Dracula Cha Cha Cha (Anno Dracula #3) 6

GELATI

She looked Genevieve's Vespa over with some trepidation. The little motor-scooter was white with red trim, aerodynamically styled like an American wireless set. A great devotee of the bicycle in her younger days, Kate hadn't had much luck with motorised vehicles. In her experience, wonderful new contraptions had a habit of trying to kill her.

'It's the only way to get about,' Genevieve declared. 'I can nip in and out between stalled cars.'

'I'll bet you get honked at a lot.'

'Well, yes.'

Genevieve smiled as if Kate happened to be in town to sample the nightlife and look at the ruins.

They hadn't talked, really. About Charles.

Genevieve sat forward on the long seat, telling Kate to climb up behind and hang on. The ride was swift and thrilling, affording the welcome comfort of a breeze and a few routine brushes with death. Genevieve knew her way about the narrow streets and through hidden courtyards and piazzas. She handled her trusty steed with practised expertise. Whizzing past stalled motorists, she waved cheerfully at a chorus of rude horns.

Clinging to Genevieve's back, with blonde hair blowing at her face, Kate realised she was at the point of being seduced. When she returned to London, she'd consider buying a scooter. She might cut a tidy figure going around Highbury Corner on a little dream machine like this. She'd draw appreciative sighs outside the coffee bars along Old Compton Street. And she could cut through the knot of Teds who liked to block her way to the launderette.

They zigzagged away from the Piazza di Trevi toward the Piazza di Spagna, then up a steep side-road. Kate clung to her hat. Genevieve drove her back to the Hassler.

In the hotel lobby, she reclaimed her suitcase from an imperious uniformed functionary. She wondered if the management had cleared out Count Kernassy's suite.

Sergeant Ginko, Silvestri's pet, was questioning some maids. The investigation must be proceeding along the usual channels, trying to establish something in the Count's past that would lead to the killer. It wasn't likely to be a fruitful avenue: she thought Kernassy was murdered for what he was, not for anything he had done.

Had the news got to Penelope? Was it in the daily papers? Surely, Marcello must have sold the story. Kate would have done in London.

Genevieve lifted her sunglasses to examine marble and gilt. Rich people with expensive luggage streamed steadily into the lobby.

'You came straight here from Fiumicino? You must like the high life, Kate.'

Kate shook her head. She felt out of place here, a mouse at a banquet.

'I went along with things because it was easier. As usual, it's landed me in trouble.'

She remembered the cadre of bellhops swarming in Malenka's wake, trying to claim her luggage from Klove. Only half a day ago.

'They say the waiters here are tres delicious,' Genevieve said, peering into the empty, shadowed bar.

'They are,' Kate agreed.

Genevieve looked, almost admiring, at her.

'You are a dark horse.'

Genevieve was fond of English idioms. She picked them up from Charles.

Kate had an idiom too. 'When in Rome...'

'I think you are a wicked girl,' Genevieve said, affectionately. 'Charles should've warned me.'

It was the first time Genevieve mentioned him. They would have to talk. Soon.

Genevieve realised it too, and suggested they slip off for gelati. Kate agreed. They left the lobby, Kate carrying her suitcase. Genevieve's Vespa looked impertinent parked outside the Hassler, so near the Spanish Steps. Genevieve gave her scooter an affectionate little pat, and tipped the doorman to watch over it.

They walked down the steps, against the human tide. Warm people in summer dresses strolled past. The few early-bird vampires among them wore enveloping robes like desert sheiks. Everyone had huge hats and dark glasses. Kate spotted fashions that would be in London by Christmas.

At the foot of the steps, a row of young artists  -  all berets and beards, as if they were dressing the part  -  sat on stools, doing sketches of the tourists. Kate could never walk past a group like this, in London or Paris, without being tempted. After seventy odd years without a reflection, she had a constant, nagging curiosity about how she looked. She remembered the shadow she'd seen in the waters of the Trevi Fountain, and shivered.

Genevieve knew a cafe opposite the house where John Keats had died. It was surprisingly neglected by the tourists who frequented the Museo Keats-Shelley.

'It's a vampire place,' she explained. 'Alive by night.'

They were given a table under a black awning. The cool shade was delightful. Kate touched her face and found it still hot from the sun. Genevieve ordered in Italian, and two tall glasses of soft crimson ice cream were presented. Kate touched hers with a long spoon, dislodging the cherry on top.

'The management claims they import Abyssinian virgins, but they use sheep's blood really.'

Kate had tried blood ice cream before. Crunchy rather than creamy, it was an unsatisfying blend of tastes and sensations. This was different.

'It's lovely,' she admitted, throat a-tingle.

'This is a city for the senses,' Genevieve said. 'A place for the heart, not the head. If you want to think, you go to Paris; if you want to feel, you come to Rome. After a while, it'll drive you mad. I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to stand it, after...'

She left the sentence unfinished.

'How is he?' Kate asked, directly.

Genevieve angled her head in thought, frowning a little. She slipped her sunglasses up into her hair like an alice band. Kate saw hurt in her eyes.

'From day to day, he fades. There's no single illness, only old age. The things which hold him here are passing.'

'Is it too late? For him to turn?'

Genevieve pondered a moment. Kate knew she must have been fretting with the question. Why hadn't she done anything, made a decision?

'The Church says there's such a thing as deathbed conversion,' said Genevieve. 'I don't know why it wouldn't be possible. To turn, you only have to be near death.'

'You have no get?'

The other vampire shook her head.

'In all these centuries, there's been no one?' Kate asked.

Genevieve looked a little sad and shrugged, a very French gesture.

'For the first four hundred years, I had to hide. You weren't a vampire then, Kate. Before Dracula came to London and the undead population exploded, many vampires felt turning was a curse, not a blessing. They believed they'd sinned so dreadfully they were barred from Heaven. Even now, I'm not sure the Changes were all for the best.'

'You can't mean that, Genevieve.'

'You are still young, Kate.'

Kate felt pinpricks of anger. Genevieve was acting like the typical elder. Seen everything, done everything, know everything. Pretty much bored with it all.

'You have no get, either.'

'I'm not sure about my bloodline,' Kate said. 'Of the many my father-in-darkness turned, I'm the sole survivor.'

The majority of those who turned vampire failed to live out their normal lifespan, let alone become elders. New-borns of tainted bloodline did not grow true. When a warm person turned, they went through a moment of liquid malleability. At that point, it took a strong mind to stay whole. Many condemned themselves to a brief, painful shamble through the dark.

'Charles is alive because of us, Kate. You and I, we have drunk from him. Touched his life. We have not turned him, but we have changed him. He is a part of us and we a part of him. Sometimes, he gets us mixed up in his mind. He looks at me and sees you.'

'And Pamela?'

Now Genevieve was pained. Skilled readers of emotion, they could hold a conversation via tiny expressions.

Kate regretted her angry spark. She shouldn't underestimate the depth of the woman's feeling for Charles. What distinguished Genevieve Dieudonne from most elders was that she could love, genuinely. Many elders couldn't even love themselves.

'Yes,' Genevieve admitted. 'More and more, there is Pamela.'

'You never knew her.'

Pamela Churchward, Penelope's cousin, had been a few years older than Kate. She'd known how Kate, then a near-blind warm adolescent carrot-top, felt about Charles, and always took the trouble to be kindly. Pam died young, in India, miscarrying Charles's child. The terrible, bloody business had affected Charles, turned him toward duty, away from himself.

Charles's engagement to Penelope was a futile attempt to get Pamela back. That hadn't been fair, especially to Penny. Kate thought not being Pam was what had driven Penny to Lord Godalming and the Dark Kiss.

'Pamela was more like you than Penelope,' Kate said.

'And more like you than me,' Genevieve replied.

'Only because I wanted to be like her. Penny did too, and even Mina Murray. Pam was the original and we the poor copies.'

'Tchah! You've had eighty years to become a real live girl, Kate. Pamela had a few summers of seeming perfection. Even Charles knows that had she lived, she'd have been like the rest of us. Not a saint, but a struggler.'

Unexpectedly, Genevieve took Kate's hand.

'One of us must turn him,' she said, red tears in her eyes. 'We can't let him go.'

'Even if that's what he wants most? To be with Pamela, not...'

'Not me? Or you, Kate.'

When Charles died, it would be the end of the warm world for her. He was the last living survivor of her girlhood. But it was Charles the man she wanted to hold on to, not Charles the Victorian, the right-thinking, honourable, good-hearted servant of Queen and Country.

This century was such a mess.

'After true death, is there anything?' Kate asked.

Genevieve let Kate's hand go as if it were electrified.

'How should I know?'

'All your years. You were a supernatural being.'

'We are all supernatural beings, the warm no less than the undead. When I was a girl, I couldn't separate religion from the Church. That was a temporal institution, devoted to the perpetuation of its power. When I turned, we were persecuted. Those who tracked us down and destroyed us did so in the name of God. In this century, we are all creatures of science, our mysteries dissected. Those who have tried to destroy us have done so in the name of science, in a calculated attempt to eliminate an evolutionary competitor. It's all the same.'

The Nazis had tried to purge most vampire bloodlines. Even now, Kate occasionally heard warm people mutter that Hitler had been right about that.

Ever since she could think for herself, Kate had been an agnostic. Now, she wondered about the immortality of the soul.

'There are vampires, Genevieve. There are werewolves. Are there ghosts?'

'I think so, though I've never seen one.'

'As a girl, I fancied I saw dozens. I went through a spiritualist craze, along with half the world. Ectoplasm and table-rapping. It was all very "scientific", you know. We Victorians wished to map the afterlife as we had mapped Africa. We wanted to believe death was a change, not an ending. Of course, that's exactly what it turned out to be for some of us, for me. When I turned, I lost interest. Only recently have I realised the puzzle wasn't solved but abandoned. At first, being a vampire seemed like being immortal. Then I realised how few of us even live a long time. Last night, I saw two elders die in an instant, like anyone else. We'll both end, Genevieve. Then what?'

Their gelati had melted.

'This is perhaps an overly momentous conversation for such a time and place,' Genevieve said. 'This is a city of life and death. Those great matters will attend to themselves without us. We are just a pair of pretty old ladies...'

'Less of the "old", Grandmama.'

'We should take young lovers and have them buy us clothes.'

Kate thought of Marcello and blushed.

Damn. Genevieve would, of course, notice.

Kate looked away, letting the shadow of her hat fall over her face.

'Kate?'

Genevieve reached over and lifted up Kate's hatbrim.

Wiping away tears, she found herself giggling.

'Kate, you've been here less than a day...'

Genevieve was astonished but not displeased. She laughed out loud.

'Kate Reed, you're a dark horse. And no mistake.'