Dracula Cha Cha Cha

PART FIVE

SPQR

FROM THE TIMES OF LONDON, AUGUST 15TH, 1959

Rome. An arrest has been made in connection with the murder of Prince Dracula. Inspector Silvestri, the detective in charge of the case, has indicated that an American citizen will be charged with attempted theft and murder. The suspect is also sought for questioning by Interpol with regards to the disappearance of Richard Fountain, an English vampire.

Prince Dracula's remains will be released into the care of his executrix, Miss Penelope Churchward. Funeral arrangements have not been announced.

Hollywood. Jeremy Prokosch, a film producer active in Europe, announces that work will begin on a three-part film biography of Count Dracula, to be scripted by Gore Vidal, Clare Quilty and Christopher Fry and shot in Spain and Yugoslavia. It is his intention that three different directors will tackle the three crucial periods of the Dracula story, with Riccardo Freda handling Vlad's warm life and rebirth as a vampire, Terence Fisher Dracula's rise and fall in Victorian Britain, and Michael Powell his exile and death. Among actors mooted for the role are Jack Palance, Francis Lederer, Alexander D'Arcy and David Niven.

London. In an interview with BBC TV's Panorama, Lord Ruthven, the Prime Minister, has condemned as 'utterly tasteless' the flood of Dracula-related items now entering the marketplace. He goes on to say that he does not deem the late Count's likeness or coat of arms a fit adornment for 'tea trays, toby jugs, join-the-dots puzzles, tie-clasps, watch-fobs or beach-blankets'. The Post Office will, however, issue a set of commemorative Dracula stamps in time for the Christmas rush.

Borgo Pass, Transylvania. Baron Meinster, an elder who claims to be the first get personally turned by Dracula, delivered an impromptu speech to a mostly vampire crowd, declaring himself the new King Vampire and that Transylvania should be an independent homeland for the undead. The meeting was broken up by members of the Romanian Securitate, and President Nicolae Ceau?escu has branded Meinster 'a verminous outlaw' and ordered his arrest, though he remains at large. Meinster is only the latest of several who have styled themselves 'Alucard' and claimed to be Dracula's heir.

Chapter 34

THE JUDGEMENT OF TEARS

This was what Genevieve needed. To face a monster rather than herself.

Bond told her Gregor Brastov was dead, skinned and gutted by the Crimson Executioner. He had known about the Mother of Tears, had wanted them to confront her for him, so he should have known better than to tangle with her creature. The Cat Man had been trying to set her, and the spy, against the enemy he most feared, but other matters had distracted them. Charles and Dracula. A quiet war had been taking place, beyond her ken. In the end, she would have to be involved. It was inescapable.

Another elder gone, after hundreds of years. They were mostly vile, but Genevieve was used to sharing the world with them. Before Dracula's great entrance, elders had passed the centuries in travel, occasionally crossing each other's paths with wary courtesy, sometimes even gathering as a community.

Since Carmilla Karnstein, Genevieve had never counted another vampire elder her friend. They were for the most part bloodthirsty bastards. Even Carmilla was cracked.

Outside the apartment, they paused by Bond's Aston Martin. It had a few new bullet scars.

'We needn't drive,' he said. 'It's within sight of here.'

It was obvious, when she came to think of it. There was only one place in Rome for a last stand. Charles had noticed the Executioner's habit of staging his atrocities in famous public places.

Bond led her along the road.

The Colosseum stood against the Roman night, cut across like a wedding cake sliced with a scythe.

The Flavian Amphitheatre  -  Charles pedantically preferred the proper name  -  had been built in AD 72 by Vespasian in place of an artificial lake dedicated to Nero, part of an urban rebuilding scheme designed to blot out memory of the murderous Emperor. Vespasian hadn't lived to see the sand of the arena bloodied by the first gladiatorial casualties, which lasted until Honorius forbade the killing of man by man in AD 405. Wild animals, always a popular supporting act, were set against each other for a further century and a half. Genevieve knew various conscience-struck Emperors had tried to introduce Greek-style athletics contests, without fatalities, in place of the Roman games, but that the public hadn't stood for them. Only blood would satisfy the people of Rome. She supposed she wasn't in a position to be too fastidiously critical on that point.

For centuries, Romans had stolen Colosseum stone for new buildings. Blood-soaked blocks now made up portions of the Palazzo Venezia, the Cancelleria, St Peter's and many humbler structures. The plundering had only ceased in the middle of the eighteenth century when Pope Benedict XIV proclaimed it a sacred site, relying on the pious fiction that it was the site of many martyrdoms. It was a canard that Christians were fed to lions. That wouldn't have been entertainment. Instead, the followers of the fisherman were stuck on poles and set alight as a primitive form of street lighting, or simply crucified as trouble-makers. The arena was reserved for those skilled enough to make a show out of fights to the death. A thousand years and more before Dracula or Gilles de Rais or Elisabeth Bathory, the public taste for blood was already keen.

In the nineteenth century, when Genevieve had been briefly in Rome, the Colosseum was a jungle, stones buried in all manner of thriving flora. She had considered the swallowing of marble death by irrepressible life a sign of hope, but the weeds were all tidied away now and the bleached bones of the building exposed again. The two storeys of arches that made up the original outer shell stood, along with half of the jerry-built addition  -  replacing a wooden level struck by credibly divine lightning in AD 217  -  piled on top. The terraces were still there in tiers, awaiting the return of the crowds, but the floor of the arena  -  the killing stage  -  was gone, exposing a maze of tunnels and chambers that had been below.

'I followed him here,' said Bond. 'He led me past your flat. I took that as a sign.'

'The Colosseum is a tourist attraction,' she said. 'It will be closed at this hour.'

'I doubt that our quarry cares much about that.'

'I suppose you're right.'

The Venerable Bede had written 'as long as the Colosseum stands, Rome will stand, and when the Colosseum falls, Rome will fall; but when Rome falls the world will come to an end.' She wasn't sure whether that was a comforting or threatening prophecy. A city, indeed a world, symbolised by this horrid edifice probably didn't deserve to stand.

They crossed the Piazza di Colosseo. Genevieve wondered if this was the route the gladiators had taken. No, they would have been chained under the arena, released only when the crowds had taken their seats.

Had any vampires died in the arena? There were nosferatu in ancient Rome. They would have been a novelty. She imagined Caligula  -  dead before this place was planned  -  pitting a werewolf against a shape-shifting vampire, sheathing their claws with silver knives, giving the thumbs down for the loser.

She supposed things were changing. Slowly.

Then again, Caligula hadn't thought of the Bomb either.

They strolled through the main entrance. It was too huge a space to fence off.

She smelled the stones. There were still traces of old blood.

'Look,' said Bond.

She was wrong. The blood was fresh, a vampire's. It was absurd to think the gore of the gladiators would still be in the ground.

The trail led through the great arch, into the arena.

'When we find the Crimson Executioner, Commander Bond? What then?'

He didn't answer. He wasn't there.

She knew something was wrong. Bond wasn't old enough to creep away while she wasn't looking. She should have felt the draught of his leaving, heard the tiny sounds he couldn't help but make.

Had it been him? Or someone wearing his face?

She couldn't have been mistaken. The man who had brought her here was the man she'd met before. But there was something different about him. He was the sort who always seemed to be play-acting, taking a part. But the quality of his acting had changed, become broader, less convincing. He'd been expressing himself too much with his eyebrows. The Scots in his accent had faded.

She was in a broad thoroughfare, lined by pillars. The ground was rough stone. Blood led through the labyrinth. Too obvious a trail.

Her hackles rose and the fine hair on her arms prickled. She spun around and glimpsed a red shape dart behind a pillar. Her claws popped.

She was no longer stalking a quarry. She was herself being stalked.

It had to happen, she supposed.

She must have been the last elder in Rome. She'd be the Crimson Executioner's final victim.

But not without a fight.

Kate was still reeling. Leaving Marcello, for the last time, was like pulling a thorn from her heart and throwing it away. She couldn't yet name the things she had chosen over him, but she burned with a certainty that she had picked salvation over sham, love above self. Still, it was not easy or simple. What if she were wrong, and was dedicating herself to possibilities that had died with Charles and Dracula rather than the as-yet unborn world she might have with the warm man?

She didn't know how she'd got from the House with the Crying Windows to Parco de Traiano. But this was where she should be, where Charles had lived, where there were answers and endings.

There was vampire blood on the street. A sports car was parked across the street from the house, rear end dotted with bullet holes. Few people were about, which was odd. She was used to Rome's crowds. Whenever the extras faded away, bad things happened.

A woman came out of Charles's apartment house. Genevieve? No, this woman was dark-haired. Penelope. She wore a mid-length Gherardi overcoat, with matching stockings and court shoes in mourning black. Her hair was done up under a neat black hat.

'Katie,' Penelope acknowledged. 'I have news.'

'Me too, Penny,' Kate said.

Penelope daintily sniffed the air, and looked at the ground.

'That's blood,' Penelope observed.

Kate swam through panic.

'Penny,' she said, 'we were friends once. You must help me. The Crimson Executioner is after Genevieve.'

Penelope was exasperated. 'What are you talking about?'

'The vampire slayer.'

'You don't understand,' Penny cooed, as if everything was all fine and dandy and settled and done. 'The murderer of Dracula is under arrest. You're free to leave the city.'

Kate had to get through to her.

'There's another murderer. Maybe an army of murderers. Under the orders of someone older even than an elder vampire. Someone truly monstrous, truly ghastly. Believe me, I've met her. You wouldn't like her.'

Penelope looked at the blood trail. Her eyes reddened slightly.

'Isn't this a bit. convenient?'

Kate didn't understand.

'It's as if arrows were drawn on the road. We're being pulled by the nose, toward the Colosseum.'

'Genevieve's in danger.'

'The French person?'

Kate remembered Penelope had not liked Genevieve, though she thought the enmity washed away in shared grief at Charles's death. While Kate was off being mad with Marcello, Genevieve and Penelope had made up, hadn't they?

Penelope made a decision. 'Very well, Katie, I'll come with you. But there's something decidedly off about this. Do you see? Someone's been shooting at this Aston Martin. Can you smell that? Not the blood, the cordite.'

Charles would have looked at the road and been able to tell from smeared footprints whether Genevieve had been alone, whether she was pursuing or being pursued, and at what speed. It was a trick he had learned from masters.

Penelope was right. The trail was too obvious. But they had no choice.

'Come on, slowcoach,' Penelope said, setting off.

The ancient stands of the Colosseum weren't empty. Though Genevieve concentrated on keeping stone pillars between her and the muscleman in red, she was aware shadow-figures were filtering along the rows, settling down for the spectacle. She wondered how much the management was charging, then remembered the games were generally held at the expense of the Emperor, a pacifying gift to the people of Rome. Give them bread and circuses.

Bond was down here in the labyrinth, but she couldn't count on him. He had gone over to the Enemy. Not Brastov's side, but someone else old and powerful, the Mother of Tears.

She took off her shoes and walked on the points of her feet, darting swiftly between pillars as if they were trees in a forest. Her fangs and claws were out, though she feared they'd be outclassed by silver swords and hardwood spears.

It was disturbing that she had only glimpsed the Crimson Executioner twice, as flashes of red. He was a warm man. She should be able to scent him, know at all times where he was and how close he was getting. She was the huntress of the night, the elder vampire, the survivor of centuries. She should be the favourite.

Yet the Executioner had killed elders.

Anton Voytek and Anibas Vajda had been more dangerous than her, and it hadn't helped them. Some of the elders the Crimson Executioner had slain were shape-shifters who could become monstrous bats or living white mists. Beside those abilities, her poor talons and teeth were feeble.

The stands were thinly crowded. Were they people, or merely shades? She smelled warm blood out there, but other presences too. Old things.

There was a crack. A silver bullet struck stone inches from her face. Chips flew at her eyes. She mustn't forget Hamish Bond. He was in this game too.

A mighty switch was thrown and light burned down.

Blinking away tears of shock, Genevieve looked up. Banks of arc lights  -  like those she'd seen on the stages at Cinecitta  -  had been erected along the third tier. They came on, one bank at a time, and floodlit the stadium, turning the arena into a maze of hard black shadows and blinding white spaces.

She slipped into a shadow. A spotlight trapped her.

Blobs of dazzle floated on her eyeballs. She was used to daylight, fancied herself immune to it, but this hurt. The beams were hazy with dust and smoke. Flies spiralled in the tunnels of light.

The arena was lit up but the stands were in darkness. There were eyes out there but she saw no faces. Wheeling about, hissing, she looked to the imperial seats. Between columns of flame stood the mistress of these games, a blonde child, one eye obscured by hair. It was Kate's apparition, the girl only she  -  and Bond, Genevieve remembered  -  claimed to have seen.

Genevieve made a fist and raised it in salute.

How had gladiators felt about their Emperor?

She stood in the light and waited for her killers. There was no sense in running.

The spotlight expanded. At its edge stood a pair of red boots. As the light grew, it revealed the red tights, trunks and belt, the broad torso naked of all but paint, the balaclava hood and domino mask, the exposed teeth and mad eyes.

The Crimson Executioner loped lazily toward her, hands opening and closing. A stench assailed her nose and she realised the red stuff on his exposed chest and face was not paint. The spoiled blood sickened her.

She danced close to him and spun around, bent over entirely at the waist, doing the splits in the air, one foot-point on the ground, the other stuck up above her head. She aimed her foot at the Executioner's Adam's apple. Her bunched, taloned toes were a dagger of skin and bone.

The kick should have fetched off his head.

Instead, he whipped to one side. Her toe-claws carved a runnel across his shoulder. His hands closed on her ankle and she was whipped off balance, up into the air. The Crimson Executioner swung her like a cat.

Her unbound hair brushed a stone pillar. On the next pass, her head would be battered against something that had stood for twenty centuries. It wouldn't kill her, but it would shatter her skull into a dozen pieces. She'd live through the next hundred years with a head like a lopsided jack o'lantern. Provided she lived through the next hundred seconds.

The crowd roared and whistled.

She let her arms fly out, above her head, and extended them at an angle from her face, heels of her hands out to take the force of the blow.

The pillar was in the way.

She felt the impact in her wrists and elbows. Her arms crumpled and her face slapped the stone, hard enough to bloody her nose.

The Executioner dropped her.

She hugged the pillar and slid down it. The blood taste in her mouth was her own.

Her red rage was rising again. She fought it. This was not an opponent who could be beaten by surrender to the animal, who'd be so terrorised by the sight of an enraged bitch vampire that his knees would turn to water.

She huddled against the pillar.

The Crimson Executioner bent and took hold of her hair, hauling her upright. His shining, empty eyes were beacons, close to her face.

Out there in the stands, a thousand thumbs turned down. This had not been much of a show.

The Executioner pressed a thumb against her neck, pinching on her jugular vein. Stolen blood pumped against the pressure but was trapped. Her heart grew swollen, her brain was starved. He could pop off her head like the top of a beer bottle. Bastard.

She tore at his sides, blunting her nails on blood-greased hide and taut slabs of muscle.

He was laughing and so was the audience.

Her fang-teeth elongated, forcing her mouth open, cutting her lower lip. But she couldn't move her head. She could only bite the night air.

She took his wrist, which was the thickness of a normal man's thigh, and dug in with hooked thumb-barbs and all eight nail-blades. She worried holes and scratched, hoping to snag a vein or a nerve.

The Executioner felt no pain.

He wasn't even her real murderer. Just the puppet of the little girl up on the imperial platform. Ghastly, hollow laughter poured out of his grin.

Red lights exploded in her skull.

'Who are all these people?' Penelope demanded.

An audience,' Kate guessed. 'The senate and populace of Rome?'

'Oh, them!' Penny spat.

Kate saw that the crowd in the stands was mixed. Zombies at the back, faces half off the bone. The bourgeois, isolated and prim in the good seats. The rabble, thronging close to the arena, craning for a smell of blood. There must have been people here she knew but she recognised none.

Except the little girl in Nero's seat.

Kate recognised the combatants who struggled in the spotlight. This was what she had feared. Penny was appalled and fascinated by the spectacle.

'Is this some pagan revival?'

'I think it's more than that,' said Kate. 'That creature is the secret ruler of Rome. She's taken upon herself the duties of the Emperors. Maybe they were always her duties, and she let the Emperors usurp them for a few centuries. These are her games, at once a gift and a demonstration of power.'

Penelope was catching up but Kate couldn't hope to explain everything in the time they had. The fight they had come upon was nearly over. The Crimson Executioner held up Genevieve, as a tribute for Mater Lachrymarum, awaiting the imperial verdict.

Kate pushed through, making her way down an aisle, toward the arena itself. Penelope followed, pacifying the irritated spectators Kate had pushed aside with a flash of her fangs and a witheringly British glare.

'Bloody foreigners, eh?' Penny muttered. 'With their barbaric bullfights.'

Kate was not about to bring up fox-hunting and pig-sticking.

The cheering and calling subsided. Even the Executioner's hollow laugh shut off. The monster child pondered the verdict.

Kate vaulted a rail and landed in the arena. Broken pillars were all around. Penelope let herself down gently and brushed dust off her good coat.

'You,' Penny commanded. 'Put that woman down.'

The Crimson Executioner's head swivelled like a mechanism.

He laughed, a sound hideously familiar to Kate.

She felt cords tug at her mind. If the Mother of Tears had made a puppet of her to destroy Dracula, then she might take hold of her mind now. Having rushed here to help Genevieve, she might be forced to hold Penelope down while the Crimson Executioner finished off her friend.

No. She was not a puppet.

The British vampire Kate knew to be a spy stepped out from behind a pillar and pointed a gun at Kate and Penny.

'Commander Bond?' Penelope said.

He was the puppet here. He'd always been a thin character, too easily slotted into a stereotype. That was what made him vulnerable. He was the sort of man who always needed a mother, to cling to and to tidy up after him.

For the first time, Kate wondered who the Executioner really was. A circus strongman? An actor in peplum movies?

Bond levelled his aim between Kate and Penelope.

Penny moved incredibly fast, swifter than Kate could have imagined, and took the gun away from the new-born. She squeezed the weapon in her hand, and it popped into clunky metal components.

Without his gun, Bond was a boy whose favourite toy has been taken away. A command passed from the little girl's brain to his and he tried to put his fingers in Penny's neck. She took him by the wrists and threw him away, tossing his flapping form fifty feet or more into the air. He executed an ungainly arc and fell badly. Though broken, he scrambled around. If left alone, he would put himself back together but as a puppet he wasn't allowed to bother with his snapped bones.

A section of the crowd cheered.

Penelope gave a cheerful wave, like a member of the Royal Family arriving at a Commonwealth airport.

Kate faced the Executioner.

Genevieve's eyes were bloodied. She looked at Kate, silently imploring her not to sacrifice herself.

The Mother of Tears could not be bested. She was as eternal as the city. She was True Death, who overtakes all living things in time. She was mistress of a million puppets. She was, Kate could admit it now, a supernatural being.

The Crimson Executioner held out his arm and let Genevieve dangle. He squeezed and Genevieve let go of his wrist. Her bloodied hands flapped by her sides. He managed a full circle spin like a ballet dancer, slow enough to let the audience in all corners of the Colosseum see the defeated elder. He looked up to the child empress.

The little girl stuck out her arm, hand flat, thumb out.

The crowd called for death.

The hand wavered. The thumb turned down.

The crowd cheered like a hurricane.

Kate saw the muscles bunching in the Crimson Executioner's upper arm, as the message slowly sparked along his nerves, the order to wrench off Genevieve's head.

Mater Lachrymarum was undefeatable, above and beyond all human understanding. But the Crimson Executioner was a man in her thrall.

Under her spell, Bond hadn't been free to look out for himself, even though he'd have been more use to his mistress without the shattered limbs.

There was a weakness there.

When fighting a puppet, the trick was to cut the strings.

Penelope pounced, sinking teeth into the Executioner's forearm, tearing out strands of muscle, chewing them apart. He didn't stop grinning, but his grip didn't tighten on Genevieve's throat. Penny stuck her thumb in his eye, fishing out a scarlet gout.

The crowd groaned as one, in sympathy. They could take any amount of disembowelment and decapitation, but show them one little gouged eyeball and they wanted to spew.

Kate tackled low, hugging the big man's legs and throwing a shoulder into his stomach. With three vampire women hanging off him, he overbalanced and fell like a collapsing colossus. The ground shook with the impact. A nearby column fell over.

Penelope was still tearing at his arm and neck and face. The Executioner wouldn't let go of Genevieve's neck.

Kate crawled over the fallen man, easing Penelope out of the way. She looked deep into his remaining eye, penetrating his red madness, trying to reach the man he must once have been.

There was only one way.

Penelope was working on his hand, shredding the skin and flesh from his fingers, but still not freeing Genevieve. Her hands and lower face were messy with blood.

Kate scooted around, scraping her knees on rubble, until she was kneeling at the Crimson Executioner's head, looking down at his upside-down face  -  upside-down, like the reflection in the Fontana di Trevi  -  and the ruin Penelope had made of his neck. Blood seeped from the wound, slower than it ought to. He was probably dying, but his mistress wouldn't let him go until the last elder in Rome was dead.

She loosened her collar and stuck a thumbnail into her own neck, opening a rent that dripped blood onto the Executioner's face. She dislocated her spinal column and pressed her wound to the Executioner's mouth while fastening her own fangs into his torn-apart neck.

She sucked his blood into her mouth and let her blood trickle into him.

There was an electric connection.

She had a sense of who he had been. An actor. She might have guessed.

His mind was still there, and her blood reached it. If he turned, he'd be her get, a responsibility for centuries. She was taking him away from his mistress. She felt his lips close on her throat. He suckled from her.

The strings were cut. New strings were forming, strings of blood between Kate and the man.

'He's let go, Kate,' Penelope said.

She heard Genevieve coughing.

The sweet strong blood was in her throat. She swallowed some and wanted more. She felt herself pouring out, into her conquest.

She had come to Rome for love. And found it.

'He'll turn,' Penny warned.

That didn't matter. With get like the Crimson Executioner, she could stand up to the Mother of Tears, could set herself up as Queen-Empress of the Night.

She thought of Charles.

And broke the connection.

She stood up and squeezed her neck-wound shut. Her blouse was stiff with blood. Ruined.

Penelope helped Genevieve, holding her upright as her crushed neck filled out and healed.

'Hail to la vampira,' someone shouted. The cry was taken up. Flowers rained from the sky.

The Crimson Executioner  -  whoever he had been  -  was shaking in his death throes. Kate's blood was in his mouth, but he didn't swallow. He choked and vampire blood poured out of him. The Mother of Tears had lost her toy but wasn't going to let anyone else claim him.

A man died. He'd had a name once. A life.

As he died, the crowds left. Kate, exhausted, slumped by him, holding his cooling hand. Genevieve couldn't speak yet, but was gasping gratitude. Penelope, elegant despite the gore smeared on her face, was still puzzled by the drama into which Kate had impressed on her.

The people of Rome went back to their dreams. Kate saw Inspector Silvestri and Diabolik, Cabiria and Marcello, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Palmiro Togliatti, the waiter from the Hassler and Elsa Martinelli. And hundreds of others, from all walks of life and death. Everyone she had met since coming to the city, and those who had been there but unnoticed. A circus parade and a funeral party, a riot and an orgy, a communion and a community.

Were they even here physically, or had the witch girl summoned their phantasms, roping them in on her private games? This spectacle was shut off from the everyday life of the city, but could not be taken out of it. The city was a great, beating heart, and all hearts need blood as much as any vampire. Mater Lachrymarum gave the night-selves of the populace the games, and the memory would not outlast the dawn. But the spilled blood kept Rome alive.

How often did this happen?

Kate felt death as the blood in her mouth went rancid. She spat, and wiped her mouth on her hand. The Crimson Executioner was gone.

Penelope gave Genevieve to Kate. They hugged, fiercely.

Again, all three vampire women were crying.

'Thank you,' Genevieve croaked.

'That's all right, m'darling,' said Kate. 'Least we could do.'

They broke the hug.

The Mother of Tears was with them. Now, she was Viridiana, the saintly adolescent with the glowing face. Her purity was hard, unsympathetic. According to Father Merrin, she told only the truth. Under some circumstances, Kate would have preferred to deal with Mamma Roma, who told only lies.

'Elder vampire,' she said, addressing Genevieve. 'You must still die.'

This thin stick of a girl could pour forth fire.

For the first time, Kate was truly terrified.

Viridiana's eyes grew, pupils whirling spirals. Genevieve was struck, gripped by an invisible force. Kate tensed, feeling an impulse to throw herself between the two. Was that brave or stupid? She couldn't decide.

Suddenly, Penelope demanded And who are you to judge, missy?'

Penny didn't understand who she was dealing with. That made her brave and stupid. She walked towards Viridiana, ready to give this impertinent chit of a monster a good slapping as if she were some careless shopgirl not the secret mistress of an eternal city. Penny would be destroyed. Kate couldn't let her step into the line of fire without understanding.

Kate didn't think about it. She stood in front of Penelope and Genevieve. It made her calm.

'You'll have to get to my friends through me,' she said.

Viridiana thought about it.

'Miss Reed,' she said, 'the love of your life chose this elder over you, and yet you're willing to die for her. Miss Churchward, you don't even like this elder, and yet you're willing to kill for her.'

The saint was genuinely puzzled, but still cunning. Her shot went straight to Kate's heart.

'We've been through a lot together,' Kate said. It sounded feeble, put like that.

Viridiana stepped back into the darkness and stepped forward as Santona. Her 'ndrangheta servants lurched out of the shadows of the columns.

'Such feelings will pass, Katharine Reed,' the fortune-teller foresaw. 'Vampire elders cannot feel. They are heartless as these walking remnants are mindless. Their souls have flown. As have yours, missies. You only feel out of habit. It will pass.'

The 'ndrangheta raised silver-tipped spears.

The Mother of Tears evidently had a killing pack to spare in case her chief puppet failed.

Genevieve laid her hands on Kate and Penelope's shoulders. She gently pushed them aside like doors, and stepped forward.

'I'll stay,' she said, croaking. 'But my friends will go. Unharmed.'

Santona's gnarled face wrestled with a puzzle.

If Genevieve was willing to die for her friends, then she could love and hate and feel. And Mater Lachrymarum was wrong about elder vampires.

Santona considered Genevieve.

Kate realised they were saved. Not just for tonight, but for all time. If Genevieve was genuine, then it was possible to become an elder and remain a real live girl. Kate did not have to yield to that gradual withdrawal from the world she'd begun to think the inevitable lot of her kind.

Dawn was breaking. Pink light rose in the sky.

Genevieve, though torn, was not broken. Her hair caught the dawnlight and shone. Her face reformed, perfectly. Her fangs receded. Her hands lay on Kate and Penny's shoulders, like a real mother's, a firm grip that said you were protected, that no harm could come.

Mamma Roma was with them now, bedraggled and weary after a night servicing the lusty men of the city. She was disgusted by what she was learning.

'You are gambling, elder,' she said. 'You are faking emotion you do not feel. You cannot love.'

There was contempt in the whore's accusation, but it made Kate's heart burst with joy

'You're lying,' Kate said, exultant. 'You always lie.'

At the last, there was only the little girl, nameless, silent, cruel, lost. For the first time in millennia, the Mother of Tears had been forced to change her mind. She wasn't happy about it but that didn't stop them from leaving the Colosseum. This was only a temporary thing. The little girl was as half-blind as a one-eyed jack, as capable of taking one side of an argument as the other. Another night, Mater Lachrymarum might decide the other way and they'd all be cut to pieces by silver blades.

Kate and Penelope supported Genevieve between them. They left the arena.