OPERAZIONE PAURA

Passing through the doors of Palazzo Otranto was like stepping into the mouth of a dragon. Kate felt the laws of the universe bend out of true. This was how it was in the Royal Presence.

Marcello noticed her hesitation. They held up traffic. A press of guests built outside the doors, like the fizz behind a champagne cork.

They popped.

Guests flowed through the corridors of the palazzo, pulsing in organ-like chambers, throbbing toward the heart. The vaulted ballroom was immense, and crowded.

She was in the grip of red thirst. Everyone here, living and dead, was a sack of blood. She'd gone beyond being glutted by Marcello, and was on the fringe of mania. She'd seen other vampires in this state, but never been here herself.

It wasn't so bad from the inside.

Her eyes must have been glowing scarlet, enlarged by her specs. Her teeth were daggers, her fingernails talons. She was a bit of a dragon herself.

The orchestra played 'Dracula Cha Cha Cha'. His Majesty's subjects danced, trailing black and red velvet across a polished mosaic floor. Black ostrich plumes bobbed like insect antennae above elaborate headdresses. Red jewels sparkled with firelight. White faces glowed like stains in the dark.

She was entranced.

'Let's dance,' she said to Marcello, taking his arm and stepping onto the floor.

It was easy to surrender to the music. Marcello kept up with her, warily. He was blank behind his dark glasses, but she owned him entirely. She had made of him a slave, like that poor mad fellow Jack Seward had been treating in 1885. Renfield.

...he killed the flies to catch the spiders, he killed the spiders to catch the birds, he killed the birds to catch the cats...

Dancing was like feeding, drinking the music. All around, in the throng, were creatures like herself. Stiff-haired muzzles, bestial paws with lace cuffs, rotted fangs with gold dental work, leathery wings freed by backless gowns, red eyes lined with blue shadow.

These were Dracula's guests.

The Prince himself did not need to be in the room. He was not a creature of the heart. He would be below them somewhere, in the earth. At the climax of the evening, he would rise to be with his subjects.

They danced past people she knew. Genevieve was in a corner, warily flirting with a handsome vampire Brit who had been at Charles's funeral. Penelope was snatching a quick ciggy, looking as fraught as a nanny whose charges are running wild. Kate found that amusing: She had often had to look after little Penny, the pretty terror. The only way Penelope could grow up was if everyone else turned back into children.

Orson Welles was sawing a Czechoslovakian blonde in half with a sword, keeping up a constant light patter as he levered the silvered blade through her lovely stomach. Inspector Silvestri and Sergeant Ginko, dressed as waiters, kept an eye out for threats to vampire elders, warm plods laughably employed to protect the most dangerous group of people in the world.

She caught the rhythm at last.

Drac-u-la, Drac-u-la, Dra... cha cha cha...

Father Merrin, in simple robes with a prominent pectoral cross, observed the throng with more pity than disapproval. And, good God, there was that rogue Sebastian Villanueva. He was supposed to be in Star City, dreaming up rocket weapons. If Villanueva was even tentatively in the West, that was a story. She should find a telephone and call her editor.

No, she was dancing.

Drac-u-la, Drac-u-la...

Tonight, she didn't care about news.

...Dra... cha cha cha...

She writhed close to Marcello, elbows on his shoulders, longfingered hands teasing his lightly-oiled hair.

Drac-u-la, Drac-u-la, Dra... cha cha cha...

She licked her mouth, feeling the rough of her tongue on her full lips. She stuck out her tongue and touched her nose with the pointed tip. The trick had sometimes delighted Penny enough to distract her from mischief. She had enjoyed laughing at poor, staid old Kate. Marcello didn't so much as flinch a smile. To him, dancing was a serious business.

Drac-u-la, Drac-u-la, Dra... cha cha cha...

She whirled around, hips punctuating the dance with precise cha cha cha thrusts, and stuck her tongue out at Penelope  -  who was bad-temperedly stubbing her cigarette on a waiter's hand  -  then exploded with the giggles. Marcello kept her upright, and she let the music take over.

She couldn't remember Charles ever dancing. She had seen him fence, though. He was light-footed and imaginative. He would have been a fine dancer. Perhaps it was just that he'd never danced with her.

She missed a step. Damn. Always, she was bothered by ghosts. It was absurd. A vampire should trump a ghost.

Among so many hypnotic elder stares, she spotted kindly blue eyes of warm wisdom. Merrin. He watched her, feeling for her. He had no right. She was a monster. She needed no sympathy.

With a thumb-talon, she slit open Marcello's neck. She craned to catch the spurt in her mouth, and sucked back the blood, feeling it bursting behind her eyes. Electric taste wiped away what she had been thinking of, worrying about.

Marcello wasn't dancing. He was spasming in her arms, too much blood pouring from his depleted veins.

Discreet footmen stepped onto the floor and took Marcello from her. One slapped a large sticking-plaster over the wound and said something in Italian about Vimto. They took him away from her as if taking a broken toy from an unruly child, careful not to express disapproval but nevertheless clearly miffed by her heedlessness.

One of the servants indicated his chin. It took her a moment to realise what he meant. She took her hankie and wiped away an obstinate trickle of blood.

Marcello was walked toward an alcove. As the curtain whisked aside, she glimpsed a row of beds and a stand of drip-feeds. Nurses were in attendance. She was not the only vampire to lose self-control under the influence of the cha cha cha.

As a lone woman, she was suddenly open season. General Iorga, a tubby elder who'd been head of the Carpathian Guard when they were sworn to cut off her head, tried to whirl her in a gavotte. The General lost her to a beatnik bleeder with a beret and a goatee who jerked her back into cha cha cha-mode. An amulet on a long chain danced between them, thumping against his black pullover and her decolletage.

She was torn from the Maynard G. Krebs-type by a woman elder who took advantage of a momentary slowing of the music to French-kiss her. As an alien tongue probed her mouth for licks of Marcello's blood, Kate realised this was the strangest of all elders, Casanova. Upon turning, he'd shape-shifted permanently into a woman, a miracle which had no effect whatsoever on his character.

Then she was detached from the great lover, a process that involved much unlocking of mouth-parts, by a ravaged, bloated warm fellow whom she recognised, under many layers of dissolution, as Errol Flynn. The former matinee idol had a spigot in his neck. Kate could not resist the blood of Robin Hood. It was more vodka than gore, but rich with Caribbean spices and gunpowder.

She left Flynn, and stumbled, drunk in several ways, through the crowds.

A huge chest blocked her way. She raised her head to look at the face, but it was a crimson blur. The man wore tights that showed thick columns of muscle in his thighs and calves.

A cold cloth dropped on her brain.

Where were Silvestri and Ginko? Where were the Carpathian Guard?

Fright seized her.

Her eyes focused. She had been mistaken. This was not the Crimson Executioner. A bespectacled, handsome, kindly face, built of solid blocks, looked down at her. It was an actor, Kent. She'd seen pictures of him as Hercules.

He wasn't even dressed in red. His tights were blue.

'Are you all right, Miss?' he asked.

She waved him away, trying to make a sober arrangement of her features. He wasn't sure about her, but took her reassurance as authentic.

Beyond the muscled American, she glimpsed a smaller figure. A tiny woman, or a child. A wing of blonde hair over one eye. She'd been wrong about the Crimson Executioner, but this was the little girl from Piazza di Trevi.

'Excuse me,' she said to Kent, brushing past him.

The girl was gone.

Now, Kate wanted to cry. She knew she was in a dulled, insensate state. She wanted to be sharp, wanted to be herself. She needed herself now.

A red ball bounced on the floor and rolled to her feet. She bent to pick up the plaything, but clumsily tapped it. The ball leaped like a balloon, and hopped away like a Chinese vampire. It bounced off Private Elvis Presley's head and against Edgar Poe's chest, making the writer spill his drink, then loped onwards, sliding between Gina Lollobrigida and an elder Kate didn't know. It was as if it were trying to escape. Kate kept her eye on the ball, and followed.