Lilith’s Dream: A Tale of the Vampire Life by Whitley Strieber Page A
Authors: Whitley Strieber
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streetlights glowing and the tiny passenger windows lit as their train raced through the little town with its garage and its church and its people who had been painted with single-hair brushes, detailed down to the color of their eyes.
The third week after Dad had disappeared, Paul had huddled right over there behind the fat, black furnace and begged the good lord to take him, too. He had been greeted with what he had come to see as mankind’s defining truth, the silence of God.
Becky came down, as he’d known she would.
“Paul, look, Ian’s becoming an adult. You have to make room for him.”
“Ian is seventeen, and he needs to open his door when his father knocks.”
Paul went through another, very different door, that led into a very different sort of a room. He flipped on the lights, which filled the room with a soft blue glow.
“Paul, you need to talk this out with him. Come on, now, this is—you talk about childish.”
“Oops. Nope. Wrong approach. Ian needs to come to me. He needs to apologize to me.”
“Sometimes I have a hard time believing that dinosaurs are actually extinct.”
He was going to control the anger. He was going to get her to see what was needed here.
He waited. He wanted her to show that she at least understood that he had a side, that it wasn’t all Ian here and no Paul. But she did not come in. In fact, she pulled his own door closed in his face. He heard her feet on the stairs.
He shut his eyes and took the slow breaths that would ease his aching chest. Far away, as if filtering down from some mad heaven, he heard, “Love me please love me, love me please love me…”
Who was playing the damn CD this time, her or him?
Christ almighty, of all the singers in the world, why did he have to go for that one? Goddammit, dammit, dammit!
He would have pounded the wall, but his hand still hurt from shattering the table. Instead, he decided that his instinct to come down here had been the right one. Throw yourself into work. He’d been a damn fool up there, it was true. But he shouldn’t have to gobble crow the way Becky wanted. Kids heal, for God’s sake.
Prescription for an upset and regretful old dinosaur: lose thyself in thy work.
He lumbered over to his slot of a desk and pressed a button, which turned on a group of three computer screens. He tapped his keyboard a few times, then stopped, waiting for the New York Overnights. These were crime reports that were on their way into the National Crime Database. He glanced at two murders, one in Brooklyn and the other in Manhattan. A drug dealer had come to his inevitable end in Bay Ridge. On the Upper West Side a man of seventy had killed his cancer-ridden wife. He had given police a tape she had made begging him to do it. Poor damn people.
A kidnapping in Buffalo merited a little attention, but not much. Leo Patterson was not in Buffalo. According to Joe Leong, Leo had left her suite wearing a black turtleneck and slacks at 2:17 A.M. She had returned at 3:22. It wasn’t enough to get him any support, not in the absence of hard evidence.
There were no missing persons reports from Midtown North. Midtown South, however, had three: a girl of seventeen with a history of runaways, an elderly man with Alzheimer’s, and a Catholic priest.
This third case Paul went into more carefully. A Father of the Holy Rosary called Joachim Prester had walked out of his rectory on Eleventh Street and never returned. But the case was three days old. They’d waited quite a while before they reported him. Then he saw why: Father Prester was a binge alcoholic and had last been seen wandering the South Street Seaport. Probably lost with the tides by now, a victim of the unforgiving waters that surged around Manhattan.
So, once again, there was nothing solid to pin on Leo. Once again, he would put in a request to allow him to detain her and obtain a blood sample for analysis. Once again, he would be denied.
Leo was not a vampire, she was a human
The third week after Dad had disappeared, Paul had huddled right over there behind the fat, black furnace and begged the good lord to take him, too. He had been greeted with what he had come to see as mankind’s defining truth, the silence of God.
Becky came down, as he’d known she would.
“Paul, look, Ian’s becoming an adult. You have to make room for him.”
“Ian is seventeen, and he needs to open his door when his father knocks.”
Paul went through another, very different door, that led into a very different sort of a room. He flipped on the lights, which filled the room with a soft blue glow.
“Paul, you need to talk this out with him. Come on, now, this is—you talk about childish.”
“Oops. Nope. Wrong approach. Ian needs to come to me. He needs to apologize to me.”
“Sometimes I have a hard time believing that dinosaurs are actually extinct.”
He was going to control the anger. He was going to get her to see what was needed here.
He waited. He wanted her to show that she at least understood that he had a side, that it wasn’t all Ian here and no Paul. But she did not come in. In fact, she pulled his own door closed in his face. He heard her feet on the stairs.
He shut his eyes and took the slow breaths that would ease his aching chest. Far away, as if filtering down from some mad heaven, he heard, “Love me please love me, love me please love me…”
Who was playing the damn CD this time, her or him?
Christ almighty, of all the singers in the world, why did he have to go for that one? Goddammit, dammit, dammit!
He would have pounded the wall, but his hand still hurt from shattering the table. Instead, he decided that his instinct to come down here had been the right one. Throw yourself into work. He’d been a damn fool up there, it was true. But he shouldn’t have to gobble crow the way Becky wanted. Kids heal, for God’s sake.
Prescription for an upset and regretful old dinosaur: lose thyself in thy work.
He lumbered over to his slot of a desk and pressed a button, which turned on a group of three computer screens. He tapped his keyboard a few times, then stopped, waiting for the New York Overnights. These were crime reports that were on their way into the National Crime Database. He glanced at two murders, one in Brooklyn and the other in Manhattan. A drug dealer had come to his inevitable end in Bay Ridge. On the Upper West Side a man of seventy had killed his cancer-ridden wife. He had given police a tape she had made begging him to do it. Poor damn people.
A kidnapping in Buffalo merited a little attention, but not much. Leo Patterson was not in Buffalo. According to Joe Leong, Leo had left her suite wearing a black turtleneck and slacks at 2:17 A.M. She had returned at 3:22. It wasn’t enough to get him any support, not in the absence of hard evidence.
There were no missing persons reports from Midtown North. Midtown South, however, had three: a girl of seventeen with a history of runaways, an elderly man with Alzheimer’s, and a Catholic priest.
This third case Paul went into more carefully. A Father of the Holy Rosary called Joachim Prester had walked out of his rectory on Eleventh Street and never returned. But the case was three days old. They’d waited quite a while before they reported him. Then he saw why: Father Prester was a binge alcoholic and had last been seen wandering the South Street Seaport. Probably lost with the tides by now, a victim of the unforgiving waters that surged around Manhattan.
So, once again, there was nothing solid to pin on Leo. Once again, he would put in a request to allow him to detain her and obtain a blood sample for analysis. Once again, he would be denied.
Leo was not a vampire, she was a human
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