Before staying as she was.

She'd been a vampire much longer than she'd been warm.

One reason for the slow progress of the Program was that the Shop had got hold of extensive documentation of a project carried out during the First World War by the Germans, at the direction of Dracula himself. She knew a little about that from Charles, the warm fiance who'd left her for Genevieve but still opted for old age and death rather than vampirism. He had been with the Diogenes Club, a more gentlemanly British version of the Shop. The Kaiser's mad scientists had created a cadre of fearsome flying shapeshifters, far more mutated than any of the Program's batmen. Few of those vampire aces came through the war human-minded enough to be of any use to anyone.

The last survivors of the experiment were exterminated by Hitler, whose own dreams of a pureblood German vampire race had fizzled. The Nazi plan was to kill off all extant 'mongrel vampires', whom they classed with gypsies and Jews. Then, a mass communion of Aryan blood would create a new iron bloodline. The War ended before Hitler's vision was realised. Gardner told her he'd faced and bested a couple of the prototype vampire supermen, remarkable only for ugliness. Upon turning, their faces shapeshifted into scarlet skulls or batwing-eared fright masks and stuck that way. Dracula himself supported the Allies and went into Romania on a crusade in 1944, uniting the elder vampires of the region against the Nazis. She'd come into that story late, joining the Count's household after Truman, Stalin and Churchill manoeuvred him out of his castle stronghold and into useless Italian exile at the Palazzo Otranto.

At one time, she'd thought vampires must become masters of the world. Would these new-borns, who could live as vampires but perhaps just switch it off, fulfil that dream? And where would that leave her?

It was good that these new-borns were imprinted on her.

One night, she might need them.

4.

Penelope found out more about the other group.

One night, after visiting the infirmary to lend Nikita some fashion magazines, she bumped into a vampire she recognised from Europe. Baron Alexis Ziska. He pretended not to remember her.

Ziska had been in London in '88 with the Prince Consort's Carpathian Guard. He'd also hung about Otranto, a vague connection of Asa Vajda, Dracula's annoying Moldavian fiancee. One of those carbon copy elders, he had cut his moustache and cloak too obviously in imitation of the Count. Since Dracula's true death, the copy had faded. There were black smudges under his red-rimmed eyes.

'Baron, we must catch up,' she said.

Ziska grunted.

'With each other's news, I mean. What brings you here, to Purgatory?'

The vampire mumbled.

'I have clearance,' Penny reassured him. 'I'm with the Shop.'

At mention of the agency, Ziska suppressed a flush of terror. He was a sender, leaking emotion all over the place. No wonder he was reduced to a hanger-on.

'Have you found a friend, Lex?' shouted someone from the ward. 'Haul her in. She's bound to be better company than you. Did you bring the fat mice, as I requested?'

The voice came from a bed behind black curtains. Ziska's face darkened.

'That sounds like an invitation,' she said.

Ziska stamped into the ward. Penny tagged along and helped open the curtains.

'My my, what a pretty one,' said the thing in the bed. 'You must introduce me.'

The patient was more coal than flesh, a living skeleton clad in black, cooked meat. The eyes were wetly mobile and the teeth sharp and white. Penny took the patient to be male, a vampire and on the way to recovery.

'Baron Lajos Czuczron,' said Ziska, 'this is, ah, Lady Godalming.'

'Penelope Churchward,' she corrected, extending a hand. 'Penny.'

Charcoal fingers took hers. She let Czuczron kiss her hand by pressing lipless teeth to her knuckles.

'Enchante, mademoiselle.'

Czuczron was another Carpathian, a Hungarian. She remembered the name. A sometime member of Dracula's inner circle, he'd neglected to call on his old master in exile. An invitation to the Royal Wedding, sent care of his old regiment, had been politely declined. She understood he was among the few vampires to prosper under communism. If he was here, he must be on the outs in Budapest.

'I regret offending your eyes with my present person. I am usually reckoned attractive. A dashing blade. I was staked out on a rock by ungrateful peasants and left for sunrise. Only the intervention of my good and faithful friends preserved me from the cruelty of true death.'

He was on a drip, like Nikita. She assumed he was getting 'golden' too.

'Had I known flowers of undeath like yourself were to be found in America, I should have come to this Virgin Land years ago. It has been an awakening, my dear.'

Ziska hissed, trying to shut Czuczron up.

'Come, Lex, we are all comrades. We are all nosferatu of the Old World. If this Shop wishes to help our cause, for whatever reasons, it would be impolite to shun them. Dearest Penny, I yearn to rise from this bed and hunt again. I am reinvigorated by our prospects, willing myself back to strength for the night when we return to our homelands, to become the princes we should always have been.'

She recognised the tune. Most popularly associated with Baron Meinster, of the Transylvania Movement.

Dr Beecher came onto the ward and shooed the visitors away from Czuczron. Outside, Ziska was steely and silent. She could taste his distrust and couldn't resist twisting the stake.

'So the Shop is training an army of elders? Carpathians. Intriguing times ahead.'

Ziska actually growled and faded into the shadows.

5.

They lost the Angel, not to the sun or bad blood but to ambition. In flying form, he affected white eagle-feathers rather than leathery bat-membranes. He further lived up to his call sign by sporting golden eyes, pre-Raphaelite hippie curls and loose white robes. While unfolding his new wings for an examination, his brain burst from the strain of the shapeshift. Blood squirted in streams out of his eye-sockets.

Penelope was glad she wasn't there to see that. Blood was her sustenance, but she was wearied by endless spilling of the stuff.

The rest of the pledges were sobered by the casualty. Officially, a training accident.

She took the seminar. The others had to learn from this incident.

'Here is the paradox,' she said. 'Vampires are immortal, but most don't last a year beyond turning. In the weeks after my death, I was nearly destroyed. I was fortunate. Many I could name were not. Tigers are an endangered species, too. It doesn't do to be too efficient a predator. They get hunted to extinction. Now, would anyone like to say anything about the Angel?'

Desire sat quietly at the back, inexpressive. The new-born had slept with the pledge, before and after turning. She must also have been in his head, a greater intimacy than sex. Penny couldn't tell if Desire had the Angel's ghost - or psychic echo - tucked in the corner of her skull.

After several long clock-tick moments, Banshee put up his hand. He hadn't ditched the screaming shirts since turning but now wore his weird eyeshade all the time.

'We were blood brothers,' Banshee said. All of us, except Iceman, we've shared blood. After we got through the first week, we had that party...'

After passing blood tests, a gaggle of flashdancers from a town titty bar had been brought in. For the pledges, this was their first chance to drink from a warm neck. One girl died and Velcro was up on a charge for a week.

'Before dawn, we had a ceremony. We cut open our wrists and let the flows go together.'

Penny shuddered. She'd suffered a year of fever after her first warm meal, a sick child. Her leech-spots itched when she remembered.

'Is this true?' she asked the class.

'It was righteous,' said Velcro.

Penny looked at Desire. The girl nodded.

'Dr Beecher will have to check you all over,' Penny said. 'Iceman, congratulations on opting out of the idiot club.'

Iceman, a human-shaped machine even before turning, took the compliment with a nod. A solo hunter, he'd be top of the class if not marked down for straying from the team. He was literally the coldest vampire Penny had ever known, his body temperature corpse-cool even after feeding. He could exhale darts of frost.

'It's not a wrong thing,' said the Confessor.

She didn't understand.

'The Angel lives on,' said Banshee. 'In us.'

Desire blinked, briefly flashing golden eyes.

6.

After weeks of public foreplay, Penelope went to bed with Banshee. His quarters were decorated like a teenager's bedroom with pin-ups and pennants. Giorgio Moroder pounded out of a chunky sound system and Madonna screamed in silence on the muted portable TV. The sex was like the entertainment: noise and light but no connection, synthesised orchestration but a banal tune. Banshee pumped to orgasms as if scoring baskets and whooped with each little victory, seeking approval. It was what Penny had expected and, in truth, wanted.

The mechanics of coupling were over and done with. Her mouth bled from the sharpness of her fangs. Banshee lay under her with his eyes closed. He hadn't slept since turning, so he was overdue for a first lapse into death-like lassitude. Even the TV light patterns hurt his dark-adapted eyes, though he wouldn't admit a weakness. She found his shades on the bedside table and fitted them onto his head so he could look at her.

Penny swallowed her own blood.

'Jedburgh has us on an exercise tomorrow,' said Banshee. 'In the Ghost Town.'

An abandoned silver-mining community from the Old West a couple of klicks from Purgatory was often used for war games.

'We're going up against the other group.'

Penny felt cold.

'The real vampires, Penny.'

She'd seen Ziska again, jogging in formation with old-faced killers. Czuczron was up and around, patches of skin forming over the charred meat. The elder was recovering remarkably.

'We have to be better than the old ones, or there's no point, is there? New has to be improved. We've got to be the best.'

She had an overwhelming need. The cat in her room wasn't going to meet it. It was foolish, but a hundred years had not taught her how to resist temptation. She let her weight press onto Banshee, surprising and delighting him, then slithered down his body. She fastened her mouth to his sculptured belly, slid in her fangs, and began sucking gently, pressing and teasing with her tongue. She made a wound which seeped sweetly into her mouth.

Banshee slid his hands under her hair, pressing her face to his skin.

'We have to win,' he said.

In her head, dazed by rich half-warm, half-vampire blood, Penny flew. She rolled over, firework display in her back-brain, and watched the ceiling. Movement and sound caught her attention.

A dove had got into the barracks and was fluttering up in the eaves, dislodging clouds of dust motes which danced in the coloured light. Smoky candles burned on all surfaces, adding scent to the grainy air. The bird's wings flapped, making pixillated flash-images in her vision. It seemed like a series of identical doves, appearing and disappearing about the beams and joists.

Penny sprang upright, shocking Banshee. Piloted by the lizard stem, she acted purely on instinct, personality and intellect left on the damp sheets.

Arms by her sides, she snatched with her mouth.

When she fell back to the bed, bouncing Banshee aside, she bit through feathers and bone. In two bites and swallows, the dove was gone, beak and feet and all.

She puffed feathers out of her mouth in a cloud and straddled Banshee like a bronc-buster.

'Try and throw me, howling man,' she said.

7.

'Howdy, girls and boys,' said Jedburgh, waving his straw-mesh Stetson for attention. The director was Shop through and through. A large, untidy Texan, he was warm but looked as if he could take down a two-thousand-year-old hopping Chinese elder with his bare hands.

'I reckon most of you have figured somethin' out about the Program. We let you do your little jobs and we take care of the big picture, but you're all smart folks. The Shop don't take any other kind.'

This briefing was for the instructors. Penelope, still woozy from Banshee's blood, sat next to Captain Gardner, who was sternly disappointed in her. Did he expect she'd become a nun for the USA? She was Code Name: Trampire, after all. Dr Beecher was there, along with Revok of Psi Division and Rainbird of Infiltration and Liquidation. Several unfamiliar men and women, vampire and warm, were also present. They must be with the other group. Up front with Jedburgh was a walking corpse.

'This here's Caleb Croft. A Brit, but don't hold it against him. He's one of the best buddies the Shop has. He's been ridin' herd on Carpathia Group.'