The Bloody Red Baron: 1918

smoothed rather than crinkled his face.

The elder Genevieve Dieudonne had been Charles's lover during the Terror. Some of her blood must have got into him. He had resisted the Dark Kiss, but it was impossible to be with a vampire for any time without tasting her blood, even if just a smidgen. Some warm men paid for tiny transfusions to keep their hair or tighten their tummies. It was a sounder rejuvenation treatment than monkey glands. Patent medicines hinted vampire blood was a secret ingredient.

The firing squad were dismissed. Reporters tried to interview them. Sydney Horler, a tub-thumper for the Mail, was in the melee.

'They love the war,' she said. 'Gives them something tastier to write up than provincial murderers and municipal adulterers.'

'You have a low opinion of your profession.'

'I like to think I'm not in the same line as the scratching vultures.'

'How does it feel?' shouted Horler, 'shooting a woman?'

If any of the squad understood the question, none was inclined to answer.

'A pretty, wanton woman?' the Englishman emphasised. 'Would you say she was a fiend in human shape who deserved no more mercy than a deadly cobra?'

The sergeant shrugged. A singularly French gesture.

'You would say she was a fiend in human shape who deserved no more mercy than a deadly cobra, then?'

The soldiers started to walk away.

'I'll write that down then. Fiend in human shape. No more mercy. Deadly cobra.'

The excitable Horler began scribbling.

'I believe we have witnessed the birth of an evening edition headline,' she said.

Charles was too weary to respond. He consulted his pocket- watch and touched his hat, preparing to leave.

'Strange. A warm man who hustles to his bed at cock-crow. Are you sure you haven't turned?'

Charles summoned a smile. 'Kate, I've kept vampire hours for most of my life.'

His was a night-time profession, even in this topsy-turvy century where wars were fought and peace pursued after dark.

'With Mata Hari gone, you can rest now, surely. Your war is won.'

'Very amusing, Kate.'

She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. His face was very cold. She held back in her hugging, so as not to crack his ribs.

'Goodbye, Charles.'

'Good day, Kate.'

He walked to a car and was driven away. She licked her lips and could taste him. His blood was strong. A mere brush of his skin was enough to give her an impression of his mood. She was excited, because she knew Charles was excited. Something had passed between him and Mata Hari that was important. She could read nothing more, nothing concrete. A shame. If she were an elder like Genevieve, she could suck his mind like an orange and know everything there was to be known.

If the trick were within her capabilities, the temptation would be too great to resist. As vampires lived through centuries, they gained strength and power. Many elders became monsters. They could do as they wished without fear of the consequences. The taste of Charles evaporated and her heart throbbed with red thirst.

In the early years of her afterlife, she had constantly tested her limits. Now she took them, along with her undead needs, as simply a part of night-to-night existence. Strangely, she still needed spectacles to correct the fearful myopia that had been the plague of her warm days. Most vampires overcame their infirmities upon turning, but she was a freak.

Her vision blurred as she tried to conquer her thirst. This was her own fault. If she had not tasted Charles, she would not now be suffering these pangs.

She did not care to consider herself dead but knew that was self-deception. Some, like Genevieve, turned without suffering true death. But Kate had certainly died. Mr Frank Harris, her father-in-darkness, liked to suck his get dry before dripping life-giving blood into them. She recalled the stopping of her heart, the queer silence inside her head. That had been death.

Her heart eased and she could see again. The day was overcast, so there was little direct sunlight to trouble her. She was not the species of vampire which shrivels and frizzles at dawn. She was of the bloodline of Marya Zaleska, an aristocratic parasite who claimed to be a by-blow of Count Dracula. In Kate, the fading Zaleska line was spiced by the powerful spirit of Frank Harris. In 1888, the famous editor had told her physical love was the gateway to womanhood and, on a divan in a private room at Kettner's restaurant, enthusiastically escorted her through the gateway. Having made a woman of her, he was obliged to make a vampire of her too.

Many young women succumbed to Harris's persuasion, but she was his only surviving get. Others had proved too fragile for such a strong line. Harris was gone too, murdered by Carpathians during the Terror. She was sorry; though a profligate who took little responsibility for his children-in- darkness, Harris was a good newspaperman. She was not ashamed to have him as her sponsor in the world of night.

Charles's car drove away, nestling secrets in a well- upholstered interior. The firing squad evaporated and the other journalists drifted off, filling in blanks in already-written stories. Jed Leland of the New York Inquirer, a rare competent American, touched a pencil to the brim of his straw hat. She returned the wave, worried he would delay her in unwanted conversation. Leland ambled along with the rest of the crowd, in search of an estaminet where they could scrawl out copy between ants and cat-blood.

Shortly after turning, her pierced ears had healed and, rather shockingly, she found herself a virgin again. The condition was swiftly, permanently, remedied. At the time, being 'ruined' was a bigger scandal than turning vampire.

She was still adapting, learning. It was hard to tell what she would become. She vowed not to be a monster.

Alone on the parade ground, she walked around to the guardhouse, keen senses alert. She did not want to share her lead. And she did not want to be involved with anyone above the rank of corporal. Her condemnation of General Mireau had won her many friends in the French army, but few in the officer class. Her articles about the Dreyfus case had predisposed them against her, and her recent writings had hardly regained their affections.

There was a French staff car parked in the road outside, just visible through a failing hedge. Its windows were dark. Had one of Mata Hari's conquests come to pay a secret farewell? Or to be sure she was truly dead?

Corporal Jacques Lantier was waiting for her in his pokey office. His face was an angry tangle of scar. After two days in which the enemy inflicted an 80 per cent casualty rate on exposed Frenchmen, the remnant of General Mireau's command had defied his 'to the last man' order and retreated across the hundred yards of dirt they had taken but been unable to hold. Lantier, alive and maimed, was one of the fortunate. In one piece, he might have been among the dozen men Mireau had had shot for cowardice. He was eligible for a place in the unofficial veterans' club of the disfigured, the Union des Gueules Cassees, the Brotherhood of Broken Mugs.

Lantier opened a hole in his lower face with the end of his little finger and stuck a cigarette into it. Kate accepted his offer of a cigarette and they both lit up off a single match-flame.

The corporal coughed and smoke clouded around him. He was, of course, grateful to one of the few journalists to condemn General Mireau but there were other considerations. Before the war, twenty francs might have purchased a horse. Now it might stretch to a slice of horse meat.

'They spoke softly, mademoiselle,' Lantier said, excusing himself, 'and my hearing is not so good ...'

One of his ears was sheared off entirely, the other an inflamed lump.

'But you heard something.'

She added more notes to the sheaf in his fist.

'Scraps here and there ... a few names ... Chateau du Malinbois, Professor Ten Brincken, Baron von Richthofen, General Karnstein ...'

Each name unloosed another ten francs.