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

for Missy.”
    “Her dad hit her?”
    “Slapped, mostly.”
    He tried to call up a picture of Dick Smith, but could recall only a pallid executive with beat-up old glasses. “That Mr. Peepers guy?”
    “Get him drunk and he’s deadly. Especially to girls. He left Dickie pretty much alone, except when he tried to get him off Missy. Then he’d come after him with a belt.”
    What was it he was hearing in Ian’s voice? Was it curiosity or compassion? Ian had never been hit. In fact, he lived in a home where a raised voice was a rarity, and punishments consisted of expressions of disappointment.
    For Becky and Paul, ultra-violence was work. Their private lives had to be as peaceful as a Trappist oratory.
    “So,” Ian said, “you no like Leo?”
    “No like Leo.”
    “She’s redefining the feminine, Dad. She’s politically, like, important. She’s going beyond feminism into grrl power. I mean, she’s this incredibly sweet, vulnerable girl who’s totally tough at the same time. Athene, goddess of wisdom and war, Lilith, mother of demons. Leo’s reempowering the myth of the feminine. Good-bye, Tinkerbelle.”
    “It’s just that…it was kinda loud.”
    “My loudness is mine, not hers. Let it sink into your soul, man, let it—” He laughed, suddenly, a brief, embarrassed chuckle. Ian was remembering why he’d turned it up so loud. He shut his mouth so hard his teeth clicked, as if he’d felt pain in the laugh and was trying to bite it off.
    “I’m sorry we disturbed you,” Paul murmured.
    Ian smiled a little. What son cannot see past the masks of his father? It struck Paul unexpectedly this time, the depth and power of his love for his boy. He’d been astonished to hear a baby crying, in the moments after the battle with Miri. Then he’d found the crib behind a curtain in the bedroom of the lavish San Francisco apartment they’d tracked her to. Paul had known instantly that this was his son, and why Miri had seduced him: to get this child.
    Paul had lifted the wriggling life from its bed and had instantly and completely loved the baby he knew he should kill. He had tightened his hands around the tiny chest until the kid squirmed, until he could feel the heart fluttering like a captured moth. He had remained like that, his own sweat dripping down onto the squalling thing, his fingers trembling, his jaw clenching.
    The baby had seemed so vulnerable, so tiny, at once more deeply a part of Paul Ward than anyone else could ever be—and more alien and more dangerous.
    “I’ll take him,” Becky had said, and swept him up in her arms. Paul had raised his head and seen in his sweating, tough fighting companion something so deeply true, and so unexpectedly soft and just very damn appealing, that it had made him cover his weapon with the blood-spattered edge of his jacket and say, “Marry me.” To which she had replied, “Yeah, right.”
    Thus are born romances, and father and motherhoods, and the journeys of children. Tentatively, he reached across to Ian, who did not react. He immediately withdrew. “Look,” he said, “I’m gonna drive down to the city. You want I should drop you at school?”
    “I drive?” Ian asked.
    “Go for it.”
    They headed out. “Seriously,” Ian said, “she’s making a statement. That’s why kids like her. This is the postfeminist era. You and Mom—you don’t see that. It’s not enough for women to get the boardroom. There’s a level of psychological and cultural empowerment that they have not yet captured. Leo is about a whole new way of looking at what women are.”
    Given what he knew about Leo, it was all Paul could do not to spit his contempt. Women were soft and good, not dangerous.
    But Becky—his sweet, soft Becky—was one of the most dangerous human beings he’d ever known, dammit!
    When Paul said nothing, Ian spoke again: “Women will never become all they can be until we respect their danger. I love Momma, but sweet is not what women need to be right