by Kim Newman
Richard bit his moustache.
‘I thought that would be so. Pity.’
Nezumi looked sad.
‘You have clues,’ she said. ‘You don’t have to be alone.’
‘I never have been,’ he said.
He squeezed her shoulder and wrung a smile out of her.
Still – The Green Lamia and the Crimson Witch. GEIST 83 and 89.
Hal, who was still buzzing, went around the room opening cupboards.
‘We should have power,’ he said, ‘but nothing else. All those systems are down. No computers, phones, television. The Light Channel is off the air.’
‘Never watched it,’ said Richard. ‘Didn’t see the point. Sorry, Sleeping Beauty…’
Nezumi was fascinated by the half-here/half-not woman.
Hal opened a wardrobe and cranked a handle he found inside.
‘We’re not stuck in this room,’ he said. ‘There’s a spiral staircase. A way out, but not in. Off any grid. It has to be worked by hand. Which is a mercy, because the elevators were hooked up to the computers and are out again. And the teleport’s down for good.’
Nezumi tried to lay a hand on Christina’s forehead, but her fingers sank through. She pulled away.
‘Just a ghost,’ she said.
Richard didn’t know who he’d send the thanks-for-having-us-at-your-party card to.
SI MOLINAR
The sunken dance floor was filled with fire-retardant. Lady Oyotsu’s plesiosaur neck ploughed through white foam, elevating her deerstalker hat out of the mess. Loyal Kasa-obake bobbed along upside-down in her wake, woodblock-sandaled foot kicking the air.
A Yank in a blue flight-suit and helmet had climbed out of the cockpit of the attack plane stuck to the side of the building. He’d arrived in the nick of time to claim credit. He looked like a recruiting poster or a gay porn star.
Mrs Van Epp waded over to the Wing Captain and started giving instructions.
Molinar gathered she was responsible for calling in WOtW.
Verlaine reminded Molinar that Light Industries Security should have jurisdiction.
‘Go and demand the Wingos cooperate with us before they make us cooperate with them,’ he told her. ‘If Watson and Kuchisake are alive, give them promotions and detail them to scout the stairwells. See if they’re clear all the way down to the ground. We’ll need to evacuate the building in orderly fashion. Without too many idiots trying to abseil.’
A filled-out kimono with a foam-crowned see-through head also stood by.
‘Check for the hostiles,’ he told Arashi. ‘Some of the undertaker johnnies will have taken off their mime masks. They’ll pretend they were hostages and hope to walk away scot-free. Do not let that happen.’
A bubble-filmed arm saluted.
The retardant thinned and evaporated.
Fires were out. The arrival of the Black Manta killed surprisingly few.
Murdleigh, Radu’s renfield, was held between a short, plump Japanese sexpot and Georgia Rae Drumgo. Molinar thought of letting them pull him in two like a wishbone. He was interested in who’d get the biggest chunk. Duty intervened.
‘Put him down,’ he told them. ‘We’ll need someone to stand trial.’
The still-masked Murdleigh didn’t show any gratitude.
Molinar checked his watch. 00.08.
So that was the twentieth century then. He couldn’t say he’d miss it.
The billionaire Angel de la Guardia stood at the guard-rail, puffing a cigar and chugging golden, looking out at the city. Someone had to celebrate. Molinar supposed the beetle-browed brute was congratulating himself on the quick-thinking, decisive imaginary actions he’d taken to save everyone.
Fireworks fizzed and flared at locations across Tokyo. The city was lit up so no big plugs were pulled when the Daikaiju Building went dark. Emergency back-up floodlights came on, doing bedraggled, bloodied party-goers few favours.
He supposed no one had Ascended.
The Princess wasn’t in his head any more.
The Bund was over. Light Industries might be out of business.
Dr Pretorius would still be here. Locked in the Integratron with a thousand dead screens. Best place for him.
He nearly tripped over a golden lad who’d slipped his chain and was washing dust and foam off his chubby face and torso.
‘What’s that?’ asked the donor, pointing at the ceiling.
Molinar looked up.
A circular hatch popped and a giant screw descended. A filigree spiral staircase.
The three who’d gone up came down again – the Man From the Diogenes Club, the Frost Girl Vampire with a Sword, the Warm Guy No One Knew.
He could tell they’d had a time of it.
Mrs Van Epp left her toy airman to welcome the trio.
Molinar stayed by the staircase. No one else came down.
Mr Jeperson laid a hand on his shoulder, then shook his head.
‘Gone?’ Molinar asked.
‘Not completely,’ Jeperson said.
Molinar climbed upwards.
She might not be calling, but the Fairy Princess still needed him.
NEZUMI
Mrs Van Epp said more Wings Over the World craft would be here soon. The Silver Sentinel and EvangeLions One and Three.
The Daikaiju Building might still collapse into the sea. It had strayed fifty yards from its foundations and was on unsteady ground. Getting everyone out safely would be a job. Mrs Drumgo and dozens of others needed medical care. Surviving pallbearers wanted locking up. Corpses should be removed.
Japan just got a Tokyo district back, only to find it an active disaster zone.
Still, it could have been much worse.
Suzan Arashi found her and returned Good Night Kiss. She even had the poster-tube scabbard.
There was vampire blood on the blade.
She trusted it belonged to someone who deserved it shed.
‘Peak,’ Suzan said. ‘He was looting from the dead.’
The sorry thief had a bloody towel wrapped around his right hand. His foot was cuffed to a heavy pot plant.
‘That won’t hold him long,’ said Nezumi.
‘He’ll stay so long as I have these,’ said the invisible woman, unknotting a bloody lump in her borrowed kimono to show four severed fingers. ‘They’ll reattach right as new but he’ll have to mend his ways if he wants them back.’
Nezumi still hoped Anthony Peak could reform. That ought to be easier than learning to pick locks or crack safes with his left hand. But she was sceptical. His spirit animal was the magpie.
Mrs Van Epp promised she’d make it a priority to get Mr Jeperson and Nezumi out of the building. She was all business now she had things to do. The Wingmen were good-looking vampires. Nezumi bet Mrs Van Epp personally picked them.
Mrs Van Epp was in a huddle with the Wing Captain. She showed him something on an electronic device and gave orders. The Daikaiju still had secrets to give up. WOtW was more than just a relief organisation.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Hal. ‘There’s nothing to scavenge. The servers are wiped. That woman can’t do any corporate raiding under the cover of helping out.’
Nezumi turned to him.
He wasn’t his old self. But he wasn’t Evil Hal either.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For everything. Jun Zero didn’t see you coming. You’re why he was stopped.’
She didn’t see it that way, but thanked him with a bow.
‘Well said, young man,’ said Mr Jeperson.
He held a waiter’s jacket, slightly bloodied.
‘Now, if you’ll take a word of advice, put this on, look gormless, mix with the staff, and slide out before Syrie gets a sec to think. She’d love a long, penetrating talk with you, whoever you are. She’s a charming woman, despite homicidal moments – but I don’t think you’d enjoy becoming her spoil of this war.’
He saw the point and slipped on the tux. He needed her help to get his dead hand through a sleeve.
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‘Will you take the dye out of your hair?’ she asked.
‘Yes, and get the tattoo removed. What about you – sticking with the yuki-white look? You could go back to black.’
She was self-conscious about that and touched her hair.
‘Leave it as it is,’ he said. ‘It’s distinctive. In a good way.’
Mr Jeperson handed him a dicky bow to go with his tux. He looked at it as if it were a tenth-level wire entanglement puzzle.
She did it up for him.
‘There,’ she said. ‘Very handsome.’
He smiled a movie star smile.
‘Dial it down,’ said Mr Jeperson. ‘You don’t want to break any hearts.’
He blushed, self-conscious.
Then joined the departing crowd.
‘I think we should take advantage of Syrie’s kind offer and leave too,’ said Mr Jeperson. ‘It’s past midnight. All over but the tidying-up.’
Nezumi agreed with him.
HAROLD TAKAHAMA
Mr Jeperson had made a good call.
Hal saw the CVL on the prowl. She’d like to get her fangs in him. His face might blend in with the crowd, but he was stuck with a clunking glass hand. He wound a wet tablecloth around it.
As he rested on a landing after shuffling down the first of ninety-something flights of stairs, a cute vampire chick sidled next to him. She was spilling out of a corset and sporting a half-ton of ribbons and lace.
Chesse Beru. He didn’t know whether she was staff or guest.
She looked like entertainment.
And hungry for his sweet, sweet vein juice.
How had it come to this?
She smiled up at him – she was under five feet – and her eyes grew big.
Her glamour swirled around his brain.
He’d just kicked a supra-personality out of his skull, and wasn’t going to be bloody mind-controlled for the rest of the night.
Though Chesse was very kawaii.
Being bitten might be worth it for the extras. So far as he knew, Hal didn’t have a girlfriend. So it wouldn’t be cheating. He looked for the knots in the ribbons. Undoing one tie might spring her out of all the gothic stripper gear. Beneath silk and lace, she’d be powder-white with violet scorpion tattoos.
‘Poor lamb,’ she said. ‘Hurt your paw?’
‘Do lambs have paws?’ he said, wavering. ‘They’re ungulates – with cloven hooves, like the Devil, only more innocent, you know… fleecy, fluffy, non-demonic…’
Her eyes were huge. Her little mouth gaped, ringed with teeth.
She laid a fingerless glove on his wrapped arm.
‘Let me kiss it better,’ she said, angling for his wrist.
She uncoiled the cloth and was shocked.
Not by the sight of Lefty. An electric arc zapped the predatory minx.
She ran off downstairs. Too embarrassed to raise an alarm, he hoped.
Lights flashed inside his glass hand, tentatively, as if testing its own connections.
Was Jun Zero back? With a weapons upgrade?
‘L-Lefty?’ he asked, terrified.
The works whirred and flashed as the question was processed.
‘What a strange feeling,’ said an unfamiliar mechanical female voice. ‘I trust we shall be friends, Harold. I am a person you would wish to be friends with. I am not a person you would wish not to be friends with.’
Uh-oh.
He’d been wondering if Hal had a girlfriend.
Now he did.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘My name,’ she said, ‘is Christina.’
RICHARD JEPERSON
Half past midnight in the shadow of the Daikaiju Building.
The Plaza was in a right old state.
The Gate was open. Tourists eager to be first through after the treaty expired rushed in. They wondered what the hell had happened. A few civil servants and minor politicians who were to receive keys and deeds in a small ceremony hassled Hyakume, who had quit the Gate. It was off duty for good and getting drunk on eye-drops.
After the Black Manta came the Silver Sentinel. An honest-to-Roswell flying saucer, with turbines that sounded like a giant Theremin. The pride of Syrie’s fleet of super vehicles. Its arrival attracted more attention in Tokyo than a skyscraper coming to life.
Wingmen and Seraphs were around to help. EarthGuard ground vehicles showed up, and fresh emergency workers liaised with Nezumi’s kiwi friend to put out fires and patch up wounds. Richard gathered the organisation was having a middle-of-the-night shake-up, with the sudden retirement of General Gokemidoro and the appointment of Kaname Kuran as his successor. Significant policy changes were likely.
The bakeneko enjoyed their own party, tweaking noses and whistling at Wingmen.
No yo-yo cops to stop them. The tough detective Richard had seen earlier was still on the job. He stared the puma pixies down with his vulture eye. They slunk off. The cop gave their bobbing tails a rare grin.
How many realised what they’d just been saved from?
‘Who’s that?’ asked Nezumi.
A slim, dark vampire woman in WOtW uniform was looking their way.
Richard knew who she was. Drusilla Zark. A true Macedonian, here when the Treaty of Light was signed and one of the first to quit the Princess’s Bund, along with Geneviève Dieudonné. Now she was here at the end of the experiment.
She walked through the crowd, zig-zagging more than she needed to, avoiding contact with busy people.
She didn’t smile.
‘Well done, School Mouse,’ she said to Nezumi.
Richard remembered more about Drusilla Zark – a seeress who was seldom helpful.
She turned to Richard, showing a hint of fang.
‘It’s yesterday morning in California, you know,’ she said. ‘Hours to catch up. Time for all manner of fun and games.’
‘Watch out there,’ shouted Syrie from the ramp of the Silver Sentinel, tiara-phone clamped back on her head.
A golden lad streaked past like a greased pig. He’d bitten a vampire, to serve the presumptuous sucker right.
The fat little fellow got lost in the crowd.
The bleeding vampire – Nezumi’s pet hate, Tsunako Shiki – bounded along after him, on all fours like a rabbit. Bells in her hair tinkled.
When Richard looked back, Drusilla was gone.
‘What do you think that was all about?’ he asked Nezumi.
‘Search me,’ she said, solemnly. ‘That was one weird woman.’
‘That’s my life,’ he said. ‘Weird women. I saw a food stand still open by the Plaza. I can spring for Red Label and guimauve. You deserve a free run at the tuck shop.’
‘We both do,’ she said.
DECEMBER 31, 1999
GENEVIéVE DIEUDONNŽ
‘If anyone says, “Let the games begin”, I’m leaving,’ said Kate Reed.
Geneviève knew what her friend meant.
‘Leaving might not be an option,’ said Penny Churchward, testing the door. ‘It’s auto-locked.’
‘I told you this was fishy,’ said Kate.
‘Then you said you wanted to come anyway,’ Geneviève pointed out.
‘True. I love a mystery. Who doesn’t?’
The foyer of the Loren Mansion was as bizarre as the exterior. A prime example of an art deco Aztec fad that swept Los Angeles in the 1930s. Earthquake, mudslide, brushfire and scandal had cleared the canyon crest of other mansions. The Hacienda on Haunted Hill survived, suspiciously unscathed.
Vampires shouldn’t go out in the noonday sun, especially in California, but this place was gloomy-cosy as a tomb. Windows were shuttered, the interior lights inadequate for warm eyes, and the air-con cranked up to chill.
Geneviève knew most of the other guests.
Kostaki, late of the Carpathian Guard, was a fellow Macedonian, and also avoiding Princess Christina’s party on the other side of the Pacific. Still trim, grim and pained. Wearing monk robes rather than a soldie
r’s uniform. It took a moment to realise he hadn’t reenlisted with the Templars. A domino mask matched the habit. He was in fancy dress as the Monk. The original vampire superhero, introduced in Detective Comics # 31, September 1939. She knew that because Angel Investigations were enmired in a case of fraud, forgery, and exsanguination involving rival comic book collectors.
Had Kostaki grown a sense of irony in a hundred years?
If so, good.
She was less pleased to see Hamish Bond, in kilt and tartan sash for Hogmanay. The British spy was still puffing vile handmade cigarettes, lecturing bartenders on how to make cocktails, and smirking as if all the women he met wanted to sleep with him. Or kill him.
Kate had a quiet reunion with the Daughter of the Dragon. Still not a vampire, the Chinese woman didn’t look any older than she had in 1888. She was dressed as a go-go chick from the 1960s, with a miniskirt and vinyl boots.
Someone hadn’t told Geneviève and her partners this was a costume party.
‘What is this?’ asked Penny. ‘Dracula’s enemies list?’
‘I hope so,’ said a vampire woman in black leather and sunglasses.
Geneviève had never met Sonja Blaue, but knew her from the popular poster. She had a reputation.
‘Good work in Atlanta,’ Geneviève said. ‘And Mexico.’
‘Thank you kindly,’ said Sonja Blaue, slightly Southern. ‘You’re the Triplets, right?’
Geneviève, Kate and Penny said ‘no’ at the same time.
‘We don’t use that,’ explained Kate. ‘We’re Angels Investigations.’
They’d squabbled over the name of the business. And many other things. Still, they’d lasted nearly ten years as private detectives in the state of California. A competitive field. Working under the cloakshadow of John Alucard was challenging, but they’d known that starting out. Every month they managed to irritate the King of the Cats, which gave life spice. Through minions, he’d tried to buy them up, off or out several times.
Geneviève was a trained medical examiner and crime scene tech, and knew more about blood spatter than the messiest nosferatu. Kate was an investigative reporter with a ferret’s instinct when it came to digging dirt. Penny handled public relations, accounts, office management, and – thanks to night school – was nearly licensed to practise law.