Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories

by Kim Newman

  Sergeant Daniel Dravot was down there too, implacable agent of the Diogenes Club – probably still keeping watch on her. Hard as it was to be accepted into the Club, membership turned out to be practically impossible to resign. Doubtless, Dravot had sealed orders for every occasion sewn into the lining of his coat. Even in the Far East, she was ensnared in Mycroft’s schemes. She had been used by the Diogenes Club before, and did not much relish the memory. It had cost her a man she might love – and for whom she was still just about willing to stay in Mr Holmes’s Great Game. Their little group – Charles, Mycroft, Dravot, Geneviève – once dealt a great blow to Dracula’s rule, but it was taking an age for the Prince to fall.

  A smart steam launch had ferried Higurashi to the Macedonia. All brass trim and tight lines. A brand new flag flew from its aft-pole. A red circle on white, like a large spot of blood on your best tablecloth. A Maxim gun was mounted on the prow. The lid was off the ammunition box, giving them sight of the gleam of silver shells.

  The Japanese Navy were loaded for vampires.

  In modernising his armed forces, the Emperor had a passion for buying – or copying – from the great Western naval powers. The launch might have been built in a British shipyard. Japanese sailors looked like smart sea cadets from Dartmouth. White, white uniforms. Skin smooth, as if they’d just shaved for the first time – tiny little razor-nicks above fresh collars.

  Delicious little beads of red.

  It’d been a long time since she drank anything but ship’s rat-blood.

  ‘We… wish… to… come… ashore,’ said the Princess, enunciating each English word like an American ordering a steak and potatoes in Paris.

  Higurashi gave no sign of understanding.

  ‘We’re in need of urgent repairs… and provisions,’ Geneviève said, in Japanese. ‘We can pay.’

  Ironically, one thing they weren’t short of was money. Vampires tended to get rich over the centuries. Well, other vampires did. She was perpetually skint, and among the few of her kind obliged to work for a living – she’d even bargained hard for wages from Captain Larsen.

  The Princess Casamassima’s credit was good at any bank in the world, thanks to the fabulous fortune she had from her husband. He’d tried to turn vampire when she did, but his family blood was too thin. While Christina rose from death as a shining vampire angel, he shrivelled into something like a very old human-sized vole who coughed and shat for a few nights then became compost which had to be shovelled into the Casamassima vaults in Rome. Christina Light, of American and Italian parentage and strange airy-fairy bloodline, was a relative new-born, but already acted like the breed of elder who looked down on Dracula as an ill-mannered parvenu. Just the sort to become a revolutionary. She thought the ruling classes – and, indeed, everyone else – were beneath her, and would like to rearrange the world to prop up that belief. Much like an Emperor of Japan.

  If she got ashore, she’d probably become Empress. Hikari-Onna, Woman of Light.

  In London, the Princess was leading light – ahem – of a series of short-lived councils, factions, unions, cells and parties of opposition which tended to fall apart through internal squabbles before Mr Caleb Croft’s Special Branch or General Iorga’s Carpathian Guard got round to infiltrating or raiding them. Christina had the useful habit of becoming a sole survivor. Useful for her – not for anyone else in any gang or group she fixed on as a playroom. A lesson Geneviève hoped the passengers of the Macedonia did not have to learn.

  ‘We are refugees,’ she continued. ‘We seek only sanctuary.’

  Higurashi nodded, once. She couldn’t tell if it was a yay or nay nod.

  The emissary had come aboard the Macedonia alone. Considering that it was a ship of monsters, that showed courage. She did not sense a death-wish or foolhardy confidence. He was more than just a messenger.

  The way he stood, at ease yet coiled… was just like Kostaki. That touch with the lid of the ammunition case was neat. He was dangerous.

  Geneviève suspected Higurashi was associated with the Black Ocean Society. Their members were drawn from the elders of feudal houses who initially backed rebellions against Mutsuhito – but who had come to be his strongest supporters, even cutting loose and hunting down their own former vassals and allies to get close to the throne. Now, they had great influence with the Emperor – perhaps even over the Emperor. Black Ocean felt an Emperor should have an empire, and agitated for the accumulation of overseas possessions in Korea, China and elsewhere. They ran a chain of brothels across Asia to finance patriotic endeavours and harvest useful information. Even Mycroft Holmes would draw the line at that.

  With India in turmoil after successive mutinies against Dracula’s Viceroys – the atrocious Sir Francis Varney, the ruthless Hymber Masters, the disgusting Lionel Roach – Black Ocean might even consider the sub-continent achievable territory. Like the British, the Chinese and the Russians, the Japanese drank tea… tea-drinkers always wanted empires. Even bloodsuckers were less rapacious. Blessed with time, they cared less for space. They generally didn’t even own their graves. Except Dracula, of course. He would be King of Space and Lord of Time. Which is why Geneviève had sailed to a hemisphere where he held no sway.

  Higurashi was sizing them up.

  That was why he had come aboard. Not to talk, but to pass judgement.

  After tiresome debate between Geneviève and Christina, with Kostaki grunting every half hour or so, they had decided all three should meet the emissary. The Princess had tactfully wondered whether it might be best to keep Kostaki in the shade – since he was most likely the kind of vampire the Japanese would take fright at. She allowed that Geneviève presented at least an unthreatening face… and was confident her own charm would carry the day, as it had so often. Of course, it was impossible to glamour someone who betrays no sign he can see you. It was as well Kostaki was of their party. Otherwise, Higurashi might have pretended not even to hear them, waving invisible butterflies away into insignificance with a hand-flap.

  The former Carpathian Guardsman kept quiet.

  There seemed nothing more to be said. Geneviève wondered about Indo-China, Madagascar or East Africa. Would the Macedonia survive another ocean crossing?

  From inside his coat, Kostaki took a white scarf. He used his left hand, leaving his right on his sword.

  He handed the scarf to Christina and stood well back.

  Higurashi faced him.

  The Carpathian and the Japanese shared no spoken language, but understood each other.

  She didn’t even try to intervene.

  The bay was calm, but the deck still shifted. A slight breeze rippled the scarf.

  Warm men might feel the January cold. Higurashi’s breath frosted. Kostaki’s did not.

  ‘Heh, men, look,’ said Captain Larsen, who had kept an eye on the conclave from his wheelhouse.

  The crew – a sour lot she’d treated for gashes and bruises, resisting the temptation to lick a welling cut for fear of a marlinspike through the heart – paid attention. An audience for… what? A duel?

  Higurashi and Kostaki let their hands rise from sword hilts.

  Christina held up the scarf, which streamed like a ribbon.

  Were they declaring war on Japan?

  Christina let the scarf go. It flew away.

  Quicker than the human – quicker than the vampire – eye could register, Higurashi and Kostaki drew swords.

  …the shiver of steel sliding from scabbards set Geneviève’s nerves on edge… she felt it in her sharpening teeth, and the salt tang of blood from her torn gums…

  They struck poses.

  The point of Higurashi’s sabre dimpled Kostaki’s coat, over the heart.

  The edge of Kostaki’s epée rested against the inside of Higurashi’s thigh.

  They stood like a stage tableau. Christina was puzzled. She knew what the thrust to the heart meant to a vampire, but not what the severing of the profunda femoris artery was to a warm man.

 
; It always surprised Geneviève that so many who lived off human blood troubled to learn so little of anatomy. As a warm girl, she was apprenticed to her father, a battlefield doctor in the service of the Dauphin. She had schooling enough in the ways men bleed and die before she turned vampire and subsequent centuries kept up to date with fatal wounds and how they were inflicted.

  The duellists stepped back and sheathed swords.

  She knew now why Higurashi brought a German sabre. It was silver-plated. Since there were no vampires in Japan, local swordsmiths didn’t manufacture weapons to kill them – so they were imported. She wasn’t surprised silver bullets and silver swords had reached Japan before they did. The best were manufactured in Sheffield, with Dracula’s mark stamped in them – British arms were bought around the world.

  Higurashi and Kostaki each had the measure of the other.

  In the Ittō-ryū style – the duel of the single stroke – they were at stalemate, and neither would survive. They did not need to press the matter further.

  ‘What is this silliness?’ Christina asked.

  ‘It’s been settled,’ Geneviève told her.

  ‘You may come ashore,’ said Higurashi, in English. ‘But you will be permitted only in a certain district.’

  * * *

  In Yokai Town, a scruffy dog trotted down the cracked street, jaws clamped around a recently severed human hand.

  ‘Charming,’ said Christina, putting a parasol between her and the unpleasant sight.

  The Princess was a parasol-after-dark sort of woman.

  A ragged, squawking fellow in a grubby striped robe ran after the mongrel, bloody rag wound round his leaking wrist-stump. Geneviève recognised the tengu bloodline, which was characterised by avian traits. His mouth and nose fused into a pushed-out beak. His feathery hair was clipped into a topknot. His sandals flapped against toe-talons.

  She felt red thirst rising. She knew others did too.

  Even tengu blood drew her fangs. She must feed soon.

  ‘Nice doggie,’ said Drusila, a friend of Christina’s. She struck Geneviève as doolally, but was supposed to be a renowned psychic medium. ‘Can we keep him?’

  ‘No, dear,’ said Christina. ‘You don’t know where he’s been.’

  The dog trotted into an alley, followed by the mutilated bird-man. After a noisome fight, the tengu strode out of the alley. He screwed his hand back on, and flexed empurpled, horn-tipped fingers. The dog whined, cheated of a meat supper.

  The tengu noticed them, for the first time – and was startled. He bowed, yapped and backed away. Then, with a gait like a flightless bird trying to take wing, he ran into the fog, as if trying to hide in it.

  Some of their party may be fearsome, but the tengu wasn’t reacting to foreign devils like Danny Dravot or Josh York. His eyes bugged at the sight of Lieutenant Katō – which made him turn tail-feathers and hop off the way he came. So he was more afraid of the Japanese officer than whoever cut off his hand and fed it to a dog. She didn’t have to be Drusila to intuit how bad an omen that was. Katō wasn’t so much their native guide in Yokai Town as an overseer. The blandly handsome young man conducted himself like the chief warden of a prison camp – which might be uncomfortably close to the truth. They were barely tolerated guests of a ruler who insisted vampires were not numbered among his subjects.

  This district – Yokai Town – was where they kept creatures which did not exist by imperial decree.

  Thick fog hung perpetually over this shabby, desolate place. Not green-yellow London peasoup, but misty grey-white and salty. Locals waded through murk like fish swimming in muddy water – brute, hulking whales leaving obvious, swirling wakes… slender, sly eels slithering without stirring up eddies. Most of the passengers of the Macedonia were sensitive in one way or another. They knew things were out there, spying.

  This was the old Edo waterfront, abandoned to monsters after the outward-looking Emperor opened Tokyo’s deep-water docks to facilitate international commerce. Yokai Town extended into the Arakawa River on unsteady platforms which became a system of artificial islands. Boats at permanent berth served as homes, restaurants, warehouses and government offices. Ashore, buildings were ill-repaired and amenities were meagre. Lanterns hung at irregular intervals, but few managed to stay lit.

  Geneviève could swear one lamp stared at her with a large green eye.

  Most of the vampires were still in coffins, stacked on carts.

  Kostaki had awakened a few to help remove the party from the Macedonia to Yokai Town. Naturally, Danny Dravot – a born non-commissioned officer – was among their number. Christina had insisted on uncrating Drusila, to have someone to talk to who wasn’t Geneviève. Frankly, the Princess treated Dru like miners treated canaries – if her head exploded, they’d know they were in a bad place.

  …which they knew already. They were always in a bad place. London was a bad place. The Macedonia was a bad place.

  Yokai Town was a home away from home.

  ‘What does yokai mean?’ asked Whelpdale, a plump new-born vampire.

  ‘Among other things, us,’ said Geneviève. ‘The word can be translated as “monster”, “ghost”, “goblin” or “apparition”.’

  ‘And this is their town?’

  ‘It’s a polite Japanese way of saying ghetto.’

  ‘I suspicioned as much, Miss Doodydunny,’ said Whelpdale. ‘I know a rookery when I see one. Look at this shambles. No life about it at all. We’ll run the place inside a week, mark my words and no mistake.’

  In London, Whelpdale – a lesser light of the book trade – got on the wrong side of Special Branch by printing a series of obscene illustrated pamphlets entitled The Private Memoirs of Prince Dracula. He didn’t write the smut himself – the author was his brother-in-law Jasper Milvain, a warm sharpie too slippery to be taken into custody. As publisher of record, Whelpdale was convicted of seditious libel – a capital offence if you libelled Dracula, seditiously or otherwise. Exercising newfound vampire flexibility, he squeezed between the bars of Pentonville Prison, breaking most of his bones, and fled, healing as best he could in the circumstances. He was still floppy and stretched out of shape.

  ‘Japanese prints are a very popular specialty item back home,’ he said.

  She knew the type of prints he meant. Pillow books – exquisitely tasteful pictures of folk doing things in beds, or things traditionally done in beds done in other, more stimulating locations.

  Unlike every other vampire on the Macedonia, Whelpdale had thought to pack a trunk with books – exclusively his own publications, of course. Thanks to a shortage of reading matter on board, Geneviève and Christina had been through all of them… though amusement wears thin after a dozen or so pages. Milvain had some good sources close to the throne – a few choice nuggets of gossip rang true, especially regarding Lord Ruthven’s caddish dalliance with the Schlegel sisters – but his imagination was limited, and when fancy should take flight his prose tended to thud down to earth. He was another who should trouble to learn more anatomy, for many acts he described would only be possible for people who were – like Whelpdale – practically boneless.

  The Macedonia was guided by tug to a quay where Lieutenant Majin Katō awaited. A crew of roughs were ready to pile coffins on carts. Their foreman – the lantern-jawed, pigtailed giant Kannuki – might technically qualify as yokai. The officer directed the dock-workers but wouldn’t look any of the foreigners in the eye.

  ‘That man’s hands are alive,’ said Drusila, meaning Katō. ‘More than the rest of him.’

  ‘Yes, dear, I’m sure,’ said Christina. ‘You’ll feel better after a nip.’

  The Princess liked to have the seeress around, but never listened to her. Geneviève had learned to pay more attention. Drusila had a habit of making pronouncements which sounded like piffle but later made horrible sense. Perhaps she clearly saw troubled waters ahead but was constitutionally unable to say straight out that they should change course. The meaning of her
topsy-turvy ramblings only became apparent when it was too late to avoid catastrophe. If canaries could serve miners the same way, they would.

  ‘O willow, tit-willow, tit-willow,’ she trilled.

  Maybe she knew Geneviève was thinking of canaries. Maybe being in Japan reminded her of The Mikado. Or maybe she just couldn’t get the tune out of her head.

  She could mean something or nothing – it was a waste of time trying to parse her, though everyone around her was compelled to try.

  Katō wore white gloves, which made his hands seem huge. They shone, almost like Christina.

  Majin wasn’t a name, but a title. Demon-man.

  Katō, despite his lowly official rank, was a considerable person in Yokai Town. Geneviève knew it before he scared off the tengu. That Drusila had blurry insights about him was further confirmation of his high standing.

  His blue uniform cape – combined with the gloves – gave him the look of a stage conjurer. His gestures were precise, but forceful. He wore his shiny-peaked uniform cap low so his eyes glinted in shade. He was used to command – and commanding more than men.

  She mentioned the thing about him not looking at them.

  ‘It’s not that,’ said Drusila. ‘He doesn’t want us to look at him.’

  Naturally, after that, Geneviève stared at Katō. Sometimes, she thought Drusila wasn’t as cracked an egg as they took her for. She also had the trick of making people do what she wanted, if in a round-the-back-of-the-houses sort of way – not through force of will, but by tapping nerves with a mallet like a doctor eliciting a knee-jerk reflex. Then she smiled to herself and changed the subject.

  ‘That mousey girl should mind her p’s and q’s,’ said Drusila. ‘Or she shan’t have any jam for supper.’

  There was no mousey girl.

  Geneviève and Christina exchanged shrugs.

  ‘Just because you can’t see her yet doesn’t mean she’s not important to the story,’ said Drusila.