The Last Vampire by Whitley Strieber

think. The Asians had already been swept away in the onslaught, and now she had endangered herself in a foolish, heedless moment of panic, and possibly many others of her kind as well. Because of what she had done, she was in the process of being captured by human beings. A Keeper!
    They came to a door. The customs officer said, “Enter, please.” She could feel the young policeman’s breath on her neck. There was no more time. She had to act, and no matter the crowd.
    She stepped away from the door and into the center of the corridor. This left the two men facing each other, their eyes widening in surprise at the speed of her movement. To them, she would have seemed to temporarily disappear. Keepers had bred humans to be slow, for convenience. That way they could be outrun, outjumped, and outmaneuvered. Prey should be easy to herd.
    Before the two men could turn to face her, she had slipped her hands behind their heads and pressed them together sharply. They dropped like sacks.
    A secretary rushed out of an office two doors down. She looked at Miriam. She could not associate a young girl in an elegant suit with two unconscious men. “What has happened?”
    “Gas,” Miriam cried.“The corridor is full of gas!” She turned and went striding on toward the emergency exit at the far end. A moment later, a horn started hooting. The terrified secretary had pulled the fire alarm and then rushed out into the customs area shouting, “Gas!” as she ran.
    Opening the emergency exit, Miriam looked about for a way back into the main part of the terminal. Once out of the customs area, she would be able to go into Paris. She’d have to get Sarah to work up a new identity and FedEx her the passport. She certainly could not use the Tallman identity, and dared not risk her own.
    Others were coming out behind her, so she climbed some concrete steps, then went down a long, empty passageway. Behind her, a man shouted that she was going the wrong way. She noticed his American-sounding voice, then glimpsed a narrow, dark figure starting to run toward her. She did not look back again.
    She soon found herself in a bustling staging area for the assembly of airline meals. There were shelves full of little trays and plastic cutlery, and a wall lined with institutional refrigerators. Workers stood at tables putting the meals together on trays. Others covered them with plastic wrap. Others still packed them in steel shelves, ready to be wheeled out to the waiting planes.
    There were aluminum double doors at the far end of the room. Striding with the confidence of a person who belonged exactly where she was, Miriam went to these doors.
    Behind her there was a cry, “Halte!”
    Miriam ran. She ran as hard and as fast as she could, speeding along the corridor and into a locker room. This was where the various workers changed into their uniforms.
    “Halte Halte!”
    A new man had burst into the room at the far end. Her throat tightened; she felt a sudden surge of rage. The reason was that this creature had appeared ahead of her. They knew exactly where she was. They must be using radios to surround her. She looked around for doors other than the ones she and the gendarme had entered.
    She slipped through one, found herself in a shower room. The door had nothing but a handle lock, which she twisted. At once, he began to shake it violently from the other side. She threw open a window. There was a drop of about three stories to an area of tarmac crowded with baggage lorries. As the door burst open behind her, she went to the window and jumped.
    Her teeth clashed together and her ankles shot pain up her legs from the impact. The palms of her hands burned when they slapped against the pavement. Immediately, she rolled under the overhang of the building, making herself impossible to see from above.
    The shock had damaged the heel of one of her shoes. She struggled away, moving among the speeding baggage lorries. Stopping for a moment, she pulled off her