Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha (25 page)

Among so many hypnotic elder stares, she spotted kindly blue eyes of warm wisdom. Merrin. He watched her, feeling for her. He had no right. She was a monster. She needed no sympathy.

With a thumb-talon, she slit open Marcello’s neck. She craned to catch the spurt in her mouth, and sucked back the blood, feeling it bursting behind her eyes. Electric taste wiped away what she had been thinking of, worrying about.

Marcello wasn’t dancing. He was spasming in her arms, too much blood pouring from his depleted veins.

Discreet footmen stepped onto the floor and took Marcello from her. One slapped a large sticking-plaster over the wound and said something in Italian about Vimto. They took him away from her as if taking a broken toy from an unruly child, careful not to express disapproval but nevertheless clearly miffed by her heedlessness.

One of the servants indicated his chin. It took her a moment to realise what he meant. She took her hankie and wiped away an obstinate trickle of blood.

Marcello was walked toward an alcove. As the curtain whisked aside, she glimpsed a row of beds and a stand of drip-feeds. Nurses were in attendance. She was not the only vampire to lose self-control under the influence of the
cha cha cha.

As a lone woman, she was suddenly open season. General Iorga, a tubby elder who’d been head of the Carpathian Guard when they were sworn to cut off her head, tried to whirl her in a gavotte. The General lost her to a beatnik bleeder with a beret and a goatee who jerked her back into
cha cha
cha-mode. An amulet on a long chain danced between them, thumping against his black pullover and her
décolletage.

She was torn from the Maynard G. Krebs-type by a woman elder who took advantage of a momentary slowing of the music to French-kiss her. As an alien tongue probed her mouth for licks of Marcello’s blood, Kate realised this was the strangest of all elders, Casanova. Upon turning, he’d shape-shifted permanently into a woman, a miracle which had no effect whatsoever on his character.

Then she was detached from the great lover, a process that involved much unlocking of mouth-parts, by a ravaged, bloated warm fellow whom she recognised, under many layers of dissolution, as Errol Flynn. The former matinee idol had a spigot in his neck. Kate could not resist the blood of Robin Hood. It was more vodka than gore, but rich with Caribbean spices and gunpowder.

She left Flynn, and stumbled, drunk in several ways, through the crowds.

A huge chest blocked her way. She raised her head to look at the face, but it was a crimson blur. The man wore tights that showed thick columns of muscle in his thighs and calves.

A cold cloth dropped on her brain.

Where were Silvestri and Ginko? Where were the Carpathian Guard?

Fright seized her.

Her eyes focused. She had been mistaken. This was not the Crimson Executioner. A bespectacled, handsome, kindly face, built of solid blocks, looked down at her. It was an actor, Kent. She’d seen pictures of him as Hercules.

He wasn’t even dressed in red. His tights were blue.

‘Are you all right, Miss?’ he asked.

She waved him away, trying to make a sober arrangement of her features. He wasn’t sure about her, but took her reassurance as authentic.

Beyond the muscled American, she glimpsed a smaller figure. A tiny woman, or a child. A wing of blonde hair over one eye. She’d been wrong about the Crimson Executioner, but this was the little girl from Piazza di Trevi.

‘Excuse me,’ she said to Kent, brushing past him.

The girl was gone.

Now, Kate wanted to cry. She knew she was in a dulled, insensate state. She wanted to be sharp, wanted to be herself. She needed herself now.

A red ball bounced on the floor and rolled to her feet. She bent to pick up the plaything, but clumsily tapped it. The ball leaped like a balloon, and hopped away like a Chinese vampire. It bounced off Private Elvis Presley’s head and against Edgar Poe’s chest, making the writer spill his drink, then loped onwards, sliding between Gina Lollobrigida and an elder Kate didn’t know. It was as if it were trying to escape. Kate kept her eye on the ball, and followed.

21

CEMETERY GIRLS

S
omeone small brushed by Geneviève.

‘Past that child’s bedtime, I should have thought,’ said Bond.

She looked around but saw no child.

‘Naughty little devil,’ the spy mused.

‘In this company, you shouldn’t judge age by looks, Commander Bond. Melissa, my grandmother-in-darkness, is one of those forever children, turned as a six-year-old. She’s been “fwightfully cwoss” for the best part of a thousand years.’

She wondered if Melissa d’Acques were here. Geneviève hadn’t heard of the old girl in over a hundred years. Once, that would have meant that the elder had been destroyed. Now, it suggested she was one of that circle who disapproved of Dracula’s showboating. Some were so used to living in shadow that they would never forgive
il principe
for taking the public stage, shattering forever the exclusivity of vampirism.

The word went round that Dracula was expected soon.

Penelope was receiving orders from Princess Asa, who had changed her outfit twice already during the party. Two hundred years hadn’t altered her imperious looks. The odd creation she now wore was as apt for Mongo as Moldavia.

Asa had a savage, almost Mongol face. Currently, it was framed by a demon ruff of lizard-like material, which served as collar for a turquoise satin train supported by a pair of dwarves made up as turbaned blackamoors. Under the cape, she wore an abbreviated brass Valkyrie breastplate and a short skirt of chain mail and leather. The spike heels of her thigh-length jackboots added as much to her height as her topiary tower of hair. The Princess carried a coil of bullwhip, the like of which she must have used to
knout
her peasants back in the good old days.

Bond was taken with the Royal Fiancée. Geneviève thought the Princess looked ridiculous, but in this company it took a lot to stand out. And Asa Vajda certainly stood out.

Penelope nodded curtly as she accepted each royal decree. There would be trumpets, torches and a cannonade from the battlements. Penny argued that it might be more politic for the cannons to be pointed out to sea rather than over the town.

‘A fall of chain-shot is a poor substitute for confetti, Princess,’ she said.

‘Pah!’ declared Asa. ‘What care we for mortals! They should be grateful to bleed and die in commemoration of my happiness. If we fire out to sea, what will happen? Only fish will die. I like not fish.’

Penelope looked at the end of her rope. Geneviève had an impulse to help the Englishwoman.

‘It’s traditional for Dracula’s guns to fire at the sea,’ she put in. ‘To avenge the flood of 1469, which cut off the retreating Turks and prevented Vlad’s armies from hacking the foemen to pieces.’

Foemen,
that was good. Very fifteenth century. Asa swivelled her enormous eyes.

‘The Dieudonné girl,’ she said. ‘Carmilla Karnstein’s little friend.’

‘So pleased to see you again, Asa.’

Three hundred years ago, Melissa d’Acques had called a gathering of female elders in the Black Forest. They were supposed to debate some point of nosferatu protocol none could understand, but Geneviève alone realised it was because her grandmother-in-darkness was lonely for new playmates. They’d spent the month dressing up and chasing huntsmen in the woods. Princess Asa hadn’t liked Geneviève then, and wasn’t about to change her opinion now.

‘
Chut
,’ Asa said, which might be either a Moldavian greeting or a deadly insult.

‘Chut
to you too,
chèrie
.’

‘This flood of 1469…?’

She had made it up, of course.

‘A rebuke to Poseidon.
Il principe
will be honoured.’

‘Very well,’ decided the Princess. ‘Englishwoman, you may bombard the waves.’

Penelope was relieved. Like Caligula, she could now claim victory over the sea.

A red ball bounced off the dance floor. Asa looked at it as if it were an interloper.

‘And have this ball burst,’ she ordered.

The point of tyranny was to be arbitrary. Asa had probably read her Machiavelli and was trying to surpass his model. Sometimes, it did to issue meaningless commands to see how swiftly one’s retainers snapped to.

Kate Reed stumbled out of the crowd, apparently following the ball. She was in a state. Her eyes were enlarged and red. There was blood on her mouth and down the front of her dress. She was so fixated on the ball that she tripped.

Geneviève caught the woman. Kate struggled a bit, then slowly recognised her.

‘If it isn’t Mademoiselle Perfect,’ she said.

Geneviève knew better than to be hurt. Kate was well gone into the red madness.

‘Do you know how you make the rest of us feel?’ Kate continued. ‘You, the lady elder, the vampire saint, the marble adventuress? Sixteen and milky-white on the outside, with all that genius and generosity of spirit caged up inside you?’

Geneviève looked at Penelope and Asa. Neither commented.

‘I’m like you, Kate,’ she said. ‘I’m not special.’

Kate laughed bitterly, to the point of tears.

‘It’s no wonder you won him,’ Kate said. ‘None of us had a chance. You’re like a statue. Beside you, we’re all ratty little kids. We change and shrivel and die, and you go on and on and on, always perfect, always modestly triumphant. The rest of us are the wreckage left behind.’

‘I think you’ve had enough to drink, Katie,’ said Penelope.

‘Yes, I know. I’m sorry, Geneviève. You’re right. I’m not being me.’

Despite everything, a sliver of ice got through. Kate was drunk, but could still think. Perhaps drink only freed her to say what she’d always thought. Perhaps Geneviève was an impossible presence. In the end, everyone she knew suffered.

She tried to find the love in her heart, the thing that made her different from Asa Vajda or Prince Dracula, the constant throb she’d felt for Charles, and through him for his warm world. Momentarily, she thought it was there no longer.

‘I’ve hurt you,’ Kate said, reaching out for her cheek, fingertip touching a tear. ‘I’m sorry. I’m wrong. You’re still alive.’

Kate was crying too. Penelope held her tight.

Again, the three were joined by tears.

‘No one must weep at my party,’ Asa said. ‘This I decree. All must smile, all must be happy. On pain of impalement.’

‘I apologise, Princess,’ began Penelope. ‘My friend meant no…’

Asa flicked out the tip of her whip and slapped Penelope across the face as if with her open hand.

The whipcrack was like a gunshot.

Bond flinched, hand slipping into his jacket. Then he relaxed. This was women’s business. He could enjoy the show.

Kate was suddenly calm. She set the shocked Penelope, whose face bore a broad red mark specked with blood, down in a chair, and faced up to Asa Vajda, who was at least eighteen inches the taller.

‘You old cow,’ she said, and punched the Princess in the throat.

Asa staggered under the blow, unsteady on her heels. Her imps tripped under the train and tugged it off her shoulders. A clasp at the neck snapped. The Princess emerged from her satin shroud and lashed again with the whip.

Kate caught the leather snake with her forearm and wrapped it several times around her wrist, tugging on it like a lasso, further unbalancing Asa. Both women wore heels, but Kate could kick off her Perugia shoes and fight in her stocking feet. She did so, and lost another three inches.

Princess Asa’s face swelled at the sides, as if teeth were sprouting around her eyes and along the insides of her jaws.

‘It’s not a good idea to bash the bride,’ Bond said. ‘Why don’t you girls kiss and make up.’

Kate yanked hard on the whip, pulling Asa toward her, within range of her clawed hand. She got her fingers in the Princess’s hair and dismantled the beehive, flopping black strands over her face. Red wheals were scratched across Asa’s cheek, but healed at once.

With terrier-like ferocity, Kate lifted Asa off the floor and slammed her several times against a column. The Princess’s head slapped back and forth and she screeched with fury. Kate dropped her and stood back, letting her recover a little.

Asa kicked out with a booted leg and caught Kate behind the knees, sweeping her off the floor. She fell badly, whip still around her wrist, and the Princess placed a boot-toe on her forehead.

‘Yield,’ she said, an Amazon addressing an ant.

Of course, everyone in the room gathered around, watching. Flashbulbs popped. Kate lay like a beached fish, the fight gone out of her.

Geneviève felt more tears on her cheek.

‘That’s enough, Asa,’ she said.

‘She must yield,’ the Princess said. ‘For that, I will reward her with a swift, merciful death.’

‘You can’t do that any more, Asa. You haven’t been able to do that for years. You don’t own serfs any more. You don’t have a right to take their lives.’

Asa looked down at Kate, then at Geneviève. She was not a stupid barbarian. That was what frightened Geneviève. Nothing was worse than a clever barbarian.