Dracula Cha Cha Cha (Anno Dracula #3) 6

PROFONDO ROSSO

For a while, it was a nightmare. Having learned of the chase among the pack didn't make her a happier quarry. She did all the stupid things she'd seen people do when barracked by reporters. She flung her hands over her face, looked down at her shoes, and tried to walk on an invisible straight line through the crowd. She didn't so much as snap 'no comment' in answer to increasingly blunt and impolite questions tossed at her like grapples. She must have looked guilty as Judas.

Kate got back to the pensione just in time to be thrown out. The press had been there too and got a lot of interview material from the landlady's family about what a suspicious foreign slut she was. She hadn't slept in Trastevere more than twice since arriving in Rome. She'd spent most of her time at Marcello's apartment, with Charles and Genevieve, out on the street, or in prison. Nevertheless, she was required to settle an inflated bill to get her suitcase back.

She tried to telephone Marcello at his apartment but got no answer. She trudged up and down Via Veneto, but couldn't find him in any of his usual haunts.

Of course, she realised Marcello had told the other reporters about her. It was how they had been able to lay in wait outside the police station. It was also presumably why he hadn't been there. Apart from anything that might have been between them, she was a story and he ought to have been there to get it. At least he had enough gumption to be ashamed of putting her on the spot.

She still planned on taking it out on him.

While she had been in prison, the mood of the city had changed. The Via Veneto wasn't as abandoned as before, except in the sense that a great many had abandoned it for somewhere else. The Cafe Strega was almost deserted. The elder vampires were gone, and quite a few new-borns were making themselves scarce. If the Crimson Executioner wanted the undead out of the city, he'd scored a triumph.

She sat in the cafe, sipping blood. To her relief, no one bothered her. The feeding frenzy over her story had passed, and someone else would be haring around with the press at their heels. The police had announced that she was not a suspect in the death of Prince Dracula. That left the press free to speculate on increasingly bizarre conspiracies. She liked the one about the Carpathian guardsman brainwashed by the Red Chinese and transformed into a vampire slayer, though she was a lot more likely to believe it was all down to the Jesuits.

Charles was gone, and now Dracula too. Her past was being dismantled. One man she had loved, the other hated, but they had defined a world she understood. A world in which she had a place, a cause, duties, ties. The cords that fixed her in the universe were being snipped one at a time.

Was this how elders came to feel? In time, everything they remembered from life passed. They alone remained, locked into their skulls, lost in a world of pop-up toasters and television advertisements.

She felt very small and not a little afraid.

'The answers to such mysteries are very often found under the soles of our shoes.'

Father Merrin's comment stuck in her mind. He had placed a subtle emphasis on the sentence. It was something he'd intended she should remember, should think about.

What was under the soles of her shoes?

Tiles. None too clean.

And beneath that?

Eventually, earth and rock and magma.

There were catacombs, ruins, caves, lairs, cells, basements. Even nightclubs. She kept being taken underground. Rome was like an iceberg. Only a fraction was on the surface.

What lived under Rome?

Or who?

'There are tears everywhere,' Santona had said. 'The stones of the city pour forth tears.'

She remembered Santona too, her talk of Mater Lachrymarum, the Mother of Tears. The fortune-teller implied a link between this mysterious person and the girl who'd led Kate into Dracula's tomb. The child's pretty, evil face appeared to her still. Everything else might die here in Rome but the little girl would live on. Kate had a sense she was an ancient creature: not a vampire, but an elemental, something eternal and dreadful.

A mother must have a daughter. She kept coming back to that. Santona had said Mater Lachrymarum was not the girl's mother, but the city's.

How could Rome have a mother? According to Kate's old classics teacher, the city had two fathers, Romulus and Remus. No mother was mentioned, unless it was the wolf bitch who suckled the twins.

Something stirred in her heart. Not just terror, but curiosity, a need to know, to understand. It was a song she'd heard since her warm days, perhaps the overriding melody of her life.

Charles's death had knocked her out of herself. But perhaps Dracula's passing had slapped her back on course. There was something new mixed in, a tune she'd never heard before. In a sense she didn't want to contemplate yet, she was free. Without Dracula, the world was free to make of itself what it wished. And without Charles, so was she.

She wept hot tears.

She was not yet ready to be this free, this alone. It was like leaving school, leaving home, leaving society. To have no rules or measures, to have nothing but herself.

Her tears dried.

'Kate,' someone said, laying hands on hers, sitting down at the table.

She thought it might be Marcello. Despite her annoyance at him, her heart leaped.

It was Genevieve. She tried not to be disappointed.

'Kate, how are you? I hadn't heard they'd let you out.'

'I'm fine,' she said, pulling in her hands.

'You wouldn't believe the day I've had,' Genevieve said. She signalled a waiter with one hand. 'They had me identify Dracula's head.'

Kate cringed in sympathy.

'It's not rotted,' Genevieve said. 'That's baffling everyone. Age is supposed to catch up with elders when they die. Most of the Crimson Executioner's victims are heaps of funny-coloured dust. But Dracula looks fresh.'

'Next thing, they'll be saying he's a saint. Some are supposed to resist corruption.'

'Everything that could be said about Dracula has been said, trust me. You should have seen the newspapers.'

'I've been catching up. It's amazing how violent death ennobles some folk. All those people seething with hatred last week can turn around sincerely and pay tribute to a great statesman and significant figure in twentieth century history. Surely someone else must have reacted to the news by singing "Ding-Dong, the Witch is Dead" and wearing a lampshade.'

Genevieve's drink arrived and she ordered one for Kate.

They looked at each other, not sure what to say.

'I miss him,' Genevieve admitted finally.

Kate nodded. 'Me too.'

They did not mean Dracula.

'I don't know what I thought it'd be like,' Genevieve said. 'It's not as if I'm not used to people dying off around me. It's just that Charles was so there, if you know what I mean.'

'I do.'

It was a good thing Kate was cried out.

'There's too much mystery left, Kate. Charles would have hated that. The Crimson Executioner and your little girl. And Dracula. Who killed Dracula?'

'It wasn't me.'

'I know.'

'It should have been. In a way, I wish I had killed him. I wish I could have cut through all the compromises and decided this man did not deserve to live any longer, then stabbed him through the heart and cut off his head. I can see myself doing it, but I know I didn't. I don't know whether to feel guilty about not saving him or not killing him. I still feel his blood on me, under my skin.'

'If I can help, Kate, I will.'

She took Genevieve's hand.

'There's someone I want to visit, to talk with. Will you come with me?'

'Of course.'

'It means going somewhere our kind aren't welcome.'

Genevieve was puzzled for a moment, then understood.