The Hunger (40 page)

The roaches had eaten the ink, what hadn’t been smeared by the vile uses to which the paper had apparently been put. She laid the page down on the dirty floor, laid it down as she might lay to rest the body of a beloved friend.

She made another circuit of the chamber, looking into its recesses and crannies, but not a page remained.

She was face-to-face with what was without a doubt the greatest astonishment of her life. Some of the richest and most ancient Keepers were Asian. There had been — oh, easily a hundred of them.

She slumped against a wall. Had man somehow done this, simple, weak little
man?

Keepers could be hurt by man — witness her mother and father — but they couldn’t be destroyed by man, not this way. They
owned
man!

She looked from empty wall to empty wall and fully grasped the fact that the Asian Keepers must have been destroyed. If even one was left alive, this book would be safe.

When she grasped this enormous reality, something so rare happened to Miriam that she lifted her long, tapering fingers to her cheeks in amazement.

Far below the crazy streets, in the fetid ruin of this holy place, a vampire wept.

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THE LAST VAMPIRE

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