Lilith’s Dream: A Tale of the Vampire Life Read Online Free PDF Page B

and down the sidewalk.
    Wind gusted, steam sped from a Con Ed ditch, a bus came clamoring down Fifth Avenue. She moved east. She would go to First Avenue, start at Fifty-ninth and work her way down under the concealing shadow of the Queensboro Bridge and into the upper fifties. She’d find somebody, she always did, wherever she went, here or on Third Avenue with the working girls, or down on Greenwich Street, or just about anywhere.
    The bridge thundered, the Fifty-ninth Street tram bobbled in the sky on its way to Roosevelt Island. A Lexus full of bridge-and-tunnel boys passed her slowly. No good, too many of them. Then there came a figure huddling north into the wind, wearing a sports jacket pulled closed by a fist. As he approached, she evaluated him. His eyes painted her quickly, flickering with short, fly like movements. He was softly made, no athlete. Good. He appeared healthy enough. A second check mark on his death warrant. Look at the hands—no ring trench. Three marks and you’re in.
    “Got the time?”
    “Uh, it’s—” He made a show of looking at his watch.
    “Eleven-forty. I have a watch, too.”
    His eyes met hers, flickered away. So he wanted a kink. He was out looking for something odd. Fine, she’d done it all five times over. Guys looking for anonymous sex weren’t generally interested in the missionary position. He offered her a weak smile.
    “Look, honey, you want a date or not?”
    “What’re you—uh—”
    “It’s a date. Whatever you want.”
    “Uh, I, you know, it’s just ordinary.”
    “C’mere.” She put her arms on his shoulders, smiled up at him. “Now nobody can hear us but us.” She met his eyes. “Honey, you look like you lost your mommy.”
    “Maybe that’s what happened. I did. You know, what about the, sort of, that I’m—I have a big job. A lot of people work for me. I spend my life giving orders and my wife, she’s not—she can’t…she just can’t.”
    She took his hand. “You just forget it, okay. Okay? ’Cause I know what we’re gonna do.”
    “You do?”
    “Baby, don’t you worry. You found the right girl. It’s lucky. I’m looking for it. I love it. So just—here, come on, don’t you pull away, now, honey.” She took him by the wrist, led him until he resisted.
    “Where is it? Is it a hotel?” His voice was higher, edgy.
    “It’s a private house. Just you and me.”
    “Is this expensive, because—”
    “Don’t worry about it.”
    He was silent but resistant, still very wary. She held him firmly, moving quickly toward the old house, the place where she had found her miracle and lost her humanity. She didn’t actually enter it often, not unless she had to.
    She drew out the old brass key.
    “Here?” he asked, raising his eyes to the dark facade.
    “Come on.” She laughed, drawing him up the steps. “It’s gonna be just us, total privacy, nobody can hear, nobody can see. You ever get that before? You can do anything.”
    “Look, lady, it’s not that I don’t trust you, but I’ve never contemplated anything quite like this.”
    Interesting use of language. Was this an educated man, a professional, the kind of guy whose disappearance would get a lot of notice? She opened the door, turned on the hall lights. “Okay, okay,” she said to him when he hesitated on the stoop. Just come in the damn house, mister. For chrissakes.
    When he entered, she immediately pushed the door closed. He could not know that there was now no way for him to get out, not through that or any door or any window, not without her keys and her knowledge of these intricate locks. No matter who he was or what he was, a dead man now stood before her.
    He smiled, revealing neatly kept teeth. “Well, wow,” he said. “Wow.”
    “It’s very old.”
    “That ceiling, it’s lovely.”
    She turned on the lights in the ceiling.
    “Tiffany,” he said, “is it the real thing?”
    “The real thing,” she said. She ushered him into the living room, turned on