The Bloody Red Baron: 1918

'Manfred falls back on the pursuits of his youth,' Goring commented.

The blood stench stung Stalhein's nostrils and eyes. Every vampire in the hall was alert. The squealing was like the scratch of claws on a blackboard. The bundle struggled with the weight of the curtain and shook free. Terrified animal eyes glittered.

Lothar stood aside for his brother. Rittmeister Freiherr Manfred von Richthofen was stripped to the waist, reddish fur wet and bristling. He was the best shape-shifter in JG1, main attraction of this Flying Freak Show. Usually reserved to the point of catatonia, Richthofen was in the grip of a passion. Killing Englishmen by night was not enough for him; he must hunt wild boar by day, as he had done as a child on his estates in Silesia.

The boar, imported God knows how and at what expense, wheeled and snarled at the hunter, froth dripping from its jaws. Richthofen stalked towards it. His feet were bare, but claw- spurs clicked on the stone. The boar, startled again, dashed off to one side.

Von Emmelman loomed enormously out of shadow. He threw himself at the boar, intending to come down hard on its back. The slippery beast wriggled as the flier smacked against the floor, mossy hands closing around the animal's greasy tail. The heap-like Emmelman, permanently caught between kobold form and his former human shape, had the hog for an instant but its tail slipped through his fist. Richthofen skidded to avoid tripping over his comrade, then leaped over the fallen flier, yelling to his prey.

Lothar dashed after Richthofen, determined to be in at the kill. Stalhein and Goring were swept along in the brothers' wake. The pig's blood was foul, but stirred Stalhein's vampire spirit. Fangs grew and sharpened in his mouth. Under his shirt, fur swarmed up his back. The darkness lightened.

The boar rammed the stand of the gramophone and pitched it over. As the horn fell, a waltz was cruelly terminated. The boar shook its tusked head and scattered parts of the broken apparatus. That was an insult not to be brooked. The hog would pay for such trespass.

Fliers emerged from the shadows, devastated by the loss of the music, excited by the stench of blood. Angry red eyes followed the boar's tail as the animal sought egress. The vampires closed on the prey. Stalhein found himself in a perfect attacking formation. Richthofen was, as in the air, the point of the arrow. Stalhein was two fliers to his right, at the spur of the barb, a mirror of little Eduard Schleich on the left. Emmelman lumbered in the rear, wading as if through thick mud.

The boar was crowded towards an open doorway. The passage beyond led to the outside. Richthofen was a sportsman. By the rules, if the quarry could push through the main door of the castle, it was free and had earned the victory.

The formation advanced step by step. The boar backed away, trotters clipping stone. Richthofen had fixed the animal's eyes. He liked his kills to know him personally, to treat him with respect. As he moved forwards, his arms extended, the vestige of membrane-folds hanging beneath them. The fingers of his right hand bunched together, nails gathered into a thin pyramidal point.

The boar turned tail and ran. The fliers closed on it, bunching perfectly through the doorway with no crowding, easing out again to put on speed in the passage.

A side door opened. Caligari scuttled out, battered hat bobbing. He turned, the boar tangled in his legs, and looked aghast through pince-nez as the hunters swooped at him. Richthofen swept the alienist aside, but it seemed the boar would have the victory. At the end of the passage, a shaft of daylight hung where the door was ajar. The light fell in a stripe on the boar's back. The animal must sniff the cold air of escape.

Manfred von Richthofen braced and launched himself. He leaped a full twenty feet, arms outstretched like wings. One hand latched on to the spiny bristles of the boar's neck and gripped firm. Richthofen fell on the pig with all his weight. Blood trickled down leathery hide. The hunter dragged his prey back into the darkness away from the door.

Stalhein was intoxicated by the blood. He fought to control base desires. There was purer hunting to be had. But a victory was a victory.

Goring clapped furiously at the Baron's feat. Fat Hermann was a born toady, a long-tongued second-in- command.

Richthofen wrestled the boar, then held it up overhead. For a moment, he was Hercules lifting Proteus. His face was that of a red lion, nose flaring, mane a-tangle from the chase, fanged jaws agape. He slammed the hog to the floor, stunning it. A flagstone cracked with a report like a gunshot. The beast squirmed, fight knocked out of it. Richthofen took his killing position like a practised matador, flexing his long right arm like a sabre, drawing back his barb-tipped hand. With a roar of triumph, he punched under the hog's tail, sticking the pig perfectly. He thrust his arm deep into his prey's insides. The boar's head, eyes empty of life, jerked upwards as a bloody fist exploded through the throat. The kill was spitted on Richthofen's extended arm.

He pulled himself free and admired the gleaming red sleeve coating his arm. Then he knelt by the fallen animal and, as was his right, lapped delicately at the gouting wound in its neck. He took little; this hunt was for sport, not lifeblood. When finished, the Baron stood and let his fellows fall upon the boar, tearing it to pieces. He stood over them, a master watching his dogs take their reward. Caligari, recovered from shock but still trembling, glanced at the feeding frenzy and waddled away, tutting to himself that the hunters were out of control.

In the melee, Stalhein fought for and won a ragged pig's ear. To gain such a mighty prize, he had to tear his arm open slamming against Udet's antlers and wrench his shoulder shoving Emmelman out of the way. He turned his back to the other vampires, protecting his morsel, and sucked the torn edge. Around him, fliers chewed and swallowed and retched and supped. The taste was vile but sparkling joys burst in his brain.

9

La Morte Parisienne

As the sun went down, he idled at a Montmartre pavement cafe. Even in the pit of this dreadful winter, habitues, not all undead, sat at street tables. They gossiped and flirted, read and drank. Doomed snowflakes melted on faces, hands and hats. Winthrop took a table inside, near the stove, and asked the patron for a pot of English tea. Experienced enough with British officers to know what was required, the Frenchman sadly turned from spices and coffees and liqueurs to fetch a shameful package of plain old Lipton's from a secret shelf.

In the minutes it took for the tea to cool to drinkability, he was propositioned by two filles de joie and a curly-haired youth; a fanged dwarf offered to sketch his portrait for the price of a loaf of bread; news swept through that the daring thief Fantomas had relieved a dowager of an emerald necklace in a nearby street; another struggling artist tried to sell caricatures of the Kaiser and Graf von Dracula; a naive Australian was asked to pay for a ten- centime anis with ten francs; and a knife-fight erupted between an apache vampire and a one-armed warm veteran who unexpectedly trounced the whole man. He supposed this was the famed vie parisienne, it struck him as mostly rather silly. Children pretending to be wicked.

When it was fully dark, he settled his bill and worked his way out of the estaminet, weaving between heavily populated tables. Americans, new to the war and Europe, were especially well- represented. Gawping and gazing at everything, they were most beloved by Parisian pickpockets. James Gatz, a 'lootenant' Winthrop knew slightly, hailed him with a reedy 'old sport'. Winthrop hurried off before he could be caught; now it was night, he was on duty. He wished Gatz well with a wave and hoped the young man would survive the evening with neck, wallet and heart whole.

In the Place Pigalle, children surrounded him, imploring cadeaux. On close examination, most of the creatures were vampires, probably his seniors. A golden boy made hooks of fingers and hung on to Winthrop's coat. The old-souled child cooed and hissed, attempting mesmerism.

Sergeant Dravot, Winthrop's inevitable shadow, appeared from a spot beyond the corner of his eye and detached the persistent parasite, tossing him back to his comrades. The savage children ran off, streaming about the legs of startled soldiers and their ladies of the moment.

Nodding thanks to Dravot, he checked that his buttons were all accounted for. He still felt the finger-points of the wild child on his chest. The sergeant slipped back into the crowd, prepared to see off Fantomas himself if the need arose. Though it was comforting to have a guardian angel, Winthrop was a little nettled that he was not entirely trusted out on his own. At times, Dravot was a nannyish presence.

He strolled with theatre crowds, studied in his air of aimlessness. The Grand Guignol offered Andre de Lorde's