PENELOPE PULLS IT OFF

It was time to depart in prosperity. The household was packing up, for disposal. The host was truly dead and the other guests had fled. Tom considered the Van Goghs, but they were too large and well-known to be practical souvenirs of his happy summer at the Palazzo Otranto.

Over the months, he'd built up a collection. The dead strewed their treasures any which way. Working by day, when elders were in their caskets and new-borns lulled with last night's blood, he'd harvested select, portable items. A bird of prey statuette, ugly but valuable; an Egyptian ruby scarab, with seven pinpoint flaws in the pattern of the big dipper; a tiny, withered brown hand which might be a child's or a chimp's; a model of the Eiffel Tower in pure gold; a dear little Corot no bigger than an icon. An enormous fellow Tom knew in Amsterdam might be able to do something with the loot; he was a collector and a dealer in rare, unprovenanced artifacts.

He did not, of course, hide his haul in his room where it might count as evidence. He'd found a loose floorboard in a forgotten attic and made himself a hidey-hole. If the cache were discovered, servants would be blamed. In his time, a butler and two maids had been dismissed for pilferage. Princess Asa insisted they be branded on their foreheads. Did a facial scar that read 'thief' in Moldavian hamper chances of future employment in Europe?

Presently, Asa was mad. She'd always been mad, he supposed, but the quality of her madness had changed. She was no longer the imperious monster. Penelope called her 'Princess Havisham' behind her back. She wore her ragged wedding dress and aged years every day she refrained from drinking blood. At the end of the month, she'd have to find a new house to haunt.

It was about midday. He was on a last look around. Some of the recently flown dead had carelessly left behind items of value. In General Iorga's crypt-like cell, he found a silver dagger. An old weapon, not like the bland scalpel they'd found in Dracula's heart. The workmanship was fine, the edge keen. This was an assassin's knife.

It struck him again how odd it was that so many of the dead owned silver knick-knacks. The metal was poison to them. It was either an ostentatious defiance of mortality or a need to have weapons for use against their own kind. With Dracula gone, there'd be secret wars of succession. Penelope had lectured him about it, suggesting with not a little relish that half the surviving elders would perish in the internecine squabbles. And a good job too, she said; it was time the mediaeval barbarians made way for rising generations. He pocketed the dagger, wondering if he should keep the thing. More and more dead were about. And Penelope Churchward might have long arms.

He made his way to the attic, carrying an empty suitcase he had found in one of the guest rooms. It was just the right size. He carefully packed his souvenirs, wrapping them in scarves. It was vulgar to set a price on such things, but he estimated he had enough to set him up for a good few years. He thought about France. It was time to make a home.

Whistling, he hauled the case  -  heavy, but not impossible  -  downstairs. He'd take the Ferrari, but only as far as the Stazione Centrale. It was too flashy, too easy to trace.

The case became heavier on the second staircase. He switched to his left hand and dropped it. Tom realised how weak he'd become. His neck-wounds, ragged and swollen, throbbed like mosquito bites. He made fists and flexed his arms, fighting the tingling in his depleted veins. His elbows and knees didn't quite work.

The suitcase slithered down to the next landing. Tom stumbled after it. There was only the main staircase to the hallway, then the front door. He took hold of the case's handle, but couldn't lift it. He considered jettisoning one of the heavier items  -  the falcon, perhaps?  -  but rejected the idea as absurd. This was his nest egg.

He hugged the suitcase to his chest like a sack of potatoes and stood. It was like lifting an anchor. The weight pulled him to the lip of the stairs. His vision blurred. A dizzy spell struck. He wanted to pitch himself down the stairs and break his own silly neck.

His hip struck the balustrade and the case balanced on the long marble sweep. Tom smiled. It could slide the case down this last staircase, letting the bannisters take the weight.

He deserved this loot. He deserved the life it'd buy him.

Concentrating to make his feet and ankles do their work without interfering with each other, he went down step by step, case sliding easily beside him.

When he was through the front door, he'd never look back. And he'd never let a dead woman near him again.

'Where do you think you're going, Mr American?'

Penelope's voice wasn't raised, but it rang in his head.

He turned, mind not catching up. The case got free and slithered down the bannisters like a prankish small child, then ski-jumped across the hallway and made a bad landing, bursting open. Treasures glittered.

Tom sank to his knees, gripping the balustrade himself.

He couldn't raise his eyes to Penelope's face. He felt her looking down at him.

'You were not given permission,' she said.

His chin hit the stairs and he lost his grip. He rolled over, breathing heavily, and looked up at a fuzzy, distant ceiling. He exposed his throat to the dead woman.

Her face appeared, upside-down.

He had only one chance to escape. One treasure he had not packed in the case.

Penelope knelt by him and stroked his hair, as affectionately as she might pet a dog. She leaned forward to kiss  -  to bite  -  his neck.

Tom stuck the dagger he'd pocketed into Penelope's ribs. But her side wasn't where he thought it would be.

She twisted easily away from the silver blade. Her thumb and forefinger pinched his wrist, digging enough to jolt pain through his whole arm, numbing it from fingertips to shoulder.

The dagger fell out of his hand.

'So, our vampire killer is exposed.'

Doors opened and people came into the hall, boots thumping on marble.

'Inspector Silvestri,' Penelope said. 'Good afternoon.'

Tom's mind was fuzz and fudge.

'There's such a thing as being too clever, Tom dear,' Penelope whispered. She kissed him on the cheek, fondly. Her rough tongue licked him from chin to eyebrow, like sandpaper scouring one side of his face.

Penelope helped him stand up and walked him down.

Silvestri stood in the doorway. Sergeant Ginko and a uniformed policeman went through the case, cooing and whistling at each discovery.

'Pick that horrid thing up, would you?' Penelope asked the always-lurking Klove, indicating the dropped dagger. 'It's another one of those silver knives.'

The swirl of incomprehension began to resolve itself into a picture Tom didn't care for.

Klove fetched the dagger.

'Signor,' began Silvestri, 'this does not look well for you.'

Was this about Dickie?

Penelope handed him over to a couple of cops. They took his arms, practically holding him up. He tried to think it over, to see how he had reached to this predicament.

'You've quite come to my rescue, Inspector,' said Penelope, voice trembling to conceal her steel core. 'I fear I've had a very close escape. I never suspected we were harbouring one of those fanatics. A vampire slayer.'

Silvestri took the silver dagger from Klove.

Others were up on the landing, above Penelope. Servants. And a white spectre.

'Could it be this was the hand that struck the blow?' Penelope wondered.

Why couldn't anyone else see she was acting? Were they all blinded by her power of fascination?

His bites stung. He wanted her mouth on his neck, her tongue in the wounds.

'That question will be answered, Signorina Churchward,' said the policeman. 'For now, we shall arrest him for assault upon your person and the attempted thefts. Our investigations have turned up other questionable affairs, in New York City and Greece. Scotland Yard are involved. The other matter requires further investigation.'

The other matter? Tom couldn't stretch his mind around the phrase. What did they mean by it?

The white spectre flew at him, all teeth and nails and frayed lace. She screeched and went for his eyes and throat.

'Murderer!' Asa screamed. 'Regicide!'

Penelope gently took hold of Asa, and forced her to withdraw her hands. The Princess's face was close to Tom's, eyes enormous and insane.

'You killed Dracula! You will die!'

Only Asa showed emotion. Penelope and the cops carried the scene off as if it were a conventional conversation on a trivial matter.

Penelope gentled Asa, whispering in her ear, sorting out her matted hair.

'She has suffered a great deal,' Penelope explained.

'We understand,' said Silvestri.

Tom was tugged toward the doors. Outside, under the glare of the sun, a police car waited. He'd never drive the Ferrari again.

'May I have a moment?' Penelope asked. She passed Asa on to a servant.

Silvestri thought it over, and nodded.

The policemen let Tom's arms go. He was so weak he could hardly stand, let alone make a break for daylight. Penelope stood in front of him. She spoke quietly

'Tom, Tom, I can't say how sorry I am it has come to this. You're not as bad as they'll say, and you're certainly no worse than anyone here. For what it's worth, I don't believe you killed Dracula. There was no gain in it for you, and you don't murder unless by your lights you really truly have to. But you'll seem so perfect when the story of your Greek adventure comes out, so right for the role, that I fear nothing you can say or do will dissuade them. This has been a public affair, and someone must take the role of villain. Take comfort in the fact that the world will remember your name, and that I shall always think fondly of you. Not the Tom who'll be the famous vampire slayer, nor the Tom you'd have liked us to think you were  -  the affable, shallow, sincere American  -  but the cold, sharp man inside. I know you won't appreciate it much, but I am very fond of your true self. In other circumstances, I should have been honoured to make you my get.'

She kissed him on the lips. No teeth, no tongue. When she broke the kiss, a jewel glinted in her eye. She wiped it away

His heart was ice. The trap was sprung.

'You may take him away now,' Penelope decreed.

The cops marched him out of the palazzo. Summer sun fell on his face. His eyes shrank and his skin tingled. He realised how badly he had been bled.