The Bloody Red Baron

Dark-Adapted

'It is as if I were about to be dressed down by my parents. You both look so earnest, so cross.'

'I am your mother in a way you don't yet understand,' Kate told Edwin, 'and Charles is your father. He brought you into this secret world. It is your duty to honour that.'

Edwin grinned, not understanding. His smile was easy but his eyes were hard. He was a wall to her mind; given their communion, he must work hard to be so impenetrable.

'Perhaps I shouldn't have peppered Rutledge's backside but I've likely saved his life. He was lax up there, careless. He'll be less so in future. The next fighter on his tail won't be a Camel. Lockwood got the point.'

They stood in the shed, between lines of aircraft. Charles leaned heavily on his stick. Jiggs worked nearby, patching the tail of the Camel Edwin had 'tagged'. The oily machine smell was strong.

Penned close between the aeroplanes, Kate saw the beginnings of the turn in Edwin. His movements were quicker. His face was colder. His sibilants hissed slightly, over sharpening teeth.

'You've taken from Kate,' Charles said.

Edwin, shame pricking minutely, looked down at the beaten earth of the shed. Then, flaring, he looked up and met their eyes.

'And I've taken from you, Beauregard. And Albert Ball. And others. We all take. That is how we grow, adapt.'

He would be eating steak nearly raw, swimming in red juice. And he would have an appetite, burning fuel like a rotary engine. He would be always hungry.

'Don't you feel the danger, Edwin?' 'Miss Reed, without wishing to be offensive, you're a vampire. That hardly puts you in a position to lecture me about taking blood, taking anything, from another.'

The cut in her throat, made with her own claw, stung. Healed over entirely, the phantom wound throbbed, pregnant with blood.

'Edwin, you misunderstand the condition. You aren't a vampire.'

'I don't wish to turn, Kate. I don't wish to die. I have a duty and I can best do my bit with your blood in me. I apologise if I hurt or upset you, but there is a greater cause than us both.'

He looked up through the open shed doors to the sky.

'Up there lives a monster. I am pledged to destroy it. I owe it to Ball.'

'Either purge yourself or turn altogether. I've seen what happens to people caught half-way between warmth and undeath. You don't appreciate the risks to your mind and body.'

Edwin appealed to Charles. 'Beauregard, you understand the risks are secondary. We don't matter. Duty does.'

Kate squirmed inside. Her blood-links with Edwin and Charles were stirring. She sensed what was going on beneath their conversation.

'It's not duty, Edwin. It's revenge.'

Edwin's face closed shut.

'My blood in you. It's fogged your mind, twisted your intentions.'

'Richthofen must fall.'

'Richthofen will fall. Eventually. Dracula will fall. But it can't be just you. It has to be all of us. A consensus. You're becoming like the worst of them. This isn't a game for a few mighty knights and a million expendable pawns. This is about huge numbers of people, vampire and warm.'

'You're editorialising, Miss Mouse.'

She was angry. 'I'm trying to save you from a great misapprehension. Probably from madness and true death. You've been through something very like hell and have focused the blame on one young Hun, when you should blame the old men on both sides who have slaughtered millions because it was easier than living. The getting and keeping of power for a tiny minority in all countries has killed us all, is killing us all.'

'You sound like a Bolshevik.'

'If that's what it takes. I've been a Revolutionist, as has Charles.'

'I don't see what this has to do with me.'

'That's just it. It has to do with everyone. You see yourself apart from us all.'

There was a quiet, angry pause. Kate was flushed. Edwin, whom she had almost reached, retreated into the armour growing around his skull.

'Is this leading anywhere important, Beauregard? I have an offensive patrol to fly.'

After deliberation, Charles - older now than his years, slower and sadder - said, 'I believe you have returned to active duty too soon after your injuries.'

'I'm fit. I'm better than fit.'

Edwin did a deep knee-bend and sprang. He leaped twenty feet, grasping a cross-beam. His boots dangled above their heads. This was the sort of showing-off Kate expected from callous new-borns. The ones who wanted to distance themselves from the warm. The ones who wanted the living penned as cattle, who felt vampirism made them Darwinian aristocrats, princes of the earth. The monsters. Edwin dropped like a cat and stood straight and cool, boyishly proud of his feat.

'In the first stages, it's like a drug,' Kate explained to Charles. 'There's a euphoria. Over-confidence.'

'She's wrong, Beauregard. I have been careful. I have made of myself a weapon.'

Charles was tempted to believe him, Kate knew. It would suit the purposes of the Diogenes Club to have this ruthless, agile creature on the books. But Charles was too good a man not to understand.

I can't risk you, my boy. Kate has lived with her condition for thirty years. I have to listen to her.'

'But it's so silly,' Edwin said, turning away. His wide smile was almost hysterical. 'I can do so much. We have to destroy JG1. We have to persuade the Boche to stop making those creatures.'

Kate's ears pricked up. Making those creatures?

'You see my point. You are losing caution. You just told me something you shouldn't have.'

Edwin's eyes rolled, in irritation.

'Why are we having this argument? We want the same things, don't we?'

Charles was thinking. 'Kate, I want your word that you won't write anything about JG1 without clearing it with me first. Under DORA, you could be imperilled.'

She was on a hook now. 'Very well, but what is the story?'

'They're shape-shifters,' he said. 'Richthofen and his battle comrades. They don't fly aircraft. They grow wings.'

'Good lord!'

'They're Dracula's get. By proxy. His blood has made monsters of them.'

It was Kate's turn to keep secrets. She understood the import of Mata Hari's confession.

Edwin did not apologise for letting the wildcat out of the bag.

'I shall recommend you be relieved of your duties, Edwin. You need more doctoring,' Charles said.

Edwin did not protest.

'He is thinking of your interests, Edwin.'

He looked at her and kept his thoughts to himself.

'Very impressive,' she said. 'It took me years to master that trick.'

'Your face still gives you away. You blush like litmus paper.'

That was almost the old Edwin.

'I still have confidence in you,' Charles said. 'You'll be one of our best. When you've recovered from this taint.'

They left him in the shed. As Kate helped Charles out into the open, Edwin went to confer with Jiggs, casually poking about in a Camel's engine, debating mechanical arcana.

She worried that Edwin had not argued his corner as fiercely as she would expect. Vampire blood was stubborn stuff.

Especially hers. Perhaps the strain was growing weak?

In the sun, Charles cringed like a vampire. She hoped she had not made an invalid of him.

'Let me turn you, Charles. It's the least I can do.'

He shook his head. 'Not now, Kate.'

'You're not like Edwin. You have the character, the backbone. You could be one of us and not go mad. Unless people like us are vampires, the monsters will win.'

'This is dizzying, Kate. You argue your blood is poison, then you try to get me to drink.'

'You are like Edwin. Your mind is made up beyond reason and you'll stick by it until death.'

'Pot, kettle, black.'

Each word was an effort.

'Idjits, the lot of you.'

'The warm?'

'Men.'

Charles laughed.

They were outside the farmhouse. Charles pushed the door open with his stick and allowed Kate to step in. He followed.

Captain Allard, wearing a face-shading hat, sat at a desk, looking over papers. In an armchair nearby was a fish-eyed grey-suited civilian. With a razor chill, Kate recognised Mr Caleb Croft.

'You'll have to take Winthrop off the roster, Captain Allard,' Charles said. 'He's not right yet.'

Allard looked sideways, to Croft.

'Diogenes will find you another bright boy.'

Croft swivelled his eyes from side to side, an implicit headshake.

'We can't spare Winthrop, Mr Beauregard.'

Charles was startled by the refusal. He was on the point of blustering.

'It's too dangerous, Croft. The lad's a peril to himself and those who serve with him.'

Croft said nothing. His skin was lizardy. Brutality boiled off him like steam.

'This is too important to take the risk.'

A contest of wills took place. Croft exuded a damp, invisible cloud. He could sap the lives of others by breathing in. He was late eighteenth century. It was whispered he was once hanged. He wore high collars to hide the rope-burn. Now he was the iron instrument of Lord Ruthven's law.

'I fear I have sad news, Mr Beauregard,' said Croft, each syllable a hollow croak. 'Mycroft Holmes is dead. Your Ruling Cabal is inquorate.'

Charles was stricken. Mycroft had been his sponsor in the Diogenes Club.

'As a consequence, your operations here are suspended.'

Croft produced a document from his inside breast pocket.

'I have the Prime Minister's authority to take over. You have earned leave.'

Charles's face was as grey as Croft's coat. His heartbeat faltered. Kate had a stab of concern for his health.

'At least listen to me about Winthrop,' he pleaded.

'He is a valuable man. Captain Allard would find it difficult to run this show without him. Your concern is noted but the Lieutenant will remain on active service.'

'His promotion is coming through,' Allard said.

'On your recommendation, I understand,' Croft said.

Charles was shattered. Kate did not know whether to step in and hold him up lest he fall. No. He would not thank her.

'One further matter, Beauregard,' Croft said. 'It would reflect well on your unparalleled record if the last order you gave before you were relieved was to place Maranique airfield off-limits to journalists.'

Croft turned deep, dead eyes to her, and cracked open his lips in a scary smile, showing green-furred fangs. During the Terror, when the Prime Minister wavered between the Revolutionists and the standard of Dracula, Croft had issued orders that she be summarily executed on apprehension. Another woman, mistaken for her by the Carpathian Guard, was impaled in Great Portland Street.

'Why don't you personally escort - Miss Reed, isn't it? - to Amiens, Beauregard?'

Charles turned, hands useless fists about his stick. Kate picked up a strong impression: Charles saw himself drawing the silver-coated blade and sinking it into Caleb Croft's heart.

'Good day, Miss Reed,' Croft croaked. 'And good bye, Mr Beauregard.'

Together, they left. Outside the farmhouse, the morning air was chill. The clouds threatened. A flight of Camels rushed noisily past, rising into dangerous skies.