by Kim Newman
As a creature of information, what would Christina feed on? She would still be a vampire. An immoderately thirsty one. That was why she had to be thwarted.
Drat – he’d come all this way and found himself on Dracula’s side. If Radu’s intel was sound, Richard would have to set aside the fact that he was a ghastly pill and offer what support he could. Mycroft Holmes would have seen it plainly. Richard was sick about it. That was the price he paid for being a feeler not a thinker.
If the Princess Ascended, everyone would be in trouble. Not just folk who’d ticked her off.
Being a world away wouldn’t protect Kate Reed, Penelope Churchward or Geneviève Dieudonné. Information moves at – what else? – the speed of light. The Light Channel was already global. The glow beamed to multiple millions of subscribers wasn’t a generated test signal. It was Christina herself – Christina’s Light.
That was how she’d feed. A pale corpse-candle, leaching life.
Keyboards sticky with blood as users slashed veins to bleed into their desktops. Desiccated corpses on couches, juices drawn to the cathode tube. Or was that old-fashioned? Could a being of sheer light feed on brainwaves?
‘Do you hear me, Tinkerbell?’ asked Radu.
If Dracula was worried by the Princess, why send the family fool to deal with her? With plague mushrooms and guns? He was usually a cannier planner. He had a blind spot, though. He didn’t take women seriously – which is why one managed to cut off his original head. For all his Hollywood moguldom, he wasn’t much for new media. He still put out films on laserdisc. The electric world had got away from him.
He wouldn’t have a strategy to bring the Princess down – with Radu as stooge or feint or sacrifice. He’d ignore the whole thing till it was too late and historians had to think of a name – World War V came to mind – for the conflict that would consume the next decades.
So, what was happening? Who were the players?
‘This is ridiculous,’ said the Bey, looking to his hostages – of all people – for affirmation. ‘It’s like talking to a weeping statue.’
‘You could try praying,’ said Georgia Rae Drumgo. She was also a Dracula acolyte, so why was she lying here bleeding?
‘That’s it, Mama Voodoo,’ said Radu. ‘You’re done. Furīman, put one in her head and another in her heart. Silver.’
The yakuza assassin raised his pistol. A single tear trickled down his cheek.
Georgia Rae said something defiant in Haitian patois.
Furīman aimed for her head. Other hostages shuffled away.
The light giantess twirled, apparently absent-mindedly. Her phantom hand passed through Furīman’s shoulder.
He spasmed and fired, his aim off. A red groove opened in Georgia Rae’s cheek, but the bullet ploughed into the floor.
Furīman’s back bent and his arms stretched as if he were lightning-struck.
He dropped his gun and convulsed, tattooed chest slick with sweat.
His hair frizzled and lost colour. His eyes whitened and his skin paled. All natural pigment went out of him. This was how Christina fed. An arc crackled around Furīman’s eyes. He choked, as if sicking up his own bones.
As his skin became ancient parchment, his tattoos stood out all the more.
His black trousers lost all their dye – even his boots blanched – but the ink in his skin stayed vivid, animated by Christina’s touch.
The monsters on his body fought, moving at first like early animations then, as the Princess mastered a new trick, with smoother, fluid motion. Felix the Cat turned to Studio Ghibli.
The three-headed dragon battled the moth, the bird and the anteater. Furīman was in agony. His skin ripped, showing worm-white organs, leaking milky blood. The dragon grew, absorbing the other monsters into its intricate design, and tore itself from Furīman’s body. The detached, flapping skin-thing hovered. Furīman lay dead on the floor, exposed veins and muscles white as bone. His departed skin danced to Christina’s baton.
Murdleigh hid behind a pallbearer as the tattoodemalian swooped. It enveloped the human shield while Radu’s renfield scurried away. One of the triphibian’s heads had working fangs. It cracked the flathead’s mask like a snake puncturing a bird’s egg. A tuber penetrated to extract the yolk. Someone opened fire, riddling the pallbearer and the thing wrapped around him. That killed the victim but holes didn’t bother the tattoo.
Cottonmouth stepped in, and with several swipes of her knives reduced Furīman’s skin to ribbons.
‘A pity,’ said Syrie. ‘That was fine workmanship.’
‘The tattoo or… the thing she did?’ Richard asked.
Syrie shrugged. She probably meant both.
‘Well,’ said Radu, now as terrified as he was angry, ‘that was something to see. What will you do for an encore?’
For the first time, the illuminated Princess took notice of him.
She smiled and the intensity of her light grew. Her red eye became impossible to look at.
‘It’s not midnight yet,’ came that roaring whisper. ‘No more presents till the New Year.’
NEZUMI
The lift doors opened.
Floor 88 was open-plan. An office suite.
A well-dressed elder with a gun – not as trigger-happy as the minion who shot Mrs Van Epp up in the ballroom – covered Nezumi and Hal. He had a Latin look, with a neatly trimmed moustache and sideburns. If anyone deserved to be called ‘the Handsome’, he did. Other vampires were with him. A smart woman, also with a gun, held in a two-handed grip that suggested firepower. A stocky Britisher and a Japanese woman, with matching ear-to-ear grins. The Brit’s red tunic would have been army issue in 1895 and groovy Carnaby Street fashion in 1965. His partner’s smile was alarming. She held a dangerous pair of shears.
That annoying warm Senator was passed out and tied to a chair.
‘We come in peace,’ said Hal.
The guns didn’t waver. The shears clacked.
Hal remembered he was holding a revolver and threw it away.
‘You are Light Industries Security,’ Nezumi said. ‘I am a bodyguard for a guest. This man is, ah, a victim of the hostiles who have taken over the building.’
Trying to explain Hal and Jun Zero would make Mr Sharp Suit shoot them. It would be easier than following the story.
‘The elevator wasn’t working,’ said the woman.
Hal’s mechanical hand was still wired into the lift controls.
‘We sort of have a pass-key,’ said Hal. ‘An override for everything.’
‘Useful,’ said the elder. ‘Especially if you were taking over the building. Tell me again how you’re not two of these “hostiles”.’
Nezumi assessed the situation.
Mr Sharp Suit and his deputy were well-spaced. Professionals. She couldn’t get Good Night Kiss into both of them. If she attacked either, the other would shoot her. With silver. The grinning ghouls would carve Hal where he stood.
Hal detached Lefty from the lift. Nezumi put her hand on the metal appendage, aiming it at the floor so it wouldn’t be mistaken for a weapon.
‘She was with one of the guests,’ said a disembodied voice. ‘An Englishman. And I know her.’
Nezumi shut her eyes and felt the room.
When she opened them again, she knew where the voice came from. And who had spoken.
‘You used to call yourself “S”,’ said the unseen woman.
‘It’s “Nezumi” now.’
High Priest Kah Pei Mei, her master from 1802 till 1923, named her ‘S’ because of her proficiency in his favourite sword stroke. As if drawing an English letter S in the air, she would strike the neck, vitals and legs of an assailant or assailants. Free of Kah, she dropped the name and the show-off dance-fighting. Zuli Bronze could bop her three times – left knee, right knee, heart! – if she tried an ‘S’ in kendoline. Once you raised the sword to begin the ‘S’, a savvy opponent recognised the stroke and cut under your guard. Mastery of numberless martial discipli
nes hadn’t stopped someone creeping up on Kah and poking a sharpened stick through his heart. She avenged him but mourned little. He was an ill-tempered master. Her current style was based on less elegant finishing moves.
The man in charge darted a glance at a swivelling chair.
‘Arashi, quick: on our side or not?’
Nezumi imagined a head inclined in thought.
Suzan Arashi was the glass geisha. Lady Oyotsu, the long-necked woman, and O-Same, the human flame, once lived in a tower with Suzan and the stone giant Sesshō Seki. In times when yōkai were shunned, they performed deeds of heroism and charity. To defend Spider Forest from General Ichimonji, the Four had to up their ranks to Seven. The undead usurper was chieftain among seven powerful ghosts, the Shichinin Misaki. They could only be defeated by an equal force. Kah and Nezumi, along with the warm jungle adventurer Mowgli of Seoni, made up the numbers. The campaign was a success, though Kah lost his eyebrows (he demanded five chests of gold in recompense) and Nezumi was wounded in a duel with a swordsman whose head was a copper pot. Suzan gave her blood. For months, she saw through her hands as if they were soap bubbles.
That blood link was still there.
‘Our side,’ said Suzan.
The guns were holstered.
‘I’m Molinar,’ said the man in charge. ‘This is Verlaine. Kuchisake and Watson. Arashi, you know.’
‘I’m… Hal,’ said Hal, remembering not to introduce himself as the world’s most wanted cyber-bandit. ‘This is Lefty.’
The hand said nothing.
‘We were locked in,’ said Molinar. ‘Our system is breached.’
‘A sophisticated attack,’ said Verlaine. ‘Fujiwara – our tech guy – is missing. The Chief thinks your hostiles got to him somehow.’
‘They had to have a man on the inside,’ said Molinar.
‘Our feeds are lying to us,’ said Suzan. ‘We’re seeing last year’s celebrations on all channels, digitally altered so the date’s tonight.’
‘Cool,’ said Hal.
‘One way of looking at it,’ said Molinar. Now he paid attention to Hal.
The elder had known Nezumi was dangerous at a look but skipped over the bloke with her. Now Hal made him suspicious. Molinar wasn’t one of those bypassed-by-the-times crumbly elders. He was sharp. Nezumi reckoned he was good at his job.
‘I’m with the Diogenes Club,’ she said, changing the subject.
‘They get about,’ said Molinar. ‘I was Carpathian Guard in the ’90s. The 1890s. Do you know Katharine Reed?’
‘We’ve worked together.’
‘Interesting woman. Infuriating, but admirable. Carrot-top.’
‘She shoved your boss into a wall at the Tower of London,’ said Nezumi.
It was something Kate mentioned quite often.
‘I had to unfix the Princess,’ Molinar grinned. ‘That was a challenge.’
‘I’m glad you’re getting caught up,’ said Verlaine, ‘but shouldn’t we be moving out? If we can use this fellah’s arm to override the override, we can get up to the Dragon’s Mouth where we ought to be. This girl can give us a sit-rep. Enemy numbers and names. Weapons capabilities. Positions.’
‘I vote we get out of the building and call in the cavalry,’ said Hal. ‘Japan has an air force, right?’
‘Japan has a Self-Defence Force,’ said Suzan. ‘Until midnight, any trespass in the Bund would constitute an attack on a sovereign state. Invading another nation violates the post-war constitution.’
Verlaine looked around, annoyed.
‘Your party poopers faked a medical emergency to justify calling in EarthGuard,’ Nezumi explained. ‘That counts as foreign aid, not an invasion. A Colonel Golgotha has occupied the building. He’s not the big boss, though, that’s—’
‘We’ve had that intel,’ said Molinar. ‘The cocky bastard used one of his aliases to give us his own name. He’s the breed of megalomaniac who wants you to know he’s shafting you.’
‘Radu the Handsome.’
‘No. Who? I mean Jun Zero. That’s who we’re up against.’
Nezumi knew a few wrong words would crack this nervy alliance and lead to a free-for-all with many casualties.
‘The commander upstairs is Dracula’s brother,’ she said.
‘That Radu!’ said Molinar. ‘The race-car cheat!’
‘Radu cel Frumos is a guest,’ said Suzan. ‘Representing the House of Drăculești. We reckoned he was the most unimportant relative Drac could find. Or the one he least wanted to see at his own party. They’re not close. He’s on the Nuisance List. Flags were raised about his entourage but Fujiwara did a background check and they came up clear.’
‘The Fujiwara who’s missing?’ said Hal. ‘And suspected.’
Suzan made a sound Nezumi decoded as combined realisation and pique. From their adventure in Spider Forest, she remembered the woman’s repertoire of expressive clucks and clicks and hums – worked up to fill in conversational spaces where people with visible faces got by on narrowed eyes or pursed lips.
‘His staff are definite hostiles,’ said Nezumi. ‘A chauffeur with iron teeth.’
‘… and Tsunako Shiki, she’s a perfect little ball of awful,’ said Hal, with feeling.
Verlaine looked at Suzan’s ladylike grunt.
They both knew the Bad Penny.
‘Oh, not her,’ said Verlaine. ‘Fujiwara should have said. She’s been barred from the Bund from the beginning.’
‘Yes, Fujiwara should have said,’ Nezumi underlined.
‘Ole Fujiwooji’s a turncloak, eh what?’ said the smiley Brit, Watson. ‘Some folk don’t ’arf let yah dahn, eh?’
‘I can’t believe it,’ said Verlaine.
‘Me neither,’ chipped in Suzan.
Even Kuchisake was disappointed. When she frowned, her cheek-slashes turned down to make a tragic crescent of her mouth.
‘Popular with the ladies is Fujiwooji,’ said Watson. ‘Never a good sign if you asks me.’
‘You,’ said Molinar, pointing to Hal. ‘We’ll need you to get the express elevator to the Dragon’s Mouth. The rest of you, check your weapons.’
‘A frontal approach isn’t advisable,’ Nezumi said.
‘Listen to her,’ Hal echoed, voice high-pitched. ‘She has, ah, good intel.’
‘We’d be shot when the doors opened. I’ve already seen it once. Their field orders are to kill security staff. Leaving only hostages who can’t stick up for themselves.’
‘We could use the Senator as a human shield,’ said Verlaine, steaming to get in the fight. She was offended and hurt by this Fujiwara’s treachery. ‘Or send in Arashi with silver cheesewire. Cut the problem off at the head.’
Molinar wasn’t convinced. He was equally gung-ho, but saw sense.
‘All they need is a noppera-bō on the crew and Arashi’s advantage is nullified. They see without eyes. Hell, this girl does too, don’t you? You knew where our unseen asset was.’
Nezumi nodded.
‘Golgotha has good bad people,’ she said. ‘A woman called Cottonmouth. A boy with a demon on his back. A gaseous assassin.’
‘The last one might not be a problem any more. He met a fan he didn’t like.’
Again, Molinar looked at Hal suspiciously.
Hal got fidgety and shut up.
‘There must be other ways up,’ said Molinar. ‘If only we weren’t locked out of the building plans.’
‘I can help you there,’ said Hal. ‘Lefty, the blueprints.’
The diagram appeared in the air. Watson went for his side-arm, but didn’t make a fool of himself by shooting the cutaway hologram. A ghost dragon wavered in the middle of the office. Again, Nezumi was prompted to wonder why anyone would pick this shape for their headquarters. What message was the Princess sending?
‘Lefty, calculate routes from Floor 88 out of the building.’
‘And up to the ballroom,’ Nezumi insisted.
Lefty whirred and clicked, processing input from its
primary user – but also, she realised, taking her suggestion onboard.
Veins of golden light appeared throughout the 3D model.
‘Is it generating this from the plans on file or mapping the building itself ?’ Verlaine asked.
‘Good question,’ said Hal. ‘Miss… what was it?’
‘Call me Marit,’ she said.
Verlaine didn’t just have a thing for computer guys. Hal talked like a pimply nerd who lived in his mother’s basement, but to look at him he was a Japanese male model who worked out by juggling sandbags. Even the cybernetic hand was cool. Strawberry Fields would gladly stick Hal’s pic up in the dorm’s Shrine of the Snoggable.
Hal puffed up at Verlaine’s attention. He responded to her sexy spy get-up. Evening dress and small-of-the-back holster.
‘So far as I can tell, and this is as much a novelty to me as to you, Lefty’s a wireless device,’ he explained. ‘It’s piggybacking the building. As you said, overriding the override. Oh, look, what a shame…’
He pointed to a broken light-line.
‘That was your elevator shaft to the neck. It’s disabled. No way up there. When they sealed you in, they cut the cables. It’s what I’d do. Now, these are all ways out—’
‘Can you get heat signatures?’ asked Verlaine, ignoring his pointed travel update.
‘Let’s try. Lefty, show who’s on site.’
Clusters of dots – red for warm, blue for vampire, turquoise for miscellaneous other – appeared throughout the projection. Mostly above them, where the party was.
‘I should have thought of this earlier,’ Hal said.
Plenty of people were still alive in the Doragon no Kuchi. She couldn’t tell if any dot was Mr Jeperson.
‘You didn’t think of this now,’ Verlaine said. ‘I did.’
She might recently – very recently – have changed her mind about computer guys. Nezumi had a pang of amused sympathy for Hal. He’d had his hopes raised and his heart broken inside a minute and the woman wasn’t even thinking of him at the time.
‘This is the Floor 88,’ said Molinar, sticking his finger into the projection. ‘This is us?’