The Bloody Red Baron

Part Three: Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man Chapter 32

A Restorative
Kate awoke in the echoing dark of her skull, eyes sealed by the grit which formed if she slept through two or three days. The thread binding her to an unaging corpse was weaker than since her death. Her body was a hotel, suddenly emptied by a change of season or the outbreak of international crisis. No longer a home.
Fierce heartburn told her feeding was a matter of urgency. Extreme urgency. Her swollen and jagged fang-teeth were broken marbles in her mouth. She was drooling, losing needed fluid. With a gulp, she swallowed spit.
Her eye-gum cracked. It was night. She was still in Edwin's billet. In addition to her dress, a sheet had been tucked around her. The makeshift sleep-clothes smelled off. She wasn't wearing her specs.
A man sat on the bed. In the unlighted room, a cigar end burned like a distant sun. His silhouette was slumped.
'Edwin,' she croaked. Her dry throat hurt.
The silhouette turned up a lamp. It was Charles, his face shockingly aged by the lamp's deep-etched shadows.
'What have you done now, Kate?'
Stabbing pain pierced her burning heart, as if she had been roused from lassitude by a die-hard Van Helsingite with a stake of hot iron.
'Edwin ...'
Charles shook his head.
'Winthrop is a changed man. A much-changed man, though not perhaps quite as you expected.'
It was not fair! Charles assumed too much, reached wrong conclusions. Blame was being unequally assigned. She could not make her voice work. She could not explain.
I thought we agreed you were to leave France?'
Kate made fists and thumped her chest. She was embarrassed Charles should find her in this condition. Apart from wretched feebleness, she was unclothed.
'You are a sorry creature,' he said.
Charles stubbed his cigar out in a saucer and stood. He creaked a little like an old man, and hung his head so as not to bump the ceiling. He knelt by her, letting out a breath of exertion as his knees locked. There was an enamel basin under the bedside table. Charles found a damp flannel and applied it to her face, wiping dried trails from around her mouth and grit from her eyes. Satisfied, he took her glasses from the table, unfolded them, and eased them on to her face.
She saw the room in dizzying, sharp focus. Up close, the tiny lines around Charles's eyes were crevasses.
'Thirsty,' she said, deliberately. The word was unrecognisable, even to her own ears. She was furious with herself. She must be captain of her vessel. 'Thirsty,' she said again, clearly.
Charles half-understood and reached for a jug of water that had been beside the basin.
She shook her head. ' Thirsty.'
'Kate, you presume a great deal on our friendship.'
She couldn't tell him what she meant. She could not explain why her red thirst was so urgent. She had lost too much blood, to Arrowsmith's Blighty cases, to Edwin ...
He touched her throat. A spark passed between them. Charles understood. His time with Genevieve had taught him.
'You are close to starved. Bled white.'
He held the lamp close to her face. She blinked as he peered at her.
'There's grey in your hair, Katie,' he said, harmlessly gloating. 'You look as you would if you'd not turned. A shame you can never see the effect.'
Kate had no reflection. She did not show up in photographs. Sketches made of her could have been of a stranger. In warmth, she was hardly remembered for her looks.
'If you'd lived, you'd have been a fine woman,' Charles said kindly.
'I look like a mole, Charles. With untidy hair and freckles.'
He laughed, surprised she could manage a sentence.
'You underestimate yourself. Girls thought prettier than you grew fat and bad-tempered. You'd have become beautiful in your thirties. Character would have shown in your face.'
'Nonsense.'
'How would you know, Kate?'
'When we were all alive, you proposed to pretty Penelope and hardly noticed mole-face Kate.'
Old hurt wrinkled his brow. 'Young men make mistakes.'
'I'd such a crush on you, Charles. When you announced your engagement to Penny, I cried for days. I was driven to the arms of Frank Harris. And look what he made of me.'
She put fingers through her stringy hair, combing away settled dust.
'I wish I could stay angry with you for any length of time, Kate.'
He pushed his knees as he stood, and sat on the stool. She squirrelled back, hugging her sheet to her chest, propping herself against the wall.
'What happened here?' he asked.
'What has happened to Edwin?'
Ever the harbourer of secrets, he didn't want to give anything away.
'You first.'
'He took blood from me.'
He nodded.
'But I took none from him.'
He shook his head.
'He seemed to have some idea of assuming vampire strength without actually turning.'
'Is that possible?'
'I don't know. Ask an elder or a scientist. Or look in your heart.'
He did not pretend not to understand her. In his time with Genevieve, Charles had gained some of her strengths. Through love, Kate thought, or osmosis.
'What has ... become of him?'
Charles was concerned for his protege. That was why he sat in vigil, waiting for her to wake.
'He seems in good health. He has graduated from flying school. He will be the Diogenes Club's man in Condor Squadron. He has created a unique position and trained himself to fill it.'
'But you're worried?'
'As I said, he's changed. I do not say this lightly, but he frightens me. He reminds me of Caleb Croft.'
Another pain-burst racked her chest. Ribs constricted her heart like a bone fist. Hugging herself, she fought to control her twitching limbs.
Charles took out his right cuff-link, skinned his coat sleeve up to his elbow and rolled back his shirt sleeve. She shook her head, lips tight over jutting, aching fangs. Her heart yearned.
'Am I too old a vintage, Miss Connoisseur? Gone to vinegar, perhaps?'
Since Genevieve, Charles had not allowed himself to be bled. Kate knew this with certainty.
He sat on the floor and pulled her on to his lap. She was shocked by the warmth of him, realising how cold she was, how close to truly dead.
'You must, Kate.'
He presented his inner wrist to her. There were tiny, long- healed marks where Genevieve had suckled.
This came too late in their lives to be what she had once wished for, but it would mean survival. And with survival came unexpected second and third chances.
'I'll take vanilla,' she said. He smiled.
She took his hand and licked his wrist with her rough, long tongue. A healing agent in her saliva would smooth his wound within the hour. Charles smiled. He was familiar with this.
'Go ahead, pretty creature,' he said, gently. 'Drink.'
She sucked a fold of skin between her upper and lower incisors. Her fang-teeth gnashed. Blood filled her mouth.
The red taste exploded. Jolts ran throughout her body, more intense than a conventional act of love. Time concertinaed: Charles's blood sparkled on her tongue and against the roof of her mouth, trickled down her dry gullet and soothed her burning heart.
Suppressing shudders of pleasure, Kate was distanced enough to measure her feeding. If she drank from Charles's neck, there would be more to it. The wrist was far enough from heart and soul and head. Only sensations came through. His mind, with its secrets, was curtained.
She detached her mouth from his fresh wound and looked up at his face. His smile was tight. A pulse throbbed below his jaw, a blue finger beckoning. Her hands hooked into his coat. She might climb up him, drink from the source.
Her nose stung with the scent of blood. The trickle from his wrist called her. She drank, losing herself...
... she was in a reverie, blood warming her throat, stickily smeared around her mouth.
'Thank you, Charles,' she breathed, lapping again.
He stroked her hair gently. Her glasses skewed as she pressed her face to his wrist. He set them straight.
She did not take much from him. But he shared the strength of his spirit. She was no longer a stranger in her body. Her aches eased. She took command of her limbs. Her muscles were supple, comfortable.
She snuggled against Charles as he rolled down his shirt sleeve and retrieved a cuff-link from his waistcoat pocket.
He held up the lamp again and looked at her hair.
'The grey is gone. Red as rust.'
She stood, steady on her feet, holding up her dress to preserve some measure of modesty.
'A pity,' Charles said. 'I liked you older.'
She flicked him in the face with her sleeve.
'We'll have no more of your cheek, Mr Beauregard.'
'You're much more Irish when you're cross.'
She was blushing. After feeding, she was ruddy as a labourer.
Charles tried to stand, but could not. She had forgotten he'd be the weaker, temporarily, for their communion. She helped him up.
'There now, grandfather,' she teased. 'You should not tire yourself so. Not at your age.'
She kissed his cheek and, modesty abandoned, wriggled into her gamey dress, settling it on her hips. There were catches up the back.
'Could you do me up, Charles?'
'I doubt if anyone could, Kate.'