The Bloody Red Baron: 1918

'I suppose it makes her better than me, that she would not change a man's mind through underhand means, even if it were for the best.'

'Believe me, Genevieve would not claim to be better than anyone.'

'Genevieve? A pretty name. I hate her already.'

Beauregard remembered pain. And more pleasant things. There was a fan of red in the sky.

'We don't have much time left,' Gertrud Zelle said, businesslike.

'It is regrettable,' he agreed.

'Very well. For the sake of your vampire lady, I shall pass on to you my surviving secret. You have been kind when you need not have been, and this is my gift to you. Use it as you will. Win the war, if it can be won.'

Was this some trick?

'No, Charles,' she said, either reading the surface of his mind or following his obvious thought process, 'I am not the Scheherezade of the age. I shall not delay my final appointment.'

He tried to think around this development.

'Convince me, Gertrud. Convince me I am not to be your last victim.'

'That is not unfair, Charles. I shall mention a place and a name. If you are interested, I shall continue.'

Beauregard nodded. Gertrud Zelle smiled again, as if laying down face cards.

'Château du Malinbois,' she said. 'Professor Ten Brincken.'

This was what he had hoped for. Another strand of the spiderweb.

I’m convinced,' he said, trying not to let his eagerness show.

'See,' she said, fang glistening, 'a vampire always knows. I'll make it brief and simple. You can take notes, if you wish. The world has made of me what it would, and I make no excuses for myself. I have followed the dictates of my heart, even when such courses were patently unwise ...'

A small crowd of journalists and interested parties huddled around a brazier on the parade ground. The last snowfall was gone, though patches of gritty ice would have made actual parade hazardous. Beauregard looked at faces. None of Gertrud Zelle's 'admirers' thought it worth while attending this performance.

Was her story another farewell performance? It was possible she hoped in death to spread some misleading lie, distracting him from whatever the Germans were really about at Malinbois. He was inclined to believe her. The Graf von Dracula was a Gothic thinker and her narrative was a Gothic tale, with castles and crypts and blood and doomed noblemen. He had filled the remainder of his notebook with shorthand.

The soldiers of the firing squad stood as if for inspection. Boys with ancient eyes. After four years, not only the undead looked older than their faces. Beauregard wondered if these poilus would be happier if the prisoner at the stake were Mireau. In the ranks, the general was hated more than the Kaiser.

'Charles,' a woman's voice cut through his musings. 'We meet in the most odd places.'

The small vampire was dressed in jodhpurs and a Norfolk jacket, reddish hair done up under an oversized tweed cap, eyes shielded by thick blue-tinted glasses. Her clear voice retained a little Irish.

'Kate,' he said, surprised and pleased. 'Good morning.'

She slipped off her glasses and squinted at the fading blush in the dingy grey sky.

'It's morning, at least.'

Kate Reed was ten years his junior, turned at twenty-five. In thirty years of the vampire life, her eyes hadn't aged.

The journalist had been something of a heroine in the Terror, editing an underground periodical, two hops ahead of the Carpathian Guard. She was no less critical of authority in the age of Good King Victor. A Fabian Socialist and advocate of Home Rule, she wrote for the New Statesman and the Cambridge Magazine. Since hostilities had commenced, she had been twice expelled from France and once imprisoned in Ireland.

'I thought you were recalled to London,' he observed.

She gave a smart, sharp little smile, eyes twinkling. 'I retired from Grub Street, then volunteered as an ambulance driver. Our old friend Mina Harker is on the committee, still trying to make things right. I was shipped back on the next boat.'

'So you're not a reporter?'

'I'm an observer, always. It is a thing we vampires are good at. It comes from a long life and too much spare time.'

Dawnlight speared across the ground and she put her glasses back on.

He shared a history with Kate Reed. They were both creatures of another century. She was fitter by far to survive this new era.

'I have always admired you,' he said.

'You talk as if it were yourself they wanted to shoot.'

'Maybe they should. I'm tired, Kate.'

She took his hand and squeezed. He tried not to let her see she was hurting him. Like many vampires of comparatively recent vintage, she did not know her own strength.

'Charles, you are perhaps the last decent man in Europe. Do not be disheartened, no matter what. The "War to End War" talk may be rot, but we can make a truth of it. This is our world as much as it is Ruthven's or Dracula's.'

'And hers?'

He pointed with his head. As the sun cleared the barracks, Gertrud Zelle was led out by the turnkey and two guards. At her own request she was veiled to protect her sensitive face from the light. She refused the blindfold and insisted no priest be present.

'Madame Mata Hari has been silly,' Kate snapped. 'I've little enough sympathy for her. Good men died wholesale because of her wiles.'

'You are a Fabian patriot.'

'There's nothing wrong with Britain that impaling the Prime Minister wouldn't cure.'

'Now you sound like Vlad Tepes.'

'Another gentleman who would be much improved by the addition of a length of stout hawthorne.'

'I read your piece on the trial, Kate.'

She fluttered a little, trying to swallow vanity. 'And ...?'

'You said what had to be said.'

'But the warm-blooded, cold-souled General Mireau still struts like a scarfaced peacock and rattles his medals at vampire fillies, kneeling at Mass with a conscience as clear as Vichy water.'

'You should know by now that commanders-in-chief make it a point of honour not to follow the advice of mere journalists. I am sure General Petain read your articles with interest.'

'I have more to write. Mireau must be brought to book.'

'And Sir Douglas Haig?'

'Him too, and the bloody lot of them.'

Gertrud Zelle stood against a pole as a guard tied her hands. She held her veiled head high, unafraid.

'Queen of the May,' Kate commented.

The sergeant of the execution party read out the verdict of the court. His thin voice was lost in the bitter wind. At least ten counts merited death. With the sentence read, the sergeant rolled up the paper and stuck it in his belt. He drew and raised his sword; eight soldiers lifted rifles and took aim. Seven silver bullets and one plain lead. Any man could have the dud and tell himself he had not fired a killing shot.

The sword wavered and fell. Shots clustered in the prisoner's torso. A stray pocked the ground a dozen yards behind the pole. Gertrud Zelle's head hung and the veil slipped from her like a scarf, wisping away on the wind. Early-morning sun fell on her face, browning it quickly. Smoke seeped from her mouth and eyes.

'That's that, then,' Kate said. 'Beastly business.'

Beauregard knew it was not finished. The sergeant walked across the parade ground and stood by the truly dead woman, sword like a scythe.

'Good Lord,' Kate said.

With a stroke, the sergeant sank his sword into Gertrud Zelle's neck. The blade bit bone. He had to press gauntleted hands against hilt and point, forcing the silver-steel edge clear through into the post. The head fell to the ground and the sergeant picked it up by the hair, holding it for all to see. The face burned black, cat eyes shrunk like peas.