by Kim Newman
Another likely rebel.
After pulling her neck in, Lady Oyotsu settled meekly with a yōkai coterie. A gnome who looked like a potato with arms. A flesh umbrella with a hairy human leg. A bent-double wretch with chunks of ironmongery embedded in his flesh. From the Dieudonné log, Richard recognised them. Abura Sumashi, Kasa-obake, Kichijiro. Pre-Macedonians, original ghetto-dwellers. Here when the Princess arrived.
That, of course, was who was missing.
Christina Light, their hostess.
It wouldn’t surprise Richard if she originally planned to stay away from her own party until close to midnight – perhaps entering with her own light show.
Now she was probably in hiding.
And Radu was pissed off at that. She was who he wanted in his net. The Princess. Everyone else were extras. Exceptionally well-heeled extras.
Radu paced, chewing his moustache.
‘Come out, come out,’ he muttered. ‘Wherever you are.’
NEZUMI
With Good Night Kiss in one hand and Hal’s collar in the other, she duck-walked as fast as inhumanly possible out of the burning boudoir into the Russian railway station. Snow was trodden into the rough planking. An authentic stove with a modern heating element cast a glow over the floor.
This must be where the Princess said goodbye to one of her anarchist boyfriends. Before he was sent to Siberia or blew himself up with his own bomb. Nezumi pictured the Princess in white fur, a frost tear on one cheek. Balalaika music. A steam train chugging offstage.
Fire didn’t spread across the line between dressing room and waiting room.
Hal wanted to stand but she didn’t let him yet. No sense getting his head burned off.
Lefty rattled off a percentage no one wanted to hear.
The Caterpillar was coming. Nezumi had sized him up earlier.
The EarthGuard cyborg op with robot arms and legs. Swollen shoulders and a Quasimodo hump. More killing power than Lefty, but cruder workmanship. A human dreadnought. A scorched earth merchant.
Nezumi could have done with one of the Bund Police’s one-person tanks.
‘I saw this clanker earlier,’ said Hal. ‘He’s with Tsunako Shiki, this awful little girl.’
Nezumi knew who he meant. The Bad Penny.
There was a blundering on the other side of the wall.
The Caterpillar could be stealthy, but wasn’t fussed now. He wanted the mini-pigoids to know Big Bad Wolfbot had the measure of their flimsy housing development.
Furniture broke. The Caterpillar trod heavily.
Nezumi let go of Hal and stood. Holding her katana two-handed, she sidestepped into the library. Striking a defending willow pose, she looked down the passage.
A juggernaut had rolled through the Princess’s life corridor, crushing mementoes. Mr Light’s collection of pervy statues was a litter of broken china. Signora Light’s sitting room was upended. Cooked orchids smouldered, bright green pulp seeping through splits in black stems. Boot-sized dents stamped across floors and carpets.
The metalwork man stood in the library. Armour plates creaked as he inhaled and exhaled. He stank of oil and soot.
He had taken off his EarthGuard safety helmet. A middle-aged Japanese face, dough-cheeked and small-eyed, was framed by a neck-brace and skull-plates. He had a hairy mole at the corner of one eye.
She darted forward and sliced his nose.
A section sheared off and bright blood gushed from snout-holes.
Her fangs hurt. The sight of blood gave her an ice-cream head.
Roaring, the Caterpillar ratcheted his fire-arm. A relatively clumsy procedure. When he aimed and let loose, she wasn’t standing in front of him.
She licked his blood off her blade.
The only insight she got from the taste was pain and channelled rage.
The Caterpillar was angry before his robot bits were sewn on. He was angrier now.
The mace-hand came down like a bludgeon, missing her head and thudding into a bookshelf, pulping covers, shredding pages, splintering wood. The Caterpillar struggled to wrench the implement free.
Blood was all over his face, pouring onto his armoured chest.
Who was he inside his tin can? Who had he been?
Military, she read in his blood. Wounded veteran, retreaded for vengeance. From the banzai brigade.
A Second World War relic. One of the Key Man’s pet projects.
A tragic figure. She felt sorry for him. But now she needed to see a way to incapacitate him.
No weak spots in his burnished carapace. His joints were sleeved with chain-mail.
She could stab his face again and hope to spear his brain but that meant getting close enough to put her skull within mace range.
He shifted his right shoulder, working up another big burn.
It took seconds to access a fuel supply contained in his limbs. How were canisters replaced? She couldn’t see any latches or tank-caps.
Hal ran out of the waiting room with a stove-pipe in his hands – Lefty’s fingers could curl! – and whanged the Caterpillar across the shoulders. The pipe broke but the Caterpillar staggered, servo-motors grinding in his hips and knees.
Hal held up Lefty as if to mock the Caterpillar’s crude workmanship.
He drew the revolver from his waistband and shot the Caterpillar in the face.
His deduction about the state in which Christina maintained her souvenirs was sound but the bullet spanged off an endo-dermal plate. The Caterpillar’s brain was shielded.
The Caterpillar hitched his shoulders and aimed fists like loaded guns.
In his armpit, Nezumi saw a plastic patch like a bung or plug.
She advanced, bringing up Good Night Kiss in a rising half-moon cut, slicing the plastic toggle, then took three steps away in retreating mantis pattern, withdrawing the sword before it could be snapped by the Caterpillar’s instinctive spasm. His ironsides were solid enough to break her silvered steel, but neither arm-attachment was good for stanching the leak.
If Dr Komoda had fit a metal screw-cap instead of a plastic stopper, a weakness would be eliminated. How it must gall that meticulous monster to work within a budget.
Nezumi’s eyes watered as flammable liquid gushed from under the Caterpillar’s arm.
Now she had to trust Hal to see the opening.
His next bullet dented the chestplate.
The Caterpillar chuckled – a gruff, low, cruel laugh. A pity-killing sound.
Then Hal shot at the gushing fuel tank.
The first explosion tore off the Caterpillar’s flamethrower arm and burned his face to the bone. The plates around his skull gleamed as red meat dissolved. Splashes of ignited fuel wrought ruin on unsorted, unshelved law reports. The severed robot arm tumbled through the air towards Hal, who held up Lefty to ward it off.
‘It is not recommended that unit designated Lefty should be—’
The complaint was obliterated by the whump of the second explosion.
The Caterpillar had auxiliary tanks embedded in his hunchback. Nezumi closed her eyes but still saw bright flames. She was deaf for a second or two, but the din rushed back in.
She looked again. Flares danced in her vision. She blinked them away.
With the impulses from his head – a fancy neural interface or something physical involving clenched and unclenched jaw muscles? – cut off, the motors in the Caterpillar’s hips, knees and ankles shut down. His lower half locked like a statue. His remaining arm flailed. As many gadgets as she had in her Girl Guide knife extruded from and folded back into his mace-fist. When had he ever used the corkscrew or – a cruel touch she might have expected from the Key Man – the nail file?
The Caterpillar’s upper body and head were wreathed in fire.
It was too late to turn vampire.
It might have grown back his arms and legs. Had he volunteered for quadruple amputation and an upgrade into man-machinehood?
A bust of Karl Marx burned too. The frowning Santa face mel
ted away from wiring and lenses.
She had assumed there was surveillance throughout the building.
‘Look,’ she told Hal, ‘the Wire is watching.’
He was puzzled. That catchphrase meant nothing to him.
‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘Good work with the gun. We should leave here now. That bang’ll have been noticed.’
‘No argument from me,’ said Hal.
He held up the suicide weapon to pose – proud of his sharpshooting, elated to be walking away from a fire fight – not yet realising how close he’d come to dying, or guilt-nagged by the possibility that the Caterpillar was a victim too.
The flames burned out quickly, leaving soot and stink.
Nezumi looked at the detached flamethrower arm. Etched into its underside was a serial number. YUREI 157. She was reminded of Mr Jeperson’s tattoo.
Hal virtually leaped up and down. Lefty clicked, whirred and flashed.
Nezumi turned away from the Caterpillar’s black skull.
‘Let’s go,’ she said. ‘I should like to find some stairs.’
RICHARD JEPERSON
The Light Channel showed a digital countdown. Red numerals against pulsating bluish white. Less than two hours till the fireworks.
Radu cel Frumos had the room.
‘Should we murderalise a few guesty-westies?’ Radu asked Colonel Golgotha, loud enough to be heard by the company. ‘See if that lures Milady Sparkletoes out of her grotto?’
Golgotha kept schtumm. His place was to execute policy, not set it.
He’d murderalise anyone, but needed a direct order. Possibly in writing.
Radu roamed, wondering whether his bright idea could find any takers.
Some squealed under his glance.
The Bey enjoyed that. He relished little spurts of terror. Almost as much as little squirts of blood. They fed his inner vampire.
‘Poor strategy,’ Richard piped up. ‘Killing – or threatening to kill – hostages only works if your ultimate target gives tuppence ha’penny about other people. Do you think the Princess cares enough about anyone here to put herself to even mild inconvenience – much less risk her neck? If you were her, would you?’
‘Fair point, Mr Jeperson,’ said Radu. ‘If irritating.’
Cottonmouth played with her knives. She’d kill on a nod and a wink.
‘Shall we put your theory to the test?’ asked Radu. ‘As hostess, the Princess should have a duty of care, don’t you think?’
Richard didn’t volunteer to be killed.
Christina Light most likely regarded her most important and powerful guests – Syrie Van Epp or Angel de la Guardia – on a level with the plump lads shackled in the buffet pens. The Princess was a different order of being. She’d given her great big building her own eyes – one bright red, one pale blue – so she could look down on all other life forms.
Kate Reed, for one, had advised Richard against accepting this invitation. The Irish vampire journalist painted the Princess as a grudge-nourisher who’d summon all her old enemies to a big room and force them to fight each other to the death. ‘Never forget that she’s potty,’ said Kate, who had little good to say about her former revolutionary comrade. ‘And petty. She won’t have forgotten the Diogenes Club.’
If Radu started killing her guests, Christina might mostly be annoyed that he got to them first.
Oh well. Richard’s other option for New Year’s Eve was British wine, cheese and black pudding at the Millennium Dome with Tony Blair, Baldric from Blackadder, Lord Ruthven, and assorted luvvies and liggers. A hostage siege was better than that.
Again, it struck him that Radu was showing uncharacteristic ambition. What was his envisioned ideal outcome?
Dracula’s brother was staring at him. Why was that?
‘I’m so sorry,’ said Richard. ‘I went away for a moment. Other things on my mind, I suppose. You were thinking of putting me to death.’
‘No point,’ said Radu, suspending sentence. ‘You’re not famous enough, old man.’
Movie stars, pop singers and sporting figures suppressed panic. Each was sure they were the most famous person at the party. An ‘Access All Areas’ laminate was suddenly a death warrant.
‘It’s all right,’ Richard told a young Asian man, ‘I have no idea who you are.’
‘I don’t know who Mr Pretty is either,’ said Radu. ‘It doesn’t matter. We can get his name from the obituary.’
The warm fellow looked as if he’d rather be beheaded than go unrecognised.
‘Murdleigh,’ shouted Radu.
The foreman of the pallbearers briskly slouched over. A fringe of bristles showed around his blank white mask. He had wolf ears and hairy wrists.
‘Get a grip on this lucky winner.’
The minion seized the youth by the shoulder.
Perkin Murdleigh was Radu’s long-time minion/renfield/dogsbody – and, for almost as long a time and better money, an informer. He ratted out his boss’s dastardly doings to any law enforcement agency with a snitch budget.
Obviously, no one had got the heads-up about this evening’s escapade.
Even if Murdleigh had whistleblown, few ears would have pricked. Radu wasn’t big or bestial enough to bother with. The Diogenes Club cut Murdleigh off years ago. No one was that fussed about an elder who cheated in motor rallies or sold helicopter kits with significant pieces missing to Moldavian rebels.
That would change after tonight. Little comfort to the dead.
Murdleigh marched the anonymous celeb – male model? Soap opera bad boy? Drac dealer to the stars? – to the middle of the sunken dance floor and made him sit cross-legged.
‘Let’s have more delightful people on their knees begging for their lives, eh?’ Radu told his minion. ‘Use your initiative. We’re looking for headlines. Get me front-page faces. And poignant human-interest stories. Oh, and Mrs Drumgo – we’ll stir her in the mix for flavour. We’ve not forgotten that unkind thing she said earlier. Try not to bleed over the other lucky winners, Georgia Rae.’
Cottonmouth and Furīman hefted the wounded voodoo vixen across the room and dumped her next to the young man. She leaned on his shoulder and ripped apart his white shirt sleeve. She opened her mouth wide, jaw hinges dislocating, and took a chunk out of his arm. Bloody meat didn’t restore her health, but her yellow tiger-eyes burned angrier. Veins throbbed in her temples and the toad-sac under her chin puffed. The bitten fellow clamped a hand over his gouting wound.
Clearly, the clot still wanted to explain who he was. Maybe he was huge in Japan.
Murdleigh wandered among the company, mask looming close to frightened faces. He tugged Kasa-obake away from his fellow yōkai, and hopped the umbrella goblin onto the dance floor. Cruelly, he kicked his single ankle. Kasa-obake upended, opening to stop his fall. The underside of his canopy was a mass of wormy cilia. He closed in embarrassment, warty hide blushing as if his slip had shown.
Next, the pallbearer picked Mr Omochi, a warm CEO who took being selected for probable death with stern dignity. He joined the others of his own accord, sitting stoically to await fate.
Surprise registered in the crowd when Murdleigh passed over genuinely famous (if not genuinely genuine) faces and tapped a waiter on the chest. Donatella Versace and that dry comedian from the whisky ads didn’t complain, but the waiter tossed his tray at the minion’s head and ran – only to bump into Cottonmouth. She held a knife to his jugular and manoeuvred him into sitting with the other select victims. Mighty feisty for staff, Richard thought, then he saw the white jacket didn’t fit. A dot.com billionaire had bribed a peon for the disguise. To show no social prejudice, Murdleigh sniffed out the waiter in the plush tux and forced him to join his paymaster.
The guests took the rounding-up seriously now.
Angel de la Guardia put his Filofax away.
No one protested when anyone else was chosen, except Omochi’s elegant vampire wife who begged their friends to intervene.
‘You shame
me, Rose,’ barked her husband.
She bowed meekly and stopped begging to the evident relief of the friends.
Murdleigh stalked the room, hand clapped over his mask’s eyeholes, pointing at random. He walked by a curvy vampire in playroom finery – cherry-red corset, inverted crucifix earrings, puffy mauve sleeves attached to no shirt, pirate boots, ripped fishnet body stocking, a myriad ribbons and bows and Halloween ornaments braided in two bunches of floor-length black-and-purple hair. She was audibly relieved to be passed over. Murdleigh heard her gasp and impishly darted back to tag her anyway. He snickered. She screeched and stuck lacquered needle-nails under his mask.
‘Don’t make such a meal of it, you blithering cretin,’ shouted Radu.
Radu hadn’t delegated to get the job done efficiently. He wanted to be amused by the cruel process and have an opportunity to whip his dog.
He was bored. Soon, he’d start chopping off heads to pass the time.
Without being asked, Furīman, Cottonmouth and the Butler took positions around the huddled circle. Cottonmouth scraped her knives together as if whetting them. Furīman’s rib muscles rippled, as if the monsters tattooed on his tits were flexing for a free-for-all fight.
Radu inspected the chosen few. Most of the other people in the room – scarcely less imperilled – got off the dance floor and shrivelled into shadows. The hostages sat like a schoolkid rabble ordered to sit on the gym floor for a lecture on moral hygiene. Except none of them were smirking.
‘You know, Mr Jeperson, it strikes me that I spoke too harshly earlier,’ said Radu. ‘You may not be famous exactly, but you are very well thought of in your profession. An icon of the swinging sixties and sordid seventies. A gentleman rake and adventurer. A good man in a tight spot. Maybe most people assumed you’d died of an overdose or in a fall from a great height years ago, but you had your moments in the public eye. So we’ll have you after all, if you don’t mind.’
Richard walked over and sat down.
Hostages shifted to make a place for him. He sat next to the v-girl. She gave him a taut smile. Her necklaces and bracelets rattled.