by Kim Newman
A dragon hatching!
Then a blizzard enfolded the statue.
Yuki-Onna’s cold poured into the stone giant, freezing it where it stood. An arm broke off and crashed down. The iron sword came loose from the stone belt. The big blade shattered a stone leg, then scythed through a pile of wicker baskets. A scabby, ragged warm man scurried out of hiding. He looked up in terror at the unsteady giant. An engine exploded. Hot metal parts rained on the unfortunate bystander. Bleeding from a dozen glinting wounds, he howled until frost reached him. Greenish-grey stone whitened, and became brittle enough to smash.
Dravot ordered volleys. Kostaki had the Sergeant’s tiger rifle. He fired at the joints, at the weak spots.
Lieutenant Majin still grinned. Bullets and other projectiles turned to water when they struck his bubble. The statue was smashed out from under him, in pieces… but he floated, kept aloft by waves of magical energy. He drew strength from powers under the earth. He called to his masters.
Taira no Masakado, the dragon sorcerer. Enma Daio, the shogun of Hell.
They were undefeatable. We were lost!
Then an angel of light descended on Majin.
Don’t look!
I shoved my face into a snowdrift. I still saw the flash.
I was deafened too. I heard only ringing.
I pulled my face from the snow and opened my eyes. The statue was rubble. Yōkai swarmed over it, dragging out dazed or dead Black Ocean men. But Majin hovered in mid-air, hands brimming with black flame. Christina, a shining ghost, was separate from Yuki-Onna now, one arm hanging limp. She wound wings of light around Majin’s bubble. Violet sludge – liquid, gaseous or ectoplasmic – poured out of the Lieutenant’s open hands and pumped into her aura. It flowed faster than she could suck out the colour. The powers of the earth were feeding her poison.
So much… so much…
I would never be deaf to Christina. My hearing was coming back anyway. Winds roared, shouts and alarms, screams…
A black-fire dragon shape formed around Majin, seiman sigils for eyes. The Demon Man was becoming more demon than man.
Our angel’s wings looked ragged and thin, bleeding rainbows.
Christina, come away.
No. As I said, I believe in collective action.
What does that mean?
I’m sorry, Gené, it means this!
A spear of light pierced my heart and I screamed.
* * *
I am a vampire. We bleed people. So we may live, usually. I am a doctor. We bleed people too. For their own good, mostly.
Before I turned, I was bled empty.
Chandagnac gave me his vampire blood first. It was what we now call a reagent. In 1432, it was black magic – tainted by Satan. As my father-in-darkness-to-be guzzled from my throat, I felt myself diminishing inside my body. Darkness closing in and the far-off light.
The something bright reported by those who nearly – or actually – die is not Heaven. It’s an effect of the optic nerves shutting down. The eye specialist Dr Doyle wrote a paper on it.
For me, the far-off light faded. And I opened my eyes to a changed world.
No, to a changed me.
Now here was the light again. Not far off but all around and inside.
Unbearable light.
Even Chandagnac did not use me as comprehensively as Christina did. He took only blood, while she bled me of much more. I wasn’t her sole donor. From her phantom wings came a thousand tendrils of light, tipped with barbs of Yuki-Onna’s ice, and she latched on to us all. Vampires, yōkai, the warm, dragons, witches, Gods, shrines, rocks, trees, ghosts, spirits, elementals. She fed on us. She treated us as prey and called us her army.
We haven’t talked about it.
We don’t need to. Because we know.
Collective action meant giving the Princess all we had; every drop of blood, every spark of life.
Wearing Yuki-Onna – an elder as powerful as Dracula – was not enough.
She needed us all.
She had known this all along. That she needed our lives. Remember her fuss about shipboard casualties? She was worried then that we wouldn’t be enough. We were important to her, collectively. Less so as individual pieces.
She took from us all. She didn’t ask permission. If she had, we would have given it. She was like Kuchisake. There was only one answer to her.
Yes. Take me to the light.
I was on my hands and knees, convulsing as she emptied me.
Before my eyes, my hand withered. At the end of my arm was the claw of a four-hundred-and-eighty-year-old woman. I tried to flex my fingers. It was as if a crucifixion nail were driven through my palm. I felt the weight of years on my heart.
All around, colour drained. I thought it was me. I thought I was becoming colour blind. But there was a rainbow around the Princess in the sky.
Seventeen of us died. I counted. Five of my casualties were bleached white, then turned to dust. They might have died anyway. Twelve others, including Rikard Moritz, a vampire priest; Aosagibi, the heron duellist; kyuketsuki; Hartlieb von der Wies, minutes after being pulled from his coffin and slapped awake. Others I didn’t know and can’t name.
But the rest of us lived. Were saved.
Seventeen is a bigger number than three.
Dafydd, Sergei, Annie…
Not fair, Christina. Recite your own names.
I forget them. I must. I will not take a rod to myself.
No, you won’t.
* * *
We were mostly unconscious when Christina Light broke the spell.
But we all woke when Lieutenant Majin fell out of the sky.
The sun rose above Yōkai Town, casting less light than our Star Princess. Fog seeped back. The ground cooled and quieted.
My hand was unwrinkled again. I could make a fist without pain.
‘Upsy-daisy, call me Maisie,’ said Drusilla.
She helped me stand. The white streak through her hair is annoyingly fetching – as if done on purpose.
All around, yōkai and vampires were dazed but recovering. Rui Wakasagi and Francesca Brysse walked by, arguing – each speaking with the other’s voice and in the other’s language. We had been drawn out of ourselves into the light. Not all of us were put back properly.
Details, details.
I saw Kostaki, wearing a Japanese straw hat against the sun.
‘My lady elder,’ he said, nodding.
‘Captain,’ I responded.
I’ve no idea what’s in his head.
Liar.
Shush.
Dravot turned his defence force into a fire brigade. Blazes raged. Roofs and walls had collapsed. Boats with hulls cracked by ice were sinking. People were trapped and people were hurt. Kurozuka brought me my bag and I got back to work. I went out with a rescue party.
In the ruin of a Christian church, we found the wretch who caught the brunt of the exploding statue: Kichijiro, formerly Dorakuraya’s minion. An interesting case. The ghouls would love him. Cogs and gears mortified his flesh and half a wheel stuck into his spine, but being frozen by Yuki-Onna had deadened pain. Things had been done to him by his master to keep him alive beyond his natural span. Now his versatile body was incorporating – perhaps making use of – junk forced into it.
I clacked my forceps and offered to extract what I could. Kichijiro was offended by the suggestion, intent on protecting the metal in his meat. He scuttled off, flapping and clanking. Some new-hatched yōkai, perhaps? A tin Renfield.
A few Black Ocean men were still alive – desperate, coming out of ergot fugues, dangerous. Smiler Watson and Kuchisake took charge of these stragglers – to talk them into surrender or subdue them with pistol and scissors. My ungrateful patient was sitting up and drinking tea served by the shadow yōkai Kage-Onna. He didn’t look in the least ashamed. I’ve a good mind to send him a bill.
Mr Bats stood guard by the temple, arms crossed, retained by the Abbess. No longer a scurvy ronin, but a pro
ud household samurai. Lady Oyotsu sat on her palanquin, watching and nodding. By her, playing with dolls, was Tsunako Shiki. All three were calm, as if this were an ordinary morning – not the day after they were supposed to die in the ruin of Yōkai Town. They looked like a vampire family.
A cry went up. The deep, throaty, nerve-scratching was a voice new to me. Gokemidoro – hair now white as his unblemished suit – shouted out of the cleft in his face, expelling air over rough strings, which passed for vocal chords.
Goké had found Majin in the ruins, and raised the cry.
As if he hadn’t been the Lieutenant’s spy, Goké was kicking the broken, crawling sorcerer.
Duty like a knife in my chest – as Kostaki would understand – I went to see what I could do for the Demon Man who’d intended to kill us all.
A cat-girl got in my way. Over her furry shoulders was draped a white tunic with pearly brass buttons. A stolen Black Ocean uniform, bleached by the Light.
‘Meiko-o-o-o,’ she miaowed.
A group of bakeneko stood around the Lieutenant, idly scratching him with toe-claws, directing his crawl, bending over to lick his wounds, hissing laughter.
Meiko, leader of the pussycats, wore Majin’s cap at a jaunty angle, peak over one big slit-pupiled eye. A cigarette dangled from her mouth. Smoke curled around her whiskers. She looked me up and down, shrugged, and let me close.
There’s nothing left.
I turned Majin over. He was blind. And his mind was empty.
Be grateful. Feeding off him – and the dragon he served – let me give back to you what I borrowed.
Took.
Borrowed.
I’m too tired to argue.
Majin’s hands were burned to stubs. His seiman sigils were ash on overdone meat.
* * *
I organised the bakeneko into a stretcher party. Meiko let me give orders, tough enough not to be insecure. I wasn’t a threat to her position as top kitten. With effort, we tipped Majin onto a whitened Black Ocean banner. We carried him to the gate.
He writhed, then swooned.
We left him for collection.
They’ll just behead him, Gené. They’ll say he was a traitor, acting on his own.
Which he was.
Of course.
The gate opened. Soldiers came in and scooped up Majin. They dragged him off – not gently. I was too tired to complain, criticise or make suggestions. Too tired for justice, revenge or mercy.
After the rubbish was removed, a deputation proceeded into Yōkai Town. Baron Higurashi, in his diplomatic togs. A European man in Japanese traditional dress. He introduced himself as Yakumo Koizumi. And Marit Verlaine, getting along very nicely thank you very much, not in chains.
They all bowed to me.
No. Not me.
I turned and saw the Princess Casamassima, glittering only slightly, dressed in white, arm in a pale pink sling, hair arranged to cover her red eye. She walked towards us, as if floating.
She was the Number Incarnate. And the Number was One.
30
AT SEA, JANUARY 1, 1900
Anew year – a new century – and I am again cast out of Eden.
Christina said I wouldn’t stay. Drusilla too. Dru’s here, on the ship. She misses her umbrella, but is fonder of the new captain.
Popejoy has changed.
He turned vampire, but his bloodline is unusual. He choked on the first blood he tried to drink. With willow sap in his veins, he can only subsist on near-liquid vegetable matter. It has to have as high an iron content as human blood. Luckily, he has a penchant for greens. Eddie Joe stocked the ship’s larder with tinned spinach.
Popejoy’s face resembles a gnarled, knotty tree. Nothing I can do about that. Even stripping the bark doesn’t help.
As for Higo Yanagi – she’s rooted on a hillside overlooking the sea, abandoned by her faithless American. Now she’s a wailing willow. She can’t be uprooted again, and the sailor has returned to the sea. An old, old story. I don’t even think Dru’s responsible. It’s the sea. Just the sea.
There are already songs about her hopeless sacrifice.
* * *
Death Larsen is not aboard.
When Popejoy returned to the Macedonia a changed man, the crew mutinied and threw the former captain over the side. He was last seen splashing towards the shore. Like many seamen, he’s a poor swimmer. I doubt he’ll be welcome in Tokyo.
The men expected Popejoy would kill the man who put out his eye. But he saw too much death in Yōkai Town – or whatever it’s to be called now it’s the Principesality of Light – to take revenge.
I worry Death will find a new boat and come after us, like Ahab hunting the whale. He harpooned his own brother for less than we have done to him.
The crew are emboldened. They think, with their tree trunk of a captain, they can beat Death. And maybe they can.
Popejoy did change the name of the ship. We now steam on the good ship Tomcod.
* * *
Drusilla freed her cricket.
At the ceremony where Lady Oyotsu placed Topazia Suzuki’s urn in the shrine of the fallen behind the temple, Dru uncaged the insect, which is now named the Blue Fur Lady, in honour of her dead friend.
If there’s a tragic heroine in this song it’s Topazia. Not me.
Without the last twitch of her tail, Dorakuraya would have slain us in the ice tomb. He’d have eaten Yuki-Onna’s heart and then risen from the winter temple to face Majin.
Whoever won, the city – the world – would have lost.
* * *
Kostaki is with the ship. With Sergeant Dravot. And very few others.
Christina let us go.
I know this is the truth. She could have kept us.
Maybe we would be too much trouble? Opinionated busybodies she would have grown tired of overruling all the time. Distractions like Dru. Idealists and cynics like Kostaki and Dravot. Nags like me.
Voices she doesn’t need in her head. Maybe it’s her idea of mercy. Or sacrifice – getting rid of vampires whose company she might enjoy, so she can focus on her purpose.
Her higher purpose.
There were cool goodbyes. All said out loud. She didn’t come to the dock to see us off. She sent Francesca Brysse to represent her.
Can she feel guilt? Or would that be another distraction?
She has done what she has done. By her lights, she acted for collective good. She was empowered by our need for immediate salvation. She believed she was entitled – obliged, even – to act as she did. As an electric vampire, bleeding us all at once.
Her arm is still lifeless – when she’s in her resting form – and her eye is red. But she’s better. I might say healed, though I think her faint spells and lapses into lassitude weren’t symptoms of sickness but effects of her process of change, like Clare in her cocoon or any of us in the first throes of the turn. All along, she has been changing – becoming. She won’t fly apart into sparkles or dissipate like moonbeams in fog. She is increasingly confident.
In every sense, she is not who she was.
I still cannot love her. As she said.
Yet she’s so alone, so cold…
But it may be that we need her.
The world still has Dracula in it.
* * *
Kostaki has avoided speaking directly to me since he pulled his black carrack out of my side. I can understand that. He gave Dru a Christmas present to pass on to me – a Japanese fan – which I have put up in my cabin.
I asked Dravot – who guards his tin of Lipton’s as if it were the Agra treasure – what I should get his comrade in return. He nudged me towards a stall in Mermaid Ancestor Place, which specialises in exotic imported delicacies.
The closest to a smile I’ve seen on Kostaki’s lips came after he unwrapped his present – a halfpenny box of Bassett’s Aniseed Imperials.
I have hopes for Kostaki.
He remains a ronin. He follows bushido. Not the low path of blood
y revenge but the higher road of atonement.
He will wipe my blood off his crab sword.
He will wander the face of the earth, a pilgrim.
* * *
The rest of our party remain in Japan – if Yōkai Town still counts as Japan. According to the hundred-year lease that went into effect at midnight, it’s an international settlement now. Christina needs them as she believes they need her. She is the new avatar of Yuki-Onna. Whisper it, for she is Princess of the Cats. The yōkai have accepted her. She saved them all and they are properly grateful.
She says she will never again use them as she did.
I believe she thinks she means that. I do not believe she will keep her promise.
Silence.
This far out to sea, I don’t hear from her.
I don’t miss her voice… but the absence is strange.
So, I am writing for you, Charles – and Mycroft Holmes, of course.
What will the Diogenes Club make of Christina Light’s utopia?
It is a strange thing, her vampire bund. The Temple of One Thousand Monsters stands, but the rest of the enclave is in ruins. Christina is not unhappy about that. It’s as if Majin wiped her slate for her. She can design and build to her own specifications. She has called on architects and builders. Everyone she needs to throw her light up into the sky. It’s her intent that a beacon be lit.
Already, I understand, other ships are en route. We were not the only refugees on the seas. Now there is a port that will – no questions asked – take vampires off your hands. Some will flee there, some will be sent unwillingly.
It’s not the vampire city the Marquis de Coulteray envisioned. But that may be for the best. Two days ago, Dorga arrived, with a retinue of rakasha from India, and jiang shi priests from China’s Temple of Golden Vampires. De Coulteray’s pishacha mother-in-darkness may finally get her pagoda. The lesson of Paris, where the Marquis was vivisected, and London, where Dracula rules, is that no city – no place – is safe for vampires. I think of de Coulteray’s hopes, and wonder whether they could have been fulfilled under Christina Light. Looking back at where we came from gives me scant insight into where we are going – where the Princess will take us.