L'ECLISSE

NOTICE OF DEATH FROM THE TIMES OF LONDON. AUGUST 1ST, 1959

Charles Pennington Beauregard, 105, died peacefully yesterday in Rome, writes Miss Katharine Reed. A distinguished diplomat whose services to his country were rarely recognised in his lifetime, Beauregard was, in a lengthy career, variously attached to the Indian Civil Service, the Foreign Office, the Royal Air Force, and Lord Ruthven's wartime Government of National Unity 'think tank'. He was a lifelong member and sometime official of the Diogenes Club of Pall Mall, a private institution that remains club of choice for many public servants.

Born in India in 1853, son of Major Marcus Aurelius Beauregard of the Fourth Bombay Native Infantry and the former Miss Sophie Pennington of Loxley Barrett, Charles Beauregard was educated at Dulwich College and Merton College, Oxford. Briefly married (1882 - 3) to the former Miss Pamela Churchward, of Chelsea, he had no issue. He twice refused a knighthood. His few publications include two books of verse, The Matter of Britain and The Britain of Matter. He will be buried privately in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, final resting place of Keats and Shelley.

16

KATE IN LOVE

Since the funeral, Kate had been on a blood bender, drunk with red thirst. She'd been back to her pensione at least twice in the past week, but had not slept. Even after feeding and lovemaking, she couldn't drop off, tormented by restless thoughts and persistent memories. Marcello, however, went out the second he was spent, sunk into a torpor deeper than any vampire lassitude. When they were in bed together, he took off his dark glasses but left on his socks. Very romantic, she supposed. Perhaps that was how Italian men won their reputation as great lovers.

They were in his apartment, a modern box in a suburb that was a mess of concrete and glass bunkers set down in featureless grasslands. At its edges, Rome was as distinct from the countryside as a cliff is from the sea.

The flat was fashionably under-decorated, with little furniture and none of the reference books or piles of periodicals Kate expected. Her own rooms were in danger of filling up entirely with paper. Marcello didn't even own a typewriter. He dictated all his articles, mostly delivering notes rewrite people worked up into actual prose. One room contained nothing but a white dial telephone  -  the famous telefono bianco, once a touchstone of luxury in Italy  -  on the floor, long golden cord snaking across bare boards.

Though Kate knew Marcello body and soul, inside-out on the deepest level, she was still ignorant of a great many details about his life. She'd found out his surname at some point, but presently it escaped her. Where was he from? Were his parents still alive? None of that mattered. He was a for-the-moment person, a present-tense man, just right for that atomic-age sense of impermanence. He knew as little about her, but had opened himself entirely.

She lay naked next to him as he snored slightly, feeling the swell of fresh blood in her face. It was as if she were wearing a fleshy, pulsating mask. Bloated with his blood, she feared she was growing careless, taking far too much from this one lover.

The light fixture above the bed swung like a gibbet. Was it moving or was her head swimming? It didn't matter. She wasn't such a fool as to believe nothing mattered. It was just that nothing mattered for now. Not a fig. Charles was dead and buried. She had to stay behind.

The fact of his death, a sunburst in her mind, had blotted everything else out. She'd planned to help Genevieve with the funeral arrangements and any legal complications, but had instead fled, sought out Marcello, frankly overpowered him, and made him distract her.

By the time of the funeral, she was in a fog of blood.

Had Edwin Winthrop come over from England? She thought so, but hadn't been able to connect the kindly old man with the clipped white moustache with the cold young maniac she remembered from the First World War.

There were few other mourners. Marcello had propped her up, and she made love to him near Shelley's ashes. All of the poet but his heart was buried in Rome. That was how she felt, too.

At first, Marcello was shocked, perhaps even unwilling, but she set out to enslave him and, rather surprisingly, pulled off the trick. Without Charles's civilising influence, she might grow into a proper vampire, a monster of the old school.

Marcello was relieved that she was leaving the Crimson Executioner alone. There had been no more jaunts to I Cessati Spiriti, no more questions asked of suspect persons in threatening locales. The more she became wrapped up in him, the less the big mysteries meant. There had been no new murders, no new clues. The paparazzi had taken dozens of photographs of Sylvia Koscina as Medea, and the material on Malenka was filed away to be forgotten. Other sensations would come along.

She shivered with fullness. Her heart coursed. Colours and shapes floated on her eyes. Her skin felt stretched tight, on the point of bursting. She had drunk so much to glut her red thirst that it came alive again and wheedled inside her, spurring her to action. Her fangs prickled in her mouth, razor-edges cutting her gums as they slid out of their sheaths. There was a little dental sensation, on the edge of tingling, jabbing over the line into pain. Delicious pain.

She wanted to feed again.

With a snort, Marcello turned onto his back and settled between pillows. Crescent grazes on his neck and chest, and other places under the sheets, trickled a little. Her bite marks were all over him. He was growing pale under his tan.

It might even be love. They had shared so much.

And Charles was gone  -  she was free to love.

She thought she was in synchronisation with Marcello's beating heart, his gently dreaming mind, his worn-out-by-love body. She'd cut through his pose of indifference and tapped into the real person underneath. There was kindliness in his makeup, passion under his cynicism, secret hurts she could winkle out and ease, and a warm strength that would keep her going.

He wanted to write real books, she knew  -  novels, history, philosophy. He admired Lankester Merrin profoundly, not just for his wisdom but for his prose. She could encourage him, nag him into giving up worthless-tat journalism, gently force him to do real work. She'd buy him a typewriter, keep others away from him while he wrote, modestly accept the dedication of his first masterpiece 'To Kate, without whom...'

God, yes.

His eyes twitched under their lids, dream-movements.

He always wore his dark glasses until the last possible moment, kissing her with them on. Their frames would tangle with her spectacles. When there was nothing else between them, he'd slip off her glasses and then his own, propping them intertwined next to the statue of the Madonna on his bedside table.

When they made love, his naked face was a blur to her. It was a quirk of bloodline that becoming a vampire changed her in many ways but left her eyesight as useless as it had been when she was warm.

She didn't know what colour his eyes were. It didn't matter. She had a sense of what lay behind them.

Slipping under the thin sheet, pressing herself against his body, feeling his warm skin with her cool belly and breasts, she tried to fit herself against Marcello as if they were the complementary halves of a puzzle. It wasn't comfortable, so she slid up over his hip, stretching one leg between his, draping an arm across his chest, hand creeping into his armpit and up behind his shoulder.

Marcello stirred in his sleep.

His heartbeat was a steady thump in her head. Like an addict, like a pathetic thing, she needed to complete the circuit, to become one creature with her lover. She opened her mouth wide and found one of the recent bites, in the meaty part of his chest, beside a lightly haired nipple. Her sharp teeth sank easily into the grooves they had made. She worked the wound with her tongue, pressing until blood welled up into her throat.

She felt the rush in her heart and head.

The blood made her forget.

As she drank, Marcello rose from the depths of his swoon and ran hands down her back, massaging her waist and bottom. She humped her middle up a little, tenting the sheets, and he fitted his penis into her.

She guided their rhythm with her mouth and hips, suckling blood and coaxing semen in tidal cycles. After all these years, she couldn't remember what lovemaking had been like as a warm girl  -  she'd only managed it the once, with her father-in-darkness, Mr Harris  -  but turning certainly increased the range of pleasures she could give and receive.

Marcello screamed and his entire body stretched taut, as if all his sinews were piano wires. She thought momentarily that she'd killed him, but the blood pouring into her mouth was rich and alive.

He collapsed under her, dragged down into unconsciousness.

She wanted more of him, and gnawed his chest almost to the bone.

If she kept at it, she would truly forget.