by Kim Newman
CONTENTS
Cover
Also By Kim Newman and Available from Titan Books
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
December 31, 1999
Unknown Male - Richard Jeperson (Geist 97)
Unknown Female - Nezumi (Mouse)
Richard Jeperson
Unknown Male - Harold Takahama
Richard Jeperson
Detective Yoshitaka Azuma
Richard Jeperson
Harold Takahama
Nezumi
Detective Azuma
Richard Jeperson
Harold Takahama
Nezumi
Richard Jeperson
Dr Kiyokazu Akiba
Nezumi
Dr Akiba
Nezumi
Don Simòn De Molinar Y Vazquez
Richard Jeperson
Si Molinar
Nezumi
Si Molinar
Dr Akiba
Harold Takahama
Yoshio Mizuno - Astro-Man (Yurei 139)
Harold Takahama
Richard Jeperson
Si Molinar
Nezumi
Si Molinar
Nezumi
Detective Azuma
Richard Jeperson
Harold Takahama
Richard Jeperson
Detective Azuma
Nezumi
Detective Azuma
Richard Jeperson
Harold Takahama
Nezumi
Dr Akiba
Richard Jeperson
Detective Azuma
Nezumi
Richard Jeperson
Nezumi
Richard Jeperson
Harold Takahama
Detective Azuma
Nezumi
Takashi Kamata (Drift Kaiju)
Harold Takahama
Richard Jeperson
Nezumi
Richard Jeperson
Detective Azuma
Harold Takahama
Dr Akiba
Richard Jeperson
Nezumi
Detective Azuma
Richard Jeperson
Nezumi
Richard Jeperson
Nezumi
Richard Jeperson
Si Molinar
Dr Akiba
Nezumi
Wingman Paul Metcalf
Richard Jeperson
Harold Takahama
Detective Azuma
Nezumi
Harold Takahama
Paul Metcalf
Detective Azuma
Richard Jeperson
Dr Akiba
Paul Metcalf
Nezumi
Detective Azuma
Richard Jeperson
Nezumi
Harold Takahama
January 1, 2000
Richard Jeperson
Si Molinar
Nezumi
Harold Takahama
Richard Jeperson
December 31, 1999
Geneviève Dieudonné
Acknowledgements
Also Available from Titan Books
ANNO
DRACULA
1999
DAIKAIJU
ALSO BY KIM NEWMAN AND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
ANNO DRACULA
ANNO DRACULA: THE BLOODY RED BARON
ANNO DRACULA: DRACULA CHA CHA CHA
ANNO DRACULA: JOHNNY ALUCARD
ANNO DRACULA: ONE THOUSAND MONSTERS
ANNO DRACULA: SEVEN DAYS IN MAYHEM (GRAPHIC NOVEL)
ANNO DRACULA 1899 AND OTHER STORIES
THE NIGHT MAYOR
BAD DREAMS
JAGO
THE QUORUM
LIFE’S LOTTERY
THE MAN FROM THE DIOGENES CLUB
PROFESSOR MORIARTY: THE HOUND OF THE D’URBERVILLES
AN ENGLISH GHOST STORY
THE SECRETS OF DREARCLIFF GRANGE SCHOOL
ANGELS OF MUSIC
THE HAUNTING OF DREARCLIFF GRANGE SCHOOL
VIDEO DUNGEON (NON-FICTION)
ANNO
DRACULA
1999
DAIKAIJU
KIM NEWMAN
TITAN BOOKS
KIM NEWMAN
ANNO DRACULA 1999 DAIKAIJU
Print edition ISBN: 9781785658860
E-book edition ISBN: 9781785658877
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP
First edition: October 2019
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Copyright © 2019 by Kim Newman. All rights reserved.
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For Sean Hogan
Rekishi wa nandomonandomo shizen ga ningen no oroka-sa o shiteki suru hōhō o shimeshite imasu.
Blue Öyster Cult
MR RICHARD JEPERSON… PLUS ONE
THE DIOGENES CLUB,
LONDON SW1Y 5AH
UNITED KINGDOM
MISS CHRISTINA LIGHT REQUESTS THE PLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY TO SEE IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM.
AT DAIKAIJU PLAZA, CASAMASSIMA BAY, TOKYO, JAPAN.
DECEMBER 31ST, 1999 – DUSK TILL DAWN.
SIGNIFICANT ANNOUNCEMENTS WILL BE MADE.
DRESS CODE: CYBERFORMAL.
INVITATION NOT TRANSFERABLE.
RSVP.
Miss Mouse, this means you…
DECEMBER 31, 1999
UNKNOWN MALE - RICHARD JEPERSON (GEIST 97)
The sky above the city was the colour of arterial blood splashed across a shower curtain.
Nightfall in the Land of the Rising Sun.
Richard was in downtown Tokyo.
One song shrilled from every speaker. A remix of Prince’s ‘1999’ by the girl group Cham-Cham. The single might as well have been pressed on tissue paper. Its zeitgeist window was an arrow-slit. The multi-tracked rinky-dink organ riff made his fillings throb.
Lu lu too sousand zeiro zeiro Pātī wa owari – oops! – jikan ga nai…
Holograms of the flounce-sleeved bubblegum trio wavered above mini projectors concealed in the oddest places. Drinking fountains, food stall hotplates, rubbish bins. Two phantom soprani and a vampire contralto. Miniature dancing ghosts.
Kon’ya wa pātī siyou 1999 fuu ni…
Mima, the vam in Cham-Cham, was a crossover artist. Her pearly fangs were kawaii – cute. Many warm girls (and not a few boys) wore plastic choppers and purple wigs to copy her. She started underground in the bloodletting bars of the Bund, then mainstreamed into the warm wide world. The pretty, unthreatening face of Asian v
ampirism. Poster child for the handover. In peppy public service ads underwritten by Red Label Sprünt, Mima ran through FAQs with a funky anime bat. ‘Give you strawberry kisses when the Wall comes down,’ she sang. That sawtooth smile wasn’t wholly reassuring.
The song would get heavy play at Christina Light’s party. Blatant was ‘in’ this season. Every season, really. Cham-Cham ‘1999’ was as inevitable as ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Should Richard have Nezumi commandeer the karaoke mike and warble ‘Three Wheels on My Wagon’ till dawn? It would not be worth the diplomatic fallout. The Diogenes Club didn’t want to have to explain itself to Peter Mandelson. The Prime Minion could turn into fog and seep through keyholes.
A velvet rope hung across the footpath to the checkpoint. Security measures were in place until midnight.
A yōkai steward waddled over to inspect invitations.
‘Richard Jeperson,’ he declared. ‘I’m on the list. I’m on a lot of lists. Best Dressed, Most Eligible, Most Likely To…’
Extra eyes glinted in the gatekeeper’s cheek-folds, like threepenny bits stuck in a fleshy pudding. The sexless goblin wore an English/Japanese nametag. Hyakume/. It shook a glitchy electronic clipboard. Kanji scrolled across greenscreen, fast as the credits of an overrunning live soap.
The back of Richard’s mind tickled.
One of those! A brain peeper.
More reliable than a photoelectric reader.
The steward accepted his verites.
Nezumi, his plus one, also passed muster.
The rope was lifted and they joined the next queue for the Gate. Though they didn’t need to show passports, they were leaving Japan. The Bund, as any fule kno, was vampire territory. Until the handover.
Here be monsters.
Of course, everywhere be monsters. That was the twentieth century for you.
The Wall encircled the enclave, a relic of less tolerant times. Sniper towers repurposed as snooper towers. Swivelling cameras scanned the crowd for mischief.
Decapitated triffids guarded the Gate. Kadomatsu. Strawbound bamboo sheaves. Temporary homes for harvest spirits, to be burned on January 7 freeing the appeased gremlins. A more uplifting end to the festive season than leaving a needle-shedding fir tree on the pavement for the Chelsea bin men.
The Bund was a temporary home for less airy creatures.
At midnight, the hundred years were up. The Treaty of Light expired. Christina Light – formally, the Princess Casamassima – was an exponent of the grand gesture. Her first idea was to blow up the Wall as the chimes sounded, but advisors suggested she not set off explosives at the height of a city-wide party. Demolition was due to begin next Tuesday, handled by professionals more concerned with job safety than staging spectacle for TV news.
Richard saw stencilled human blast-shadows at the base of the Wall, a fools’ dance amid a swarm of dayglo graffiti.
One shadowman moved, detached from his conga line, and scaled the brickwork. He was not ominous street art, but a two-dimensional vampire.
Only in Japan…
The Wall was in poor shape. Funds for maintenance must have been hard to justify these last few years. Christina Light had already arranged a promotional tie-up with Sprünt GmbH to sell souvenir bricks. The energy drink came in blue and red cartons, with different additives for warm and vampire palates. All over the world, Blue Label Sprünt was a gold-mine and Red Label a loss-leader. Richard doubted gumming chunks of brick to Red Label cartons would change that, but the one-time socialist firebrand had a gift for turning a profit from every little thing.
Handy right now.
This bash must be costing Light Industries a packet. The millimetre-thick invitations had gilt edging and an inset microchip. They doubled as phone cards and trebled as tracer bugs. Disabling the chip voided the invite. His was going into the nearest flush toilet as soon as he was accredited at the bar.
Before the Gate, they had to submit to a pat-down.
Nezumi unslung her portable poster tube and handed it over. A security flathead popped the stopper to peep inside. The tube was returned without comment. Nezumi shouldered it like a rifle. It wouldn’t be the strangest bit of kit waved through tonight.
The flathead assessed the white-haired girl. Him: wide-shouldered, sharkskin suit. Armpit bulge, curly wire earplug. Her: slight, school uniform. Skirt, blazer, boater, knee-socks.
Richard knew who his money was on in a scrap.
A long shadow fell across the rope.
‘Voltan,’ declared a one-eyed elder. ‘Aside, vassal. I’ve urgent business within.’
He sounded as if he’d smoked fifty gaspers a day since Mr Benson copped off with Miss Hedges.
Hyakume waved its e-board. Flatheads scratched holsters.
From under his cloak, Voltan fished out a laminate on a lanyard.
The goblin’s face-folds stretched tight. Voltan’s eye roamed.
Forged invitations to the Light Industries mireniamu party were circulating. Bootleg chips held up for twenty minutes before burning out. A thousand yen in the Chatsubo Bar.
No wonder the Princess had a mindworm on the Gate.
Hyakume farted contemptuously around its lesser eyes. The official didn’t care if Voltan was Count Chocula or the Duke of Earl. It knew a chancer with a snide invite when he brainscanned one.
The elder drew up to his full height – eighteen inches of the tally were stack heels and tall hat – and boomed, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’
Hyakume was unimpressed. Its wattle sacs inflated.
‘That question has two possible answers, chum,’ Richard interpreted. ‘You wouldn’t like either of ’em.’
Voltan’s mouth gaped. He had top and bottom fangs but no other teeth.
He fixed his cold eyes on Richard.
Nezumi angled her poster tube, declaring that he was under her protection.
Venturing into v-territory, it made sense to bring a vampire of his own – or at least, one sponsored by the Diogenes Club. Nezumi embodied school spirit. Big on not letting the side down. If provoked, his yojimba was a lovely little mover. Mistress of the Six Painless But Fatal Cuts.
‘I have been vilely insulted,’ said Voltan. ‘The Hunchback shall hear of this!’
Richard was with British Intelligence. His calling was to be well-informed. He could rattle off the dirt on most of the world’s rascals. He knew Voltan’s record. 1945: arrested by Occupation Authorities in Bucharest for selling adulterated blood products. 1973: cashiered from the Mexican National Guard for malfeasance. But he had no clue who this Hunchback was when he was at home.
Nezumi’s thumb squeezed the top of the tube.
Voltan’s face darkened. Stiff hair crept across his cheeks.
He was holding up a queue. Intolerable in Japan. Shaven-headed, saffronsashed functionaries with fighting poles chivvied him off the red carpet.
‘You’ve not heard the last of this,’ Voltan ranted.
Nezumi solemnly waved a bye-bye at the elder she hadn’t had to kill.
Voltan was wrong. This was the last they’d hear of him.
Tomorrow would be a shiny new millennium. Relics like Mr Tall and Shouty – and his bloody Hunchback – would get stuffed head-first into Trotsky’s Dustbin of History. On top of Comrade Trotsky, come to think of it. And skiffle. That was never coming back. Or little blue bags of salt in potato crisps.
Richard had a sympathy twinge for Voltan, stuck behind the rope while the Space Ark lifted off without him. The elder hobbled away.
Sometimes, Richard felt close to the Trotsky Bin himself.
Never more so than tonight, with the century’s expiration stamp flashing everywhere. Digital displays counted down. Retro clocks ticked on.
At midnight, hana-bi – fireworks!
UNKNOWN FEMALE - NEZUMI (MOUSE)
‘Going home for the holidays?’
An innocent enough question, asked by dorm-mates when they saw her packing.
Nezumi replied – honestly – that she couldn
’t say. Girls giggled at her spaciness then remembered she was a thousand years old and stopped.
Her warm friends were a tiny bit afraid of her.
Sad, but she was used to it.
This was the holidays and she was in Japan, where – more than a thousand years ago – she was born.
Was she home?
Words lost meaning over time. Faded kanji looked like splotches.
Home.
Country.
Nezumi was last here just after the War.
Another splotch word.
War.
Now, that meant the Second World War.
You’d think one world war would be enough, but no, people had to have another. Maybe world wars were like sweets. You can’t have only one. Even if they’re bad for you.
Vampires knew the lure of things that were bad for you.
Still, ‘the War’ had meant the Second World War for over twice as long as it had meant the First World War. That had to be progress.
Then again, Mr Jeperson said ‘the double Ws’ weren’t the wars that counted.
There had been others, which few who didn’t fight in even noticed.
She still served.
Her principal in 1945 was Mr Edwin Winthrop, another Man From the Diogenes Club. A British agent had disappeared while looking for Dr Jogoro Komoda, code-named the Key Man. In Europe, Russia and America competed to net the ‘best’ Nazi mad scientists. The Western Allies had a freer run at Japan’s von Brauns and Merkwerdichliebes.
Tracts of the city were burned ruins. GIs swarmed through bathhouses and gaming parlours. Japanese who’d only heard about Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t fully understand why their indomitable fortress nation had surrendered to barbarians. Tokyo had been bombed and the Emperor didn’t give in. Why was this different? Only first-hand witnesses knew the world had changed.
A defeated people saw Nezumi as a traitor before they saw her as a vampire.
The agent was found folded into a cupboard, eye sockets empty, mouth open wide enough to fit in a coconut. Dr Komoda, a surgeon who turned mutilated soldiers and captive vampires into living weapons, surrendered to the Americans. Nezumi supposed he continued his programme under new sponsorship. The War was over, so his operations couldn’t be war crimes any more.
While in Tokyo, Mr Winthrop sent a note to the Princess Casamassima ‘to check in after the fuss and bother’. She came to the Gate to thank him for the courtesy but did not invite him into the Bund. A famous beauty of the 1890s, the Princess seemed paper-thin to Nezumi, so pale as to be almost transparent. It hurt to look at her. One of her eyes was a red blood marble. She’d fought for her ground.