Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha Read Online Free PDF

some vampires, or been stolen away like Peter Pan’s shadow. But, since her turning, it was hard to find. Only in extraordinary circumstances, like the imminence of true death, did her reflection come back.
    For a mad moment, she was distracted. So this was how she looked with short hair. Not bad — very mid-century, a sort of existentialist Joan of Arc. She’d been tempted to hack off her waist-length red rope since the 1920s. Only now, with the European fashion for cropped bobs, had she dared ask her hairdresser to wield the silver scissors.
    The killer, laughing like a demon of mockery, had a knee on her spine, pinning her to the edge of the fountain. He let go of her neck. She reached behind, and her fingers scrabbled on his muscular leg. He wore thick tights.
    She was going to be murdered by a Mexican wrestler. It was too silly for words.
    If he kept pressing, her ribs would shatter. If a broken bone stuck through her heart, she would die. Again. This time, it would take.
    The killer wasn’t a vampire. His strength of wrist equalled most elders, but his hand was hot, sweaty. She felt a strong pumping of blood in his thigh. He was a warm man, alive.
    The noises of her body were more distinct than the crash of the water. Blood pulsed in her ears. Bones creaked inside her chest. Her reflected face, clear now even to her fogged eyes, looked up in rabbiteyed panic. She seemed a young woman, the 25-year-old twit she’d been in 1888. She was hurting, not a common thing with her.
    The pressure on her back let up slightly. The laughter stopped.
    Kate’s first thought, a universal journalist’s instinct, was not to save herself but to understand. She scooped up her wet specs, sliding them on.
    She still couldn’t get up. Even if she bent her neck back as far as it would go, she couldn’t see above the broad pool. At the other side of the water was another reflected face.
    A little girl peered over the rim. In her upside-down face, a frowning crescent mouth floated above a sad eye. She had long hair, blonde like Geneviève’s. Ripples made her shimmer, as if she were shaking her head solemnly. A tear crawled up her hollow cheek.
    Kate tried to think of the Italian for ‘run away’.
    ‘Va ,’ she tried to shout, coming out only with a gasp.
    The girl didn’t move. She was a ghost in the water, stuck in time.
    The killer removed his knee from her back. Kate tried to gather her vampire qualities. Talons slipped easily from her fingers. Her teeth became fangs. Strength uncoiled in her limbs.
    She sprang up and balanced on the rim of the fountain, clawing at empty air, ready to kill… nothing.
    The killer was gone, spirited away. Kate looked across the piazza for the little girl. She heard the rapid pit-pat of the child running off down the Via delle Muratte and saw the last of her shadow, enormous on a far wall. The roaring hiss of the fountain returned, filling her ears.
    Her flash of anger passed, her teeth and claws receded. In place of fighting rage, she had only puzzlement. She knew she had missed something. She stood alone in Piazza di Trevi with the truly dead.
    Then Marcello came back with milk. He gently set the bottle on the brick pavement and came over to her. There was dawnlight in the sky. Hating herself for living the cliché, she swooned in his arms.

2

    ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE
    S he wheeled his bath chair onto the broad balcony and positioned it in deep shadow. Beauregard welcomed the enfolding darkness as if it were a comfortable blanket. At his age, direct sunlight would kill him faster than it would Geneviève, and she was a vampire. She left his tea within his reach. Green gunpowder. He practically lived on the stuff.
    From shade, he looked out at the grey light, down into the Via Eudosiana. This early in the morning, the misty haze — almost scented fog — was not yet burned away. It was already hot, promising a day in which flat loaves could be baked on sun-warmed flagstones.
    A sleek,