Page 12 (1/2)

DEAD SOULS

More people were in Piazza di Trevi tonight It wasn&039;t yet ht Couples - other couples, Kate corrected herself - looked at the fountain, tossed in coins, uard

&039;The little girl was standing there,&039; Kate said, pointing across the piazza &039;Where that woman is&039;

Marcello tried to brush her hand down, but cath of wrist

&039;Be careful, Signorina Reed&039;

&039;Kate,&039; she insisted

&039;Kate It does not do to attract attention Especially with such creatures&039;

The woarette, legs dangling like a kid&039;s Her tiny face reirl&039;s, her blonde hair was cropped short She wore a ratty fur cardigan, a sweater with horizontal stripes, and a tight, short skirt

By gesture and ellipsis, Marcello tried to imply wordlessly that this woman was a prostitute

&039;Marcello, don&039;t be silly Do you think I don&039;t know a tart when I see one?&039;

On the whole, Kate got on ith prostitutes She&039;d interviewed dozens, dating back to the Whitechapel of Jack the Ripper Soht their blood Just now, she didn&039;t want to think about that

She concentrated on Marcello He was annoyed

The little whore noticed they and dutifully sashayed over, calculatedly o with the puppyish openness of her big eyes She argested she made herself available to too many vampires

&039;Ciao,&039; she squeaked &039;I am Cabiria It lish Cabiria was the name of the heroine of an Italian film spectacle Kate had seen before the First World War Obviously, its h to birth many heroines

Marcello tried to shoo off the whore, but Kate shushed him

&039;Do you come here often?&039; she asked

Cabiria was astonished by the question

Kate laughed &039;I&039;m sorry I really mean that Are you often in Piazza di Trevi?&039;

&039;Soood place Many tourists co spenders?&039;

&039;I&039;azza I saw her here&039;

The whore looked shocked and dreay Kate realised Cabiria thought her a bloodthirsty childimpression

&039;I think I can help you not&039;

&039;No,&039; said Kate, touching the woman&039;s arm &039;I didn&039;t mean it like that She was lost, I think I want to talk with her She saw so You&039;ve heard of the murders, of the Crimson Executioner?&039;

Cabiria crossed herself and spat

Kate had thought the whore little irl She was tiny and frail Her face was unlined and open, almost clownish But she must have been in her thirties She was frayed a bit, like her clothes Kate guessed she&039;d often been bruised

&039;Perhaps you should see fortune-teller,&039; Cabiria suggested

Marcello snorted He was trying to move off, to pull Kate away Kate held still She was interested

&039;I can take you It is not far Near my home&039;

&039;We have a car,&039; Kate said

Marcello was coldly angry He didn&039;t want a whore in his car, the precious red Ferrari (which wasn&039;t actually his - Penny let him have the use of it for reasons Kate couldn&039;t understand and orried about) That decided Kate The Italian reat fortune-teller of my district&039;

&039;Where do you live?&039;

&039;I Cessati Spiriti,&039; Cabiria said

Dead Souls Kate sensed Marcello&039;s rush of fear

&039;It is impossible,&039; he said &039;Kate, you do not knohat such a place is like&039;

For s were impossible, that places were terrible and off-limits They usually meant that poor people lived there Or there were sha to read about in the papers If Marcello had known her better, he&039;d have understood that telling her a place was io there

&039;I&039;ve been in bad places, Marcello,&039; she said &039;Worse than you can iine&039;

&039;Perhaps But you have never been in I Cessati Spiriti&039;

&039;It sounds fabulous&039;

&039;It is not so bad,&039; Cabiria said &039;The dead there are not swift like you, vampiro They are morti viventi, slow You have to watch over your shoulder&039;

Kate led them to the sports car Cabiria was struck onder at the ious object &039;Ferrari,&039; she repeated, over and over, eyes bri the mirror-finish of the body It was a nice car, but Kate couldn&039;t see what the fuss was about

Getting three of them into the two-seater was a squeeze, but Kate and Cabiria were se Cabiria put on a cloche hat Kate feared a little for her Dior Marcello let off the brakes and freed the beast under the bonnet For the first tienuinely rather than to punctuate boredom with politeness At the wheel, he was a little boy with a new toy, going &039;brooh the narrow streets at inadvisable speeds

On the drive across the city, Cabiria told her a little about I Cessati Spiriti, with Marcello adding o between the partisans and the Germans, the once-prosperous district was bombed heavily by the Allies A famous priest had been executed by the Nazis when Ro After the war, I Cessati Spiriti became a shanty-town, hoee, many ished to avoid the peacetime authorities, and the traditional poor The unplanned community expanded and collapsed in on itself overnramme to clear the slums and rebuild I Cessati Spiriti, but the funds allocated were diverted to the ot done was so shoddy it fell down at once The population of the district still swelled, flooded by escapees froht-ridden South With them came a new bloodline An epidemic cluster of the risen dead, brains burned out by fever, prompted much of the warm population to evacuate A hardy side sha morti viventi Cabiria had lived here ever since the War She seemed quite fond of the place Marcello, it turned out, had never been here

As it slid over trackless wasteland, cruising between huddles of patchwork shacks and piles of festering rubbish, the Ferrari must have looked like a spaceship Kate was reht of 1918 Open fires burned on the wastes like tribal beacons

Nearby, a knot of morti viventi was encircled by war torches Fro dead seemed like crippled traot too close to fire and went up like a screeching roman candle It fell in flames, and two youths battered its head with crowbars

Cabiria directed them to a street lined by the hulks of bos There were no streetlaht on bullet-pocked walls It was hard to believe this was in the same city as Via Veneto, but it was hard to believe Whitechapel was in the saton

It annoyed her that so much of the world was still like I Cessati Spiriti when it didn&039;t have to be

&039;I live there,&039; ventured Cabiria, pointing to a shattered apartest dropping by for a &039;visit&039; Kate intended to pay the whore for her troubles but didn&039;t want to take advantage of her services &039;And Signora Santona lives here&039;

Marcello parked by another raone, replaced with polythene sheets Solass between the beaten tin cans and taped-in cardboard

&039;I shall stay with the car,&039; Marcello announced

Kate couldn&039;t argue that wasn&039;t a sensible idea

Perhaps he&039;d be attacked by ht i him into an attackable situation in the first place Men were always unreasonable

Marcello sat in the car, angling the wing mirror so he could look in as ot out Standing on the pavement for a moment, Cabiria listened to the wind There were faint cries She shook her head and ventured on

The front door of the former church was boarded up, but a little door at the side led to a staircase that went down into the baseround,&039; she said &039;Watch your shoes&039;

At the bottoht canant water lay on top of a furry carpet Rough planks propped on bricksinto roo in the water

Business was being transacted in so down A waltz ground to a halt

Cabiria balanced like a tightrope walker on the planks, ar heels, tottered a little as she followed

Fro Behind the thin blanket burned a fire thatspurted and splattered against the blanket, and dribbled down There were swirls of red in the water

Cabiria pulled Kate on, past that roonora&039;s apartment,&039; she said

This doorway had an actual door It was bright blue, with gold crescents and silver stars Cabiria knocked on the door and a hole opened in the centre of a painted eye

&039;To see the fortune-teller,&039; Cabiria explained

The door was opened and the women allowed in

The fortune-teller&039;s servant was e-rinding jaw Face eyes betokened no intellect Kate understood this was a breed of va blood out of flesh rather than drinking froht of the someone as a reanimated automaton, entirely vacated by its former personality, was an excuse not to treat them as huue the assuood suit gone to the bad He had no shoes or socks His feet were black and ragged

He didn&039;t try to eat Kate or Cabiria, but led them into a labyrinth The fortune-teller&039;s aparte, and full of items perhaps accepted in payment Stacks of furniture, bundles of books, a pile of broken bicycles, jars of speci ailt picture frames, a rack of rifles Off in curtained rooms, morti viventi performed chores Kate didn&039;t understand

Santona sat cross-legged on a canopied palanquin, her barrel-body swaddled in many-coloured shawls, neck and wrists heavy with jewellery She was an old wolets were youthfully dark

Two more morti viventi attended the fortune-teller