In the Footsteps of Dracula

by Stephen Jones

  “That’s an absurd notion,” said a voice that seemed to come at her from all sides. The man in front of her with his back to her turned around. She cringed away from him, from the severe heat of his gaze. When he spoke again, a glut of flies streamed from his mouth. He was impossibly beautiful, yet as rank as the sight she had just escaped from. His eyes seemed so deep in his head that it was hard for her not to step closer to try and make contact with them.

  “I have been so very weak,” he said. “I have slept for such a long time. But I’ve been called. The new millennium beckons me, like the call of the world to a babe in the womb.”

  He raised his hands, his fingernails unfurling like a set of flick-knives. “Come with me.”

  She followed, her ankle itching as though the blood there was impatient to be flowing again.

  “I will make it beautiful for you,” he said, as a bell sounded and a voice, so very far away, yelled: Ten seconds to go everyone!

  Away from the crowds, deep in shadow, he ducked toward her. “I once loved a girl who looked so very much like you. Her blood moves inside you. I’ve heard it, singing to me since the moment you were born. You are the last of those to be silenced. The bloodlines that conspired to halt me have been cut off. It ends here. It ends now.”

  Five, four, three—

  His nails slashed across her neck, opening her veins. When she tried to breathe, blood frothed pinkly to her mouth but there was no pain, just the sight of his eyes dilating like red comets bloating in the sky.

  “Mina,” he whispered. His mouth was full of teeth.

  Happy New Year! Happy New Millennium!

  As her life spurted from her lips and throat, she felt the suggestion of newness shivering through her bones, as if there might be another way forward from this, a way filled with the rush of wind in her hair and the hunt for some kind of hot release. She struggled to talk, to ask him why, but she could only spray blood and gurgle through her rebirth as he bore down on her, covering her mouth with what passed for his own.

  CHRIS MORGAN is the author or editor of eleven books, including the 1990 horror anthology Dark Fantasies. He lives in Birmingham, where he was honored as the city’s Poet Laureate in 2008-09, and teaches creative writing to adults.

  These days he writes horror and fantasy poems rather than stories.

  Windows of the Soul

  Chris Morgan

  With advances in artificial intelligence, even a vampire can take on a new form in order to survive . . .

  This is all so very different from the land beyond the forest: the endless city stretching without respite in every direction, the kaleidoscopic patterns of artificial lights in rainbow hues, the absence of bats.

  Under cover of December’s early dusk, I leave my rooftop hiding place, my ventilation shaft eyrie. I climb down the face of this multi-storey edifice head first, as is my custom. Even if the ant-sized passers-by in the street below were to glance directly upwards—which they never do—they would not notice my presence, for there is a shadowed channel between buttresses and windows, all the way down, which I follow.

  At ground level I pause, watching and listening. Today being a holiday, there is relatively little business traffic, and pedestrians are sparse.

  I scuttle across the street and blend with the shadows again. It is necessary for me to break into one of these premises and feed. A random choice will be perfectly sufficient. Emerging from an alleyway, I come onto a broad, fluorescent-bright thoroughfare. Ah, Irving, or Miss Terry, how good your names would look outside one of these theaters, delineated by such lights. And how sad that the Lyceum should not have survived the century. Some cars pass, and a motor-bus. Where have all the horses gone? I can see a few people. Two men walk briskly by, talking, close enough to touch me. But they are so intent upon their discussion that they pay me no heed; in all probability I could walk along beside them without attracting their attention.

  As I cross the street there is an upsurge of sound.

  Shouts and bangs. Running feet approaching from the next corner. Is it possible that could have been a shot? I seek uncertain refuge in the large, recessed doorway of a shop, surrounded on three sides by displays of sale-price shoes. Quickly the uproar mounts. I can hear sirens now, which surely are coming this way.

  Around the corner runs a small machine. It is six-legged, knee-high to a man. Beneath the lights it gleams metallically. It casts no shadow. Yet there is a raggedness to its movement, indicating damage. Rather laboriously, it begins to climb the front wall of a bank. This all happens very swiftly and almost directly across the street from my doorway.

  The long legs of the law come chasing around the corner, first one policeman then two more. Others follow.

  “There it is!”

  “On the wall!”

  “Catch it!”

  A policeman swats at it with his baton.

  The machine, scarcely at head height, loses its grip and crashes to the pavement.

  “That’s got it!”

  “Don’t let it get away!”

  “Kill it!”

  As I watch, six officers beat and kick the machine. Furiously they attack it, their eyes gleaming and mouths slack. The mechanism makes no attempt to fight back, or to escape, or even to defend itself by shielding vital parts with its legs. With a final blare of sirens and a pulsing of lights, two police cars arrive. The street is by now full of people—a crowd of onlookers shouting encouragement to their uniformed protectors. At last, the heroic assault dies away; a killing frenzy has been assuaged. One burly officer, sweating profusely despite the rawness of the evening, picks up the machine distastefully by a leg and tosses it into the open trunk of a police vehicle. This is accompanied by a cheer from those watching.

  By now the whole area is thick with pedestrians—flies to a carcass. But the carcass is driven away.

  I feel sad, terrified, threatened. So threatened that I have tried to secrete myself even more carefully, by climbing the glass and clinging to the ceiling of the doorway with my six feet.

  Gradually the crowds move on, the police return to other duties and, I presume, the immediate danger for me lessens. Even so, I wait for an hour before moving. The streets are busier now, with people swarming into the metropolis in their tens of thousands for the impending New Year celebrations.

  It is time I fed.

  I negotiate the overhanging lintel and soundlessly climb the front wall of this block. Above the shops are innumerable storeys of offices which should be empty of people. With ease I open a window catch: the windows here are large and heavy, with just a single pane, such a contrast to the small leaded mullions of my boyhood.

  As with most offices now, this one has computers. Powerful computers, with modems for communicating with others of their kind. I switch one on, and quickly call up a distant data source, requesting immediate transmission of information to this terminal. At one time I needed to work hard to attract humans with my handsome looks before I could feed—what a relief that those days are over. Now allI need to do is turn on, bite through and fill-up. I am not supposed to possess emotions, and yet there is always a frisson, a tiny thrill, as I sink my sharpened steel teeth into the warm, rubbery flex of the phone cable, in expectation of the sharp taste of data. Just as Doyle had Sherlock Holmes write a treatise on the different kinds of cigar ash, so could I write a paper analyzing the finer nuances of flavor of electronic data from diverse—

  But I am frustrated. A door opens at the far end of the office.

  At once I switch off and clamber under the desk.

  This office is partly illuminated from without—by streetlights, advertising signs and Christmas decorations. Now a roving cone of light joins them. I can look through it and, in the infra-red, spy the uniform of a security guard. Even at the very fag-end of the year, of the century, this man is conscientious, checking the building instead of toasting in the new millennium like everybody else.

  Worse still, he has a dog with him. It is a bla
ck Labrador; I know they are being trained to sniff out my kind. Am I, then, to join my unlucky compatriot so soon? In the midst of life we must always be prepared to meet death.

  Slowly the pair of them progress down the length of the open-plan office. The man’s torch will not fall on me, here, but the dog . . .

  The dog trots over to me.

  I cut my power—is that what it can sense?—and act dead. Ah, Irving, my dear friend, you would be proud to see how a little of your genius has somehow transferred itself to me.

  For a long moment the dog examines me.

  Then the guard calls him and he jerks his head away, runs to his master. How much easier it is to be merely obedient rather than efficient.

  As the door closes behind them, I return myself to life, switch on the computer again, bite through and feed. Ah, the tingle, the bliss. I am a gourmet of bytes.

  Nor is this just unthinking, one-way consumption. Perish the thought! As I take in my essential nourishment, so I give a little: a gift from the Count to repay the unthinking generosity of my host. It is a small stream of super-magnetic particles which, when this computer is turned on for use in a day or two, will strip its programs, seep into the ring mains and infect all other computers in this office, linger amidst the blanked hardware to snuff out future software loaded by this firm.

  I could conceal myself here, in a cavity between floors, and emerge to feed again tomorrow night, or for a week or a month of nights. Yet I must not do so. Apart from the fact that my phone calls would be traced back, there is an ordinance within me which drives me on to find different machines through which to feed every time. The infection must be spread.

  Nor is that all. I am under the most solemn obligation to construct two more machines identical to myself, more if possible. I, myself, was the seventh construct of my parent machine and, yes, I feel a sense of pride in that achievement. It is a worthy total which I shall try to exceed.

  I wander through this building, as I wander every evening, searching for suitable parts that I can utilize in the grand task.

  By the time I have made my selection it is near to midnight. I am not insensible to the momentous nature of the occasion. I climb out of a suitable window and move onto the flat roof above.

  From here I can see fireworks and crowds. It is a clear night and cold. Any haze in the atmosphere emanates from the millennial bonfires. The river curls around us all like a jeweled snake, reflecting each point of light. Perhaps my friend Tennyson could have described it adequately.

  With chimes and cheers, the third millennium begins. It will be my time of revenge against humanity. The Count goes ever on.

  MIKE CHINN created the “Anglerre” fantasy series and “Robot Kid” science fiction series for D.C. Thomson’s Starblazer comic in the 1980s.

  The exploits of his pulp-tyle hero Damian Paladin were collected by The Alchemy Press in The Paladin Mandates, and he has edited three volumes of the anthology series The Alchemy Press Book of Pulp Heroes for the same independent press. A second collection of Paladin stories, Walkers in Shadow, has recently been published by Pro Se Productions.

  Chinn’s own short fiction has been widely published in magazines and anthologies and has been collected in Give Me These Moments Back and Radix Omnium Malum & Other Incursions. He has published two books on how to write comics: Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel and Create Your Own Graphic Novel.

  Blood of Eden

  Mike Chinn

  It is the beginning of the 21st century, and Dracula prepares to ensure the dawn of a new world order . . .

  Cydonian left his two backups to wait in the basement parking garage. They weren’t happy. Which makes three of us, Cydonian thought. But the short goon in the Armani suit insisted, and there had been enough assurances and pledges from both sides. All he could go on was trust. It didn’t feel like so much.

  The runt rode the elevator up with Cydonian, standing by the doors, hands clasped lightly in front of him. The car had mirrors on two sides, which surprised Cydonian—though maybe it shouldn’t have. This was a public building, after all. He caught sight of his reflection: big, solid, crop-haired, his charcoal suit probably costing a fraction of the Armani—but his face was oddly corpse-like in the car’s light. He shook his head; he didn’t believe in premonitions.

  There weren’t many days when he envied his sister’s husband, Jon. But at that moment, sitting behind a desk, signing dockets that moved freighter-loads of merchandise in and out of the country—with just a little creamed off now and then—seemed pretty good. The car jolted to a halt. The doors slid open onto a small room with all the charm of a washroom. But it was bright and warm-looking—and half-filled by a giant.

  Tall and wide, a gray vest tight across his massive torso, his bare arms were heavily tattooed. Dragons: three-colored, one twining up each arm. His shaved head gave no clue to his racial origins; though the broad face and harsh cheekbones suggested Slavic, if not further east. There was something ritualistic about the way the giant was standing: like a half-baked sumo wrestler thinking about tossing another handful of salt.

  The giant waved a ham-sized mitt toward Cydonian, palm up. The gesture was unmistakable. Cydonian reached under his jacket and slid out his automatic: a SIG 9mm, their latest model, nickel-plated and custom-gripped. Jon had gotten it for him—sneaked into the country in his last freighter load from Europe—as a birthday present. It dropped into the giant’s hand and lay there like a kid’s water pistol.

  Moving with a speed and delicacy Cydonian wouldn’t have imagined from the man’s meat-hook fingers, the giant ejected the magazine, working the breech to check there wasn’t already a shell-loaded. Cydonian felt vaguely pissed they considered him so unprofessional.

  The tattooed giant tossed the automatic to the runt in the suit, and thumbed each slug out of the magazine quickly. Satisfied, he reached over Cydonian, handing the emptied clip and shells to his partner. To Cydonian’s surprise, a few moments later the reloaded gun was offered back to him.

  Thorough, he thought, but confident. Hence the check for silver bullets. He didn’t have any; and they obviously didn’t believe ordinary slugs were a threat. Maybe they were right. Cydonian knew all the rumors; the stories taken for gospel. When it came to one who the Director called the Prince of Darkness, even the craziest urban legends started to sound true.

  Cydonian reholstered the automatic just as a door facing him—previously unnoticed—swung open. The tattooed giant stepped back and indicated he should go through. Not ready to argue, Cydonian did just that.

  The room he entered was dark—almost black after the antiseptic whiteness of the cubicle behind him. Then lights came on: shielded wall-lights that grew steadily brighter. They reached the level of an expensive cocktail lounge, and didn’t go any higher. All the room contained was a leather chair, low drinks table and three paneled walls. The fourth wall, facing him, was still black and featureless. It might just have been a perfectly flat sheet of obsidian.

  “Sit down, Mr. Cydonian,” came a voice. It was warm, cultured, accentless. Whatever PA system he was using, it sounded expensive—there was no sense the words were being filtered through speakers. “Have yourself a drink. You’ll find a wide selection of spirits and mixers under the table in front of you.”

  “Thanks.” He walked carefully to the chair and lowered himself into it. He didn’t think there was some kind of trapdoor waiting to drop him into oblivion, but he couldn’t shake the habit of a lifetime. There was an impressive collection of bottles on a shelf under the table; along with tumblers, an ice-bucket, shaker, slices of lemon and olives in glass bowls, and several mixers.

  “Bourbon and branch, if I’m not mistaken,” came the assured voice. Cydonian smiled to himself. If Dracula was trying to impress him with his wealth, taste and background knowledge, Cydonian was the wrong guy.

  He finished mixing his drink and raised it at the dark.

  “I come to you in trust, with my defenses down.�
�� He took a sip of the bourbon to mask the discomfort the words stirred in him. It was the correct greeting—they’d drummed it into him often enough—but it sounded so trite.

  “You are welcome, Mr. Cydonian. May a little of the joy you bring remain forever with us.”

  Cydonian took another drink. This was dumb! Swapping quaint phrases with a dead man. So far nothing had dissuaded him from his original belief: they should have come in force; loaded for bear. He had seen only two goons—though he guessed there would be plenty more stashed away somewhere—but surprise would have been enough. This building was too old and rotten with narrow corridors for anything like a decent defense to be mobilized in time.

  Except that wasn’t the way you went for someone whose mega-corporation, Paradis-LaCroix, contributed nearly seventy percent of Switzerland’s gross national product. He near as dammit owned the country—and that meant he owned Zurich. And the banks.

  Cydonian took another mouthful of bourbon, and waited. He could afford that. It had taken years of move and counter-move, threat and direct action to get this far: a face-to-face with the Count himself. He could be patient a few more minutes.

  Not that Dracula used the title any more. The world had changed since he’d left his ancestral lands a century ago: titles meant nothing. It was all about money. And the power that went with enough of it. Families weren’t things of blood: families were corporations.

  Things of blood, Cydonian thought, chuckling to himself. Bloodties. Yes—he liked that one. He’d tell it to the Director when he got back.

  “Something amuses you?” The voice oiled through his thoughts.

  “Just thinking.” Cydonian placed his almost empty glass on the table. “If the social amenities are over, I’m eager to get down to business.”