys, soon finding a set. There were four of them, and rather than tumble the lock, she found the correct one. She let herself in, then turned the timer that lit the foyer. As it hummed through its few minutes, she located the next key and entered the atelier itself.
The room was furnished with another Gobelins loom and more tapestries, medieval reproductions that the woman must have been selling in the tourist market.
"h.e.l.lo," she said. There was no answer. She went across the studio to its small kitchen, and beyond it into an equally tiny salle de bains salle de bains and and toilette toilette. For sleep, a couchette couchette had been installed at one end of the studio. had been installed at one end of the studio.
She searched the salle de bains, salle de bains, looking for makeup, but also trying to determine if more than one person lived here. The results were ambiguous. There was a man"s razor, also two toothbrushes. looking for makeup, but also trying to determine if more than one person lived here. The results were ambiguous. There was a man"s razor, also two toothbrushes.
Somebody moved. She glimpsed in the shadows a strange, dark creature. She reeled back out of the tiny room, raising her arms, preparing to defend herself.
But n.o.body came leaping after her. The only sound was her own breathing, that and a trickle of water from the toilet.
She turned on the light and saw in the mirror a Miriam Blaylock so profoundly changed that she"d thought herself a stranger. The head was bald, the face sunken, the eyes black sockets. She raised a finger to her cheek, felt the skin. It ought to be pink and soft right now, glowing with the life she had just consumed. But it revealed another surprise. She was not sallow, but covered with fine gray ash. The outer layer of her skin seemed to have been carbonized, at least on her face.
She splashed some water on it, then dried it with a serviette. It came up muddy white. The sink was full of gray. She stripped off her clothes and looked down at herself. She had sustained tremendous damage, more than she had realized. There were great rifts in her skin, filled with raw, angry flesh. Her hips were sc.r.a.ped almost to the bone. In one place, she could see actually see some bone.
She drew a bath, watching as the wonderful, steaming water gushed into the big tub. When she sat in it, the ash clinging to her body soon turned the water dark gray, tinged pink with the blood of her wounds.
Soon her whole body was tickling as her blood raced to repair the damage. She closed her eyes. How lovely. How much she needed to sleep. So easy it would be, so warm was the water.
No! No, she had to find stimulants - coffee, pills, anything - and she had to locate the woman"s pa.s.sport, call an airline, and buy a ticket to New York, go to the mines, warn the other Keepers.
She rose from the tub and threw open the medicine chest. There were three bottles of pills - vitamins, an herbal remedy for colds, nothing of any use. The poor young creature had been healthy and clean of even simple drugs. Miriam could not avoid a sense of waste when she destroyed a vital, young life like this. The girl had been not unlike her Sarah.
She had given up telephoning Sarah. All that mattered now was getting home. She was afraid that the disaster had already crossed the Atlantic and that was why Sarah couldn"t respond. Would she find her beautiful home in Manhattan a ruin, just like the Castle of the White Queen, and Sarah"s very bones burned to ashes? There was no way to know that. It was not given to her.
She peered into the mirror. Actually, her face wasn"t so bad. A little makeup here, a little there, a bit of lip gloss, and she would be a girl again. She would be - She stopped. Like the fall of evening or a black cloak dropping over her, a shroud, a sorrow so great fell upon her heart that it inspired not the usual gnashing anger, but a deep questioning of her own value as a creature, and indeed of the worth of the Keepers as a species upon the earth.
Look around you, she thought, at the complex life that had been unfolding in this atelier, at the wonders in the looms, their colors glowing in the faint light that came in from the street. Look at the book beside the bed, thumbed, earmarked, a book of poems with which Noelle Halff had put herself to sleep at night. Les Fleurs du Mal Les Fleurs du Mal - "The Flowers of Evil." Miriam knew the poems, appreciated them as well. - "The Flowers of Evil." Miriam knew the poems, appreciated them as well.
The girl might not have any pills in her cabinet, but she kept lip gloss and other cosmetics of the very highest quality. Miriam started to make up her face, to return to it an approximation of the endless youth that lay beneath her wounds.
She felt the weight of sleep urging at her brain, at her exhausted muscles, increasing the weight of her bones. She tossed her head, her eyes gleaming with a kind of fury. Even without drugs, she would not sleep. She could not, must not.
For she knew without question, if she lay down in this atelier - if she slept - they would certainly catch her.
NINE.
Lady of the Knife The lower condyles of human femurs lined the walls, joint-end out. Above them were stacked skulls. Paul had known about the Denfert-Rochereau ossuary, but only vaguely, as the sort of grotesque that tourists of a certain kind - fans of horror movies, say - might visit. For ten francs you could spend as much time as you wanted to with the bones of seven million Parisians.
"What"s that smell?" Becky asked.
"Maybe there"s a fresh corpse."
"Thank you, Charles."
"No bodies were ever buried here. Just skeletons," Colonel Bocage said.
Still, there was a certain smell, and smells were important to this work. Paul inhaled carefully. They all knew the fetors of the vampire - the sour, dry odor of their unwashed skin and the appalling stink of their latrines. Their waste was dead human plasma.
Colonel Bocage and Lieutenants Raynard and Des Roches walked ahead. The two lieutenants had interesting histories. Raynard was not French but Algerian. He had been a Foreign Legionnaire. Des Roches, a solemn-looking man with a quick sense of humor and what looked to Paul like a whole lot of physical power, had been a GIGN officer. The Groupe d"Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale was France"s elite terrorist intervention unit. These were the guys who stormed planes being held by madmen. These were also the guys who were sent in when the government didn"t want prisoners, only bodies.
Because of the catastrophe that had just occurred, these were the last two men Bocage had. Signing people on was just as difficult for him as it was for Paul. They had to be excellent, they had to be clearable to a high level, and it was just d.a.m.n hard to find people like that.
As they moved forward, everybody was quiet. The French were grieving over the decimation of their team, and everybody was well aware of how this hole had chewed up people in the past. Theirs was brutal, extremely dangerous work. Vampires died, but it cost. G.o.d, it cost.
They were pa.s.sing rows and rows of bones, an incredible sight. They were still in the ossuary itself.
"No teeth," Charlie observed, "no lower jaws."
Des Roches said, "The teeth were sold to b.u.t.ton makers to help finance the ossuary."
"Was that legal?"
"Perhaps, at the time," Colonel Bocage replied, "although not politically correct, I am embarra.s.sed to say. But old France - it was not politically correct."
"Madame de Pompadour," Becky said, pointing to a sign.
"Who was?" Charlie asked.
"She was the executive secretary of King Louis XV," Raynard said.
"And the mistress," Bocage added, "of course."
"How"d she end up down here?"
"After the revolution, the bones of aristocrats were no longer held sacred." The tone of Raynard"s voice suggested that he did not entirely approve of the revolution. Like many men engaged in extremely difficult military pursuits, he was ultraconservative.
"Stop, please." Des Roches consulted his PalmPilot, which contained a map not only of the ossuary, but of the entire system of mines beneath the streets of Paris. The mines were more extensive even than the legendary Paris sewer system. The map, provided by the Inspectorate General of Quarries, covered the two hundred plus miles of tunnels and shafts that were interconnected. This was estimated to be roughly three-quarters of the total. The rest of it, among the most ancient of the shafts, were either completely detached from the main body, or connected only by openings too small for a human to enter.
Given the danger of entering the tunnels, ground-based radars and sonars had been used to complete the maps, so they were not nearly as accurate as the hunters would have liked. Paul had spent the night with Charlie and Becky studying them. Each had committed a section of the complex to memory. They had quizzed one another on twists and turns, blind alleys and unexpected crossings, until dawn.
They reached a dead end in the ossuary, which was blocked by a gate and marked with a sign, Entree Interdite Entree Interdite. Over the past hundred years, the Prefecture of Police had recorded sixty disappearances from the ossuary. It wasn"t many, but the points at which these people had last been seen were all closest to this particular connection with the abandoned labyrinth of mines. It was here that Bocage"s teams had entered in the past.
"Regard," Bocage said, "beyond this point, we must a.s.sume that we are, at all times, in peril of our lives."
Raynard opened an aluminum case that he carried. He distributed lightweight Kevlar body armor. "Remember that they are experts with knives. They can throw a knife almost with the speed of a bullet, because of the arm strength."