Anno Dracula ad-1

by Kim Newman

  ‘Again, he has spoken with me but nothing more. I understand I owe him a debt of gratitude for distracting the elder.’

  Miss Reed was rather intent on digging out something. Geneviève had the impression that the lady journalist was more interested in Charles than in the Ripper.

  ‘And what is Mr Beauregard’s actual involvement in the investigation?’

  ‘That, you would have to ask him.’

  ‘I shall,’ Miss Reed said. ‘When he can be found.’

  ‘He can be found here, Kate,’ Charles said.

  He had come into the foyer a few minutes ago. Geneviève had not noticed him standing quietly in the corner. Miss Reed’s eyes narrowed and she slipped on a pair of smoked glasses. She had the new-born’s pallor, but Geneviève discerned the ghost of a blush on her cheeks.

  ‘Um,’ Miss Reed said. ‘Charles, good evening.’

  ‘I come to call upon an invalid, but I find her quite recovered.’

  Charles bowed to Geneviève. Miss Reed’s line of questioning had petered out.

  ‘Thank you for your time, Miss Dieudonné,’ she said. ‘I shall leave you to entertain your caller. Charles, good night.’

  The new-born flitted out into the night.

  ‘What was all that about?’

  She shrugged, and her neck hurt. ‘I don’t know, Charles. Are you familiar with Miss Reed?’

  ‘Kate’s a friend of my... a friend of Penelope’s.’ At his own mention of his fiancée – whose veiled face and guardedly hostile eyes Geneviève had cause to remember – Charles’s face fell, and he shook his head. ‘Maybe she has been talking with Penelope,’ he suggested. ‘It is more than I have been.’

  Despite herself, Geneviève was interested. She should be beyond such things, but in her weakness she reverted to a silly gossip.

  ‘I had the impression that you were required to call upon Miss Churchward this afternoon.’

  Charles half-smiled. ‘You were not alone in that impression but circumstances intervened. There was trouble in St James’s Park.’

  She found Charles holding her hands as if feeling the bones for damage.

  ‘Forgive me for being overly inquisitive but there is something about your domestic arrangements that puzzles me.’

  ‘Oh, really,’ he said, cooling.

  ‘Yes. Am I correct in assuming that Miss Churchward, Penelope, is a connection of Mrs Beauregard, Pamela, your former wife...’

  Charles’s face betrayed nothing.

  ‘I would assume them sisters were it not for the fact, demonstrated by Mr Holman Hunt and Miss Waugh, that if such were so, your engagement would constitute incest under English law.’

  ‘Penelope is Pamela’s cousin. They were brought up in the same household. As sisters, if you will.’

  ‘So you intend to marry the pseudo-sister of your late wife?’

  He picked his words carefully. ‘That was indeed my intent.’

  ‘Does this not strike you as a peculiar arrangement?’

  Charles let go of her hands and turned away with a suspiciously casual aspect. ‘No stranger than any other, surely...’

  ‘Charles, I do not wish to embarrass you, but you must remember... the other night in the cab... through no fault of mine, I have some, uh, some understanding of your feelings, for Pamela, for Penelope...’

  Sighing, Charles said, ‘Geneviève, I appreciate your concern but I assure you it is quite needless. Whatever the motives for my engagement might have been, they now mean nothing. It is my understanding that, through no action of my own, I am released from my promise to Penelope.’

  ‘My condolences.’ She put her hand on his shoulder and turned him so she could see his eyes.

  ‘Condolences are unnecessary.’

  ‘I was flippant about Penelope the other night. I was light-headed, you understand. Close to hysterical.’

  ‘You’d nearly been killed,’ Charles said, with feeling. ‘You were not responsible.’

  ‘Nevertheless, I regret what I said, what I implied...’

  ‘No,’ Charles said, looking at her straight-on. ‘You were exactly right. I was being unfair to Penelope. I do not feel for her as a man should for his wife. I was merely using her to replace the irreplaceable. She is better off without me. Just recently, I’ve been feeling... I don’t know, feeling as if I’d lost an arm. As if I were not complete without Pamela.’

  ‘You mean Penelope?’

  ‘I mean Pamela, that’s the terrible thing.’

  ‘What will you do now?’

  ‘I’ll have eventually to see Penelope and clear things between us. She’ll find a far better catch than me. As for myself, I have more important affairs to consider.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as the Whitechapel Murders. Also, I want to see what I can do about saving your life.’

  35

  A DYNAMITE PARTY

  Look at them,’ said von Klatka, nodding at the wagon. ‘Terrified of us, are they not? It is good, no?’

  Von Klatka was enjoying himself too much. The Carpathian Guard had been called into the park too late to do much more than gloat. It was the best kind of victory, Kostaki reflected, with spoils but no losses. The police had already rounded up and penned most of the trouble-makers.

  A row of worried faces peered through the bar-like slats of the nearest wagon. It held the women. Most wore white vestments with red crosses on the front.

  ‘Christian Crusaders!’ von Klatka sneered, ‘fools!’

  ‘We were the Christians once,’ Kostaki said. ‘When we followed Prince Dracula against the Turk.’

  ‘An old battle, my comrade. There are new enemies to be conquered.’

  He approached the wagon. The prisoners whimpered, cringing away from the slats. Von Klatka grinned and snarled. Some woman stifled screams and von Klatka laughed. Was there honour in this?

  Kostaki saw a familiar face among the milling policemen.

  ‘Scotsman,’ he shouted, ‘hail and well met.’

  Inspector Mackenzie turned from his conversation with a turnkey and saw Kostaki bearing down on him. ‘Captain Kostaki,’ Mackenzie acknowledged, tapping the brim of his hat. ‘You’ve missed the merriment.’

  Von Klatka prodded between the bars of the wagon, a naughty child in the zoo. One of the prisoners fainted and her comrades called for God or John Jago to protect them.

  ‘Merriment?’

  Mackenzie snorted bitterly. ‘You might think it so. Not enough blood spilled for your tastes, I imagine. No one killed.’

  ‘I am sure the omission will be remedied. There must be ringleaders.’

  ‘Examples will be made, Captain.’

  Kostaki sensed the warm policeman’s discomfort, his swallowed anger. Few alliances truly lasted. It must be difficult for this man to reconcile his duties with his loyalties. ‘I respect you, Inspector.’

  The Scotsman was surprised.

  ‘Have a care,’ Kostaki continued. ‘These are awkward times. All positions are precarious.’

  Von Klatka reached into the wagon and tickled a shrinking girl’s ankle. He enjoyed his sport. He turned to Kostaki, grinning for approval.

  A vampire emerged from the shadows of the park. Kostaki immediately saluted. General Iorga – a blusterer if ever there was – had been caught in the rioting; now, he strode about, with that arrogant devil Hentzau in tow, as if fresh from winning the Battle of Austerlitz. Iorga grunted to get von Klatka’s attention and was rewarded with another salute. He was one of those officers, as common in the armies of the living as of the un-dead, who need constant reassurance of their importance. What of his time was not spent snivelling to his superiors was taken up with being beastly to his subordinates. For four hundred years, Iorga had vowed eternal fealty to the cause of Dracula, and for as long he had secretly hoped someone would hoist the impaler on one of his own stakes. The General saw himself as King of the Vampires. In this, he was alone: set beside the Prince, General Iorga was a featherweight.
/>   ‘There will be a celebration in the barracks tonight,’ Iorga told them. ‘The Guard has triumphed.’

  Mackenzie shifted his hat to shade his disgusted face, but did not contradict the General in his poaching of credit for the rout of the rioters.

  ‘Von Klatka,’ Iorga said. ‘Cut out half a dozen of those warm women and escort them to our barracks.’

  ‘Yes sir,’ von Klatka replied.

  The prisoners cried and prayed. Von Klatka made a great show of leering at each of the prisoners, rejecting this one as too old and fat, that one as too thin and stringy. He called Kostaki over for an added opinion but he pretended not to hear.

  Iorga and Hentzau strode off, capes flapping behind them. The General aped the Prince’s dress, though he was too plump to carry it off properly.

  ‘He reminds me of Sir Charles Warren,’ Mackenzie said. ‘Struts around spitting orders with no idea what it’s like out here at the sharp end.’

  ‘The General is a fool. Most above the rank of Captain are.’

  The policeman chuckled. ‘As are most above the rank of Inspector.’

  ‘We can agree on that.’

  Von Klatka made his choices and the turnkey helped him haul the girls – for they tended to be the youngest – out of the wagon. They clung together, shivering. Their vestments were unsuitable for a chilly night.

  ‘Good fat martyrs they make,’ said von Klatka, pinching the nearest cheek.

  The turnkey produced handcuffs and chains from the wagon and began to bind the chosen together. Von Klatka slapped one on the rear and laughed like a gay devil. The girl fell to her knees and prayed for deliverance. Von Klatka bent over and poked his red tongue into her ear. She reacted with comic disgust and the Captain was seized by convulsions of laughter.

  ‘You, sir,’ one of the women said to Mackenzie, ‘you’re warm, help us, save us...’

  Mackenzie was uncomfortable. He looked away, putting his face in the dark again.

  ‘I apologise,’ Kostaki said. ‘This is an absurdity. Azzo, get those women to the barracks. I shall join you later.’

  Von Klatka saluted and dragged the girls off. He sang a shepherd’s song as he led his flock away. The Guard were quartered near the Palace.

  ‘You should not be asked to stand by for such things,’ Kostaki told the policeman.

  ‘No one should.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’

  The wagons trundled off, the prisoners to be distributed around London’s jails. Kostaki assumed most would end up on stakes at Tyburn or put to hard labour in Devil’s Dyke.

  He was alone with Mackenzie. ‘You should become one of us, Scotsman.’

  ‘An unnatural thing?’

  ‘What is more unnatural? To live, or to die?’

  ‘To live off others.’

  ‘Who can say they do not live off others?’

  Mackenzie shrugged. He had out a pipe and filled it with tobacco.

  ‘We have much in common, you and I,’ Kostaki said. ‘Our countries have been devoured. You, a Scotsman, serve the Queen of England, and I, a Moldavian, follow a Prince of Wallachia. You are a policeman, I a soldier.’

  Mackenzie lit his pipe and sucked in smoke. ‘Are you a soldier before or after you’re a vampire?’

  Kostaki considered.

  ‘I should like to think I am a soldier. Which are you first, policeman or warm?’

  ‘Alive, of course.’ His pipe-bowl glowed.

  ‘So, you have more kinship with this Jack the Ripper than with, say, Inspector Lestrade?’

  Mackenzie sighed. ‘You have me there, Kostaki. I confess it. I’m a copper first and a living man second.’

  ‘Then, I repeat myself: join us. Would you leave our gift to braggarts like Iorga and Hentzau?’

  Mackenzie considered. ‘No,’ he said, at last. ‘I’m sorry. Maybe when I’m near death, I’ll see things differently. But the Lord God didn’t make us vampires.’

  ‘I believe the contrary.’

  There was noise in the near distance. Shouts of men, screams of women. Steel on steel. Something breaking. Kostaki began to run. Mackenzie tried hard to keep pace. The din came from the direction von Klatka had taken. Mackenzie clutched his chest and gasped. Kostaki left him behind and covered the distance in moments.

  After sprinting through bushes, he found the scuffle. The girls were loose and von Klatka was on the ground. Five or six men in black coats, scarves tied over their faces, held him down, and one white-hooded fellow sawed at his chest with a shining dagger. Von Klatka yelled his defiance. Stuck in the ground was a stick from which hung the flag of the Christian Crusade. One of the masked men pointed a pistol. Kostaki saw the puff of smoke and prepared to shrug off yet another bullet. Then he felt a burst of pain in his knee. He had been shot with a silver ball.

  ‘Back, vampire,’ said the gunman, voice muffled.

  Mackenzie was with them now. Kostaki was ready to lunge forwards but the policeman held him back. His leg was numb. The bullet was lodged in his bones, poisoning him.

  One of the freed women kicked von Klatka in the head, doing no damage at all. The man straddling the vampire had wrenched free his cuirass. With slices from a silver knife, he exposed von Klatka’s beating heart. He was handed something like a candle by one of his comrades, and thrust it into von Klatka’s rib-cage.

  ‘For Jago,’ the crusader shouted, mouth moving behind his cloth mask.

  A lucifer flared and the crusaders scattered away from their handiwork. There was a circle of blood around von Klatka. He held his chest together, wounds closing. The candle stuck out from his ribs, a hissing flame at its end.

  ‘Dynamite,’ Mackenzie shouted.

  Ezzelin von Klatka grasped at the burning fuse. But too late. His fist closed around the flame just as it expanded. A flash of white light turned night to day. Then a strong wind and a roar lifted Kostaki and Mackenzie off their feet. Mixed in with the blast were gobbets of vampire-flesh and scraps of von Klatka’s armour and clothes.

  Kostaki scrambled to his feet. First he made sure Mackenzie, who was holding his abused ears, was not seriously hurt. Then he turned to his fallen comrade. The whole of von Klatka’s torso was blown to fragments. His head was burning, his flesh putrefying fast. A gaseous stench burst from his remains and Kostaki choked on it.

  The Christian Crusade flag was fallen, dotted with burning specks.

  ‘A reprisal for the attempt on Jago,’ Kostaki said.

  Mackenzie, shaking his head to try and get the ringing out of his ears, paid attention. ‘Most likely. Dynamite’s an old Fenian trick and there are a lot of Irish in with Jago’s crew. Still...’ His thought trailed off. There were people running towards them. Carpathians, roused from the barracks, breastplates hastily misbuckled, swords drawn.

  ‘Still what, Scotsman?’

  Mackenzie shook his head.

  ‘The fellow who spoke, the one with the dynamite...’

  ‘What of him?’

  ‘I could have sworn he was a vampire.’

  36

  THE OLD JAGO

  ‘There are people in this world of whom even vampires are afraid,’ he said as they walked up Brick Lane.

  ‘That, I know,’ she admitted.

  The elder was out in the fog waiting for his tongue to grow back. When ready, he would come for her again.

  ‘I’m familiar with all the devils in all the hells, Geneviève,’ Charles said. ‘This is just a matter of invoking the correct demonic personage.’

  She did not know what he was talking about.

  He led her into one of the narrow, unpleasant-smelling streets that constituted the worst slum in London. Walls leaned together, dropping the occasional brick to the cobbles. Evil-looking new-borns congregated at every corner.

  ‘Charles,’ she said. ‘This is the Old Jago.’

  He allowed that it was.

  She wondered if he had gone mad. Dressed as they were – which was to say, not in rags – they were practically parading w
ith a sandwich board marked ‘ROB AND KILL ME’. Red eyes glittered behind broken windows. Rat-whiskered children sat on doorsteps, waiting to fight for the leavings of larger predators. The further they penetrated into the rookery, the thicker the gathering crowds were. She was reminded of vultures. This was not England, this was a jungle. Places, she told herself, were not evil: they were what people made of them. In the dark, something laughed and Geneviève jumped. Charles calmed her and looked about, leaning on his cane as if taking the air at Hampton Court.

  Hunched, shambling creatures lurked in courtyards. Hate came off them in waves. The Jago was where the worst cases ended up, new-borns shape-shifted beyond any resemblance to humanity, criminals so vile other criminals would not tolerate their society. A Christian Crusade flag, the cross dyed in what probably was not blood, hung from one window. John Jago’s mission was hereabouts, where few policemen dared venture. No one knew the clergyman’s real name.

  ‘What do we seek?’ Geneviève asked, under her breath.

  ‘A Chinaman.’

  Her heart sank again.

  ‘No,’ he reassured, ‘not that Chinaman. In this district, I imagine any Chinaman will serve.’

  A burly new-born, bare-chested under his braces, detached himself from the shadows of a wall and stood before them, looking down on Charles. He smiled, showing yellow fangs. His arms were tattooed with skulls and bats. Having seen Charles save the day with Liz Stride, Geneviève thought he could best the vampire with silver blade or bullet. But he would not last long if a dozen of the rough’s friends joined in. At least a dozen were scattered about, picking their teeth with grimy thumbnails.

  ‘I say,’ Charles began, drawling like a Mayfair ass, ‘direct me to the nearest opium den, there’s a good fellow. The viler, the better, if you catch my drift.’

  Something shone in Charles’s hand. A coin. It disappeared into the rough’s fist, and then his mouth. He bit the shilling in two and spat the halves out. They hardly had time to clatter before a tangle of children were fighting over them. The rough looked into Charles’s face, trying to exert his new-won vampire powers of fascination. After a minute or two, during which Geneviève was increasingly uncomfortable, he grunted and turned away. Charles had passed a test. The rough nodded towards an archway and slouched off.