La Morte Parisienne

As the sun went down, he idled at a Montmartre pavement cafe. Even in the pit of this dreadful winter, habitues, not all undead, sat at street tables. They gossiped and flirted, read and drank. Doomed snowflakes melted on faces, hands and hats. Winthrop took a table inside, near the stove, and asked the patron for a pot of English tea. Experienced enough with British officers to know what was required, the Frenchman sadly turned from spices and coffees and liqueurs to fetch a shameful package of plain old Lipton's from a secret shelf.

In the minutes it took for the tea to cool to drinkability, he was propositioned by two filles de joie and a curly-haired youth; a fanged dwarf offered to sketch his portrait for the price of a loaf of bread; news swept through that the daring thief Fantomas had relieved a dowager of an emerald necklace in a nearby street; another struggling artist tried to sell caricatures of the Kaiser and Graf von Dracula; a naive Australian was asked to pay for a ten- centime anis with ten francs; and a knife-fight erupted between an apache vampire and a one-armed warm veteran who unexpectedly trounced the whole man. He supposed this was the famed vie parisienne, it struck him as mostly rather silly. Children pretending to be wicked.

When it was fully dark, he settled his bill and worked his way out of the estaminet, weaving between heavily populated tables. Americans, new to the war and Europe, were especially well-represented. Gawping and gazing at everything, they were most beloved by Parisian pickpockets. James Gatz, a 'lootenant' Winthrop knew slightly, hailed him with a reedy 'old sport'. Winthrop hurried off before he could be caught; now it was night, he was on duty. He wished Gatz well with a wave and hoped the young man would survive the evening with neck, wallet and heart whole.

In the Place Pigalle, children surrounded him, imploring cadeaux. On close examination, most of the creatures were vampires, probably his seniors. A golden boy made hooks of fingers and hung on to Winthrop's coat. The old-souled child cooed and hissed, attempting mesmerism.

Sergeant Dravot, Winthrop's inevitable shadow, appeared from a spot beyond the corner of his eye and detached the persistent parasite, tossing him back to his comrades. The savage children ran off, streaming about the legs of startled soldiers and their ladies of the moment.

Nodding thanks to Dravot, he checked that his buttons were all accounted for. He still felt the finger-points of the wild child on his chest. The sergeant slipped back into the crowd, prepared to see off Fantomas himself if the need arose. Though it was comforting to have a guardian angel, Winthrop was a little nettled that he was not entirely trusted out on his own. At times, Dravot was a nannyish presence.

He strolled with theatre crowds, studied in his air of aimlessness. The Grand Guignol offered Andre de Lorde's notorious Maldureve, while the Theatre des Vampires presented Offenbach's operetta La Morteamoureuse, featuring the celebrated can-can 'Clarimonde'. At the Robert-Houdin, the warm illusionist Georges Melies presented feats of presdigitation which he defied any vampire to duplicate by supernatural means. Bernhardt was giving her blood-boltered Macbeth in one of many all-female productions currently gracing the Paris stage. With most actors gone to the war, the situation of Shakespeare's day was reversed and many masculine roles were taken by women en travestie. If the war ever ended, a second Revolution would be required to force the Divine Sarah back into frocks.

Squeezed into an unremarked side street away from the famous houses, the Theatre Raoul Privache was neither magnificent nor celebrated. He had never heard of the place before receiving, in the note signed 'Diogenes', details of this appointment. A poster depicted a huge-eyed, gaunt woman in a leotard. The marquee announced, simply, 'Isolde - les frissons des vampires'. A small press of devotees clamoured for entrance. Almost exclusively male and warm and mainly in uniform, they had a greedy, hollow-eyed look that matched that of the poster woman.

Joining the audience funelling into the foyer, Winthrop looked about for Dravot. It was a game, sometimes, to locate the sergeant. Broad-shouldered and a head taller than most, the vampire did not exactly take pains to conceal himself but had the ability to fit in with any background.

An arrangement had been made at the kiosk. Winthrop was ushered down a narrow, unlit corridor to a private box. Dravot followed and took up a post at the door. He would not be able to see the performance. From the decayed state of the wallpaper and the faint smell of damp mould, Winthrop assumed the sergeant would not miss much.

Winthrop opened the door and stepped into the box. A man sat comfortably, puffing on a cigar.

'Edwin, you are remarkably punctual. Do sit down.'

Winthrop shook a firm hand and sat. Charles Beauregard had a full head of white hair and a clipped grey moustache. His face was unlined and he gave the impression of agility. Winthrop understood Beauregard had distinguished himself during the Terror, and once refused a knighthood.

Beyond the balcony, a muttering audience settled hastily into seats. A pianist tried to wring melodies from an ailing instrument.

Beauregard offered his cigar case but Winthrop preferred to smoke his own. He lit a cigarette and shook out the match-flame.

'I've read your report,' said Beauregard. 'A bad business, the other night. You mustn't blame yourself.'

'I picked Albright, the man who died.'

'And I picked you and someone picked me. No one of us is more responsible than any other. From Albright's record, I should say you couldn't have made a better choice for the show.'

A dark, winged shape flitted across Winthrop's mind.

'The Germans have awarded the victory to Manfred von Richthofen,' said Beauregard. 'If any of Condor Squadron had a chance against the Bloody Red Baron, it would have been Captain Albright.'

So the shape had been the Bloody Red Baron himself. Winthrop wondered what kind of kite Richthofen was piloting. Something new and deadly.

'German High Command are fond of building up their man- killers for the newspapers. We have no monopoly of jingo. If twenty Fokkers shoot at and down an Allied aeroplane, credit tends to be awarded where it will make the best propaganda.'

'There was only one thing in the sky with Albright.'

'I didn't say Richthofen wasn't a fearsome devil.'

An examination had shown Albright was completely dry, veins and arteries collapsed. Thorndyke, the specialist who performed the autopsy, reported the body was drained not only of blood but of every drop of liquid.

'Captain Albright was pulled out of his SE5a and killed in mid-air. I've never come across that before.'

'There's nothing new, Edwin. Even in this great modern murdering game.'

The House lights dimmed and the pianist tried harder. He wounded a theme from Swan Lake as the curtains parted. The stage was bare, except for a cane chair and an open steamer trunk.

A vampire woman walked out, a transparent moth-wing cape draped over her leotard. She was the Isolde of the posters. She had a hard face, not pretty. The shape of her skull showed at cheeks and temples. Fang-teeth stuck out of her mouth, wearing grooves in her underlip and chin.

The music continued and Isolde walked up and down the tiny stage, not even dancing. The audience was quiet.

'We are more and more interested in the Chateau du Malinbois,' said Beauregard, watching Isolde with half a glance. 'Strange stories are in circulation.'

Isolde spread out her long, lank hair with black-nailed hands. Her neck was painfully thin, prominently veined.

'The pilots all knew the place,' Winthrop said. 'Richthofen is an obsession with them. He's the man to beat.'

'Over seventy victories.'

'It would be a relief to see him downed.'

'Strange: the soldier who pulls a howitzer lanyard or works a machine-gun often kills as many in a few seconds as our Red Baron has during the entire war. Yet it is the flier who gets the press. Cavalry Captain Baron Manfred von Richthofen. He has the Pour le Merite, of course, the Blue Max. That's the Hun Victoria Cross. And more lesser decorations than a man can list.'

Isolde undid the collar of her cape and let it float away. She was unusually skinny. Each rib showed like the slat of a fence.

'Watch this, Edwin. It's ugly but you'll learn something.'

The vampire solemnly took a knife out of the trunk and held it up. It seemed entirely ordinary. Isolde stuck the point into the hollow of her throat, dimpling the skin but not drawing blood, and ran it down the front of her leotard, slicing. Fabric peeled away from her chest. She had no noticeable breasts, but her nipples were large and dark.

Winthrop had no more than the normal experience of Paris frivolity, but the drab Isolde seemed to him underdeveloped to gain much following as an ecdysiast. The popular girls of the Folies-Bergere were far more substantial than this poor creature, pigeons to her sparrow.

She shrugged and the upper half of her singlet slipped over her shoulders, falling to her waist. Her skin was unblemished but had a greenish undertone. Isolde put her knife to her throat again and repeated her cutting, this time slicing a red line down her sternum, to her stomach. There was very little bleeding.

'She's not a new-born,' Beauregard explained. 'Isolde has been a vampire for over a thousand years.'

Winthrop looked closer. He saw nothing that suggested the fabled strength and power of an elder. With her fixed fangs, Isolde looked forlorn, almost pathetic.

'She was guillotined once.'

Isolde clamped the blade between her thin lips and used both her hands. She worked the edge of her self-inflicted wound with with her nails and peeled back the skin of the right side of her chest. As she moved, exposed muscles bunched and smoothed. With her whole hand under her skin, she loosened the covering of her shoulder and slipped it off like a chemise.

The audience were rapt. Winthrop was disgusted, as much at the spectators as at the performer.

Beauregard was not watching the stage but watching him.

'We do not understand our limits,' Beauregard said. 'To become a vampire is to have the potential to stretch the human body out of its natural shape.'

As Isolde turned, skin ripped down her back. Red-lined folds hung loose. With only her nails and a few slices of the knife, she methodically flayed herself.

A group of Americans, misled as to the nature of Isolde's exposure, stormed out, protesting loudly. 'You're all gooney birds,' one shouted.

Isolde watched them go, easing the skin off her right arm as if it were a shoulder-length glove.

'Some vampires, Edwin, have no more power to shift their shape than you or I. Notably those of the bloodlines of Ruthven or Chandagnac. Others, including those of the Dracula line, have capabilities that have never been tested to their limits.'

Isolde tore at herself, face impassive but gestures savage. Her skin hung in scarecrow tatters. Winthrop's stomach queased but he kept nausea down. The theatre stank of blood. It was a mercy there were few vampires in the audience; they might have been maddened. The performer detached scraps of her white skin and tossed them to her crowd.

'She has her disciples,' Beauregard said. 'The poet, Des Esseintes, has written sonnets to her.'

'It's a shame de Sade never turned. He'd have relished this.'

'Maybe he saw her in his day. Isolde has been performing for a long time.'

Her torso was a glistening dissection, bones visible in wet meat. She held up her skinned right arm and licked from elbow to wrist, reddening her tongue. Arteries stood out, transparent tubes filled with rushing blood.

Many of the audience were on their feet, pressing close to the stage. At the Folies, they would be cheering and whooping, making a display of gay goodfellow abandon. Here, they were intent and silent, holding breath, eyes on the stage, shutting out their comrades. How many of these men would want it known that they were patrons of the Raoul Privache?

'When she was guillotined, did someone stick her head back on to her body?'

She bit into her own wrist, gnawing through the artery, and began sucking. Blood rushed through the collapsing tube and she swallowed, gulping steadily.

'No, they buried her,' Beauregard explained. 'Her body rotted but her head grew another. It took ten years.'

She paused for breath and sneered at the audience, blood speckling her chin, then redoubled her attack. As she sucked, her extended fingers twisted into a useless fist.

'Of course, some say she hasn't been the same woman since.'

'How far can she go?'

'Can she consume herself entirely so that there's nothing left? She hasn't yet.'

Isolde's raw flesh changed colour as she sucked the blood out of it, but her face flushed, bloated.

'I think we've seen enough,' Beauregard said, standing.

Winthrop was relieved. He did not want to be a part of Isolde's audience.

They stepped into the corridor. Dravot stood by the door, reading Comic Cuts. Beauregard and the sergeant were old comrades.

'Danny, are you looking after our young lieutenant?'

'I do my best, sir.'

Beauregard laughed. 'Glad to hear it. The fate of the Empire may rest on him.'

Winthrop could not shake Isolde from his mind.

'Shall we take the air, Edwin?'

They left the theatre. It was a relief to get out into clean cold. The snow did not settle, leaving slushy residue on the pavement. Winthrop and Beauregard strolled, Dravot following about twenty paces behind.

'When I was your age,' Beauregard said 'this was not the world in which I expected to grow old.'

Winthrop had been born in 18%, after the Terror. To him, vampires were as natural a part of the world as Dutchmen or deer. From his father, he understood what every Englishman of Beauregard's generation had lived through, the mental adjustments everyone was forced to make during the Terror.

'I remember a time when Lord Ruthven wasn't Prime Minister and Edward Albert Victor wasn't King. Since neither gentleman shows any intention of dying, it may b�� that they will hold their positions well beyond my lifetime. And yours, should you not take the opportunity to turn.'

'Turn? Become a thing like that>'

He nodded back at the Raoul Privache, thinking of Isolde's blood-veined eyes as she sucked herself stupid.

'Not all vampires are of her line. They are not a race apart, Edwin. Not all demons and monsters. They're simply ourselves expanded. From birth, we change in a million ways. Vampires are more changed than the warm.'

Winthrop had, of course, thought of turning. Shortly after his father's death, his mother tried to persuade him to seek the Dark Kiss, to preserve himself from mortality. At seventeen, he had not been ready. Now, he was no surer. Besides, he knew it was not a simple decision: there was the question of bloodline.

'The best woman I ever knew was a vampire,' Beauregard said, 'and the worst man.'

Miles away, there was an explosion. Tongues of flame licked the sky, outlining the whale-shape of a Zeppelin. There had been more air raids in the last month. Parisians had taken to calling the incendiary devices that fell 'Valentines from the Kaiser'. Zeppelins had to fly at such altitudes that it was impossible to drop bombs on precise targets, so anyone and anything could be destroyed. There was no real military purpose to the raids; Dracula had decreed a policy of Schrecklichkeit, 'frightfulness', to batter the morale of the Allies.

'Before we next talk, I want you to read this,' Beauregard said, handing over an envelope. 'You might call it a deathbed confession. A woman who was shot this morning told me her story and I've done my best to set it down in her own words. It's a trick worth cultivating, to remember exactly what people say. Often, you will find they have told you things they themselves are not aware of.'

Winthrop slipped the envelope into his pocket. Firebells clanged in the distance. There were bursts of Archie, too low to hurt the Zep. The dirigible drifted higher, pushing up into the clouds. There were usually five or six ships in a raiding party. If the Hun actually wanted to destroy something specific, they would send one of the big long-range Gotha bombers.

I'd like to see one of those beasts brought down in flames,' Winthrop said.

Beauregard looked up to the skies, snowflakes brushing his eyelashes like tears.

'I'm tired now and I must go. Read Madame Zelle's confession carefully. Perhaps you will find something I've missed.'

The old man turned and walked smartly away, cane clipping the pavement. Drunken Americans courteously made way for him. In his day, Charles Beauregard must have been quite someone. Even now, he was the single most impressive individual Winthrop had come across in the service of the King.

Winthrop looked around for Dravot, and saw him after a few moments. The sergeant stood calmly in the shadows under an awning. Each time he played this game, he found Dravot more swiftly. He supposed he was learning something.