Doctor Who - [Missing Adventure 01] - [Vampire Trilogy 3] - Goth Opera

by Paul Cornell

  GOTH OPERA by PAUL CORNELL

  First published in Great Britain in 1994 by Doctor Who Books an imprint of Virgin publishing Ltd 332 Ladbroke Grove London WI 05AH

  Copyright (c) Paul Cornell 1994

  The right of Paul Cornell to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright Designs and patents Act 1"388.

  "Doctor Who" series copyright (c) British Broadcasting Corporation 1994

  ISBN 11 4262 20418 2

  Cover illustration by Alister Pearson

  Typeset by Galleon

  Typesetting printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berks

  This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which a is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  E-Book version:

  primary scan/proof by Shakaar

  lit file format and build by Wordsmith

  Contents

  PREFACE

  PROLOGUE

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  EPILOGUE

  PREFACE

  Welcome to the first of a new series of Doctor Who novels.

  I'm sorry. You've probably heard all this before, several times. But for the benefit of those of you who have been in suspended animation for the past five years, here it is again. The last new Doctor Who television story was broadcast in Britain at the end of 1989. A little less than two years later, having published novelizations of just about every one of the stories shown on television since the series started in 1963, we launched the New Adventures: original, full-length Doctor Who novels that related the Doctor's continuing exploits, picking up the trail where television had abandoned it.

  Indulge me for a moment: let me tell you about a publishing success story. Yes, the series has become established, extending across ever-wider stretches of bookshops' shelves. But that's not the point. As a Doctor Who fan, I find the most satisfying aspect of the New Adventures is that they have helped to keep Doctor Who alive (and kicking, sometimes) - and not in a nostalgic, introspective way, but by setting the Doctor in stories that are, I hope, interesting and challenging for the mature and sophisticated audience that Doctor Who fandom has developed into.

  And as a publisher, I find the New Adventures exciting because they have provided a showcase for a gang of talented young authors who deserve to be in print. Our policy has always been to encourage book proposals from anyone - absolutely anyone - who's prepared to follow our guidelines. In these straitened times the New Adventures constitute one of the few places where new SF writers can work, experiment, show off - and get published.

  And now: here we go again.

  Except that the Missing Adventures are not the New Adventures all over again. Yes, they will be full-length original novels, written for a readership that is older than you and I were when we started to watch Doctor Who on television. And - of course - we will continue to encourage new talent.

  But these are new stories with old Doctors. Each Missing Adventures will slot seamlessly into a gap between television stories, and we will attempt to ensure that the Missing Adventures have the flavour of the television stories in which they are embedded.

  This book, Goth Opera, the first of the Missing Adventures, demonstrates the principles of the series. It is written by Paul Cornell, one of the brightest stars of the New Adventures galaxy (his first published novel was the fourth New Adventure). But he hasn't written just another New Adventure. In Goth Opera you will find a complex story beautifully told - but you won't find experimental techniques, ultra-fast cutting between scenes, enigmatic dialogue, and the other modern styles featured in some of the New Adventures. The Doctor Who television stories weren't like that, and neither will the Missing Adventures be.

  As an added bonus, this first Missing Adventure and the simultaneously published New Adventure share a storyline. Goth Opera is, in a way, the sequel to Blood Harvest by Terrance Dicks, although they can be read and understood separately. Except that Goth Opera features the fifth Doctor, while Blood Harvest has the seventh Doctor, so in a sense Blood Harvest is the sequel to Goth Opera. It certainly confuses me.

  There'll be a month without a Missing Adventures after this one, and after that there will be one Missing Adventure a month, all being well. Look out for the distinctive blue diamond logo and more stunning Alister Pearson artwork.

  Finally - yes, really, we're getting near the end - I must stress that when I say "we" I sometimes mean Virgin Publishing as a whole, and even its predecessor companies. But usually I mean myself, Rebecca Levene who edits, and Andy Bodle who assists. And these days, of that triumvirate, I play the smallest part.

  Peter Darvill-Evans Fiction Publisher, Virgin Publishing Ltd.

  With thanks to: Kini Brooks, Sarah Groenewegen, Claire Longhurst, Trog, Mark Wyman

  FOR TERRANCE

  PROLOGUE

  The beacon on top of the Siemens Tower blinked red every twenty seconds. At a certain eye-level, it formed part of a chain of blinking lights, igniting one by one as the sun set over the city. Russet light sparkled off Piccadilly Station, ran in a great amber river down Oxford Road, made the crescent estates of Moss Side into tangles of lengthening shadows. In the city, people were going home, pulling on coats and gloves, and locking shops. The pubs were filling up and the bus station was busy with commuters.

  In the chilly clear autumn air two figures danced, swooping past the tower like sparrows, calling and laughing. Against the darkening blue of the sky they were like two charcoal sketches, the drifting debris of some distant bonfire. They didn't care if they were seen.

  Madelaine lowered her arms to her sides, holding down her long black dress, and sped towards the beacon tower. She grabbed it as she shot past, spinning around the pole at a speed which made the bones in her arm pop out of their sockets. She let go again, her hand a floppy glove, and whizzed off into the sky under her own momentum, shaking her joints back together. Her black-lipsticked grin was wide with laughter.

  Jake stopped, standing a few feet above the roof of the skyscraper. "Manchester!" he called, spreading his arms wide. "So much to answer for!"

  "I like it!" Madelaine flew to him, embracing him so that they both fell onto the roof. "Thank you for bringing me here." They'd slept on the journey up, in a freight wagon on a train out of Bristol.

  "No need to thank me, like." Jake cradled her head with his arm, and they lay back against the concrete, looking up at the sky. "This is where I come from. Mum and Dad still live here, down in Rusholme."

  "Want to visit them?"

  "No. Best not to." He frowned quickly, because he'd thought of bad things to do with his past. He tried not to show her all that.

  Madelaine had met Jake one night at the King's Bridge Inn, a pub in Totnes. She'd lived in the town with her Mum and Dad, spending more time with her friends than at home. The town was what kept her going, a round of gossip and people she'd always known. You hung around Vire Island, out in the middle of the river, or down at the Rumour bar. You could be really buoyed up by it some nights, or sometimes you could be very lonely in it, held back when everybody else said they'd be leaving so
on. The inn had a ghost, it was said, a serving maid who'd died on the premises. That, and the books you could grab off the shelves above the tables, and the little corners and stairwells for gossip was enough to attract her crowd, the goths and the metal-heads. They had bands upstairs too, one of the few places left in town that did. They used to have a laugh, but Madelaine always thought that there was something missing in her life, and as soon as she saw him she knew that that thing had been Jake.

  He'd been with a group of mates, and they'd said they were down for the surfing, with a VW van parked somewhere. But they didn't look like surfers. The other lads had treated her like she was invisible, talking over her and ignoring her. He was different. He had a face that held a permanent grin somewhere, even when he was sad. His hair was all over the place, a mess of black and shiny stuff that set off his grey eyes. He had a lovely northern accent and shoulders that looked like he'd stuffed a pair of great wings under his leather jacket.

  "Come on over to the beach with us," he'd said. "You'll be all right." His friends had bellowed with laughter at that and Madelaine said no, asking if he was going to be around the next day. He'd shrugged, grinning again, and grunted something non-committal. As she got back into conversation with her friends he left, not looking back. His mates stayed at the bar, drinking pints down in one gulp and then getting another round in. They didn't seem to be getting pissed, either.

  She stopped in at Rumours on her way back home, but nobody she wanted to see was about. Then she'd wandered down through the dark walkway behind the supermarket, heading sadly back to her house. The walkway had a square gap in it beside the railing where people chained their bikes. Maddy always stopped in the gap to look up into the sky. She'd been into astronomy when she was little, always wanting to go into space. Wouldn't mind now, really.

  The lads stepped forward. They were standing on the roof, around the edge of her gap, looking down at her with intent.

  "What're you doing up there?" she'd asked.

  They swooped on her. They grabbed her by the hem of her skirt and pulled her up into the sky. High up, until she could see the whole of the peninsula in the moonlight, the sea and everything. They went through a cloud, and it was like a cold mist, soaking her. She was screaming through all this, strange as it sounded now.

  One of the men had started to suck at her fingers. The most horrible part of it all was that they weren't threatening her or telling her to be quiet or anything. They were just ignoring her.

  He arrived as they were pulling the scarf away from her neck. His entrance, rising up through the cloud until it looked like he was standing on it, was spectacular enough, but he didn't attack them or even shout at them.

  "Come on lads," he said. "Not this one, eh?"

  "Frigging hell, Jake ..." one of the creatures moaned. "It's only a woman. Have an arm, if you want."

  "I was talking to her, lad. I don't like to talk to my food."

  "Oh, and she was really interesting, I suppose. Really of great interest, all her stories about travel." The last word raised a laugh from the others.

  "She's never gone anywhere," Jake mumbled, looking down at the cloud. "But she's all right, okay? She's just a nice girl."

  "I'm sure she is, my son, but, in case you haven't realized, that's the whole point of being vampy. She's a nice girl, and we - don't - care." The man holding her had an accent like Michael Caine, an affected Cockney. The little details of it all were continually scaring Madelaine out of the idea that this was a dream.

  "Look, how about if I - "

  "Make her one of us and live happily ever after? You can only do that to three people in your whole existence, mate. I've met kids like you before. You've got the teeth, but you're still back in the daylight in your head. You dream about cashpoints and Sega and foreign travel."

  Jake nodded. "You're right there. I had this dream yesterday about going on an 18-30 holiday. Woke up sweating." He spread his arms out towards the others. "Give her here, I'm claiming her as one of my three."

  "It all gets written down, you know. You won't thank me when she goes on telly and shows off her teeth." The man who'd been holding her pushed Madelaine away, and she fell.

  Falling from high up, fluttering on the edge of unconsciousness, she'd been more scared than ever before in her life. She'd spun, over and over, her skirts and hair fluttering like a falling flag.

  He caught her as quickly as he could. She shouted again, beating at him with her hands.

  "Are you happy at home? Get on with your Mum and Dad, like?"

  "Yes!" she screamed. "Yes!"

  "Then I'm really sorry. Can't do anything else. Calm down, now, calm down."

  Their eyes met, and like a big hand had grabbed her head, she was suddenly calm. A strange taste rushed into her mouth, all that biological fear with nowhere else to go. "You're a vampire," she said.

  "Yeah."

  "What's all that stuff about travel?"

  "Something humans do. Go on package tours, watch TV, buy crisps. Whatever the running joke is this week."

  "Let me go. Let me go home."

  "Sorry. I can't."

  He pushed her hair back, and leaned forward to her neck. There were two sharp injections, a sudden small pain, and a powerful sucking sensation. Madelaine was paralysed. She tried to move her fingers as the sucking went on, but she couldn't. She could feel his teeth, his normal teeth, against her skin.

  It went on too long and she opened her mouth, wanting to laugh or cry, or at least give some sign that she didn't believe in this. "Don't kill me, don't kill me," was all she could whisper.

  When it was over, he turned his face aside and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "You're one of us now," he'd said.

  They landed in Dartington and walked through the gardens, Jake explaining all the rules and the dangers.

  She'd hated him for five days.

  On the roof now, Madelaine laughed and put Jake's fingers to the old wounds on her neck. They'd been together four years now. "I was just thinking about how it all happened," she told him. "It doesn't turn you on, being bitten, like in the films."

  "It can." Jake grinned. "If you make it like that. But I wanted it to be honest. You'd got into a mess, I sorted it the only way I knew how. You're still glad, aren't you?? "Yeah. It's the flying that I like. That's still great."

  "Aye, you never lose that. Right, then - " Jake clapped his hands and stood up, taking a deep breath of night air.

  "Dinner?"

  "Dinner." She took his hand and he pulled her upright.

  "Chinese?"

  "Indian."

  All right, Indian then. But can we find one with leukemia?"

  "Leukemia? That's a long shot, an Indian leukemia victim. They're not going to be out and about, are they? Where'd you get a taste like that?"

  "Party of Lace's. He passed a cup round. That's what he said it was."

  "We'll try, all right? But only if we find one walking down the street. I don't want to work too hard. I was thinking of a kid, myself."

  "A pretty young Indian girl? You be careful." She punched him playfully in the chest, breaking one of his ribs.

  He flexed his back and the bone melted back together with a theatrical popping sound. "Aye, well, I was thinking I might convert a couple more of you soon, build myself a harem."

  Madelaine pretended to sulk. "I'd leave you."

  "Never. We're together forever, you and me." He whistled a couple of bars of an old pop tune. "Long as you keep on leaving me the drumsticks."

  "Perhaps we could find somebody famous? I wouldn't mind a bit of Morrissey. What do you think his blood would taste like?"

  "Milky tea, love. You know we can't off anybody famous, it'd draw attention to ourselves, get us on the news and all that. Do you remember the article in that magazine?"

  Maddy laughed. " 'Vampire hunters in Stoke-on-Trent report that British vampires now number 1225, up 65 on last year's figure!' D'you think they watch us with binoculars and put
tags on our ankles when we're not looking?"

  "I wonder if Russ down in Burslem's seen it? He might go and give them a fright. Make it 67 up on last year. 1225 indeed, it must be more like 300. 400, maximum."

  Maddy laid her head on Jake's shoulder. "I've started to think about kidneys..." she murmured. "Stop me, won't you, you know they're bad for me."

  Jake patted her head. "I'll take both of them, and you can have some nice healthy liver instead."

  They would have flown off to find meat then, but a new sound split the air atop the tower: the sound of time and space being ripped apart.

  It was a sound the lovers had never heard before. They watched in amazement as a new pylon appeared on the roof top, a red light flashing on top of it. The light stopped flashing when it was fully materialized.

  The side of the pylon opened, and out stepped a woman.

  She was tall and straight-backed, wearing a neat black trouser-suit and a silver belt. From it hung a number of utility packs. Her hair was bound severely back to her head, and her features were sharp and inquisitive. Strangely, she sported a bruise across her cheek. She'd done nothing to hide it. The only ostentation about her was a necklace of golden spheres. "Ah." she said to Jake, smiling politely. "There you are."

  "You were expecting us, like?" Jake advanced with a cheeky grin, the courage that indestructability gave you.

  "Somebody like you, yes. My name is Ruathadvorophrenaltid. Call me Ruath. And you are?"

  "Jake Hedges, this is Madelaine Worth." Jake waved a hand at Maddy, who curtsied, adopting that look of dangerous hunger which always produced such a good effect in their prey.

  Ruath didn't blink at it. "You are vampires, am I right?"

  Jake laughed. "Well, we don't like to boast."

  "Good. I thought this would be the right time to find some of you. Always at the high points, overlooking the feeding grounds. This is a good omen." She noticed the curiosity on their faces, and indicated the pylon behind her. "I'm a Time Lady of Gallifrey. That's a TARDIS. Do you know what one of those is?" Jake and Madelaine shook their heads. "How soon they forget."