The Bloody Red Baron: 1918

guns discharged. The wing was gone and he let up the pressure on the buttons.

The burst, only a few seconds' worth, jarred his ears. On instinct, he fired again, moments before another wing passed in front of his prop. This time, the shape-shifter flapped into his burst, and was twisted, screeching, in the air. A row of holes appeared in a curtain of wings. He was sure he had sunk a few into the furry barrel of the flier's body.

He tasted blood in his mouth. His own, mingled with Ball's and Kate's. His teeth were coral razors. This was as near to the vampire condition as he wished to come.

Another burst. Another miss. The bat-creature executed a perfect Immelmann and swooped towards the slice of moon. Dandridge was on his tail, firing scientific bursts. The Boche came out of his turn and spread wings wide. Dandridge had hit him. Red gobbets dripped in black fur.

With a sinking motion, the shape-shifter got beneath Dandridge's climb and latched like a lamprey on to the underside of the Camel, wings wrapping upwards, tail lashing. The Camel's frame buckled and its engine stalled. The prop sliced into the Boche's face but jammed.

Winthrop was appalled.

The Camel came apart. Dandridge's upper plane ripped off and disappeared like a kite in a storm. The shape-shifter detached from the aircraft. Dandridge's crushed wreck plunged, wind shrieking in the wires. As he went down, Dandridge emptied his guns.

The creature that had killed Dandridge struggled to stay aloft. He had taken many hits and the propeller slice was severe. His wings were ragged and torn. Ribbons of dark blood flew from wounds.

Was this the Red Baron?

Winthrop had the mutilated monster in his sights. He fired, pouring out silver and lead. He swooped down and over the creature, briefly worried that he might latch on to his Camel, repeating the manoeuvre that had defeated Dandridge.

His blood thrilled. There would be a reckoning. Turning for another pass, he saw Allard diving on the same prey. The monster struggled upwards to meet Allard. With what seemed a single shot, Allard put a lump of silver into the monster's skull. Instantly dead, the flier dwindled to human size, weighted by heavy guns, and fell towards black ground.

The creatures could be beaten.

His victory stolen, Winthrop wheeled, searching. He was at the heart of the dog-fight. Shape-shifters and Camels whirled around, firing guns, tearing wings. There was an explosion as a Camel (Rutledge's, Winthrop thought) burst into a fireball. An expanding ball of hot air hit his wings and forced him back.

Down below was the castle. And above was an immense dark shape that laid a shadow on the land.

Rutledge had not been killed by one of JG1. There was Archie all around. The Schloss Adler was defended by gun emplacements. Archie exploded below Winthrop, a carpet of fire in the night. Smoke smeared the lenses of his goggles and stung his eyes.

A bat came at him, and he turned the Camel's nose away. Detaching one hand from the stick, he wrenched off his blinded goggles, unmasking his face to the icy dash of open air.

Looking up, he realised a Zeppelin hung over the castle like a mammoth balloon, floating in thin atmosphere above the operational ceiling of any heavier-than-air machine. Only real monsters lived in those altitudes, where the cold froze blood in veins and made woolly flight suits into crackling ice chain-mail.

Allard signalled withdrawal. The shape-shifters were landing on their tower, retreating within stone walls.

Winthrop had been cheated of his kill. Perhaps the Red Baron was truly dead. Allard's kill. Angered beyond thought, Winthrop approached the Schloss Adler. A shape-shifter on the landing platform was shrugging his flying shape, bending to wriggle into the castle.

Winthrop fired a burst to get range. He heard his shots whine off stone. Half-way between human shape and bat form, the flier turned, attention caught by the fire, pointed ears swivelling. Winthrop's next burst caught him in the chest, bearing him backwards against the castle wall. Scarlet gouts blurted through thinning fur. A perfect heart-shot.

A seventh score. One that counted. One of the monsters.

No, it would not count officially. Winthrop, the killing urge briefly satisfied, realised he had gone against Allard's orders to withdraw. His victory would never be confirmed. Besides, what he had done was strafe a foe on the ground, not meet him in the air. The pitch was not level.

Still, the kill counted in his system. One of the monsters was gone.

It had been only seconds. He slid easily back into formation, behind and above Allard.

There were others. Brandberg, Lockwood, Knight, Lacey.

They sped away. There was still archie but it was ineffectually distant. The shape-shifters were out of the air. The airship was too high to bring guns to bear.

Fourteen had approached the castle. Five were returning.

Winthrop had seen Dandridge and Rutledge killed and known Severin would lose his match. Now, he realised he had for a half- instant glimpsed one of the shape-shifters with a human rag in his mouth, shaking his head as blood-trails whipped. That had been another of the pilots.

The rest had been killed without his even noticing. Nine men exchanged for two monsters. The dog-fight couldn't have lasted more than two or three minutes.

The five Camels flew away from the rising sun. Spreading dawn fell heavily on Winthrop, like a blanket, sapping his energy, cooling his blood. They crossed the lines.

39

Up at the Front

'Your bus is wheezing a bit, miss,' said Colonel Wynne-Candy, 'I'll have my driver look it over.'

Kate, not attuned to the eccentricities of internal combustion, thanked the officer, whose staff car was mired at the side of the road. He had pulled over to let her ambulance past and suffered the consequences of gallantry.

There had been near-continuous bombardment all day. The enemy had brought up big guns and were hammering the Allied trenches. It would be heads down in the lines.

She looked up at a slate sky empty of all but cloud. To the east, the gloom was reddened by fire.

'A boy in the air?'

The round-faced colonel, cheerfully retained from the Boer war, was not the jolly fool he seemed. Kate shivered as she tried to shrug. She could usually put ideas into words, but was too involved in the business with Edwin to explain it easily.

The lad'll be a lot safer with Richthofen down.'

The Red Baron?'

'Word over the blower this morning. Not official yet. Boche won't admit a thing but our ears in Hunland have picked up a whisper. It seems Allied mastery of the air has been reasserted.'

Kate wondered if Edwin was disappointed. He had shaped himself into a weapon so he could go after the creature who had nearly killed him. Or maybe he had succeeded? No, he had not bested the Red Baron. In her blood, she would have known.

'Almost a pity, ain't it?' Wynne-Candy mused. 'The war will seem a spot less colourful. Richthofen gave our fellows something to shoot for.'

Something to shout at, she thought.

A projectile whizzed into the mud a couple of hundred yards away and burst. Kate and Wynne-Candy cringed in a light patter of wet dirt.

'That's an overshot', the Colonel said. 'No harm to anyone.'

A smoking crater marked the site of the shell-burst. There were more of them dotted about behind the lines than usual.

'Enough misses like that and our supply lines will be jiggered.'

'You have a point, miss.'

Wynne-Candy's driver, a muddy Cockney, reported on the ambulance, grumbling in the colonel's ear.