Read Online Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha by Kim Newman - Free Book Online Page B

the first that she was interested in bleeding him. This was a comparatively new experience for him, but he was picking up on it. Was he one of those fellows who was attractive to the dead?
    Penny found Tom useful for more than his blood. Her position in il principe’s household was undefined. She ran things, as much a housekeeper as a mistress. There were always chores Tom could do, like driving that dead cow Malenka through adoring hordes, or fetching goods from the city in broad daylight. He didn’t even mind. There were advantages to being part of il principe ’s entourage and yet a living man.
    When she was bleeding him, she was as helpless as Dickie, as much addled by the taste of his blood. But she was more demanding, thirstier. Her red kisses drained him. He wondered how long she could last. At times, she was quite fun. She’d known Whistler and Wilde in her warm days, though not much understood their work.
    His bites itched. He rearranged his dressing gown over them. Tom wasn’t yet sure what to do with Penny. Something would come to mind.
    It must be past noon. The sun had passed overhead. Shadows gathered like curtains in the Crystal Room.
    Dead hands slipped around his neck.
    Tom didn’t have to guess who.
    Penelope was in a mood, he realised. Working too hard on devil-may-care brittleness, she draped herself over an armchair as if it were a patron’s lap, dangling one leg like a flirty fourteen-year-old. Her foot swung like a metronome. He guessed she’d like to kick someone.
    She wore slacks, cut halfway up the calves to show off her pretty ankles, and ballet pumps. Her Nehru jacket was a sombre blue shade with frivolous filaments of something shiny mixed into the weave. Her hair was pinned up under an oversize sailor’s cap with a red pom-pom.
    Sunglasses dangled from her mouth. She had a habit of chewing the arms, sometimes snapping them off. He saw a tiny fang biting down.
    ‘You must amuse me, Tom,’ she decreed. ‘I need to be amused. Desperately.’
    It was because the elder from last night and his bovine ‘niece’ had run into the local murderer. Penelope could have cheerfully killed them herself, but resented the fuss made about this colourful atrocity.
    The Roman morning papers were full of pictures. Malenka was everywhere, her luminously smiling face and ridiculous pout contrasted with grainier, less glamorous shots of the cops at the scene of the crime.
    ‘Malenka came to Rome to be a star,’ Tom observed. ‘And has got her wish.’
    Penelope snorted rather than laughed.
    ‘You don’t think the little witch will turn up unhurt, do you?’ she said. ‘That it’s a publicity stunt? There isn’t much identifiable in the way of a body, according to the papers. Even that blessed dress has waltzed off.’
    ‘Count Kernassy is definitely identified,’ he pointed out.
    ‘She’d have killed for headlines. That one would kill for lunch.’
    Penelope sat cross-legged on the seat, winding her legs together in a yoga pose, and lifted herself up on her arms, swaying slightly like one of those nodding dog automobile ornaments prized by vulgar people.
    ‘Your English pal was a witness,’ Tom said.
    ‘Irish. Katie’s Irish.’
    ‘She gave a full description of their deaths. And of their murderer, this Crimson Executioner. Of course, she might have her reasons for being a liar.’
    Penelope smiled nastily at the thought of her friend being in on murder.
    ‘She can’t be mixed up with it. She met Kernassy on the plane.’
    ‘So she says.’
    Tom did not believe for a moment what he was suggesting. He was spinning out a story to distract Penelope, to amuse her. She liked to think the worst of people. Except of him, oddly enough.
    ‘It’s not Katie Reed, Tom,’ she said, having thought it through. ‘You don’t know her.’
    ‘How well do we ever really know anyone?’
    ‘I’m a vampire, you American clod. I can see into men’s minds and hearts, and suck them dry.’
    She flipped