Dracula Cha Cha Cha (Anno Dracula #3) 6

LACHRYMAE

The ancient villa at the heart of the city had sunk. Ground-floor windows peeped slivers of glass above street-level. Kate thought they might be stained glass: inner light made blocks of vivid red, turquoise, and amber of them.

She checked the address again. Marcello's editor had given her a vivid description: the House with the Crying Windows. She looked up. Just under the roof, a row of eye-shaped gables were angled to suggest desolation. Water trickled from gutter-spouts positioned like tearducts. The brickwork was stained green by years of sorrow.

It was striking. She wondered why it wasn't in the guide-books.

Light behind the eyes changed from red to green.

She walked across the deserted piazza.

She had almost given up on getting in touch with Marcello, but dutifully made regular telephone calls to his apartment, his haunts, and the various papers she knew he worked for. Finally, an editor told her Marcello had left instructions for her with him. He was staying at a certain address in the city, and would receive her there.

Though she still knew little about Marcello, she didn't think this was a family home. She had the idea he wasn't originally from Rome. Under his sophisticated veneer, he was a country bumpkin. And he was not from money.

This was an impressive property.

Kate ascended the steps to what must once have been a balcony and paused at the front door. It was bright blue, with gold crescents, silver stars and odd angel-faces. She had a shiver of recognition but knocked anyway. A hole opened in the centre of a painted eye.

For a moment, she was looked at. She turned round completely, hands in the air.

The door opened. The hallway was empty. A cheap trick.

She stepped inside. Portraits and mirrors and doors were symmetrically spaced along the corridor. The mirrors reflected the portraits opposite. Dried leaves drifted on the rich red carpet. The doors were locked.

The front door closed behind her. It also locked.

It occurred to her that Marcello might not have left the message. She'd seen a door like the portal of the House with the Crying Windows before, at Santona's apartment in I Cessati Spiriti. What was the connection?

Having no alternative, she walked down the corridor. In the first mirrors, she cast no reflection. But as she neared the end of the corridor, a black shadow coalesced, then resolved into a looking glass image of herself, the sharpest she had seen since her death.

She looked at her own face.

She'd been reckoned plain in life. Red hair, spectacles, and freckles weren't conventional attributes of beauty for late Victorians. Over a century, fashions in prettiness changed, and she'd been told enough times recently that she wasn't so terrible in the looks department that she'd come to wonder.

To her mind, she was still plain. Maybe she'd always be a late Victorian. Her hair looked nice cut short, though. And perhaps a different style of spectacles might help.

Behind her, in the mirror, was the face of the little girl, white with a wave of hair over one eye. Her expression re-formed from a look of desolation to a grin of malign triumph.

She spun round and found herself looking at a portrait.

It was old. Sixteenth century, by the clothes and style of painting. The face was unmistakable, though. Kate wondered at the trick of making the expression change. Was this one of those ingenious puzzle paintings so prized by cleverclogs Renaissance patrons?

She'd been too taken with the mirrors and her own silly self, to pay much attention to the pictures. Now she looked at them. The same face appeared over and over, in different styles and modes of dress. One woman was seen at four ages. Father Merrin had said Mater Lachrymarum had four aspects. 'A child, a young woman, a mature woman, and a crone... she is a complete cycle.'

The young woman was Viridiana, the lay worker Kate had seen at the Vatican, and the crone was Santona, the fortune-teller. The child  -  'the most terrible, for she is an innocent, and has the ruthlessness of innocence'  -  she would never forget. Only the mature woman, somewhat blowsy and overripe, was unfamiliar, though she saw in the harlot the last traces of Viridiana and the beginnings of Santona.

A door opened. Kate was getting tired of this Cat and the Canary business. If this were supernatural trickery, it was nothing Orson Welles couldn't contrive with levers and distracting flourishes.

Laughter bubbled from the top of a staircase. A woman's laughter, rich and lewd. Music also sounded, very loud. A choral work, played too fast, a mass for something unholy. She couldn't help but think of this as sound effects. The walls shook with the racket.

She shrugged and climbed the stairs.

The landing was dark, but lamps came on with a lightning flicker as she set foot on the carpet. There was probably a tilting panel under it.

The music and laughter came from a room on the other side of a gallery. She went around the landing, which was a balcony in a huge ballroom. The floor below was a pool of darkness. Along with music, she heard whispers, as if every word ever said in this house were still trapped here.

This door hung open. Lights moved within the room.

Kate crossed another threshold and entered a whore's palace. The room was dominated by a four-poster bed, curtained with many tassels. Pornographic pictures covered the walls. A stench of rotten perfume hung in the air. The light was redder than blood, a solid scarlet.

The curtains opened, and she saw Marcello in the arms of a giantess, face buried in her bosom. The woman laughed, enormous mouth stuffed with food, lipstick smeared over her chin. This was the last aspect of Mater Lachrymarum, the harlot, the liar.

'Welcome to Mamma Roma's boudoir, missy,' she said.

Kate's heart was a stone.

She didn't care about the Crimson Executioner, about the vampire slayings. She was flattened to have been abandoned for this gross creature.

Mamma Roma shrieked with laughter and clasped Marcello so close to her mountain of flesh that he might have suffocated. Kate wished he would stifle himself on those gargantuan teats. Like all men, the only woman he could really surrender to was Mamma. He cared only for the breast, not the heart.

Was she crying? Again?

She turned and tried to flee, but tripped on thick carpet and sprawled on the landing. Something held her down.

She had to listen to their intercourse, the great gurgling, farting, squelching of it, the barks of laughter and joy, the grunts of pleasure and pain. Her own sobbing didn't drown out the din. She was shrinking inside herself. Contracted to a point, she vowed this was all she would be in the future, an appetite with teeth. Penelope had learned within days of her turning the lesson which had eluded Kate until now.

For the first time in seventy years, Katharine Reed felt like a proper vampire.

Soon, she would rise and prey.

Slim, naked ankles caught her attention. She looked up. Viridiana stood over her, robed simply, face shining. The young woman was almost sorrowful.

She helped Kate stand and straightened her spectacles.

Kate was taller than this girl. She could tear open her throat and drink her blood.

No. Viridiana was only a quarter of a creature. If she attacked, Kate would face the whole woman, the Mother of Tears, the Monster of Rome.

'Why?' Kate asked. 'Why everything?'

'I can only tell the truth,' Viridiana replied. 'I cannot explain it. Come.'

She led Kate to another room.

In the swinging of a door, Viridiana was gone. Inside, in her bower, Santona awaited.

'Why?' she asked again.

'Cities can die, Katharine Reed from Ireland. And this city is my home, my empire. Roma rises and falls like the tide, but it is always alive, in turmoil. Those who are old, though not as old as I, are a danger to the heart and soul of Roma. Creatures like you slow down the processes of life, still blood in the veins, turn a city brittle. In time, too many elder vampires will exhaust a place, make it like the things which stumble and chew in I Cessati Spiriti. I am old, older than you can imagine, but I have a reflection, a heart, a life. All I have done I have done for Roma.'

'The Crimson Executioner is your creature?'

An actor, at my direction? Yes.'

Kate understood this woman. She felt in herself the beginnings of an elder.

'You're like us,' Kate accused. 'You don't let men's minds alone, you make them puppets. You demand blood, as we do. You demand love and worship.'

Santona nodded. 'But I can also give, Katharine. Can you say as much?'

She had loved Charles. She did love Marcello.

No.

She had loved Marcello. She did love Charles.

Life or death didn't matter.

'Yes,' she said, 'I can love.'

Santona considered the statement.

'I see you speak the truth. But you are changing. In the end, you all change. You have died. For you, feelings are a habit you outgrow.'

'That makes it all right to kill us? If we can't love, you can destroy us?'

'If you couldn't love, would you want to endure?'

'To endure? That's all there is for you, Mother of Tears. You live only to live on.'

'Perhaps.'

'Is it over yet? Are the elders all dead or gone? Are you now unchallenged in your reign over this bloodied ground?'

'One remains. She will be dead by dawn. Truly dead.'

Kate turned to leave the room, the house, the city.

Marcello stood in the doorway.

'Kate,' he said, 'I am sorry.'

He took off his sunglasses. Tears poured from his eyes.

'I was a fool,' he admitted. 'You are the first woman on the first day of creation. You are mother, sister, lover, friend, angel, Devil, earth, home. I love you entirely. I was misled by this creature. You are all things.'

It was overwhelming.

She slipped into his arms and received kisses. A burst of relief flooded her. The witch had been wrong. Kate Reed could love and be loved. That made her more than a zombie, gave her a right to live.

Marcello's arms were all the world to her. She nestled against his chest. Her tears were hot and happy.

One remains. She will be dead by dawn. Truly dead.

Damn. Why couldn't she forget?

'Stay with me, my love, my love,' Marcello whispered. 'Stay forever, my love.'

Now, her heart really did die.

'I can't,' she said, pushing him away.