'Enough,' she said. 'Just tell me what you heard.'
Lantier shrugged and began ...
It was nearly midday when Corporal Lantier finished. Kate had filled a notebook but was not sure what to make of it. There were gaps. Some she could fill in with her own intelligence but most were true blanks.
She had expected new light on the perfidy of General Mireau but this was entirely fresh. She would have to read up on the Richthofen Freak Show. If Charles was interested enough to hear Mata Hari out, there was certainly a story in it.
Lantier escorted her outside. Without its sole prisoner, the barracks was dead. The firing squad were on leave in Paris and would be back in the trenches by tomorrow's dawn.
They walked across the parade ground. She paused to examine the pole where Mata Hari had died.
'After the beheading,' Lantier said, 'young men pressed around and dipped handkerchiefs in the blood. For souvenirs.'
'Or to taste. It must be heady stuff. The blood of Mata Hari.'
Lantier spat and missed the pole.
'Vampire blood could help ...' she began, indicating Lantier's face.
He shook his head and spat again. 'Curse you all, you bloodsuckers. What good have you ever done?'
She had no answer. Many Frenchmen, especially outside Paris, felt as he did. Vampirism had not taken hold quite as it had in Britain, Germany and Austria-Hungary. France had its elders - Genevieve, for one - and a growing swell of newborns, often self-styled 'modems' and 'decadents', but vampires were still not entirely welcome in the best circles. Alfred Dreyfus had been a scapegoat because he was at once a Jew and a vampire.
She bade Lantier goodbye and left the parade ground. Her trusty Hoopdriver bicycle was against an old cavalry hitching post by the main entrance. The staff car was still in the road outside.
Kate knew there was danger. During the Terror, she had developed the sense. Her nails slid out like cat's claws.
She stepped past the hedge into the road and looked at the car. There was a chauffeur in the front seat and the rear door was slightly open. Someone looked out at her with piggy eyes.
A black-robed man vaulted a low fence and rushed at her. A wild-eyed, white-haired priest had been crouching out of sight. She recognised him but had no time to summon a name from memory. Berating her in bad Latin and gutter French, the priest sloshed liquid in her face. Her glasses spattered with blurry blobs.
Her thought was that the lunatic had thrown oil of vitriol. Acid ate vampire flesh to the bone. She would recover, but look like Lantier for the next fifty years. There was no burning, no hissing.
The priest waved with his flask. Another splash struck her forehead and dribbled down. She tasted plain water. No, not plain water, she realised. Holy water.
She laughed in surprise. Some Catholic vampires were sensitive to such things, but she was an Anglican of long standing. Her family were Prod to the marrow; when told Kate had turned, her father commented, 'At least the fool girl hasn't embraced the foul Antichrist of Rome.'
The priest stood back smugly, prepared to enjoy the dissolution of a corrupt creature of hell. He pressed a large, crudely detailed crucifix to his breast and held up a fistful of Communion wafers.
Her cap had come off and her hair flew loose. She picked her headgear up and patted her face with it.
'I'm all wet, you idjit,' she said.
The priest tossed the Communion wafer at her. He seemed to expect it to bite into her skull like a Japanese
Annoyed, she crunched the wafer in her mouth and spat out the fragments.
'Where's the wine? I've the red thirst on me, now. Transubstantiate a bottle and I'll have blood to drink.'
This attack had spurred her bloodlust. She must feed soon.
The priest shook his cross and poured the curses of heaven on her. She saw a face dart back into the interior of the car. It had worn a French officer's kepi with a great deal of scrambled egg.
'You are Father Pitaval. You were at the trial of Mata Hari.'
Pitaval, some kind of renegade Jesuit, was Mireau's confessor. Also, it seemed, his tame vampire-killer.
'You'll have to do better than this poor showing, Father.'
He shoved his crucifix at her face and she pushed it away.
'Look to your own conscience,' she shouted, at Mireau as much as the priest.
He raised his crucifix like a dagger and stabbed at her chest. The end was jagged enough to serve as the proverbial stake, but she deflected the blow. Her tinted glasses fell off and she was in a world of blur. She saw a black shape coming for her and stepped aside. She pushed hard, catching the priest and tossing him towards the car.
Scrambling in the grit, she found her glasses and replaced them. Pitaval crawled for the car. The door slammed shut before he could get there. The dark window rolled up, fast. Moving with vampire swiftness, she overleaped the priest and exerted an iron grip on the car door-handle. She wrenched the lock open, enjoying the popping of the mechanism.
In the dark inside. General Mireau sat stiffly, staring hatred. He had a companion, a little new-born in a froth of white shroud. The minx had rouged her wrists where Mireau bound her with a rosary, misleading him about the effect of religious artefacts on vampire flesh. The general's taste for undead girls was predictable. Kate hoped this one was cunning enough to rob him blind and drain him dry.
She shook her head. Mireau shoved behind his companion.
'Sister,' Kate said, 'you have very poor taste in blood.'
The new-born wriggled. She was probably a dancer or an actress. Even more probably another spy.
Kate bent to get her head into the car. Mireau's cold eyes held flames of fear. He pushed the new-born forward, encouraging a reluctant dog to fight. The vampire poodle opened her mouth to show tentative fangs. She attempted a hiss.
Kate considered hauling the foolish girl out and giving her posterior a sound spanking. It would be cruel: she might rot to nothing in the sun.
Father Pitaval was on his feet again, somewhat sheepish. The general was not getting value for his patronage.
'Mireau, have you no shame?' she asked.
Turning, she walked away from the lot of them. She heard shouting as the general abused his subordinates. A little spark of satisfaction warmed her heart. She had accomplished little, but at least Mireau was hurt enough to want to strike back. If she kept at it, she could have him.
Perhaps there were more worthwhile bones to worry. Especially the bone marked Chateau du Malinbois.
She got on her bicycle, and pushed off. On the road to the railway station, she whistled the 'Barcarolle' from
8
Castle Keep
Inside the Chateau du Malinbois, night was eternal. By day, the mediaeval slit windows were shuttered, the stone hallways lit only by infrequent candles. Deep in the damp guts of the castle, even a vampire felt the cold. Tiny drips of water were as constant as the granite-muffled pounding of the guns. Only the scientists' work quarters made use of electricity. In the examination room, dark corners were banished. Light shone without mercy. Merely to lie on the table was to expose one's interior workings.
Leutnant Erich von Stalhein wondered if General Karnstein had chosen Malinbois to give the fliers a feeling of being buried alive, to increase their desire to get into the air. Aloft, with the freedom of the currents and the strength of the moon, they were loosed from the shackles of earth.
Stalhein lay prone as Professor Ten Brincken checked another series of measurements. A brooding bear with shocks of grey hair on his beetle brows, the director was more dockyard bruiser than scientist. Perhaps his craze for the physical improvement of mankind sprang from awareness of his own ursine appearance.
