THE MAGIC SWORD

She couldn't stop laughing. Her throat had taken a bruising, and blood was backed up in her mouth.

'You stupid, stupid bitch,' Kate spluttered.

She felt her neck. It wasn't even broken.

Princess Asa Vajda looked at the sword in her hand as if it were a snake. It seemed straight, sharp and silver. Red stuff dripped from its edge. Not blood, strawberry jam.

'It's a magic sword,' Kate said, sitting up.

Orson Welles looked sheepish. Asa stabbed at his enormous torso and the sword appeared to pass through his chest without harming him.

'Not your kind of magic, Princess,' Kate said. 'Not necromancy and sorcery. Just trickery, prestidigitation.'

The Princess looked an utter prawn. Kate wasn't the only one laughing. Penelope desperately tried to keep a straight, sympathetic face, but couldn't contain her delight at the humiliation of the Royal Fiancee.

'You try saying "prestidigitation" in my state,' said Kate.

'What manner of sword is this?' the Princess demanded of Welles.

'A conjurer never reveals his secrets,' he said.

Asa Vajda had made a big mistake, and while making it had taken the name to which she was not yet entitled. A subtle hint of terror crept across her beautiful, mask-like face. Dracula would hear of her presumption, probably already knew about it.

Tartars seized Kate and hauled her upright. Genevieve laid a hand on one of them, calmly powerful and impossibly lovely. Princess Asa nodded to the guards. Kate was released.

Penelope handed Kate her shoes. She was crying with suppressed laughter. The mark of Asa's whip had disappeared.

'I think you'd better leave, Katie,' said Penny, biting the insides of her cheeks to keep from exploding.

'I think you're right.'

Kate kissed Penelope.

'Lovely to see you, as always, Penny,' she said, really hugging her friend. 'And you too, Genevieve. I withdraw unequivocally my ill-judged rant of a few moments ago. You're the best friend a girl could have.'

Genevieve kissed her too.

Asa muttered about the barbarous lands and isles of the West. Ireland, England, and France were far from Moldavia. The customs of those places were absurd.

'Princess, good night,' said Kate. 'Do enjoy the rest of this democratic century.'

'Out,' Asa spat.

Kate left.

She was outside the palazzo before she remembered that Marcello was inside, probably choking on Vimto and cursing her appetites. Should she wait for him, or hitch a lift back to Rome by herself?

Music filtered through the barred windows and spread out over the town. Kate sat on the broad front step and slipped her shoes back on. She was still drunk, but now under control. The danger had passed, her red rage was spent. She would not attack anyone else tonight. Unless she ran into someone ghastly.

She could laugh about it, but her fight with Asa Vajda had been scary. If the Princess had found a more reliable sword, Kate would be a head shorter, and truly dead. Even if she'd avoided the blade and gouged out the vampire elder's slippery guts, she'd have wound up dying for it. Only a moment of comedy had saved her life.

Something red rolled on the driveway: the ball she'd been following. It was as if it were waiting for her. Even in her current state of not thinking straight, she knew toys were not supposed to have minds of their own.

A cannon sounded from the battlements. Something whizzed out to sea then exploded, scattering fiery chunks down onto the waves. She smelled the stink of gunpowder and conquered an impulse to throw herself flat on the ground. She'd been in too many wars.

In the flash of powder, she saw a small figure at the edge of the cliff. She looked at the dark and couldn't see the little girl any more.

She had been there.

A fog of boiling blood rolled across her brain, the beginnings of a truly spectacular headache. She wanted to curl up and go to sleep here beside the stone lions that guarded the doors of Dracula's palace.

The girl had left a silhouette burned into Kate's eyeballs. She momentarily took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes. In the red darkness, the child stood out.

She had a flash of the sad face she'd seen in the waters of the Trevi Fountain. The look she knew was wrong. She almost understood what was wrong with the picture.

The ball was at the edge of the cliff. She stood up and walked across the drive onto a stretch of long, wet grass that sloped down gently until the land broke sharply away. Below the battlements was a sheer drop. Waves crashed against the base of the cliff, hammering the foundations, slowly eroding them.

Eventually, the Palazzo Otranto would fall, like Mr Poe's House of Usher. And a good job, too.

The red ball was trapped by a shrub that clung to the very edge. Kate reached down to free it and was struck dizzy at the worst possible moment, attention caught by the froth of foam hundreds of feet below. The waves came up at her and went away again, a trick of vertigo.

She did not fall.

Where had the little girl gone?

She looked along the side of the palace. The wedge of green grew thin, where the cliff had crumbled away. After a few yards, the wall and the cliff became one, without even the thinnest of ledges. There was no way past the building.

A stab of guilt thrust into her heart. Had she frightened the child? Made her fall?

Kate sat down, feet dangling over the edge. There was spray, like waves of fine rain. Coolness seeped into her mind, wiping away the fog. She liked the saltwater specks on her face.

Another cannon went off.

This time, she was looking down as the flash lit everything up. The dark rock face momentarily bleached white, and a small figure was visible.

Was she moving, waving her arms? Or was she still, animated by the flash?

Kate called out.

'Little girl. Ragazza.'

Her voice was lost. Waves roared like the blood in her ears.

She waited, but the next cannon blast was a long time coming. She had time for fear. The girl must have fallen. Was it Kate's pursuit, or the shock of the cannon going off? Had she been chasing her ball and overbalanced, only to be caught on an outcrop?

Obviously, there was more to the child than random wandering through Kate's life. She'd been in Piazza di Trevi when the Crimson Executioner had struck, and now she was here at the Palazzo Otranto for her face-off with the Princess. Somehow, she had become Kate's angel of violence.

The ball sailed off the cliff and out to sea.

Kate knew what she'd have to do. She needed to remove her shoes again. This was going to ruin her stockings, and her expensive dress. But the party was over for her anyway.

She stood on top of the cliff, arms outspread like a diver, judging the wind and the spray. Not too strong, thank heavens. She knelt on the edge and leaned over, bending down below the lip of the cliff, reaching for a handhold a few feet down.

Pulling herself over the edge, she clung to the rock, feeling her weight in her shoulders and hips. She crawled down like a lizard, worried her glasses would slip off and be lost forever. Her elbows and knees grazed rock, but her fingers and toes found holds.

She clung like a heavy fly, looking down into the dark. If the girl was still there, Kate could not see her.

Slowly, she made her zigzag way down. Her soaked dress clung to her back and bottom. Some vampires could grow wings and fly. Kate Reed had to crawl.

Another cannon fired.

Kate saw the girl looking up at her. The tiny face was shockingly close, still half-masked by that unnaturally beautiful hair. A single tear stood out from her exposed eye. And she was smiling like the Cheshire Cat.

When the flash was gone, the darkness came back.

She knew what she had failed to see the first time. It was the mouth, the downturned crescent of sorrow. She had seen a reflection, upside-down, of a smile. At the sight of the Crimson Executioner murdering Kernassy and Malenka, the girl had not been shocked, but possessed with unholy delight.

In that innocent face was Evil.

Kate reached out for where the girl was, and her hand closed on nothing. There'd been no cry. The child hadn't fallen.

She lurched forward, hands free of the cliff, and scrabbled down a few yards. Her feet found holds and she dangled. There was a hole in the rock. Not a cave, but a man-made entrance. She got her hands around the hewn edges of the ingress and clung on tight.

Inside the cliff, the little girl ran.

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