But after eight decades, Alexei had had enough of hiding in the shadows. And so, at last, he was re-born as Prince Vladimir of Bratsk – taking the name of the primogenitor of his vampiric bloodline and the cult’s infamous forebear – ready to put into operation the plan that would deliver him the Imperial crown of Russia. But in his years in hiding, the scope of Alexei’s ambition had grown. Russia was only to be the beginning.
It was with this knowledge that he had tormented his former mentor. The prince had taken pleasure in taunting the old man with his schemes, knowing that he would never be Rasputin’s puppet now and that he had, in fact, become the puppet master.
“I CAN SEE where this is going,” Ulysses said.
“He means to assassinate the Tsarina!”
“Indeed. And it’s up to us to stop him.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Cry Havoc
“WE MUST AWAY to Saint Petersburg,” Ulysses said. “We don’t have a moment to lose.”
“But our quarry will not find the Tsarina Anastasia there,” Katarina said, eyes flashing as she turned them on Ulysses.
“Then where is she?”
“She is due in Prague for a state visit.”
“Of course!” Ulysses said, recalling the newsreel footage.
“And that is where he will have gone too.”
Miranda stirred momentarily as Ulysses took her up in his arms but her eyes thankfully remained shut.
Without a moment’s hesitation, the agent of the British throne and the agent of Imperial Russia – the dandy and the vampire – turned their backs on the damned monk and left Rasputin with only darkness for company.
THE CASTLE WAS eerily quiet. Ulysses, carrying Miranda, followed as Agent K led them through drawing rooms, solars, ballrooms, dining chambers and reception rooms; directing their way with such confidence that it was as if she was making use of some other sense beyond the accepted five.
In the stillness of the castle, the tapping of their hurrying heels on the polished marble floors, Ulysses’ rasping breath and the beating of his own heart seemed traitorously loud.
“What was that?” he hissed, suddenly tensing.
Katarina skidded to a halt. “I cannot hear any –”
The blood-curdling howl cut through the still night air like a rapier blade.
“The wolves,” she said, sniffing the air. “Come on. We have to keep moving. It is not far now.”
They passed another ballroom and then they were through a glazed solar and into a battlemented courtyard. On the other side stood an ornate ironwork hangar, looking out over the forests beneath it.
Ulysses paused before the battlements and peered over them at the foot of the cliff a hundred feet below. Behind them, sheer walls of icy black rock rose up behind the palace, making it look as if the hawkish edifice had been sculpted from the face of the cliff itself.
Ulysses could see shapes moving in the shadows below. Sometimes they appeared as wolves and then, at other times, they looked more like men. From the way they kept following the same, regular, looping pattern through the trees and around the craggy protrusions, he would have said they were patrolling the castle grounds.
“Look at them all,” he gasped. “There must be hundreds of the things.”
“The pack are loyal to the prince and him alone,” Katarina stated.
“Well, I for one am glad that we’re travelling by air,” Ulysses remarked. “I wouldn’t fancy having to battle my way past that lot.”
Katarina sniffed and spun round, her eyes fixed on something beyond Ulysses’ head.
Ulysses turned, gasped and dropped to the ground, the child slipping from his arms onto the cold stones of the battlements..
Snarling, the man-beast sailed over their heads, having misjudged its leap from where it had been perched, gargoyle-like, atop a gothic window arch. It crashed onto the battlements in a flurry of grasping claws, raised hackles and murderous intent.
Ulysses’ hand immediately went to his sword-stick and Katarina pulled a primed and loaded flintlock pistol from the bandolier of weapons strung across her chest.
The werewolf tensed to spring but then something slammed into it with the force of a cannonball.
Snarling and snapping at each other, the huge sabre-toothed cat and the werewolf tumbled over the battlements, the sharp crack of snapping branches reaching them a moment later as the creatures crashed through the canopy below.
A terrific trumpeting reverberated from the sheer walls of the rock face and Ulysses and Katarina both looked west as, with a groaning crash of falling timber, a bull mammoth smashed its way through the trees towards the Winter Palace. Clinging to a howdah lashed across its mighty shoulders was its Mongol handler and a team of warriors. Other war mammoths came after the bull, clad in armour and other creatures too; styracosaurs and hunting cats, slipping lithely between the lumbering pachyderms.
The wolves at the foot of the cliff rushed forward to meet the charge head-on and were the first to be savagely cut down, feline claws tearing them open from gizzard to gut, human-wolf intestines spilling into the snow, the hot ropes steaming. But the sabre-tooths did not stop to feast; at a command from their handlers they moved on to cull the next wave, those they had already wounded left lying in the snow to be crushed under the huge feet of the mammoths and the lumbering dinosaurs.
Snarls and roars echoed from the trees below.
Ulysses looked up. Black shapes crowded the sky too as great winged things approached the castle.
One of the huge pterosaurs swooped down over the battlements and, wings beating furiously, the rider alighted.
Ulysses could not help but smile as a hairy-faced mountain of a man dismounted and approached him with his great bear arms outstretched.
“Ulysses, my brother!” the warlord proclaimed.
“Targutai!” Ulysses said as the khan caught him up in a great bear-hug. Having half squeezed the life out of him, the warlord broke from their embrace.
“You smell worse than a yak’s arse!”
“Do I? Sorry about that.”
“But you are alive!” Targutai proclaimed delightedly, clasping Ulysses’ shoulders again.
“It would appear so.”
“And I have brought someone else with me who will be very pleased to see you.”
The Khan stepped to one side.
Alighting from the back of a squawking pterosaur was a pale-faced and slightly shaking Nimrod. From his ashen expression, Ulysses guessed that his manservant hadn’t particularly enjoyed the flight.
“Nimrod!” Ulysses exclaimed. “Boy, are you a sight for sore eyes!”
The two men took a step towards each other, Ulysses making as if to hug his ever-faithful manservant and Nimrod looking like he was about to do the same. Then they both paused and restrained themselves, settling instead for a firm handshake.
“It’s good to see you, old boy,” Ulysses said.
“And you, sir.”
Then Targutai was at their sides, his huge arms encircling both of them around the shoulders. “It’s thanks to this man here that we came at all.”
“Really?” Ulysses said.
“Well, we hadn’t heard from you for so long, sir,” Nimrod mumbled.
“And he was bally-well worried, weren’t you, old chap?” Targutai said.
“Well, I was a little,” Nimrod said, his cheeks reddening.
“Kept badgering, day after day, trying to persuade me to come to your rescue.”
Nimrod glowered at the warlord, who continued, oblivious or indifferent to the butler’s discomfort. “So persistent was he, in the end I just had to give in, didn’t I, what? Took us days to get here, mind.”
BELOW THE BATTLEMENTS the cries of the Mongol warriors, the snarling voices of the wolves and the trumpeting of the mammoths all merged into the clamour of battle.
Within half an hour the howls of the routed pack were fading, as the first light of a new day painted the cliff-face behind them and
Ulysses’ mind returned to the chase.
Nimrod looked up as Ulysses boarded the prince’s zeppelin and could hardly hide his concern. The dandy was still emaciated after days of malnutrition and his eyes were sunken within grey-ringed hollows. But nonetheless, he still looked one hundred percent better than he had done before.
Agent K had dressed her own wound and found herself a clean, undamaged, tunic from somewhere.
“Ready for the off then, are we?” Ulysses addressed those assembled within the airship. Katarina Kharkova was at the helm, making her final checks while Nimrod supervised a bucket-chain of Mongols loading the airship with all manner of supplies.
“Just about, sir,” Nimrod said, happy to be back in the thick of things.
“Excellent! Excellent!” Ulysses replied.
“You’re looking much better, sir, if I might say so.”
“Thank you, Nimrod. You may say so. I must admit that I feel like a new man.” He stopped and gazed out of the cockpit, through the yawning hangar doors, at the last vestiges of night that were slipping away over the horizon far to the west.
“We have a journey of thousands of miles ahead of us to stop Vladimir from murdering the crowned head of Russia. He has a five-hour head-start and is on board a train, whereas we are going to be travelling by airship. Do you think we can catch him in time?”
“Indubitably, sir.”
“That’s the spirit. Right then, Agent K, chocks away.”
“THANKS AGAIN, MY brother,” Ulysses called from the open door of the cabin as the airship’s engines ran up to speed and the dirigible was cleared of Mongols.
“Don’t mention it, old boy! Wouldn’t have missed it for the world, a battle like that,” Targutai grinned back from his place on the battlements. “That was always the problem with this area – too many damned vampires and werewolves running about. Nimrod!” he shouted as Katarina slowly guided the zeppelin out of the hangar, “You’re sure you won’t stay? I would pay you a prince’s ransom.”
“Thank you, Khan, but I am afraid I shall have to politely decline your offer!” Nimrod shouted. “You’ve seen what happens when I let him out of my sight. Begging your pardon, sir.”
“Not at all, old boy; not at all.”
“Tally-ho!” Targutai shouted from the courtyard. “And good sailing!”
“Offered you a job, did he?” Ulysses said, a wry smile on his lips, as he waved at the Mongols ranged along the battlements before pulling the cabin door shut.
“Yes, sir,” Nimrod said, his cheeks flushing.
“Tempted were you?”
“Well the pay was good.”
“I can imagine.”
“But I couldn’t stomach the gaseous anal-exhalations of ruminants... I couldn’t have stuck it, sir.”
“Oh, I see. It was like that was it?”
“Yes, sir.”
Ulysses returned to gazing out of the glass bubble of the cockpit. “Jolly good,” he said, half under his breath as he gazed out at the endless expanse of the Central Siberian Plateau. “Jolly good.”
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Blood Relative
THE HORSE-DRAWN CARRIAGE rattled to a halt on the cobbles outside the imposing entrance to Prague Castle. A door opened and Ulysses Quicksilver got out. He looked very dapper in black tie and a red velvet-lined cape – a necessary indulgence considering he was about to be hobnobbing with the heads of state of at least half a dozen European countries. The only thing his outfit was lacking was a suitable mask for the ball he was about to infiltrate.
Second out of the carriage was Nimrod, wearing a fresh suit of anonymous black and grey that marked him out as a gentleman’s valet.
His bloodstone-tipped cane in hand, his pistol loaded and holstered beneath his dinner jacket, Ulysses turned and addressed the two ladies remaining in the cab.
“Right, this is the plan. We’ll have a gander inside, find the villain and stop him before he can harm the Tsarina. You stay here and watch the exit in case he tries to make a break for it. Okay?”
“Okay, Uncle Ulysses,” Miranda replied. The colour had returned to her cheeks now and she didn’t look as horribly emaciated as she had when they had discovered her hooked up to Vladimir’s blood-letting machine. He gave her a warm smile and ruffled her hair.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to come with you, and have your man stay here?” Katarina Kharkova suggested, fixing Ulysses with her baleful gaze.
Ulysses squeezed his eyes shut tight and shook his head. “Don’t try that on me now. I’m not as susceptible as I was, you know.”
The vampire looked away sulkily.
“I need you to keep an eye on our prize asset here,” he said. “And if you have to look after yourself without back-up, you’ve got a much better chance in a fight against whatever Vladimir might have to throw at you.”
“Good luck, Uncle Ulysses.”
Ulysses turned and set off along the torch-lit path , joining the other well-dressed guests as they made their way inside for the evening’s main event.
“Come on, Nimrod,” he called back over his shoulder. “You’re my plus one.”
THEY HAD ARRIVED in Prague only that morning. The journey from the Winter Palace had felt as though it had taken far too long. But at least the flight from Siberia had given them all a chance to recover their strength – Miranda and Ulysses most of all, considering what the former had been through and the sacrifice the latter had made to save her.
And yet there were more than simply physical scars to heal there and Ulysses was impressed by Miranda’s mental fortitude in the face of all that she had had to bear.
But the length of journey had also meant that, upon arriving at the Czech capital, they had spent a frantic day doing their darnedest to discover the whereabouts of Prince Vladimir.
The dandy detective had decided against contacting the authorities – he wasn’t entirely convinced of the abilities of the police forces of Europe; London’s Met was bad enough.
While Ulysses and Nimrod had raced about town – checking hotel reservations and train arrivals – Katarina had been left with the still recovering Miranda. By mid-afternoon, with time fast running out, Ulysses had realised that their only chance of stopping the murderous prince now was to be there in person, ready to leap into action when he made his move on the Tsarina Anastasia at the masked ball that was being held in her honour within Prague Castle. With that in mind he had paid a visit to the British consulate, playing on his reputation as the hero of the hour and using his royal-ratified ID to talk his way into an invitation to the royal function.
And so, back at the Ambassador Hotel they had held their own private council of war to formulate their plan of attack, or counter-attack as it was more likely to be.
“ANY JOY?” ULYSSES asked as the two men re-convened in a balcony vestibule, looking down into the ballroom.
Having moved through the crowds of political animals, diplomats and other assorted VIPs, accepted a glass of champagne from a frighteningly realistic porcelain doll-faced serving droid, and made polite small talk, having failed to spot their quarry, the first opportunity they had, they decided to split up to track their prey instead. Between them they had explored every nook and cranny of the castle, moving among the hundreds of guests in the vain hope of locating one individual who was wearing a mask to conceal his identity and who no doubt knew that they were onto him.
“There’s no sign of the devil, sir,” Nimrod stated.
“Damn it all to buggery!” Ulysses swore. “I can’t just stand here doing nothing, waiting for him to make his move!
“If only there was some way to force his hand, sir.”
“Indeed, Nimrod.”
Ulysses looked up from his musings, an expression of startled near-delight on his face.
“By Jove. I think I’ve got it!”
“What do you have in mind, sir?”
“Well you know what they say about desperate times, old boy.”
“That they call for desperate measures, sir?”
“Well, they’ve never been more desperate.”
“AMBASSADOR!” ULYSSES ANNOUNCED as he approached the cowering, weasel-faced man simpering and fawning before her majesty the Tsarina Anastasia III.
Ambassador Lionel Snelgrove looked round, his look of startled surprise quickly giving way to one of indignant annoyance. He had been waiting all night for the opportunity to ingratiate himself into the guest of honour’s company and now that upper class twit from the mother country was here, making a fool of himself.
“Oh. Mr Quicksilver. What a pleasure it is,” Snelgrove said. “I was just speaking with the Tsarina about our mutual concerns regarding the German issue. Your majesty, Ulysses Quicksilver, Esquire.”
“Ah, good evening, Mr Quicksilver,” the Tsarina said in heavily-accented English and offered him her hand.
Ulysses took it and, bending, laid a kiss upon her silk gloved fingers. “Enchanté.”
“He’s considered something of a hero back home in England,” the ambassador went on.
“Ah, I see,” the Tsarina said, smiling blankly, patently having no idea who Ulysses was.
“That’s right, your majesty, and I would be grateful if you could bear that in mind,” Ulysses said, giving her a rakish smile.
“I am sorry,” the Tsarina replied, “my English is not so good. What do you mean?
“With everything that’s about to happen.”
“No, I am sorry, I still don’t –”
In one fluid movement Ulysses pulled his pistol from its holster, grabbed the Tsarina and pulled her to him, putting the muzzle of his gun to her temple.
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