Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha (24 page)

Scanning the room, she recognised many guests: Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong-Jones, representing the Queen; John and Valerie Profumo, representing Lord Ruthven; Senator John Kennedy and Ambassador Clare Boothe Luce, representing America and hating each other; Carlo Ponti and Sophia Loren; Alberto Moravia, the author; Gina Lollobrigida and General Mark Clark, liberator of Rome; Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin; Pier Paolo Pasolini, the poet; Jonas Cord, the aviation millionaire; Rita Hayworth and the Aga Khan; Totò, the Italian clown; Moira Shearer and Ludovic Kennedy; Enrico Mattei, head of the state petroleum concern; Palmiro Togliatti, the Communist Party chief; several screen Tarzans, and the genuine Lord Greystoke; Zé do Caixão, the Brazilian celebrity undertaker; Magda Lupescu, a vampire once famously the mistress of the King of Romania; Mrs Honoria Cornelius and Colonel Maxim Pyat; Salvador Dalí, sporting long curved fangs like the mirror of his famous moustaches; Edgar Poe, the screenwriter; Dr Orlof, the controversial plastic surgeon; Yves Montand and Simone Signoret; Lemmy Caution, the American adventurer; Gore Vidal, whose work she admired; Amintore Fanfani, the just-deposed government bigshot; Michael Corleone, the olive oil tycoon; Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, an ex-fascist with ambitions; and, representing the Vatican as unobtrusively as possible, Bishop Albino Luciani.

And the elders: Saint-Germain, the famous enigma; Karol Lavud, back from Mexico; Armand of Paris, the theatrical manager; Gilles de Rais, called
barbe-bleu;
Baron Meinster, the golden-haired toady; Sebastian de Villanueva, disgraced alchemist of the Manhattan Project; Elisabeth Bathory; Drago Robles; Innocente Farnese; Faethor Ferenczy; Don Simon Ysidro. There was even a clutch of elders who held themselves apart from the rest, like a separate species entirely: Edward Weyland, Joshua York, Miriam Blaylock, Hugh Farnham. One octopoid shape-shifter went so far in dissociating itself from humanity that it claimed to be a native of the planet Mars. If any of the secret societies dedicated to the memory of Abraham Van Helsing were to stage a terrorist attack, they might practically exterminate the breed.

Her appalling contemporary de Rais, a hero of France in her warm days, reminded her she was of an age to style herself an elder if she so chose.

She excited little interest among so many famous faces.

‘I’m the only person here I’ve never heard of,’ she thought.

Of course, one famous face was unseen.

Princess Asa Vajda made an entrance, born on a palanquin shouldered by six gilded youths, bat-wing fans stuck into her mountainous beehive. But her fiancé had not yet put in an appearance.

Geneviève could wait.

She saw Penelope through the crowd. The Englishwoman looked tastefully pretty in a simple formal dress, hair done up. She wore an expression of exasperated harassment. They made eye contact. Princess Asa swept down on her like a parrot-plumed hawk with a series of demands. She had to concentrate on being reasonable, smoothing over some minor crisis. Geneviève remembered Penelope’s tendency to domestic tyranny and wondered if she were repenting her sins here in Otranto, suffering the exact torments she had inflicted on so many servants.

Cagliostro and Orson Welles faced off inside a circle of onlookers and duelled with magic. The warm conjurer bested the nosferatu sorcerer with showmanship, smiling broadly as he used trickery to accomplish his stunts while the Count sweated blood as he worked genuine but affectless magic. Cagliostro had relied for so long on supernatural powers that he was at a loss in this century of everyday miracles. A pretty girl giggled as Welles found a mouse in her cleavage. Spectators tucked long-stemmed glasses into the crooks of their elbows so they could applaud with both hands.

Geneviève was well into her second drink — the waiter claimed to be a virgin of a good Catholic family, and his blood certainly had a tang to it — when she rounded a pillar and found Hamish Bond, immaculate in white dinner jacket, surrounded by disposable popsies, languidly smoking one of his special cigarettes, instructing a waitress that he wanted her blood with vermouth and an olive.

‘Shaken, not stirred,’ he purred.

‘What a ridiculous way to go about things,’ Geneviève said.

Bond cocked an eyebrow at her.

‘Mademoiselle,’ he acknowledged.

The popsies — beauty contest runners-up and orgy extras — faded. She liked the effect.

‘I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re here,’ said the spy ‘You’re the type who might turn up anywhere.’

‘Weddings and funerals,’ she said. ‘And hairs-breadth escapes.’

‘I’ve yet to thank you properly.’

‘Don’t mention it. Have you seen our friend with the whiskers? Brastov is bound to be here. Penelope will have set out a saucer of bloody milk for him.’

Bond’s face darkened. He didn’t like to be reminded.

‘Everybody is here,’ the spy said.

‘I spotted Villanueva,’ she said. ‘The defector. Shouldn’t you kidnap him? When he skipped behind the curtain, he left those Rosenbergs to take the blame. This must be his first peep in the West in five years.’

‘That’s Johnny Yank’s business. Besides, this seems to be a halfholiday. Otranto is a bit like Spandau prison. Neutral territory, with presences from all sides. When they renewed the Croglin Grange Treaty at Yalta, they agreed to leave Dracula alone but keep their eyes on him. The palazzo has been infested with spies since ’44. I shouldn’t be surprised if everybody here was a double agent. Except me. And you.’

‘Thank you for the compliment.’

‘Don’t think of it. You’re yourself.’

She felt a tiny pang. She knew what he meant. With Charles gone, she had no loyalties except to her own heart.

He sipped his bloody martini.

It had been a gory business hauling him out of Brastov’s lair. She had reverted almost to a feral creature, scything through Smert Spionem minions, ignoring bullets, tearing down walls. It wasn’t something she cared to do often. It disturbed her to be reminded how easy it was to shape-shift not in body but in mind, to streamline her intellect for mere survival, to set aside empathy.

That scene with Penelope and Kate, at Charles’s side, had been a messy afterthought. She’d not settled back into herself, and had been forced to cope with a roomful of volatile emotions.

Bond was completely over it. She’d left him a ragged survivor, but he sprang back together like Wile E. Coyote, donning armour of suavity and brutal polish like his Savile Row tuxedo, ready again to do meaningless battle, to see off the faceless hordes she stubbornly insisted on seeing as inconvenient, bleeding individuals.

Penelope marched past them, intently lecturing a white-faced warm youth.

‘I ran into that fellow after you left me,’ said Bond, nodding at Penelope’s companion. ‘Our hostess’s American friend. Tom Someone. Something not right about him, you know. Well, more than that. He’s got something missing.’

‘Like all of us,’ she said.

‘You’re gloomy tonight.’

‘The man I’ve loved since 1888 died this week. That tends to take the wind out of your sails.’

Bond was politely taken aback. He couldn’t imagine anyone taking death seriously. It was so much a part of his daily life. Charles had never let himself become like that. The retreat behind callous irony wasn’t even a vampire thing; it was a twentieth century thing.

Suddenly, she felt only sorry for this spy

‘You’ll fall in love too,’ she said. ‘And she’ll die.’

Bond tried to shrug, but froze. He knew she was right. It had happened to him before and would happen again.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘That was needlessly cruel. You’re right. It’s a half-holiday. We’re all dressed up and allowed out. It’s a night for dissembling, not for inconvenient honesty.’

He looked at her.

‘You’re a remarkably beautiful woman, Geneviève.’

She laughed at him, but was flattered a bit.

‘Earlier, a film producer asked me if I did any modelling.’

‘You couldn’t. Too much character in your face.’

‘Too much overbite, more like.’

She clicked her sharp teeth.

20

OPERAZIONE PAURA

P
assing 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. Geneviève 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.