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NEW-BORN

Art had left Penelope to see herself out She was in a species of a swoon as he told her why he was dashing off Soreat iency Masculine matters, she assumed, and none of her concern It seereat wind blowing against hione and she was alone with herself

she was turning It was not what she expected She had been told it was quick: a brief pain like a tooth being pulled, then a period of dozing, coe of an insect, followed by a reawakening into the vahout her body, was terrible Suddenly, in a hot gush, her ed Kate had warned her, but she had forgotten At the moment, there was little consolation in the prospect that this was the last time such feminine inconvenience would bother her Vampire females, she understood, do not menstruate That curse was lifted forever As a woman, she was dead

on the divan where Art had taken her, where she had bled hiripped a bolster to her stomach She had expelled every scrap of food on to Art&039;s Persian carpet Then, in a more convenient moment, she had voided her bowels and bladder She understood why, even as he wasa hasty escape, Art took the trouble to tell her where his privy was During the turn, her body expelled all its wastes

She felt feverish and empty, as if her insides had been scooped out Her jaws ached as the buds of her teeth opened, sharp enaed, pointed teeth of the typical vampire This was not a pere in theto her new s

Why had she chosen this? She could hardly remember

Her hand was close to her face She saw veins and tendons under the skin, undulating like worerish diamond-shapes There were even a few coarse black hairs Her fingers had thickened and her engage cut into her skin

She tried to concentrate

Her hand stopped writhing and dwindled into its faue, she tested her teeth They were ser felt that her s

She was on her back, head lolling off the edge of the divan She saw the room upside-down Art&039;s father stood on his head in a full-length portrait A blue standing vase hung fro sharp fronds of white paed the roo board, blue flarew until they were all she could see The fever was in her brain In the fla He was fully clothed in evening dress but she was naked and bloody The faces were Charles&039;s and Pamela&039;s Then her cousin&039;s face became her own and Charles turned to Art They were clothed in flaain until the faces were unrecognisable Theyone four-eyed, two-rew and engulfed her completely

&039;Penelope for ever after,&039; she had shouted as a child &039;Long live Penny&039;

The flale shiver, she was instantly awake She tingled all over, clothing scraping her sensitive skin

She sat up and arranged herself on the divan Thefast She felt her neck and breast and could not find a trace of the wounds Art had hter and she saw into the shadowed corners She saw things differently There were subtler gradations of colour And she could ses were distinguishable, and not offensive She thought all her senses were sharpened Her tongue longed for new tastes She wished to experied feet to the bathroom There was, of course, no mirror She divested herself of her soiled clothes, and wiped herself off with a balled petticoat She washed herself all over In her former life, she had rarely been as completely naked Her old self seemed a dream She was new-born When satisfied that she was clean as any cat, she left the bathrooarments of her warmth were useless now, sodden with useless blood

Someone moved in one of the rooms off the corridor and she was instantly alert She ran her tongue over sharp teeth A door opened, and a thin face poked out Shocked by her nudity, Art&039;shis door behind hi her hands, she wondered if she could wrench open the door and get to the man She could smell his warm blood &039;Fi fifo fu one of the doors, she found Art&039;s dressing roo clothes was laid out ready for hi tall had been an embarrassment Her mother had trained her to sit down as often as possible and, without stooping, to arrange herself so she would not tower over a ht suited her well

She pulled on Art&039;s shirt and buttoned it up She ers were abler now and solved all the problems presented to them She threw aside Art&039;s underclothes and pulled on his trousers, fiddling with the unfamiliar braces until the contraptions set on her shoulders The garht, crotch snug, then shortened the braces to suit her She found a cravat and tied it around the too-large collar A waistcoat and a coat completed the ensemble Barefoot, she returned to the room where she had turned Her shoes were under the divan, and still fitted her She iined she cut quite a dash, and wondered what her fiance would think

Running her hands through her hair, she considered whether she should do anything to ht But she did not really care any more how she looked The dead Penelope would have been shocked senseless But the dead Penelope had been so different

She felt a twinge of thirst The taste of Art&039;s blood lingered in her ht But noeet and delicious And necessary What to do? What to do?

She did not know if she wasthis terribly well But if Kate Reed, who could barely pour tea fro Mrs Beeton, could become a successful vampire, then Penelope the Conqueror would not be daunted by the complications

In the hall, she found an opera cloak, lined with red silk It did not feel heavy She tried to set one of Art&039;s top hats on her head, but it slipped down around her ears and visored her eyes The only headgear on Art&039;s rack that could be made to suit her was a soft check cap with ear-flaps It hardly fit with the rest of the get-up she had appropriated but it would have to do She was at least able to bundle up her hair under the cap and get it out of the way Soirls cut their hair short, like a ht consider that

outside, the sun was rising She thought she should get ho the hours of daylight Kate told her the sun could harm new-borns She supposed she would have to put herself in the invidious and hu her advice on any number of unforseeable points

She left the house and found the earlythick Yesterday, she would not have been able to see the other side of Cadogan Square Now she could distinguish things a little better, although her vision was better with shadows than fog If she looked up at the foggy clouds that blocked the sun, her eyes stung She pulled her cap down, so the peak would shade her face

&039;Missy,at her out of the fog, dragging two sain - the red thirst, they called it - and herIt was not to be compared with the needs she had known as a o desire, a natural instinct on a level with the need to breathe

&039;Missy&039;

An old woman, her hand out, was before her She wore a tatty poke bonnet and a ragged shawl &039;Do you thirst,and her breath stank Penelope could sin had a , this was she

&039;For sixpence, you could drink your fill From one of irl child, one of a pair The face and hair were dirty but the girl was pale, led the scarf from a thin, many-times-scabbed neck &039;Just sixpence, irl&039;s neck, scraping scabs Tiny drops of blood welled The child ht in Penelope&039;s nostrils It was a hot, spiced, penetrating scent She thirsted

The girl was handed to her For a moment, she hesitated at the intimacy When warm, she had not cared to be touched, had especially not cared to be touched by children She had vowed after Pamela&039;s death never to submit to a man&039;s lusts, never to bear children That eventually caht of her wedding night That side of things had very little to do with her engage, ent of the turn There had been a carnal ele Now, it was acceptable, even desirable

&039;Sixpence,&039; the wo as Penelope concentrated on the child&039;s neck

With Art, the drinking of blood had been an unpleasant necessity She had felt a strange thrill, not quite indistinguishable fronant chore; this desire was different The turn had awakened soue to the open wound, her old self truly died As the blood trickled into her mouth, the new-born she had become awoke

She had chosen to becory with Charles, for his dalliance with that elder creature, for his failure to appear and y He treated the oman badly, but perhaps his attitude would be different if she turned All of that was absurdly by the bye

She gulped, feeling the blood seeping throughout her It did not just slip down her throat, but puh her face She felt it swelling in her cheeks, throbbing in the veins under her ears, filling out her eyes

&039;There now, missy You&039;ll polish her off Have a care&039;