Anno Dracula--One Thousand Monsters
Page 33
I think of that ‘family portrait’: Lady Oyotsu seated, Mr Bats standing, Tsunako Shiki playing with dolls. For the moment, they are content to let Christina keep busy. But she should watch them. She may be close to all-powerful, but she will need them; if not their support, then their neutrality.
Kostaki says we were the Shiki girl’s puppets all along. Well before Dorakuraya or Christina got their hooks in us. He was certainly her favourite playmate – or, perhaps, toy. I see why he thinks of her as an infernal nuisance, though he still keeps quiet about the exact nature of the tricks she played on him. While the rest of us fought monsters, she was fighting boredom.
That little girl’s black eyes still haunt me.
* * *
Since this account will function as an intelligence briefing, I will do my best to set down the facts.
Realising Lieutenant Majin was intent on destroying all of Tokyo, Christina took it upon herself to stop him. In this, she served the cause of self-preservation, but had the genius to see an opportunity to earn the grudging gratitude of the Emperor, even of the Black Ocean Society. Her woman, Marit Verlaine, petitioned Baron Higurashi, and entered into protracted negotiations. The Japanised Yakumo Koizumi – a Greek-Irish journalist and former West Indies correspondent of the New Orleans Times-Democrat, born Lafcadio Hearn – acted as go-between. Both sides could say things to Koizumi as estranged couples talk to each other by addressing everything to the butler, knowing full well that every complaint and insult is heard by all parties in the room. It’s a matter of conditional clauses without prejudice or favour.
The ‘trifling service’ Christina offered was stopping Majin before he could wake the city-destroying Taira no Masakado. She was also responsible for returning Yuki-Onna to her rest after making use of her. Deep under Tokyo, fire and ice are in balance. There may be a future cataclysm, but at present there is a pleasing harmony of in and yo.
What has Christina achieved? A reservation for vampires where the warm can keep us penned? Her own country, where she may put her revolutionary socialist principles in effect? Will she grow tired of squabbling comrades and cut out inefficiency by reluctantly taking on supreme command?
A safe haven for the world’s unwanted undead?
A wide-open town, like Shanghai or Deadwood?
A capital for an empire to come?
The lease runs a full hundred years. Once that would have seemed a long time. We must strive to live through the twentieth century to see how the experiment turns out.
In 1999, will Christina’s camp still stand? Will it still be necessary?
What will succeed it?
Dracula could plunge the world into war before even a tenth of the century is done, so it may not matter.
As our resident oracle, I’ve asked Drusilla.
‘It depends on the School Mouse,’ she says.
So, that’s comforting.
Our holds are empty. And, frankly, our money has run out. Popejoy has set a course for Hawaii. The seas are against us.
As usual.
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…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kim Newman is a novelist, critic and broadcaster. His fiction includes The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, the Anno Dracula novels and stories, The Quorum and Life’s Lottery, all reissued by Titan Books, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles, Angels of Music and The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School published by Titan Books and The Vampire Genevieve and Orgy of the Blood Parasites as Jack Yeovil. The critically acclaimed An English Ghost Story was nominated for the inaugural James Herbert Award. His non-fiction books include the influential Nightmare Movies (recently reissued by Bloomsbury in an updated edition), Ghastly Beyond Belief (with Neil Gaiman), Horror: 100 Best Books (with Stephen Jones), Wild West Movies, The BFI Companion to Horror, Millennium Movies, BFI Classics studies of Cat People and Doctor Who, and Video Dungeon, a collection of his popular Empire magazine columns of the same name.
He is a contributing editor to Sight & Sound and Empire magazines, has written and broadcast widely on a range of topics, and scripted radio and television documentaries. His stories ‘Week Woman’ and ‘Übermensch’ have been adapted into an episode of the TV series The Hunger and an Australian short film; he has directed and written a tiny film, Missing Girl. Following his Radio 4 play ‘Cry Babies’, he wrote an episode (‘Phish Phood’) for Radio 7’s series The Man in Black.
Follow him on Twitter @annodracula. His official website can be found at www.johnnyalucard.com.
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
ANNO DRACULA
It is 1888 and Queen Victoria has remarried, taking as her new consort the Wallachian Prince infamously known as Count Dracula. His polluted bloodline spreads through London as its citizens increasingly choose to become vampires.
ANNO DRACULA: THE BLOODY RED BARON
It is 1918 and Dracula is commander-in-chief of the armies of Germany and Austria-Hungary. The war of the great powers in Europe is also a war between the living and the dead. As ever the Diogenes Club is at the heart of British Intelligence and Charles Beauregard and his protégé Edwin Winthrop go head-to-head with the lethal vampire flying machine that is the Bloody Red Baron…
ANNO DRACULA: DRACULA CHA CHA CHA
Rome 1959 and Count Dracula is about to marry the Moldavian Princess Asa Vajda. Journalist Kate Reed flies into the city to visit the ailing Charles Beauregard and his vampire companion Geneviève. She finds herself caught up in the mystery of the Crimson Executioner who is bloodily dispatching vampire elders in the city. She is on his trail, as is the un-dead British secret agent Bond.
TITANBOOKS.COM
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
ANNO DRACULA: JOHNNY ALUCARD
It is 1976 and Kate Reed is on the set of Francis Ford Coppola’s movie Dracula. She helps a young vampire boy, Ion Popescu, who leaves Transylvania for America. In the States, Popescu becomes Johnny Pop and attaches himself to Andy Warhol, inventing a new drug which confers vampire powers on its users…
‘Compulsory reading… glorious’ Neil Gaiman
‘A tour de force which succeeds brilliantly’ The Times
‘Anno Dracula is the definitive account of that post-modern species,
the self-obsessed undead’ New York Times
‘Politics, horror and romance are woven together in this brilliantly
imagined and realised novel’ Time Out
TITANBOOKS.COM
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
THE SECRETS OF DREARCLIFF GRANGE SCHOOL
BY KIM NEWMAN
A week after her mother found her sleeping on the ceiling, Amy Thomsett is delivered to her new school, Drearcliff Grange in Somerset.
Although it looks like a regular boarding school, Amy learns that Drearcliff girls are special, the daughters of criminal masterminds, outlaw scientists and master magicians. Several of the pupils also have special gifts like Amy’s, and when one of the girls in her dormitory is abducted by a mysterious group in black hoods, Amy forms a secret, superpowered society called the Moth Club to rescue their friend. They soon discover that the Hooded Conspiracy runs through the school, and it’s up to the Moth Club to get to the heart of it.
‘Kim Newman stands among speculative fiction’s finest, and his new book is no less impressive than the best of the rest of his writing… I had a hunch it would be wonderful and it was’ Tor.com
‘I can
see myself re-reading this book time and again’
Fantasy Book Review
TITANBOOKS.COM
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
AN ENGLISH GHOST STORY
BY KIM NEWMAN
The Naremores, a dysfunctional British nuclear family, seek a new life away from the big city in the sleepy Somerset countryside. At first their new home, The Hollow, seems to embrace them, creating a rare peace and harmony within the family. But when the house turns on them, it seems to know just how to hurt them the most – threatening to destroy them from the inside out.
‘Immersive, claustrophobic and utterly wonderful’ M.R. Carey,
New York Times bestselling author of The Girl With All the Gifts
‘Thoroughly enjoyable, master storytelling’ Lauren Beukes,
bestselling author of Broken Monsters
‘Deserves to stand beside the great novels of the ghostly’
Ramsey Campbell
‘An intoxicating read’ Paul Cornell, bestselling author
of London Falling
TITANBOOKS.COM
ALSO AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS
VIDEO DUNGEON
BY KIM NEWMAN
Ripped from the pages of Empire magazine, the first collection of film critic, film historian and novelist Kim Newman’s reviews of the best and worst B-movies. Some of the cheapest, trashiest, goriest and, occasionally, unexpectedly good films from the past twenty-five years are here, torn apart and stitched back together again in Newman’s unique style.
Everything you want to know about DTV hell is here.
Enter if you dare.
TITANBOOKS.COM
COMING SOON FROM TITAN COMICS
ANNO DRACULA 1895: SEVEN DAYS IN MAYHEM
BY KIM NEWMAN AND PAUL MCCAFFREY
The award-winning horror series creeps into comics from Titan in 2017, written by creator Kim Newman with art by Paul McCaffrey (The Third Doctor).
Anno Dracula has garnered high praise since its initial release, including from literary superstar Neil Gaiman, who helped to develop the series and called Anno Dracula ‘compulsory reading’.
TITANBOOKS.COM
For more fantastic fiction, author events, exclusive excerpts,
competitions, limited editions and more
VISIT OUR WEBSITE
titanbooks.com
LIKE US ON FACEBOOK
facebook.com/titanbooks
FOLLOW US ON TWITTER
@TitanBooks
EMAIL US
readerfeedback@titanemail.com