WHAT'S NEW, PUSSYCAT?

It was all over. Dracula was dead, properly. He wouldn't marry Asa Vajda, therefore wouldn't become a force again in the politics of the Balkans. Bond felt the knot he'd almost unpicked had been severed by an Alexandrine blow.

'Princess Asa is not very good with visitors yet, I'm afraid,' Miss Churchward told him. 'She's had a shock, as I'm sure you appreciate.'

He looked around the empty ballroom. Hangings were still left over from the party, banners with coats of arms. The buffet mice  -  largely untouched by vampire guests who preferred human blood  -  had escaped from their cages, swarming over the abandoned salads, thriving on canapes. Generations would probably breed in Palazzo Otranto.

A few liveried minions made a futile effort to tidy up.

'We have been given notice to quit, Commander Bond,' said Miss Churchward. 'I expect you knew that, being a spy and so forth.'

He didn't deny it. Everybody in Rome knew what he was. He was a bit on the high-profile side. The Diogenes Club was cultivating his colourless replacements, Grammar School civil servants with National Health glasses and Marks & Spencer's raincoats.

Miss Churchward's severe suit and diamante sunglasses didn't entirely disguise her fine figure. At the ball, her hair had been more attractively arranged than it was now. She might be a tigress.

That American chap he had run into outside the Kit Kat Klub, the one who'd been drained white and tossed aside, was part of the household. He thought more about Miss Churchward, imagined her lips red and her teeth sinking into skin.

He gave her his card.

'When you return to London, perhaps we could meet?'

Miss Churchward looked at it, and over her glasses at him.

He allowed her a smile. She accepted it. There was a promise and a challenge in this vampire vixen. Under her tight Victorian skin was a lush, passionate, hungry heart.

Then she gave back his card.

'I think not,' she said.

He couldn't have been more surprised if she had slapped him.

'Commander Bond, you're undoubtedly a very attractive fellow and I would assume something of a success with the ladies. But you are a new-born. You don't yet have powers of fascination.'

He showed nothing in his face.

'You don't understand, do you?' she said. 'Here.'

She took off her glasses, and fixed him with a red look like a vice. He couldn't move. His knees were locked. Miss Churchward owned him. He would die for a word from her. He would throw himself into flames.

Miss Churchward touched her lips with a forefinger, and brushed his mouth with it. An electricity coursed through him, making every nerve burn. The moment lasted an eternity. He staggered.

And that's just a touch,' she said, with a tiny smile.

Bond composed himself. The sunbursts in his head fizzled. He looked across the hall and saw how carefully Tom was moving, like an old man. He was white as a ghost and thin to the point of insubstantiality. Miss Churchward had nearly used him up.

'If you would show yourself out,' she said. 'I've a lot to see to.'

He couldn't speak.

* * *

Outside, Bond dawdled by his Aston Martin, watching the sunset behind the palazzo, smoking a cigarette. His limbs still tingled. It was as if he'd been seduced by Catherine the Great, then tortured for a week in her dungeons.

He knew very little about Miss Churchward, but Winthrop said that as a warm girl  -  back in the '80s  -  she'd been briefly engaged to the Old Man. From the demonstration he'd just had, Bond thought it worth adding a footnote to his report. Penelope Churchward would become one of the most powerful elders in Europe. And she was British.

With Dracula gone, there was a vacancy. Someone had to be Vampire King.

Bond thought the day of King-Emperors was over. The next ruler of the night could well be a Queen-Empress.

He tossed the cigarette to the gravel and slid into the sports car. He didn't have to be in London for a few days, and thought he could scare up some entertainment in Rome.

Halfway back to the city, he realised he was being followed. A familiar sensation. A black Mercedes matched the speed of the Aston Martin. Bond realised the Merc was coordinated with a pair of black-jacketed motorcyclists up ahead. He was trapped between the outriders and the control car.

He shook the last of Miss Churchward's fog out of his mind, and shifted gears.

This was more his style.

He let the Aston Martin surge forward, drawing level with the bikers, to show he was on to them. He looked from side to side, clocking them. They were twins, tiny vampire girls. Long blonde streams fanned out under their crash helmets. They wore black leather jackets over frilly pink leotards.

The girls blew him kisses and, as one, gunned their cycles, nipping ahead of his speeding car. The road narrowed, winding along the rocky coast. He thought of nudging the girls' motorcycles, but didn't want to damage the car.

The Merc caught up with them. In the rear mirror, Bond saw the driver's face. It was the thug Genevieve had called Flattop, black lips in a cruel line, heavy eyes fixed on the car ahead.

So this was Brastov tidying up.

It was possible that Smert Spionem had killed Dracula, but unlikely. The Russians rarely favoured ostentatious displays of assassination. A quiet disappearance was more their style.

No, this was personal business.

Beside Flattop, raised on a cushion, was the Cat Man himself. He was in slightly more human form, though his face was still covered with white fur. His whiskers quivered.

The Aston Martin held the road superbly. The bike girls had to lean this way and that on the curves, knees scraping asphalt, but the car cornered with ease. The heavier, armour-plated Merc screeched, tail scraping the guardrail or the rock wall.

Brastov rolled down his side window and leaned half his body out. He wore a dinner jacket and a studded leather collar. His forelegs lengthened and bulked into human arms. In claw-fingered paws he held a submachine gun.

The gun chattered. Bullets pranged against Bond's car. It was a good job the Aston Martin was armoured with lightweight alloy twice the density of steel. The glass of the rear window cracked but didn't break.

The coast road fed into the main highway. Ahead was Rome. He could lose these gnats in the city.

He appreciated the tight bottoms of the vampire twins as they leaned over their motorcycles, weaving in front of him. They must be Brastov's new bodyguards. His old crew were hors de combat.

Other traffic got in the way. A moon-faced priest on a bicycle wobbled and fell over as the chase passed him. Bond looked back, and saw the Merc run over the bike but not the priest, who shook a fist and cursed like a docker. Oncoming cars sensed it would be a good idea to get out of the way.

A herd of sheep were crossing the road. The girls ploughed through the animals first, knocking over some unfortunate beasts. The Merc was too hard on his rear for him to slow down, so he sped up. Animals bounced from the bonnet, leaving bloody smears that'd be hell to clean. A rain of flying sheep fell on Brastov's car, forcing Flattop to skid from side to side, sheep-guts tangled in his wheels.

Bond laughed.

A shepherd ran up to Brastov's car, shouting. The kitty-cat shot him in the face.

That wasn't sporting. It was bad form to kill civilians.

For that, he wouldn't just escape. He would teach the Smert Spionem chief a lesson. Death to Spies, indeed.

The girls were herding him as if he were a bull, skilfully nudging the Aston Martin's bonnet, dancing out of the way if he tried to knock them over. Every so often, they threw him kisses or smiles. They had pink lipstick and pale blue eyeshadow. He wondered how old they were.

They were driving through a slum area. There was still rubble from the war. Mindless zombies shambled past in pathetic gaggles. Fires were starting, spreading red light around. Whores in ratty wool jumpers and short skirts shivered by braziers, showing their breasts at passing cars.

This must be I Cessati Spiriti.

There was room on the wasteland to open up the motor and do a few spectacular circles. It was time to show the twins what the Aston Martin could do. Bond no longer wished to play bull to their toreadors. Here, where there was no property worth damaging and bystanders were hardy enough to survive or too dead to matter, he could be a shark and the girls minnows.

A wall of flame divided one section of rubble from the next. He drove through it.

The girls plunged through after him. When they came out of the fire, their pretty faces were smudged with soot. Their jackets smoked.

The Merc exploded through the flames and ground to a halt in a thick mudpatch.

The Aston Martin wheeled round, leading the bike girls in a figure eight. Bond's fangs popped from his gums, razor tips dimpling his lips. He was working up an appetite.

He eased on the brakes and came to a perfect stop.

The bikes still followed.

With his Walther in his hand, he stepped out of the car.

The bikes skidded and overturned. The girls let their machines skitter away and stood. They took off their helmets and shook out their hair. They still smiled at him, though there was more than a little pout in their full lips.

He had an idea shooting them would have no effect. But it seemed only courteous. He put bullets in one girl's shoulder and the other's knee. They giggled and danced towards him like acrobats.

There was an explosion. The Merc's petrol tank had gone up. The flameburst outlined the tall figure of Flattop and the smaller one of Brastov. They were safe.

'Good evening, Mr Bond,' purred Brastov.

'If you say so,' he replied.

'What do you think of Cathy and Pony? My kittens?'

Brastov stood between the twins, arms around their waists. His head barely came up to their shoulders and they were small. The spymaster wore leather jackboots like Dick Whittington's cat, and walked upright, more like a primate than a feline. He smoked a cigarette in a long holder and wore a red monocle over his left eye.

'Lovely,' Bond said.

'They have claws,' Brastov purred.

'So I see.'

'I shall enjoy watching my kittens play with you.'

Bond remembered what Miss Churchward's touch had done to him. If these girl-shaped creatures had a fraction of her power, he would die. Admittedly, in an interesting way, but that was no consolation.

People had come out to watch. The whores and the zombies and the others of I Cessati Spiriti. This was the modern arena, fire and rubble. Dull eyes gleamed in the dark.

It was time to put on a good show.

Pony struck first, tumbling through the air like a Chinese ghost. She had claws on her hands and feet, and they hooked into his Erik Conrad car coat, scratching through to his skin. She hissed as her chattering mouth neared his neck.

He put a hand against her face and pushed her away.

She hurtled off but landed on her feet. Her sister was already on him, wrapping her legs around his waist, tearing at his face with talons.

Cathy had a better grip, but he broke it.

Bond knew now these were comparative new-borns. They'd not be easy, but he was on an equal footing with them. He kicked Cathy in the face, and punched Pony in the stomach.

Pony tried to latch her needle-ringed mouth on his crotch. He fought panic and stepped back. Her teeth closed on nothing and he felt a wash of relief. Angry, he thumped the vampire girl on the side of her head, then picked her up and tossed her screeching at her sister.

The twins fell in a ball, foaming and spitting.

Flattop stood over Brastov, holding his master's cloak. After the girls, Bond would have to face this dead-alive thing.

Then someone new bowled into the arena.

A masked man in red tights leaped through the flame and ran across to the fight. He pushed through the spectators and embraced Flattop from behind. He gripped like a wrestler and Flattop gurgled, back bent out of shape, desperation written on his green-grey face.

It was the Crimson Executioner, the man who had killed Anibas and all the others.

'Cathy, Pony,' shouted Brastov. 'To me.'

The girls untangled themselves. The Executioner hefted the broken-backed Flattop above his head in a perfect weightlifter's stance. The muscles of his arms and legs swelled with exertion. His mouth was fixed in a manic teeth-baring grin and mad eyes shone through his domino mask.

Flattop was thrown away. He landed, groaning.

The twins crept forward, summoned by Brastov. The Executioner looked at them and laughed. Given pause, they stopped in their tracks, hissing.

Brastov's whiskers bristled. He was angry and terrified.

Bond had cause to be thankful that he was a new-born vampire. This man killed only elders.

The Crimson Executioner, still laughing, picked the Cat Man up by the scruff of his neck and held him off the ground. His boots kicked in the air. His strangled protests sounded more like miaows than complaints.

Bond looked at the faces of the crowd. Morti viventi, lips rotted away to display permanent grins, watched with rapt attention, the last of their intelligence fixed on the spectacle.

Among the whores was a large warm woman, not obese or a giant, but big of frame and gesture. Something was strange about her eyes. She gave the classical thumbs-down sign.

'So decides Mamma Roma,' she declared.

'Mamma Roma, Mamma Roma,' chanted the whores.

The Crimson Executioner nodded.

He demonstrated one of the proverbial ways of skinning a cat. First, he took off Brastov's face as if it were a mask, then he pulled a red tear down through his chest, as if unbuttoning a shirt. He reached inside and extracted Brastov's red-clad skeleton from the furry skin. He tossed the fur away, and two female zombies tore it apart in an argument over its possession. Each salvaged scraps, which they rubbed against their noseless faces.

Without his catskin, Brastov was more human. He seemed to grow, assuming the shape of a full-sized man. Blood and bones and organs leaked out of him, falling with a splash around the Executioner's boots.

Bond saw mad fear in Brastov's slit pupils.

The Executioner tore the elder vampire apart and let the remains tumble. The zombies fell on the splatter of meat and bone, and began chewing. The Executioner held Brastov's beating heart and squeezed it like a sponge until it was still.

'You,' said Mamma Roma, pointing at Bond.

'Madam,' he acknowledged.

'Come here.'

He looked at the morti viventi, brawling and biting over the remains of Gregor Brastov. He saw Cathy and Pony helping the mewling Flattop up onto his feet.

Mamma Roma's face was implacable. She was past her youth. Her wide hips had birthed many babies. Her full breasts had suckled children and full-grown men.

Her name was apt. She was Rome.

Her arms were out. Her mouth was open.

He went to Mamma.