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’Absolutely not, norina Reed We have not done with you yet I insist you join our party this evening You and Signorina Churchward have ht It is thestreet in the world’

Kate’s rented flat was in the Holloway Road Not even thestreet in North London She allowed Count Kernassy to overwhelnorina Reed, Marcello,’ Kernassy said, suavely co

’But of course,’ Marcello said, his first words of English

’I’m rather afraid Marcello despises us,’ Penelope said, politely ’He’s gathering material for a novel which will put us all in our places His subject is the eht-lives of the eternal rich’

From the set of his mouth, Kate knew Marcello understood what Penelope had said He had son

’Do you still write for the papers, Katie?’

’Yes’

’I thought so’

Penelope sat back Kate feared she was reddening

’Will you write about Malenka?’ she asked Marcello

Kate wondered why her stoht And whether she could have coed and expressively tilted his head

’She is like a big doll,’ he said, trying to sneer

Kate knew at once the reporter was smitten with the starlet and felt unaccountably betrayed The city was doing so to her It was a hypnotic spell in ’Arrivederci, Ro into an idiot

Her throat prickled with red thirst

’But of course he rite ofaround the Italian ’There raphs It is a legal requirement’

Kate wondered if Marcello disliked the Count’s patronising purr There was steel in Kernassy’s velvet, as if he had a hold over the reporter Perhaps it was as easy to buy an Italian newspaperman as a passport official

The Fiat crossed the Tiber at the Ponte Sisto and followed the Ferrari through the crowded streets of Campo de’ Fiori and Piazza della Rotunda Traffic horns honked a Spike Jones symphony, punctuated by rude shouts and appreciative cries Couples ongirls grinned sweetly at stalledin the road rather than the pave the under the streetlights, driven by sharp-eyed children

’Italian cars are for speed,’ said Marcello, ’but Italian cities are not for cars One can only drive through theentina, a football game was in process Three-dozen youths booted a ball about a crowds When the Ferrari drove into the square, the match was abandoned and the players clamoured around Kate wondered which chassis they worshipped reat deal of whistling and sta Malenka stood up in the car and waved

Everyone wanted red kisses Malenka bestowed a few on favoured lads, nipping slightly She licked blood off her lips, and esture which parted the sea of people They were able to drive on

Hoots followed them

Kate’s teeth were sharp and hera va like an addiction To blood, and all that ca The ere addicted to food and drink, of course, and to air? But the vaer, crueller, more insistent

’For whom do you write?’ she asked Marcello

He rattled off nai, Europeo

’Marcello once sold the exact same story to Paese sera and Osservatore Ro

’She won’t understand why that’s a, Count,’ Penelope said, sweetly ’Katie, Paese sera is the newspaper of the Italian Communist Party, and Osservatore Ro no shame

’They are deadly enemies, you see, the priests and the reds,’ Penelope explained further

Kate wondered if anyone would mind if she killed Penny

The Count had a suite at the Hotel Hassler, a baroque renificence at the top of the Spanish Steps The elder tipped the dooring in her pensione

Kate, Penelope, Tom and Marcello sat in the crowded bar while Kernassy and Malenka settled in upstairs Klove ferried many trunks from the Fiat up to the suite Kate was self-conscious about her own tiny suitcase Penny - correctly - a poverty of wardrobe

Marcello and Tom drank espresso, and Penelope insisted Kate sample the va waiter He wore a finely striped waistcoat and very tight black trousers Penny ordered a measure for herself - to be sociable, she said - and one for Kate

The waiter deftly popped a snap-fastener on his cuff and rolled up his sleeve A tourniquet was tied around his elbow, and a steel needle was stuck into a fat vein in his lower arot

He twisted open the tap and allowed a brief squirt of his blood into a thin cocktail glass Penelope nalled hio on The waiter twice measured two inches of the red stuff over ice and a slice of leave him a handful of lire and waved him away He couldn’t serveto be relieved Kate wondered how hts a week he worked Did poverty-stricken Southerners dribble away their lives to send money home to their fae-points extended

’Good health,’ she said, clinking Kate’s glass and sipping

Kate looked at Marcello, wondering if he were disgusted by this display She couldn’t tell He held up his tiny coffee cup in a parody toast

All three of her coue to the cocktail

It was a rush She had not had huulp It was rich and would iddy if she tossed it down She savoured a peppery ainst the back of her throat, then sed denorina Reed, is it true what they say of Italian men?’ asked Marcello ’Is our blood hot?’

’This isn’t,’ she said ’It has ice in it’

Marcello senuine sweetness

’It would have to,’ Tom said ’Or you’d flame away’

Kate sensed a fastidiousness in Penelope’s American friend If he disliked public displays of va around Penny? Was he jealous that she was drinking the decanted blood of an anonyht from the barrel?

It would take a while to sort all these people out in her ht, she saw them at all She could cheerfully avoid Penny for the rest of her visit and knew Tom would prefer her out of the way, but Count Kernassy appeared uncommonly decent for one of the old ones And Marcello

Malenka swept into the bar in a new dress and caused a sensation

Kate assumed the Via Veneto was less likely to be bowled over by Malenka Thepeople in the world gathered here nightly She was sure she spotted Jean-Paul Sartre outside the Cafe de Paris, shrinking under the awning as Siway into submission Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer strolled past arm in arm, a pack of worshipful urchins at their heels

But Malenka conquered all

Her gown, from the House of Massi Midnight black velvet, it was cut low, slashed high and had round s at the waist Malenka was one of those vae would explode the whole asseo fur rithed on her wide, white shoulders - she had huge, lady-wrestler shoulders, Penny eagerly pointed out - as if it still had some remnant of life

The Count displayed his niece She rested a hand on his ar the elder into peruely escorted by Marcello and Tom, followed paces behind the main attraction The faithful Klove was somewhere near in case anyone was too overenthusiastic in their attentions

The paparazzi ran in a pack, snapping at Malenka, insatiable and insistent Kate was sure she would show up as a se in the corner of a lot of pictures She didn’t photograph well

They went fro for drinks at each Marcello stayed with espresso but Tooaded Kate into ht be so in these stories of the virile blood of Italian id whenever she thought she was turning clingy or cluut a nun with a breadknife tonight and no one would notice She was carried along in Malenka’s tide

At each stop, youths offered their necks to Malenka Some she petted, solutted, and yet she was still white as bone and ice Kate gathered that one war to complain

At each cafe, and in the streets, there was ra, cheering people One irritating song was everywhere When Kate realised what it was called, she had the presence of hast

Malenka sailed on in rhythave three sudden thrusts with her hips and elbows

Cha cha cha

’It’s for the wedding,’ Penelope told Kate ’E, really Princess Asa hates it’

Drac-u-la, Drac-u-la

Dra Cha cha cha

Malenka danced as she walked Supposedly phlegmatic sophisticates stopped to stare Famous people allowed thereat Technicolor pageant of her procession The television playwright Clare Quiltysensation, and said so waspish about overdevelopment to his wraithlike vaistered ed in any of his films The Polish olf Walde bad wolf in the Tex Avery cartoons

Appalled and astonished, Kate looked at Marcello Without taking his eyes off of Malenka’s rotating derriere, he shrugged and lit another cigarette She waved her fingers to catch his attention He offered her his cigarette case and she took one, to smoke the taste of blood out of her hter and she bent to suck fla here

She looked around and saw Penelope and Toripping his arm Thatthrough to Malenka and the Count, pestered Marcello and Kate He told theo away and that he was a nobody like theh to shield her eyes

’I’ll have to get sohed ’Everybody wears the It is a Roone The Count was taken up with Malenka His pro sun So ht look after her, though his attention, like everybody else’s, was fixed on Malenka No, his attention was different She recognised an ironic distance He wasn’t involved He took it all in, to write about later

She was a bit like that too

But Malenka had bewitched him, as she had all other men It must be those ridiculous breasts And all that hair

A satyr-bearded man in a polo-neckjerseyjumped out of a pal Malenka to ’cha cha cha’ over him Klove picked him up and shoved him back into the crowd

Cha cha cha

Suddenly, it all see, and Marcello politely joined in

’Drac-u-la Dra cha cha cha,’ she gasped,arm movements ’Cha cha cha!’

It was all too silly

Marcello stopped her falling down

Time passed in a rapid blur More cafes, more famous faces, more crowds A constellation of flashbulb supernovae Malenka wanted to visit this bar, to be snapped with that picturesque orphan, to sample a specific waiter’s blood in a certain out-of-the-way trattoria, to be seen in front of every fa a surprised country priest and show him her teeth

Kate wondered howthe distance in the hope that Malenka’s miracle dress would collapse completely Already, her cha cha cha had torn new splits over her hips, causing great exciteht it the fashion equivalent of an ice sculpture, crafted to last for only so long Before dawn, it would fall away in pieces and the photographers would finally get the shots they needed to coh it Without him, she’d have been left behind in some cafe, like her suitcase (which was at the Hassler, she remembered) She considered a dozen different ways to ask if he would care to have her nip his neck, trying to fra herself politely but not insistently to hi close to rape

He was a bit irritated with her Every tiet closer to Malenka, she was in the way Sensing how he felt, she tried to be sober and didn’t do a good job of it Her expression must be comically soleh at her

The cocktails hadn’t helped The red thirst was gone, but the need was there Blood was not enough It was very civilised and lass and take it like a tonic, but she needed hu, the sighs in her ears, the unresisting body in her ar silly, quite as stupidly blatant as Malenka Penelope didn’t have to go through all this face-pulling to attract attention Or Genevieve, as French and only had to ignore a person for a few minutes to make him her slave forever

Kate noticed suddenly how hot it was Midnight had coht was still balmy and tropical Her face burned, as if she arm Blood-tides pounded in her temples, and she was unsteady on her feet

How did it happen? The crowds melted away Their footsteps echoed in empty streets Malenka still hummed the ’Dracula Cha Cha Cha’

Kate focused on soroup depicted King Poseidon and his Tritons, pouring forth water fro sea-horse, the other led a docile creature The sea-horses symbolised the unpredictable moods of the sea, her Baedeker said She’d planned to visit the Piazza di Trevi on her ’Ro away fifty lire andthe rim of the fountain pool and nuzzled up to Malenka’s pluainst hers Its white fur exactly matched her wrap

’Poor little lost dear,’ she said ’He must have milk’

It was a command She looked at Count Kernassy, and he looked at Marcello

’Everywhere is shut,’ he said ’Even in Roma’

’There will be somewhere,’ Malenka declared ’It would not do to let such a tiny beauty die of thirst’

Shesounds The cat climbed onto her head It curled up, like a slit-eyed busby

’Marcello, see to it,’ the Count said, coldly He handed over banknotes, which Marcello made disappear

Kate was embarrassed Marcello politely withdrew, in search of lasses She understood he was as much a pet as this suddenly adopted cat, and felt bad for him, bad about herself

She was more like him than she was like these people

Malenka leaped up onto the fountain The cat slid off her head and landed unsurprisingly in her cleavage, slipping cohtrope-tiptoed along the edge, then stepped into the water It rose to her thighs Her dress spread like a water lily

The cat was spooked It yowled and scratched Malenka bit into its neck and threw it away She wiped blood from her mouth with the back of her hand

They wouldn’t need milk any more

Kate sat down on a stone bench Her head span

Whatever the cat had sensed

Malenka’sthe Count to join her, letting the cascade fall on her hair, her face, her chest

’There are coins You can dive for treasure’

’You are mio tesoro, cara’

Malenka draped herself over a sea-horse, pointing her breasts at the stars

One of the cocktail waitersat all well Impressions filtered into her hing faerous cri

So fast and red bounded into the piazza Kernassy turned, cloak swirling, and was struck The elder was lifted up and tossed into the fountain His head was gone completely Blood fountained froled in the cloak The head soared and crashed into a pool, face powdering off it

Kate tried to sit up, but couldn’t

Malenka screa She leaped like a lioness Soot up and tried to step forward A hand took her by the back of the neck and made her watch She had seen true death come to many vampires Most elders went like Kernassy, turned instantly to dust and bones, centuries of age and decay catching up in seconds

So she’d never seen before happened to Malenka

If she had grown old as a oman, Malenka would have become fat It was in her body type, a ripeness ready to swell Now, pockets of blubber bulged under Malenka’s skin, inflating her face, her belly, her thighs, her torso, her are White stuff, veined with red, bubbled out of her rent skin Her dress exploded

Malenka boiled over Her cheeks expanded, and her forehead, her jowls, her throat, even her lips Her eyes stared in panic fro Kate was stabbed with guilt for having taken a petty dislike to this wo withoff their backs and the fingers

Kate was held fast like a kitten An outsize hand gripped the back of her neck, cla her shorn hackles She looked down The Count’s cloak floated like a wingspread of black duckweed Coins lay like a scatter of eyes on the pool-bed

She braced coainst the low stone rihter roared out of the Piazza di Trevi and up the Quirinal Hill The killer was bellowing gusts of triumphant hilarity The fountain’s rush was muted for a an to bend the wrong way Her thick specs, blobbed with droplets, slid down her nose, blurring everything further Fang-teeth sharpened in her mouth, an instinctive defence mechanism rather than a response to spilled blood She felt no flicker of red thirst, only disgust and puzzlement

The killer steadily forced her face to the water, as if he wanted to ht her of a bloodline susceptible to running water or, considering the nearness of the church of Santa Maria in Trivio, holy water If so, he rong She wasn’t even Catholic: water thrice-blessed by the Pope would only get her wet

Kernassy’s fleshless skull grinned fro coins Ribbons of old blood, the foul blood of the Dracula line, threaded through the water, notIt was sucked up fro all around like dead rain

Face near the surface of the water, dizzy from the stink of spoiled blood, Kate focused on the killer’s rippling reflection: crimson skull-cowl, black dorin Bare-chested, he displayed an expansively muscled and oiled torso

Her hands slipped froed into cold water She was shoved forward and her chest slalasses fell off and splashed into the fountain Without specs and with the agitation of the water, she glie between the wavelets - her own reflection, rarely seen It hadn’t vanished altogether like those of some vampires, or been stolen away like Peter Pan’s shadow But, since her turning, it was hard to find Only in extraordinary circumstances, like the imminence of true death, did her reflection come back

For a mad moment, she was distracted So this was how she looked with short hair Not bad - very mid-century, a sort of existentialist Joan of Arc She’d been teth red rope since the 1920s Only noith the European fashion for cropped bobs, had she dared ask her hairdresser to wield the silver scissors

The killer, laughing like a de her to the edge of the fountain He let go of her neck She reached behind, and her fingers scrabbled on histo be murdered by a Mexican wrestler It was too silly for words

If he kept pressing, her ribs would shatter If a broken bone stuck through her heart, she would die Again This time, it would take

The killer wasn’t a vath of wrist equalledpuh He was a warm man, alive

The noises of her body were more distinct than the crash of the water Blood pulsed in her ears Bones creaked inside her chest Her reflected face, clear now even to her fogged eyes, looked up in rabbiteyed panic She see woman, the 25-year-old twit she’d been in 1888 She was hurting, not a cohtly The laughter stopped

Kate’s first thought, a universal journalist’s instinct, was not to save herself but to understand She scooped up her wet specs, sliding theet up Even if she bent her neck back as far as it would go, she couldn’t see above the broad pool At the other side of the water was another reflected face

A little girl peered over the ri crescenthair, blonde like Genevieve’s Ripplesher head solemnly A tear crawled up her hollow cheek

Kate tried to think of the Italian for ’run away’

’Va,’ she tried to shout, coirl didn’t host in the water, stuck in time

The killer reather her vaers Her teeth beca up and balanced on the ri at eone, spirited away Kate looked across the piazza for the little girl She heard the rapid pit-pat of the child running off down the Via delle Muratte and saw the last of her shadow, enor hiss of the fountain returned, filling her ears

Her flash of anger passed, her teeth and claws receded In place of fighting rage, she had only puzzle She stood alone in Piazza di Trevi with the truly dead

Then Marcello caently set the bottle on the brick paveht in the sky Hating herself for living the cliche, she swooned in his arms