Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha (37 page)

THE JUDGEMENT OF TEARS

T
his was what Geneviève needed. To face a monster rather than herself.

Bond told her Gregor Brastov was dead, skinned and gutted by the Crimson Executioner. He had known about the Mother of Tears, had wanted them to confront her for him, so he should have known better than to tangle with her creature. The Cat Man had been trying to set her, and the spy, against the enemy he most feared, but other matters had distracted them. Charles and Dracula. A quiet war had been taking place, beyond her ken. In the end, she would have to be involved. It was inescapable.

Another elder gone, after hundreds of years. They were mostly vile, but Geneviève was used to sharing the world with them. Before Dracula’s great entrance, elders had passed the centuries in travel, occasionally crossing each other’s paths with wary courtesy, sometimes even gathering as a community.

Since Carmilla Karnstein, Geneviève had never counted another vampire elder her friend. They were for the most part bloodthirsty bastards. Even Carmilla was cracked.

Outside the apartment, they paused by Bond’s Aston Martin. It had a few new bullet scars.

‘We needn’t drive,’ he said. ‘It’s within sight of here.’

It was obvious, when she came to think of it. There was only one place in Rome for a last stand. Charles had noticed the Executioner’s habit of staging his atrocities in famous public places.

Bond led her along the road.

The Colosseum stood against the Roman night, cut across like a wedding cake sliced with a scythe.

The Flavian Amphitheatre — Charles pedantically preferred the proper name — had been built in AD 72 by Vespasian in place of an artificial lake dedicated to Nero, part of an urban rebuilding scheme designed to blot out memory of the murderous Emperor. Vespasian hadn’t lived to see the sand of the arena bloodied by the first gladiatorial casualties, which lasted until Honorius forbade the killing of man by man in AD 405. Wild animals, always a popular supporting act, were set against each other for a further century and a half. Geneviève knew various conscience-struck Emperors had tried to introduce Greek-style athletics contests, without fatalities, in place of the Roman games, but that the public hadn’t stood for them. Only blood would satisfy the people of Rome. She supposed she wasn’t in a position to be too fastidiously critical on that point.

For centuries, Romans had stolen Colosseum stone for new buildings. Blood-soaked blocks now made up portions of the Palazzo Venezia, the Cancelleria, St Peter’s and many humbler structures. The plundering had only ceased in the middle of the eighteenth century when Pope Benedict XIV proclaimed it a sacred site, relying on the pious fiction that it was the site of many martyrdoms. It was a canard that Christians were fed to lions. That wouldn’t have been entertainment. Instead, the followers of the fisherman were stuck on poles and set alight as a primitive form of street lighting, or simply crucified as trouble-makers. The arena was reserved for those skilled enough to make a show out of fights to the death. A thousand years and more before Dracula or Gilles de Rais or Elisabeth Bathory, the public taste for blood was already keen.

In the nineteenth century, when Geneviève had been briefly in Rome, the Colosseum was a jungle, stones buried in all manner of thriving flora. She had considered the swallowing of marble death by irrepressible life a sign of hope, but the weeds were all tidied away now and the bleached bones of the building exposed again. The two storeys of arches that made up the original outer shell stood, along with half of the jerry-built addition — replacing a wooden level struck by credibly divine lightning in AD 217 — piled on top. The terraces were still there in tiers, awaiting the return of the crowds, but the floor of the arena — the killing stage — was gone, exposing a maze of tunnels and chambers that had been below.

‘I followed him here,’ said Bond. ‘He led me past your flat. I took that as a sign.’

‘The Colosseum is a tourist attraction,’ she said. ‘It will be closed at this hour.’

‘I doubt that our quarry cares much about that.’

‘I suppose you’re right.’

The Venerable Bede had written ‘as long as the Colosseum stands, Rome will stand, and when the Colosseum falls, Rome will fall; but when Rome falls the world will come to an end.’ She wasn’t sure whether that was a comforting or threatening prophecy. A city, indeed a world, symbolised by this horrid edifice probably didn’t deserve to stand.

They crossed the Piazza di Colosseo. Geneviève wondered if this was the route the gladiators had taken. No, they would have been chained under the arena, released only when the crowds had taken their seats.

Had any vampires died in the arena? There were nosferatu in ancient Rome. They would have been a novelty. She imagined Caligula — dead before this place was planned — pitting a werewolf against a shape-shifting vampire, sheathing their claws with silver knives, giving the thumbs down for the loser.

She supposed things were changing. Slowly.

Then again, Caligula hadn’t thought of the Bomb either.

They strolled through the main entrance. It was too huge a space to fence off.

She smelled the stones. There were still traces of old blood.

‘Look,’ said Bond.

She was wrong. The blood was fresh, a vampire’s. It was absurd to think the gore of the gladiators would still be in the ground.

The trail led through the great arch, into the arena.

‘When we find the Crimson Executioner, Commander Bond? What then?’

He didn’t answer. He wasn’t there.

She knew something was wrong. Bond wasn’t old enough to creep away while she wasn’t looking. She should have felt the draught of his leaving, heard the tiny sounds he couldn’t help but make.

Had it been him? Or someone wearing his face?

She couldn’t have been mistaken. The man who had brought her here was the man she’d met before. But there was something different about him. He was the sort who always seemed to be play-acting, taking a part. But the quality of his acting had changed, become broader, less convincing. He’d been expressing himself too much with his eyebrows. The Scots in his accent had faded.

She was in a broad thoroughfare, lined by pillars. The ground was rough stone. Blood led through the labyrinth. Too obvious a trail.

Her hackles rose and the fine hair on her arms prickled. She spun around and glimpsed a red shape dart behind a pillar. Her claws popped.

She was no longer stalking a quarry. She was herself being stalked.

It had to happen, she supposed.

She must have been the last elder in Rome. She’d be the Crimson Executioner’s final victim.

But not without a fight.

Kate was still reeling. Leaving Marcello, for the last time, was like pulling a thorn from her heart and throwing it away. She couldn’t yet name the things she had chosen over him, but she burned with a certainty that she had picked salvation over sham, love above self. Still, it was not easy or simple. What if she were wrong, and was dedicating herself to possibilities that had died with Charles and Dracula rather than the as-yet unborn world she might have with the warm man?

She didn’t know how she’d got from the House with the Crying Windows to Parco de Traiano. But this was where she should be, where Charles had lived, where there were answers and endings.

There was vampire blood on the street. A sports car was parked across the street from the house, rear end dotted with bullet holes. Few people were about, which was odd. She was used to Rome’s crowds. Whenever the extras faded away, bad things happened.

A woman came out of Charles’s apartment house. Geneviève? No, this woman was dark-haired. Penelope. She wore a mid-length Gherardi overcoat, with matching stockings and court shoes in mourning black. Her hair was done up under a neat black hat.

‘Katie,’ Penelope acknowledged. ‘I have news.’

‘Me too, Penny,’ Kate said.

Penelope daintily sniffed the air, and looked at the ground.

‘That’s blood,’ Penelope observed.

Kate swam through panic.

‘Penny,’ she said, ‘we were friends once. You must help me. The Crimson Executioner is after Geneviève.’

Penelope was exasperated. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘The vampire slayer.’

‘You don’t understand,’ Penny cooed, as if everything was all fine and dandy and settled and done. ‘The murderer of Dracula is under arrest. You’re free to leave the city.’

Kate had to get through to her.

‘There’s another murderer. Maybe an army of murderers. Under the orders of someone older even than an elder vampire. Someone truly monstrous, truly ghastly. Believe me, I’ve met her. You wouldn’t like her.’

Penelope looked at the blood trail. Her eyes reddened slightly.

‘Isn’t this a bit. convenient?’

Kate didn’t understand.

‘It’s as if arrows were drawn on the road. We’re being pulled by the nose, toward the Colosseum.’

‘Geneviève’s in danger.’

‘The French person?’

Kate remembered Penelope had not liked Geneviève, though she thought the enmity washed away in shared grief at Charles’s death. While Kate was off being mad with Marcello, Geneviève and Penelope had made up, hadn’t they?

Penelope made a decision. ‘Very well, Katie, I’ll come with you. But there’s something decidedly off about this. Do you see? Someone’s been shooting at this Aston Martin. Can you smell that? Not the blood, the cordite.’

Charles would have looked at the road and been able to tell from smeared footprints whether Geneviève had been alone, whether she was pursuing or being pursued, and at what speed. It was a trick he had learned from masters.

Penelope was right. The trail was too obvious. But they had no choice.

‘Come on, slowcoach,’ Penelope said, setting off.

The ancient stands of the Colosseum weren’t empty. Though Geneviève concentrated on keeping stone pillars between her and the muscleman in red, she was aware shadow-figures were filtering along the rows, settling down for the spectacle. She wondered how much the management was charging, then remembered the games were generally held at the expense of the Emperor, a pacifying gift to the people of Rome. Give them bread and circuses.

Bond was down here in the labyrinth, but she couldn’t count on him. He had gone over to the Enemy. Not Brastov’s side, but someone else old and powerful, the Mother of Tears.

She took off her shoes and walked on the points of her feet, darting swiftly between pillars as if they were trees in a forest. Her fangs and claws were out, though she feared they’d be outclassed by silver swords and hardwood spears.

It was disturbing that she had only glimpsed the Crimson Executioner twice, as flashes of red. He was a warm man. She should be able to scent him, know at all times where he was and how close he was getting. She was the huntress of the night, the elder vampire, the survivor of centuries. She should be the favourite.

Yet the Executioner had killed elders.

Anton Voytek and Anibas Vajda had been more dangerous than her, and it hadn’t helped them. Some of the elders the Crimson Executioner had slain were shape-shifters who could become monstrous bats or living white mists. Beside those abilities, her poor talons and teeth were feeble.

The stands were thinly crowded. Were they people, or merely shades? She smelled warm blood out there, but other presences too. Old things.

There was a crack. A silver bullet struck stone inches from her face. Chips flew at her eyes. She mustn’t forget Hamish Bond. He was in this game too.

A mighty switch was thrown and light burned down.

Blinking away tears of shock, Geneviève looked up. Banks of arc lights — like those she’d seen on the stages at Cinecittà — had been erected along the third tier. They came on, one bank at a time, and floodlit the stadium, turning the arena into a maze of hard black shadows and blinding white spaces.

She slipped into a shadow. A spotlight trapped her.

Blobs of dazzle floated on her eyeballs. She was used to daylight, fancied herself immune to it, but this hurt. The beams were hazy with dust and smoke. Flies spiralled in the tunnels of light.

The arena was lit up but the stands were in darkness. There were eyes out there but she saw no faces. Wheeling about, hissing, she looked to the imperial seats. Between columns of flame stood the mistress of these games, a blonde child, one eye obscured by hair. It was Kate’s apparition, the girl only she — and Bond, Geneviève remembered — claimed to have seen.

Geneviève made a fist and raised it in salute.

How had gladiators felt about their Emperor?

She stood in the light and waited for her killers. There was no sense in running.

The spotlight expanded. At its edge stood a pair of red boots. As the light grew, it revealed the red tights, trunks and belt, the broad torso naked of all but paint, the balaclava hood and domino mask, the exposed teeth and mad eyes.

The Crimson Executioner loped lazily toward her, hands opening and closing. A stench assailed her nose and she realised the red stuff on his exposed chest and face was not paint. The spoiled blood sickened her.

She danced close to him and spun around, bent over entirely at the waist, doing the splits in the air, one foot-point on the ground, the other stuck up above her head. She aimed her foot at the Executioner’s Adam’s apple. Her bunched, taloned toes were a dagger of skin and bone.

The kick should have fetched off his head.

Instead, he whipped to one side. Her toe-claws carved a runnel across his shoulder. His hands closed on her ankle and she was whipped off balance, up into the air. The Crimson Executioner swung her like a cat.

Her unbound hair brushed a stone pillar. On the next pass, her head would be battered against something that had stood for twenty centuries. It wouldn’t kill her, but it would shatter her skull into a dozen pieces. She’d live through the next hundred years with a head like a lopsided jack o’lantern. Provided she lived through the next hundred seconds.

The crowd roared and whistled.

She let her arms fly out, above her head, and extended them at an angle from her face, heels of her hands out to take the force of the blow.