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Genevieve reached out and took a fold of Dracula&039;s cape She whipped it away and cast it across the rooar like slashes in the hide of a brave bull at the end of the corrida

Someone - the Princess? - screamed

Dracula&039;s head was stuck on a wooden pole It had been raggedly sawn off

eway Plastered walls gave way to rough stone Attendants ran with her, the fla the low roof

A steward - Klove - was guiding her to Dracula&039;s lair

After all, there was more to his body than his head

The Princess was in shock, de that the murderers be put to the sword The Carpathian Guard had sealed off the palazzo Half the catering staff turned out to be policemen Inspector Silvestri kept pace with her He was the detective in charge of the Crimson Executioner case

The na yelled from the battlements

The Crimson Executioner! If this was his work, then it was thehad been able to carry off the head of Vlad Tepes Prince Dracula had died before, of course - even, she was sure, had been beheaded - but this was true death

That roll of the eyes, a final focusing on her, was the last of his tenacious spirit, fleeing the flesh, disappearing into the wherever Any other elder of his age would have turned to dust, but Dracula&039;s great will staved off bodily dissolution

There were offers already to buy the head The Inspector had left it in the care of Edgar Poe Famous quacks - Drs Hichcock, Schuler, and Genessier - were pro their services for the autopsy Ze do Caix?o had already tried to get close to Princess Asa and put in a bid for the funeral

Orson Welles ith thely for soht by the Ariadne thread of story, and was following it to the end

Cobweb curtains parted and the snificent catafalque, still leaking profusely at the neck-stuht black A red floas pinned to his chest with a silver sticker

The painted ceiling and walls of the toht date back to Ancient Rome, were redecorated with modern-art splatters of rich blood The Prince had drunk an ocean of blood in his undeath It all poured forth now in a ghastly torrent The place stank of the death of Dracula It was indescribably foul

Her attention was drawn by the silver knife in il principe&039;s heart It was a fa lost The silver scalpel of Jack the Ripper Charles Beauregard had shae Now it had been used to end another royal vampire&039;s life The red floas a frozen clot of Dracula&039;s heartsblood

&039;Someone is here still,&039; Silvestri said

Genevieve heard whirey face floating in the gloom Klove drew a curtain aside Cold air flowed into the tomb

An exhausted woman tumbled out, covered frolasses were thickly painted red, her hair was ore

PART FOUR

FUNERAL RITES

NOTICE OF DEATH FROM THE TIMES OF LONDON AUGUST 9TH, 1959

The true death is announced of Count Dracula, formerly Prince of Wallachia, Voivode of Transylvania and Prince Consort of Great Britain Born in 1431, turned vampire in 1476, Dracula was in warainst the Turk As an elder vae Byhis bloodline in Britain, he established himself not only as a statesenerations of vampire breeds Before Dracula, vampires were covert creatures, considered by endary spirits His presence in London h he was driven from the throne of Britain in 1897 and fell from power in Germany with the defeat of the Kaiser in 1918, Dracula survived the eddying tides of this turbulent century for far longer than ned the Croglin Grange Treaty with the Allied powers in 1943, he rallied an underground of elder and newborn vampires in South Eastern Europe to assist the invasions of Greece and the Carpathian Nations Without his influence, victory in the Second World War ht have been a far costlier and more protracted affair Since the War, Dracula has lived in h the recent announceement to Princess Asa Vajda fuelled speculation that a return to the stage of international politics was i wartime Allied leaders: Lord Ruthven, President Eisenhower, Marshal Zhukov, and General de Gaulle Alone ae in death to the King Vampire

It has become a commonplace in recent years for the new-born vampires of the 1880s and &039;90s, bewildered by the rapid changes of the atoia for the certainties and values of Dracula&039;s coe of Dracula as a tyrannic monster was enshrined by Bra chapter of Lytton Strachey&039;s Eminent Victorians (1918) This traditional portrait is qualified in revisionary, syu Summers&039;s Dracula: His Kith and Kin (1928) and Colin Wilson&039;s The Ih the old view is reinforced with conviction by Alan Clark&039;s The Monsters (1958) and Asa Briggs&039;s The Age of Impalement: 1885 - 1918 (1959) Daniel Farson&039;s controversial Vlad the Imposter (1959) advances the theory that the vampire Count Dracula was not the former Vlad Tepes, but an as-yet unidentified Transylvanian who assumed the name and title Farson lists many discrepancies between Dracula&039;s accounts of himself and what can be established of Vlad but, with his passing, it is unlikely this question will ever be resolved In death as in life, the Prince took pains to maintain his air of mystery

In Rome, a suspect is in custody in connection with the es Police Chief Francesco Polito has declared all effort will bethe murderer to justice It is speculated that the destruction of the most famous of all elders is the latest in a series of atrocities carried out by a vaoes colourfully by the name of the Crimson Executioner Garlands of traditional black flowers have been sent by ishers to Buckingham Palace, where they pose an embarrassment for a Royal Household which would perhaps prefer not to be reminded that Dracula was once Prince Consort The disposal of the estates and fortunes has yet to be decided; it appears that, after defying death for five hundred years, the Count died intestate The corpse is in the custody of the Ro in demand for release and burial Nicolae Ceau?escu, President of Romania, has refused perrave on the island ov, and Lord Ruthven, the Prime Minister, has ruled that a space in Westminster Abbey is &039;Sadly, out of the question&039;

See also (in our weekend-special edition):

DRACULA, AS I REMEMBER HIM, by the Prime Minister, Lord Ruthven

THE END OF AN ERA: THE PASSING OF THE FIRST AMONG VAMPIRES, by Dennis Wheatley

UNSOLVED CRIMES: THE FIVE HUNDRED YEAR CAREER OF VLAD TEPES, by Catriona Kaye

DRACULA: STATESMAN, GENERAL, HERO, by Enoch Powell

IS DRACULA REALLY DEAD?, by R Chetwynd-Hayes

AND GOOD RIDDANCE TO BAD RUBBISH!, by John Osborne