Alucard agreed.

'Meinster may be a candy-ass little bastard,' said Jedburgh, 'but he's got some moves on him. I guess you don't become a vampire elder without learnin' a little sneaky. You heard what Kissinger said when Baron Meinster went up against Ceauescu?'

'"It's a pity they can't both lose.'"

'You did hear? Well, Henry Hawk was wrong, Johnny-Boy. In some wars, everybody loses. That's the point.'

Gardner and Banshee, flying in formation, went after the Carpathians. The limpet-miners had flapped a lot of miles from their roost - Meinster must have had them on Crete or one of the smaller islands - and were in no shape to outpace a pair of fresh fliers. Jedburgh ordered a flare popped so personnel on deck without nosferatu night-eyes could catch the show.

It was swift and brief.

The Americans let one Carpathian go free 'to tell the tale' and brought the other - whom Banshee introduced as 'a loser named Al Ziska' - back to the Queeg, wings ripped and useless.

'It was Czuczron, sir,' said Gardner.

Alucard remembered the hearty elder at the Wild Hunt, thumbnail tearing into a girl's femoral artery as if opening a shrink-wrapped CD. Dracula remembered Czuczron as a useful blade in a melee, but only when the gold was clinking his way. Meinster's man. Bought and paid for, at least for tonight.

'Give pursuit,' Alucard told Iceman and Nikita. 'Make it good, but let him lose you. Show proper frustration.'

'Yeah,' put in Jedburgh. 'That little bastard just offed Johnny Alucard!'

The fliers were gone in a second, zooming across the sea like darts.

Attention turned to the prisoner.

'The pretender is dead,' declared Ziska, an old Carpathian hand, looking from Gorse to Jedburgh. 'What you do to me means nothing.'

'The pretender?' asked Alucard, amused.

Ziska looked at him and saw the Father.

Alucard shifted, mostly inside his skull. Each time it happened, it was faster and easier and more complete.

'Alexis, you have made a mistake,' said Dracula. 'You know what you must do.'

Ziska, shocked into terror, shrugged free of Banshee and Gardner. He couldn't fly away. He knew better than to beg forgiveness. He raised an arm in salute and levered loose a long bone-spur that projected from his elbow, ripping away the last of the wing-membrane. Blood pattered on the deck.

Dracula looked at the sheared end of the bone.

'It is well,' he said.

Ziska took a step forward, bone-dagger raised, then fell to his knees, leaning forward onto the spike, slipping it under his ribs like a seppuku samurai, forcing it through his heart. The fire in the elder's eyes went out. He crumpled into a coherent statue of cinder, ash and dirt. Even his baggy flight suit blackened and flaked.

Dracula filled his lungs and exhaled, a concentrated blast of cold.

Ziska fell apart.

'Get someone to clean this up,' said Jedburgh. 'We're supposed to be a ship-shape ship.'

The Father folded inside Alucard.

'That was an attack on American forces,' said Alucard.

'Indeed it was, Johnny-Boy. Shop protocols apply. If we want, we can make this a shootin' war and Georgie can't bleat about it. So long as the other feller draws first, no court in Dodge is gonna throw us a neck-tie party for pluggin' him.'

How long would it take for Czuczron to report back to Meinster?

General Iorga came up from below-decks and reported that the real helicopter was ready. He was well aware that Alucard must have weighed up the advantages of putting him on the first Huey, to add conviction.

'Then, my friends,' said Alucard, 'let's go to the castle.'

7.

Dry-ice fog banks dissipated on late afternoon breezes, revealing a life-size cutaway diagram of an Aztec step pyramid. A place of perfect sacrifice. Stage centre, tilted as if in an undertakers' showroom, were three black coffins, emblazoned with scarlet inverted crosses. A heavy, simple drumbeat started. An electric piano laid down jangled, ominous chords. Observing from the battlements of Castle Dracula, Holly felt the thrumm in the roots of her fang-teeth.

With three explosions, two coffins burst open. Out jumped the lead and rhythm guitarists of Spinal Tap, all straining spandex and hair extensions, dhamped to the eyeballs. Striking pelvis-out, guitar-heiling poses, they shouted 'Hell-o-o-o-o-o, Transylvania!' The amplified greeting resounded from treetop and mountainside. The band should have remembered the traditional Carpathian peasant saying 'they only come out at night'. In the distance beyond the under-populated amphitheatre, mountain goats bleated. The guitarists held their pose, fangy snarls stuck on their faces. A few roadies and merchandise-hawkers gave a charity clap. All seven members of the local chapter of the fan club - three babushkas, two sociologists, a seriously out-of-style vampire elder, some poor slob in full leather-chains-and-wig gear and a sullen nine-year-old girl - whirled bull-roarers and waved placards with Romanian slogans.

The third coffin, still clamped shut, leaked fire and screams. Minions scurried in with extinguishers and axes, and set about rescuing the trapped bass guitarist. Ignoring this frenzied activity, the currently uncoffined band members launched into a messy cover of Meat Loaf's 'Bat Out of Hell'. Just as the song finished and the others returned to their coffins, the bassist was freed. A stage-hand gave him an extinguisher blast, whiting his blacked face and putting out the flames incubating in his piratical nest of hair. The fans cheered wildly, which might have been a consolation.

After nights as Patricia, trotting after Baron Meinster like a third poodle, and Josie, rehearsing with her all-girl band, Holly enjoyed this moment as herself. She liked being up high, with a panoramic view, finally seeing how all the pieces John put on the board fitted together.

The Baron was under the castle in the 'communications centre', hooked into the TV and audio set-up, leeching time from the broadcast team to keep abreast of the movements of his people, who were in place all over the province. Giant screens were erected in the squares of Timioara and Cluj, the principal cities of Transylvania. Every village and town hall had its own television set on a wall-bracket. The show was a line of communication for the coup. Carpathian community leaders were prepared to cut in as the concert reached its climax at dawn. It was Crainic's responsibility to recruit these spokespeople. Meinster had Patricia go over the list to weed out those more loyal to the Cause than the Baron. That useful chore meant she could sideline vampires John suspected of counting on Meinster for advancement in the new Transylvania.

Penny, custom-fitted earplugs in place, looked out over Borgo Pass. She summoned Holly to watch the sunset. 'Saliva of the Fittest', Spinal Tap's second number, could safely be ignored.

Stands of trees had been felled for the lumber used to erect benches and bleachers around the open-air stage. A mountain crag was levelled to make a performance space, with the castle itself dramatically off to one side. From the tower-top, Holly and Penny had a skewed view of the arena. They could see into the wings, where dozens of people swarmed and fussed to keep the show moving.

Castle Dracula, uninhabited for over a century, was now head-quarters for the talent, the techs and their hangers-on. Crypts were now dressing rooms. Torture chambers were rehearsal spaces. John had contracted Swan, the innovative record producer, to stage-manage the concert. The apparently youthful mastermind, in command of a crew which would shame NASA Mission Control, had outfitted the East Tower as a state-of-the-art broadcast facility. A giant RKO logo aerial on a nearby peak transmitted to the one-man T5 space station, which John was sub-leasing for one night only from an international disaster relief organisation. The signal was relayed to sub-stations around the world by a ring of satellites.

As Patricia, Holly had averted daily thermonuclear conflicts between Swan and Meinster. Both bighead boys needed to see themselves as ultimate puppet-master of this event, though that position was, of course, already taken.

The courtyard helipad was in constant use, over a dozen choppers in the air at any time. As the concert began, many headliners weren't even in Europe. Their global positions were marked on an electronic big board in Swan's turret. Even now, the Short Lion wasn't one hundred per cent confirmed, though his people were talking with the control room. Swan cooed promises into a throat-mike, constantly upping the offer. The Short Lion was in the air, either over Mexico or India. Timmy V's people were dawdling en route from Thailand, intent their superstar shouldn't arrive first. It was easier to arrange the overthrow of a European government than to get the leading vampires of rock onto the same stage at the same time. If it fell through, Swan would shove Jagger and Bowie out there, get a backing band to play 'Give Me the Moonlight, Give Me the Music' and hope for the best. But Alucard would still take revenge on the recalcitrant superstars. Even literal immortals could be hustled prematurely into Rock n' Roll Heaven. If there really was such a place, they must have a hell of a drug problem.

The opening band wound up a short set and jeered 'Goodbye, Transylvania'. In the wings, exultant after his frenzied performance, the band's red-faced, drac-bloated drummer tried to sprout Satanic metal horns and his head exploded. Shame he hadn't managed that onstage. Then, Spinal Tap would have been a hard act to follow. As it was, he left a mess that had to be stepped over or cleared up.

Holly slipped into Penny's mind and asked about John. Czuczron had showed up early this morning and reported to Meinster that 'the pretender' was no longer a problem. John's position was not on the big board.

'Part of the plan, dear,' mouthed Penny.

Holly thought that if Alucard were truly dead, she'd know. It would be as if a part of her were ripped away. As it had been when Kit died.

She remembered Kit now. She remembered who she had been.

It didn't seem quite real. Thirty years on the road, with only speed and blood.

The sun was down now. Artificial moons illuminated the stage. Crowds poured along torch-lined paths from villages where ten-lei-a-night hostel accommodation was going for five hundred American dollars. The stands filled. On stage, Paul Simon and a Szgany band played a selection of newly composed traditional tunes from his Land Beyond the Forests album. Some warm Romanians chanted anti-gypsy slogans and were quieted by vampire bouncers. Decades after Dracula's passing, the Szganys, his traditional servants, remained under his protection. Simon welcomed a 'very special guest', the English rock star Fang. They played duelling throats on 'They Bleed Alone', Fang's protest dirge about the mass impalement of hoppingjiangshi in Communist China. In a pause not filled by applause, Fang produced a yellow scroll and read a lengthy message of support from someone or for someone. Simon whipped his gypsies into line and belted out something Romanian that locals enthusiastically joined in with, drowning the speech.

'That sounds just like "My Old Man Said Follow the Van",' commented Penny. 'Marie Lloyd. Now, there was a star. Not like these clods.'

Fang slunk off. Gloom squirted out of his ears and nose like octopus ink.

Josie's band, the Pussycats, weren't on for hours.

Of her back-up selves, Holly liked the singer best - but when she shifted into her she had the least control. Josie Hart was certain of who she was and Holly needed a code-word (they had picked 'Shazam') from Penny to trigger a reverse shift. It'd be easy to slip into Josie's life and not come back. She was performing all the time, but never pretended she wasn't. Her sense of taste was extraordinarily well developed, distinguishing amongst the thousands of flavours of choice blood. Before she became a star herself, Josie had battened on many gods and goddesses of rock -some now truly dead, others on the bill tonight - and taken something of each, leeching and learning. When she stepped on a stage, the taste of Janis Joplin was in her mouth, sharpening her fangs.

Holly looked at Penny's programme.

Next up was a goth gore girlie with red skin and horns. She used special effects magic in an act which had as much goat-sacrifice as music in it. Not all the goats were goats. Performers hated going on after her because the stage was tacky with discharges. The short straw went to Jackson Browne. Though warm himself, he wanted to show support for 'nosferatu self-determination' with a reprise of 'Before the Deluge'. He was surprised on the final chorus to be joined by a red-eyed Fang, who fought his way through roadies to come out, warble harmonies, and cut into Browne's encore by reading the rest of his statement. In the wings, a stage manager made vivid throat-cutting gestures.

Still to come, here at the epicentre or in hook-ups from key sites around the world: the Eurythmics, the Deep Fix, the Pet Shop Boys, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Cher (ordered not to sing 'Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves'), Screaming Lord Sutch (''Til the Following Night'), Frozen Gold, Judas Priest, Loud Stuff (the band who used to record as Loud Shit), Tony Bennett and Bob Dylan ('Blue Moon'), Strange Fruit, Huey Lewis and the News, Whip Hand, The Railtown Bottlers, Automatic Dlamini, Crucial Taunt, Bob Geldof and Midge Ure ('Don't They Know It's Hallowe'en?'), Iggy Pop and Deborah Harry ('Swell Party'), the Jake Hammer Band, Nik Kershaw, Debbie and the Dayglos, Black Roses, Alice Cooper ('I Love the Dead'), Phoenix ('Old Souls'), Coil, the Johnny Favorite Big Band, Rick Springfield, Bobby 'Boris' Pickett, Ivor Cutler, the Dangerous Brothers ('Grab Yourself a Sheep'), Steven Shorter ('I've Been a Bad, Bad Boy'), Talking Heads, Barbara Cartland ('A Nightingale Sang in Ba-a-a-rk-eley Square'), the Impossibles, the Ramones, Satanico Pandemonium (with her snake act), Dire Straits, Kylie Minogue, Aled Jones...

Pale or warm, hot or cold, group or solo or bizarre once-in-their-careers combo (Stephen King, Warren Zevon and Dick Contino?), they all had reasons to show up here. Some were Immortology believers, others had a commitment to the Transylvania Movement, some needed a charity gig on the resume to demonstrate social worth to a disapproving judge, a few saw an opportunity for a chart comeback or to unveil a new personality, a couple were addicted to the lights and the buzz, maybe a dozen had traded sexual favours with Swan, two or three had been blackmailed, one had literally committed murder, and Phil Collins just turned up unannounced at Stonehenge and was given a slot by a minion too embarrassed to say he wasn't wanted.

Dawn was a long way off. When it came, the world would be changed.

And so would Holly.

8.

'Would you like the concert fed through, sir?' asked the pilot.

'Not really,' said Alucard.

Now it was happening, he wasn't that interested. Putting it together had been the challenge. The show must take care of itself. He could rely on Swan to make the best of it, to exploit disasters as well as triumphs. There was a healthy market for a Most Embarrassing Concert for Transylvania Flops, Bloopers and Out-Takes video.

As they took off from the Queeg, for real this time, news came in off the wire that the Short Lion's jet was down in the Bermuda Triangle and all hands lost. The crooner Petya Tcherkassoff went on stage in a flood of crocodile tears and announced a tribute to the fallen rock prince. He was struggling to impress a shocked-silent audience with a dreadful cover of the Short Lion's bad-enough whinge single 'Louis Louis' when word came through that the Short Lion hadn't been on his jet. He was undestroyed, aboard the Istanbul Express and nearing the concert. It was a master-coup, even if it did entail sacrificing a backing band. The response from the Timmy V camp - issuing formal denial of responsibility for any rocket attack - was weak. If the duo did make it on stage at the same time, Alucard didn't know whether they would sing together or bite through each other's throats. Either way was fine with him.

Alucard's entourage flew in a Super Jolly CH-53, larger than the Sea Knight Czuczron had blown up, with manned door-guns and a belly full of Bat-Soldiers. He hadn't had a backing band to throw away, but the stratagem had meant writing off a Huey as collateral damage. For show, someone had to be on board - Dirk Frost. He'd been told he was making an urgent drac delivery to the dressing rooms.

Meinster had too much self-belief to double-check the good news. By now he'd be as distracted as a boy on Christmas morning, opening all his presents at once. Street-fighting had started in Timioara, expected flashpoint of the Transylvania coup. Key elders had taken positions around the province and were practising their speeches. Behind them, quiet vampires held hardwood daggers and Kalashnikovs. In Bucharest, President Iliescu would soon discover phone-lines into Transylvania were down. The concert's enormous broadcast bandwidth blotted out military and civilian radio communications. With the T5 under Alucard's command, even an international distress call would go unanswered. Iliescu would have to watch the revolution on television like everyone else. On CNN, it would appear in a tiny iris in a corner of the screen as the pop concert dominated the image.

'We are now entering Romanian air-space, sir.'

They had flown across Turkey and Bulgaria. Alucard looked out of the armoured glass window of a nearby gunport.

'Is this a homeland, Iorga?' he asked.

The elder scowled, uncomfortable. Some people around here had long memories.

The dark landscape was nondescript. The few towns were like signal fires in a black plain. Fir trees rose like a forest of stakes. Below was Wallachia, homeland of Vlad the Impaler. In warm life, Dracula ruled not Transylvania but its neighbouring province. If that history, which the Father remembered in flashes, was indeed his own. Holly could steal whole lives at a feeding. Some argued that the Dracula who came to London in 1885 was not the Dracula who had been Vlad Tepes. It didn't matter who the Father had been; the question was who he was now.

'Bogeys, sir.'

Bat-shapes rose from the trees.

The Delta Force door-gunner locked and loaded. Silver slugs shone like ball-bearings in his ammunition belt. He angled around, getting a fix on the flitting wings.

Alucard indicated they should hold fire.

The bat-creatures fell into a holding pattern, keeping pace with the Jolly.

'Our escort has arrived, gentlemen,' Alucard announced.

The door-gunner stood down.

Ahead rose the jagged peaks of the Carpathians. The pilot took the helicopter up, out of shadow and into clear night sky. The escort kept pace, even up here where the air was thinner and colder. They crested the mountains and were over Transylvania.

Some part of him felt home.

Another part remembered why he had left.

Alucard folded back inside himself and the Father took over. Gorse noticed the shift and removed the earpiece he had tuned to the BBC World Service. He gave a curt nod of respect. It passed around the helicopter. Everybody knew they were in the Presence.

'Now,' said Dracula. 'The music.'

The radio operator flicked switches. Ralph Rockula and Lesley Gore were duetting with 'Judy's Turn to Cry'. The song filled the interior of the helicopter.

Dracula smiled.

9.

'Shazam,' said Penny, sending Josie Hart to the Phantom Zone.

Holly came back, ears ringing from music and applause, cat-suit stretched onto her taller shape. They were backstage, in a red room. The green room, full of flowers and live snacks, was for acts about to go on; the red room, a bare space which didn't encourage anyone to stick around, was for those who had just come off. Over the p.a. system, Elton John and Kiki Dee introduced each other, then segued into a duet, 'Bleedings (Woe-Woe-Woe, Blee-eedings)'.