'Guide me, Reed.'

'I can't write your ending for you.'

31.

At the worst possible time, the policeman was back. There were questions about Shiny Suit. Irregularities revealed by the autopsy.

For some reason, Kate was questioned.

Through an interpreter, the policeman kept asking her about the dead official, what had their dealings been, whether Georghiou's prejudice against her kind had affected her.

Then he asked her when she had last fed, and upon whom?

'That's private,' she said.

She didn't want to admit that she had been snacking on rats for months. She'd had no time to cultivate anyone warm. Her powers of fascination were thinning.

A scrap of cloth was produced and handed to her.

'Do you recognise this?' she was asked.

It was filthy, but she realised that she did.

'Why, it's my scarf. From Biba. I...'

It was snatched away from her. The policeman wrote down a note.

She tried to say something about Ion, but thought better of it. The translator told the policeman Kate had almost admitted to something.

She felt distinctly chilled.

She was asked to open her mouth, like a horse up for sale. The policeman peered at her sharp little teeth and tutted.

That was all for now.

32.

'How are monsters made?'

Kate was weary of questions. Francis, Marty, the police. Always questions.

Still, she was on the payroll as an advisor.

'I've known too many monsters, Francis. Some were born, some were made all at once, some were eroded, some shaped themselves, some twisted by history.'

'What about Dracula?'

'He was the monster of monsters. All of the above.'

Francis laughed.

'You're thinking of Brando.'

'After your movie, so will everybody else.'

He was pleased by the thought.

'I guess they will.'

'You're bringing him back. Is that a good idea?'

'It's a bit late to raise that.'

'Seriously, Francis. He'll never be gone, never be forgotten. But your Dracula will be powerful. In the next valley, people are fighting over the tatters of the old, faded Dracula. What will your Technicolor, 70mm, Dolby stereo Dracula mean?'

'Meanings are for the critics.'

33.

Two Szgany gypsies throw Harker into the great hall of the castle. He sprawls on the straw-covered flagstones, emaciated and wild-eyed, close to madness.

Dracula sits on a throne which stretches wooden wings out behind him. Renfield worships at his feet, tongue applied to the Count's black leather boot. Murray, a blissful smile on his face and scabs on his neck, stands to one side, with Dracula's three vampire brides.

DRACULA: I bid you welcome. Come safely, go freely and leave some of the happiness you bring.

HARKER looks up.

HARKER: You... were a Prince.

DRACULA: I am a Prince still. Of Darkness.

The brides titter and clap. A frown from their Master silences them.

DRACULA: Harker, what do you think we are doing here, at the edge of Christendom? What dark mirror is held up to our unreflecting faces?

By the throne is an occasional table piled high with books and periodicals. Bradshaw's Guide to Railway Timetables in England, Scotland and Wales, George and Weedon Grossmith's Diary of a Nobody, Sabine Baring-Gould's The Book of Were-Wolves, Oscar Wilde's Salome.

Dracula picks up a volume of the poetry of Robert Browning.

DRACULA: 'I must not omit to say that in Transylvania there's a tribe of alien people that ascribe the outlandish ways and dress on which their neighbours lay such stress, to their fathers and mothers having risen out of some subterraneous prison into which they were trepanned long time ago in a mighty band out of Hamelin town in Brunswick land, but how or why, they don't understand.'

RENFIELD claps.

RENFIELD: Rats, Master. Rats.

DRACULA reaches down with both hands and turns the madman's head right around. The brides fall upon the madman's twitching body, nipping at him greedily before he dies and the blood spoils.

Harker looks away.

34.

At the airport, she was detained by officials. There was some question about her passport.

Francis was worried about the crates of exposed film. The negative was precious, volatile, irreplaceable. He personally, through John, argued with the customs people and handed over disproportionate bribes. He still carried his staff, which he used to point the way and rap punishment. With his stomach swelling again, he looked like Friar Tuck.

The film, the raw material of Dracula, was to be treated as if it were valuable as gold and dangerous as plutonium. It was stowed on the aeroplane by soldiers.

A blank-faced woman sat across the desk.

Stirrings of panic ticked inside Kate. The scheduled time of departure neared.

The rest of the crew were lined up with their luggage, joking despite tiredness. After over a year, they were glad to be gone for good from this backward country. They talked about what they would do when they got home. Marty Sheen seemed healthier, years younger. Francis was bubbling again, excited to be on to the next stage.

Kate looked from the Romanian woman to the portraits of Nicolae and Elena on the wall behind her. All eyes were cold, hateful. The woman wore a discreet crucifix and a Party badge clipped to her uniform lapel.

A rope barrier was removed and the eager crowd of the Dracula company stormed towards the aeroplane, mounting the steps, squeezing into the cabin.

The flight was for London, then New York, then Los Angeles. Half a world away.

Kate wanted to stand up, to join the plane, to add her own jokes and fantasies to the rowdy chatter, to fly away from here. Her luggage, she realised, was in the hold.

A man in a black trenchcoat (Securitate?) and two uniformed policemen arrived and exchanged terse phrases with the woman.

Kate gathered they were talking about Shiny Suit. And her. They used old, cruel words: leech, nosferatu, parasite. The Securitate man took her passport.

'It is impossible that you be allowed to leave.'

Across the tarmac, the last of the crew - Ion-John among them, baseball cap turned backwards, bulky kit-bag on his shoulder - disappeared into the sleek tube of the aeroplane. The door was pulled shut.

She was forgotten, left behind.

How long would it be before anyone noticed? With different sets of people debarking in three cities, probably forever. It was easy to miss one mousy advisor in the excitement, the anticipation, the triumph of going home with the movie shot. Months of post-production, dialogue looping, editing, rough cutting, previews, publicity and release lay ahead, with box office takings to be crowed over and prizes to be competed for in Cannes and on Oscar night.

Maybe when they came to put her credit on the film, someone would think to ask what had become of the funny little old girl with the thick glasses and the red hair.

'You are a sympathiser with the Transylvania Movement.'

'Good God,' she blurted, 'why would anybody want to live here?'

That did not go down well.

The engines were whining. The plane taxied towards the runway.

'This is an old country, Miss Katharine Reed,' the Securitate man sneered. 'We know the ways of your kind, and we understand how they should be dealt with.'

All the eyes were pitiless.

35.

The giant black horse is led into the courtyard by the gypsies. Swords are drawn in salute to the animal. It whinnies slightly, coat glossy ebony, nostrils scarlet.

Inside the castle, Harker descends a circular stairway carefully, wiping aside cobwebs. He has a wooden stake in his hands.

The gypsies close on the horse.

HARKER's Voice: Even the castle wanted him dead, and that's what he served at the end. The ancient, blood-caked stones of his Transylvanian fastness.

HARKER stands over Dracula's coffin. The Count lies, bloated with blood, face puffy and violet.