Free Lilith’s Dream: A Tale of the Vampire Life by Whitley Strieber Page A

flashed past Fiftieth Street, he realized that he was going seventy, whipping in and out of traffic so fast that people could only stand and stare. He hit the brakes. His reflexes made such maneuvers easy for him. He could have done the same thing at a hundred, just as efficiently. But you didn’t do high-speed driving in Manhattan, not if you didn’t want to attract some pretty upset traffic cops. He dropped back to forty and let the car slide into a right onto Fifty-sixth Street.
    He pulled into a garage on First Avenue. Up here, the brownies might or might not understand that his plate number said he was a federal officer. He got out of the car, gave the attendant his keys, and crossed the avenue. He passed then into the magical world of Sutton Place, which had once been a fabulous enclave of homes with gardens stretching down to what was then called the North River. The gardens were still there, but they had been rendered into walled stumps of their former grandeur when the East Side Highway was built.
    Among the fables of Manhattan is that of the tunnels. The abandoned Second Avenue Subway and other, more ancient tunnels—the first New York Central tunnel, the Crosstown Walkway, among others—snake beneath the streets. There are deeper, more hidden passages, too, the access tunnels for Con Ed’s steam lines, the sewers, and the access tunnels to the great water lines that shoot down from the upstate reservoirs at a depth of two hundred feet.
    There are also other tunnels down there, tunnels that have not been mapped on any map, and in those tunnels lay the undead vampires of New York. It had been a methodical carnage. It had also reduced the annual missing persons count by five thousand. That’s how many lives had been saved in this one city alone, five thousand a year.
    His team hadn’t even known of these tunnels. They’d thought that New York had few vampires. But Miriam Blaylock had escaped from her house into a tunnel, and that had led them to the rest of the infestation.
    He and Becky had not dared to follow her, not into that dark unknown. Later, though, the team had conquered it completely.
    It was a branch of Miriam’s escape tunnel that Paul would now use to enter her house. It would be tricky, though. His eyes were sharp enough to notice the twists and turns, but not as sharp as a vampire’s. Even though he was going only a couple hundred feet, getting lost was a distinct possibility. If that happened, he’d probably end up starving to death before he found his way out.
    He walked down Fifty-sixth Street to its end, then vaulted the wall that concealed Miriam’s garden from the world. He dropped down into it, looked immediately up toward the leaded glass windows of the music room. This was taking a mad chance, he knew that. But he also knew that no progress would be made without such chances.
    He took five quick steps to the back of the garden, then touched the pavement around a birdbath. Doing it just right caused a crack to open in the green of the lawn. There were a few hewn steps, and the rattle of busy water. It was low tide, so a faint glow could be seen from below where the tunnel opened onto the East River. For a few hours each day, the mouth was above water. He’d seen it from a boat. It was identical to the other drains beneath the esplanade that supported FDR Drive. There would be no reason whatever to suspect that it led to the hidden warrens of a vicious species of predator.
    He descended to a small landing at the bottom of ten steps, then pulled a lever which closed the entrance above him. Like everything made by them, age and long disuse had not reduced its efficiency. The trap above closed without a murmur or a creak.
    All he had was a penlight. But he had expected to get some information from the police. He had not expected that this situation would arise. For that reason, also, he was not armed. He stepped carefully, his head down, one hand guarding his forehead. Paul was easily