The Bloody Red Baron: 1918

Kate twitched her nose.

'You are blushing. It brings out your freckles.'

For a moment, she thought the bombardment was oddly regular, then she realised she was listening to Edwin's heartbeat, lulled by his strong pulse. Her glass was empty.

'Might I buy you a drink, Kate?'

'No thank you. I'm not thirsty.'

'I should have thought you were always thirsty.'

Her heart ached sharply. She would like a drink but not the sort Edwin might buy for her.

'My associate Charles Beauregard speaks highly of you, too. Though he made sure to remind me you were old enough to be my mother.'

'I am barely out of the cradle. I haven't been dead for thirty years yet.'

He was going to ask her what it was like. All young men did, eventually. It was a two-fold question: what was it like being a vampire, and what was it like to be bitten by a vampire?

The patron came over. Edwin ordered brandy giving her the chance to reconsider his offer.

'I'll take vanilla,' she said, like a silly girl in a Paris street café Edwin hadn't heard the expression before. She moderated her request to another blood-in-<mi5.

When he had sipped his drink, he looked at her and began, 'Kate

' "What is it like?"'

He was astounded she had read his mind, convinced of her supernatural powers. She was amused and a little triumphant.

'It is hard to explain. It is one of those matters one has to experience for oneself. Like war and love.'

Edwin considered her answer and looked her square in the face. Her tinted spectacles were no shield against his gaze.

'You are after me, Kate Reed. I'm not sure to what end, but I'm certain you are after me.'

She shrugged. 'You have a sweetheart at home?'

He weighed the possibilities and nodded. 'Catriona Kaye. We're engaged. She's very modern.'

'Unlike myself, a cobwebbed relic of another age.'

'She is a century baby. I call her Cat.'

'And so might I.'

The tang of Edwin's brandy was in her nose. The anis taste on her tongue did not dull her sense of him.

'Does your fiancée want you to turn?'

'We haven't discussed the matter.'

'You'll have to.'

'I like being warm.'

'Not a foolish thought.'

'You are no propagandist for the undead state, then?'

Edwin's breath misted. There was a February evening chill. The warm wore scarves and gloves.

'I'll take vanilla.'

'Pardon?'

'I am the only one of my sisters-in-darkness to survive. It is a thorny thing, this condition, not predictable. After thirty years, the doctors don't fully understand it. To turn is to gamble on one's own strengths. Most new-borns die unpleasantly.'

She had no doubt Edwin would turn magnificently. Even as a warm man, he had a vampire sharpness about him.

'Catriona is my name in Scots. Katharine. Are we alike?'

He was surprised by the question.

You must have something in common. She wants to be a journalist.'

'Will you let her follow a profession?' 'My inclination would be to insist on it. Her father takes a different view. He's a clergyman. She's an agnostic. They're always rowing.'

Annoyingly, she felt sympathy for Edwin's inconvenient attachment. Catriona Kaye sounded like an exact copy of her younger, warm self. Only prettier. Kate would not be able to win him away from the other woman and make of him a docile informant. Her career as a Mata Hari was ended before it could begin.

'Why the interest in my personal arrangements? I thought you ran more to politics and matters of great moment?'

'Journalism needs the human touch. Tiny insights to illuminate dry facts.'

Edwin finished his drink. His blood would be warmed by the brandy, flavoured strongly. An envelope edge peeped out of his jacket. He demurely pushed it out of sight.

'Sealed orders?'

He grinned. 'I couldn't possibly say.'

'I would be prepared to make a wager with you,' she said. 'That I know where you are to be sent.'

'If you could do that, you would indeed be a sorceress. I've no idea what is in these orders.'

She knew from his heartbeat that he was lying but let it pass.

'What would you be prepared to wager?'

She shrugged.

'A kiss?' he suggested.

Her eyeteeth lengthened minutely. She felt little pains, not unpleasant, in the nerves of her fangs.

'Very well,' she said. 'You are recalled to London.'

He took out his envelope and opened it. He read his orders, keeping them close to his chest, chuckling.

'You have lost your wager.'

'Am I to take your word for it?'

'As an officer and something reasonably approaching a gentleman?'

'Officers and gentlemen make the best liars. Especially intelligence officers. Lying is their profession, just as the truth is mine.' l\ could name the odd journalist not unacquainted with mendacity.'

'Touché.'

'You accept you have lost?'

'I suppose I shall have to.'

They stood, awkwardly, and looked at each other. He was not a tall man, within a few inches of her five foot four. He kissed her on the lips. His warmth shocked her, jolting fire through her veins. There was no blood but she had the contact she knew from feeding. It was not a long kiss. Bartlett's table cheered and jeered. She could not draw anything much from Edwin's mind. Just a drop of blood and she would know things. Edwin drew away. His hands opened and his orders drifted down past the table.

'That'd curl your hair,' he said, eyes wide.

With the swiftness of the undead, she bent down and picked up the paper, presenting it to Edwin. He was in a brief reverie, befuddled by the press of her lips. The paper passed only briefly through her glance but she knew Edwin was ordered to return to the airfield at Maranique and arrange another reconnaissance flight to the Château du Malinbois.

'Now that wasn't what you expected?' Kate said.

'I'll say not. You're electric, aren't you. Like an eel?'

Part Two: No Man's Land

15

The Vile, the Violent and the Vein

'This is absolutely intolerable,' ranted Ewers. 'We were to be met at the station. A car was to be provided for us. This delay was not to happen.'

Poe dumped his carpet-bag on the platform as gloomy soldiers clumped around him. It was just past sunset. His red thirst was roused, an exquisite torture.

'Stakes will be hoist,' Ewers vowed. 'Guts will be spitted for this!'

Small irritations were disproportionately infuriating to Hanns Heinz Ewers. As his sense of self-importance was sorely exaggerated, so was his wrath when others refused to credit him with the inflated position to which he laid claim. Were he a subscriber to the theories of Sigmund Freud, Poe would be forced to conclude that Ewers's phallus was remarkably tiny.

Actually, he felt the Viennese Jew said much of interest. Also, he deserved his place in history. Franz Joseph has been on the point of acceding to a petition underwritten by the House of Rothschild and rescinding the Edict of Graz when Freud published The Oral-Sadistic Impulse. With its especial relevance to the undead, the book was evidence that the Hebrew race was so morally degraded, not to mention dangerously supportive of subversive notions, that the Edict should not only remain in force but be considerably strengthened.

'There should be no place for inefficiency in the German soul,' Ewers continued. 'It should be burned out with blood and iron.'

The station was Peronne, near Cappy. They were in France, only a few miles from the lines. This was the Somme. In Berlin, Poe had heard the bombardment as a tiny echo. The audibility grew as the train neared the war. Even Ewers heard it well before the French border. The noise wore on Poe's thin nerves; if he stayed too long near the front, he might go mad.