Free Anno Dracula 1918 - The Bloody Red Baron by Kim Newman

between ants and cat-blood.
    Shortly after turning, her pierced ears had healed and, rather shockingly, she found herself a virgin again. The condition was swiftly, permanently, remedied. At the time, being 'ruined' was a bigger scandal than turning vampire.
    She was still adapting, learning. It was hard to tell what she would become. She vowed not to be a monster.
    Alone on the parade ground, she walked around to the guardhouse, keen senses alert. She did not want to share her lead. And she did not want to be involved with anyone above the rank of corporal. Her condemnation of General Mireau had won her many friends in the French army, but few in the officer class. Her articles about the Dreyfus case had predisposed them against her, and her recent writings had hardly regained their affections.
    There was a French staff car parked in the road outside, just visible through a failing hedge. Its windows were dark. Had one of Mata Hari's conquests come to pay a secret farewell? Or to be sure she was truly dead?
    Corporal Jacques Lantier was waiting for her in his pokey office. His face was an angry tangle of scar. After two days in which the enemy inflicted an 80 per cent casualty rate on exposed Frenchmen, the remnant of General Mireau's command had defied his 'to the last man' order and retreated across the hundred yards of dirt they had taken but been unable to hold. Lantier, alive and maimed, was one of the fortunate. In one piece, he might have been among the dozen men Mireau had had shot for cowardice. He was eligible for a place in the unofficial veterans' club of the disfigured, the Union des Gueules Cassees, the Brotherhood of Broken Mugs.
    Lantier opened a hole in his lower face with the end of his little finger and stuck a cigarette into it. Kate accepted his offer of a cigarette and they both lit up off a single match-flame.
    The corporal coughed and smoke clouded around him. He was, of course, grateful to one of the few journalists to condemn General Mireau but there were other considerations. Before the war, twenty francs might have purchased a horse. Now it might stretch to a slice of horse meat.
    'They spoke softly, mademoiselle,' Lantier said, excusing himself, 'and my hearing is not so good ...'
    One of his ears was sheared off entirely, the other an inflamed lump.
    'But you heard something.'
    She added more notes to the sheaf in his fist.
    'Scraps here and there ... a few names ... Château du Malinbois, Professor Ten Brincken, Baron von Richthofen, General Karnstein ...'
    Each name unloosed another ten francs.
    'Enough,' she said. 'Just tell me what you heard.'
    Lantier shrugged and began ...
    It was nearly midday when Corporal Lantier finished. Kate had filled a notebook but was not sure what to make of it. There were gaps. Some she could fill in with her own intelligence but most were true blanks.
    She had expected new light on the perfidy of General Mireau but this was entirely fresh. She would have to read up on the Richthofen Freak Show. If Charles was interested enough to hear Mata Hari out, there was certainly a story in it.
    Lantier escorted her outside. Without its sole prisoner, the barracks was dead. The firing squad were on leave in Paris and would be back in the trenches by tomorrow's dawn.
    They walked across the parade ground. She paused to examine the pole where Mata Hari had died.
    'After the beheading,' Lantier said, 'young men pressed around and dipped handkerchiefs in the blood. For souvenirs.'
    'Or to taste. It must be heady stuff. The blood of Mata Hari.'
    Lantier spat and missed the pole.
    'Vampire blood could help ...' she began, indicating Lantier's face.
    He shook his head and spat again. 'Curse you all, you bloodsuckers. What good have you ever done?'
    She had no answer. Many Frenchmen, especially outside Paris, felt as he did. Vampirism had not taken hold quite as it had in Britain, Germany and Austria-Hungary. France had its elders - Genevieve, for one - and a growing swell of