Miriam was through the door and had it locked before Sarah had taken three fast steps. Unless Miriam was completely surprised there was no hope.

Sarah hurled the scalpel at the door and snarled the rage that consumed her.

She grabbed at the door handle, yanked angrily, knowing in advance that Miriam’s doors were all of steel.

Her heart weighted with disappointment, Miriam took the victim across the hall and stuffed her into a closet in her own bedroom. The girl’s skull was crushed so there was no need for caution. The coma would last perhaps three hours. Sarah would have to feed before death occurred or the girl would be wasted.

Drawn by her concern for poor Sarah, Miriam went back to the locked door and listened. The sounds within were hideously reminiscent of those made by her own kind in the dungeons of Paris. Sarah’s will was quite extraordinary. There was howlings and screams on the other side of that door, but not a whisper of a plea. Here was one whose will was great enough to do battle with the hunger.

But not forever.

Sarah shrieked out her suffering. Miriam was unkillable! So fast and so strong. If only there was a telephone in this damnable room, even a tape recorder.

She opened drawers, searched the closet. There was nothing except ancient, rotting clothes and a stack of theater programs from the last century.

The room grew stifling. Sarah’s whole body hurt. She felt as if she had a blood infection, which in a sense she had. Her tongue was hard and dry, her eyes watering. Her guts churned and she was momentarily doubled over by the pain.

Her medical background told her that Miriam’s blood, finding no other nutrient, was beginning to feed on its host body. She was literally being eaten alive from within. Her mouth jerked open. A spasm choked her until darting black shadows filled her eyes and the room seemed far, far away.

When the spasm passed she found herself lying on the floor, the weave of the carpet crawling beneath her as if she were lying in a mass of worms.

She managed to get to her feet. Somehow she had to reach Miriam. Her mind screamed at her, ‘last chance, last chance!’

If only she had told Tom earlier. There had been time back in the apartment. Just a few words and he would have known the whole truth.

He would never have come here then, not without help. Perhaps even at that late hour Geoff’s blood wash would still have worked.

Sarah could have saved herself, she saw it clearly.

‘Why not, you fool?’

Even this morning she was still half-convinced she wanted Miriam’s “gift.” She remembered well the thought that had revealed her truth: ‘I could live forever. Actually live forever.’ And she had tried to imagine it. ‘Me. Still alive in a thousand years.’

Or two thousand.