by Kim Newman
Most of us are still hibernating. The Macedonia isn’t a passenger vessel or even really a cargo ship. Its usual trade is seal hunting and its guts are foul with a carcass stink which won’t wash away. Larsen’s battered crew stay clear of the coffins below decks, for vampire sleep is not always restful. Many of us have nightmares of Dracula, spreading black wings over us. Or the mob, with fire and silver.
Remembering the slaver trick of jettisoning human cargo when a revenue cutter hoves in view, Kostaki volunteered to be supercargo. With the Carpathian on watch, Larsen could not just rob us and consign us to the sea. He’s survived worse than silver harpoons.
Christina would not sleep away an opportunity to speak for us all, so she also stayed out of the hold. She swanned around the Macedonia’s narrow walkways as if enjoying first-class passage on the White Star Line’s Majestic. The crew were in awe, and sometimes mooned about behind her like small boys seeing their first horseless carriage. When bleeding a man, she leaches colour out of him. Those she has visited are identifiable by white patches on their hair, formerly tanned skin and even their clothes. Kate mentioned that too. She has no idea how it works. A quirk of the Oblensky bloodline.
I happily left Kostaki and the Princess to represent us on the voyage. I was roused from my padded trunk after Dr Doskil cut his throat. One night, Larsen took it in mind to tear strips off the bald-pated, meek little man. The ship’s doctor might have done something to offend his captain, who inflicted a severe dressing-down in public… or perhaps Death hadn’t killed anyone in a month and was seized by his own brand of red thirst. Starting quietly, Larsen trapped Doskil into contradicting him on trivial points, then let fly a stream of inventive, vicious taunts. Kostaki – late of the Carpathian Guard, famous across Europe for savage cruelty – professed to be appalled at the way the Captain set about murdering the doctor, throwing words like harpoons. In the end, Doskil fled the table and took out his razor.
A ship must have a sawbones. Kostaki remembered I had worked in a clinic in London. So, I was roused from weeks of lassitude. I inherited Doskil’s cabin. It has been scrubbed but is to my senses permeated with spilled, spoiled blood. Lying on the bunk forces my fangs from their gumsheaths, which is painful and frustrating. I fight red thirst as a warm drunk sleeping on a whisky-soaked mattress would struggle with the bottle.
Many of the crew’s minor injuries were caused by the Captain. He likes to lash out with the tarred end of a rope, often at table. Something about eating sharpens his cruelty, though he knows better than to go after Eddie Joe, the Negro cook. If anyone is well-placed to murder Death, it’s Eddie Joe – he could easily sauce a fish supper with jellyfish sting.
At one meal, Larsen suddenly took against Popejoy. The American tar was piling too many greens on his plate, but any excuse would have done. The rope-end flicked out, and made a mess of his face. I saved the patient from having to wear a patch, but he’ll squint for life.
‘You’ll have to find a new deck name,’ laughed the Captain. ‘We can call you Hawk-Eye the Sailor Man no more.’
That’s what it was really about. Taking away the name.
Even a captain as cruel as Larsen could only go so far in tormenting his crew. He dare not cripple or kill more than one or two on each voyage. Even if he had no fear of mutiny, he must worry about having too few able bodies to keep the Macedonia afloat. The passengers were another question. At sea, seven vampires turned to dust and bone in their boxes. I have an idea how that might have happened. Death wanted us to show him the respect of fear, even if it killed us all – which it might.
Defying Dracula means having interesting associates. Some I would steer clear of if given the option. In the hold are many choice specimens. For one: Mr Yam, the jiang shi elder who once tried to pull off my head. The Chinese assassin – not a political animal – accepted too many contracts to eliminate (understandably unpopular) cronies of the Crown Prince. In our company are committed opponents of the regime (like, to give her credit, Christina Light) and criminals who’d be wanted by Scotland Yard no matter who sat in Buckingham Palace. We also have former Dracula loyalists. Most who fall from his favour are selfish rogues or fools whose mistake is getting found out for dereliction of duty or conniving in treasonous plots – though Kostaki is in exile for abiding by a military code that embarrasses superior officers and frightens the troops.
We are a pond stocked with sharks. When all are awake, there’s no guarantee we won’t turn on each other. Christina collects (and selectively disseminates) information with a genius that rivals Mycroft Holmes. She tattles about those among us who are old enemies or have recent affronts and betrayals to avenge. With tart sweetness, she points out that I am not exactly popular with some vampires.
Daniel Dravot is in the hold too, implacable agent of the Diogenes Club. His duties still include keeping watch on me. Hard as it is to be accepted into the club, membership turns out to be practically impossible to resign. The Sergeant doubtless has sealed orders for every occasion sewn into the lining of his coat. Even in the Far East, we are Mycroft’s pawns. He foresaw our wayward course would wind to Japan, a country he has lately given some thought. The war with China over Korea marked this as a coming nation – insular still, but no longer isolated. Mycroft ponders how Asian realignments affect the interests of the Ideal Britain he is devoted to – a phantasmal, misty realm not to be confused with the red map stain ruled by Prince Dracula. I’ve been used by the Diogenes Club before and did not much relish the experience. It has cost me a man I might love. For him, I am still just about willing to stay in Mr Holmes’s Great Game. Our little circle – Charles, Mycroft, Dravot, myself – once dealt a blow to Dracula’s legitimacy as monarch, but it is taking an age for the Prince to topple and Mr Holmes’s Britannia to rise again.
A smart steam launch ferried Higurashi to the Macedonia. All brass trim and tight lines. A brand new flag flying from its aft pole. A red circle on white, like a spot of blood on your best tablecloth. A Maxim gun mounted on the prow, the lid off the ammunition box, so we could see the gleam of silver shells.
The Japanese are loaded for vampire.
In modernising his armed forces, the Emperor has a passion for buying – or copying – from Western powers. The launch’s keel will have been laid in a British shipyard. Japanese sailors look like Dartmouth sea cadets in white uniforms. Skin smooth, as if they’ve just shaved for the first time – tiny razor nicks above fresh collars.
Delicious little beads of red.
It’s been a long time since I drank anything but ship rat’s blood.
‘We… wish… to… come… ashore,’ said the Princess to the Baron, enunciating each English word like an American ordering a steak and potatoes in Paris.
Higurashi gave no sign of understanding.
‘We’re in need of urgent repairs and provisions,’ I told him, in Japanese. ‘We can pay.’
Ironically, one thing we aren’t short of is money. Vampires tend to get rich over the centuries. Well, other vampires do. I am perpetually stony broke, and among the few elders obliged to work for a living. I am drawing wages from Captain Larsen – or, at least, getting partial refund of my passage.
The widow Casamassima’s credit is good at any bank in the world, thanks to the fabulous fortune she inherited. The Prince, frail scion of a distinguished but enfeebled Italian family, tried to turn when she did. His noble blood was too thin. Christina rose from death as a shining vampire angel. Her husband shrivelled into something like a human-sized vole, which coughed and shat for a few nights then became compost. He had to be shovelled into the Casamassima vaults in Rome. Christina Light, of American and Italian parentage and the strange airy-fairy Oblensky bloodline, is a relative newborn, but conducts herself like the breed of elder who looks down on Dracula as an ill-mannered parvenu. Just the type to become a revolutionary. She thinks the ruling classes – and, indeed, everyone else – are beneath her, and would rearrange the world to prop up that belief. Much like an Emp
eror of Japan.
If she gets ashore, she’ll probably become Empress. Hikari-Onna, Woman of Light.
In London, the Princess was leading light – ahem – of a series of short-lived factions, unions and parties which tended to fall apart through internal squabbles well before Mr Caleb Croft’s Special Branch or General Iorga’s Carpathian Guard got round to infiltrating or raiding them. Christina sat with Kate Reed on the Council of the Seven Days, an anarchist cell that made a splash during the Jubilee Year. It is her useful habit to be a sole survivor. Useful for her – not for anyone else in her playrooms. Katie barely got out of the council alive. I hope we of the Macedonia fare better.
‘We are refugees,’ I continued. ‘We seek sanctuary.’
Higurashi nodded. I couldn’t tell if it was a yay or nay nod.
The emissary came aboard the Macedonia alone. Considering that we’re a ship of monsters, that showed courage. I did not sense a death wish or foolhardy confidence. He was more than just a messenger.
The way he stood, at ease yet coiled… just like Kostaki. That touch with the lid of the ammunition case. One item out of place on the shipshape launch – just the thing to draw the eye, send a message. We could be cut down at any time. We were above water only because this man refrained from having us sunk.
At a guess, Higurashi is a member of the Black Ocean Society.
Black Ocean have influence with the Emperor – perhaps even over the Emperor. They feel an emperor should have an empire, and agitate for the accumulation of overseas possessions in Korea, China and elsewhere. They may have supplied the ronin assassins who killed Korea’s Russian-leaning Empress Myeongseong in 1895, and run a chain of brothels across Asia to finance patriotic endeavours and harvest useful information.
Even Mycroft Holmes would draw the line at that. With India in turmoil after successive mutinies against Dracula’s viceroys – the atrocious Sir Francis Varney, the ruthless Hymber Masters, the disgusting Lionel Roach – Black Ocean might even consider the sub-continent achievable territory. Like the British, the Chinese and the Russians, the Japanese drink tea… tea-drinkers always thirst for empire. Even bloodsuckers are less rapacious. Blessed with time, we care less for space. We don’t even own our graves. Except Dracula, of course. He wishes to be King of Space and Lord of Time. Which is why I have sailed to a hemisphere where he holds little sway.
Higurashi was sizing us up. That was why he had come aboard. Not to talk, but to pass judgement.
After tiresome debate between Christina and me, with Kostaki grunting every half hour or so, we had decided all three of us should meet the Emperor’s man. The Princess tactfully ventured that it might be best to keep Kostaki in the shadows, ‘for he is the kind of vampire the Japanese would take fright at’. She allowed that I present ‘at least an unthreatening face’. She was confident her own charm would carry the day, as it has so often before.
In the event, Christina found it impossible to fluence Higurashi. Exercise of a power of fascination entails first getting a person’s attention and the Baron affected not to notice her. It’s as well she relented and let Kostaki on deck with us. Otherwise, the emissary might have treated us as invisible, inaudible gnats, and waved us into insignificance with a hand flap.
Still, the former Carpathian Guardsman kept quiet.
There seemed nothing more to be said. I wondered about Indo-China, Madagascar or East Africa. Could the Macedonia survive another ocean crossing?
From inside his coat, Kostaki took a large white handkerchief. He used his left hand, leaving his right on his sword.
The gesture caught Higurashi’s eye the way all the Princess’s smiles, moues, coughs, flutters and sparkles had not. The Baron stared at the flapping cloth.
Kostaki handed the handkerchief to Christina and stood well back. Higurashi faced him.
The Carpathian and the Japanese shared no spoken language, but understood each other. I didn’t try to intervene.
The bay was calm, but the deck still shifted a little. I am now so used to sea voyaging that I seldom notice the motion. The breeze rippled the handkerchief.
Warm men might feel the winter cold. Higurashi’s breath frosted. Kostaki’s did not.
‘Heh, mateys, look,’ said Captain Larsen, who had kept an eye on our conclave from his wheelhouse.
The crew paid attention. I’ve been treating their gashes and bruises, resisting the temptation to lick a welling cut for fear of a marlinspike through the heart. Few would sail on the Macedonia if they could get berths on less cursed ships. Now, the sour lot were an audience for… what? A duel?
Higurashi and Kostaki closed their hands around sword-hilts. Their elbows kinked and their shoulders angled.
Christina held up the handkerchief, which streamed like a ribbon.
Were we declaring war on Japan?
Christina let the handkerchief go. It flew away.
Quicker than the human – quicker than the vampire – eye can register, Higurashi and Kostaki drew swords. The shiver of steel sliding from scabbards set my nerves on edge. I felt it in my sharp teeth, and the salt tang of blood from my gums…
They struck poses.
The point of the Baron’s sabre dimpled the Carpathian’s coat, over the heart.
The edge of Kostaki’s carrack rested against the inside of Higurashi’s thigh.
They stood like a stage tableau. Christina was puzzled. She knows what a thrust to the heart means to a vampire, but not what the severing of the profunda femoris artery is to a warm man.
It always surprises me that people who live off human blood don’t trouble to learn more anatomy. As a warm girl, I was apprenticed to my father, a battlefield surgeon in the service of the Dauphin. I had enough schooling in the ways men bleed and die before I turned vampire. I’ve had centuries to keep up to date with fatal wounds and how they are inflicted.
The duellists stepped back and sheathed swords.
I knew now the real reason why Higurashi brought a German sabre. It is silver-plated. Since there are (by imperial decree) no vampires in Japan, few local swordsmiths manufacture weapons to kill us. So they must be imported. I’m not surprised silver bullets and swords reached Japan before we did. The best vampire-killing implements are made in Sheffield, with Dracula’s mark stamped on them. British arms are bought around the world.
Higurashi and Kostaki each had the measure of the other. In the Ittõryũ style – the duel of the single stroke – they were at stalemate, and neither would survive. They did not need to press the matter further.
‘What is this silliness?’ Christina asked.
‘It’s been settled,’ I told her.
‘You may come ashore,’ said Baron Higurashi, in English. ‘But you will be permitted only in a certain district.’
2
BEFORE DRACULA
As the curtain falls on the nineteenth century, memoirists and historians will fall over each other to chronicle the last fifteen turbulent years. I do not expect to join them in print. Sergeant Dravot will ensure this notebook finds its way to you, Charles. Once you have read it, and removed certain personal pages of no interest to anyone but ourselves, you will deliver it to Mycroft Holmes – who will secure it in his private files. Consider it a report. Intelligence, collected by the Diogenes Club.
To be used against our great enemy.
In filling pages unused by the late Dr Doskil, I shall become an imitator of journal-keeping Jonathan and letter-writing Mina in Bram Stoker’s strange half-novel. No longer welcome in Fleet Street, Kate Reed writes for the underground press – pamphlets printed off in East End basements, distributed by inky-fingered children. Jack Seward muttered into his dictagraph till the end. Mycroft, like Jonathan Harker, uses a shorthand of his own devising. If posterity needs to know what is in his diaries, only his clever brother will be able to crack the cipher. Everyone who takes part in the dance around Dracula becomes an author, lettriste or diarist – except the Crown Prince. He dictates telegrams or scratches c
urt notes signed with a bold D. Until he mesmerises G.A. Henty or Marie Corelli into transcribing his yarns of foes impaled and ladies loved, we won’t have Dracula’s side of his story.
I shall try to be truthful, at least as I remember the truth.
Charles, I concede I have been a poor correspondent, but neither of us have recently had fixed addresses. I don’t even know if you are in England. I hope you aren’t, though it’s ridiculous to ask you to be somewhere safe. For us, there is no such place. Even if there were, you wouldn’t be there. We’re lucky not to be in unmarked graves or Devil’s Dyke. I can scarcely complain that life ‘on the run’ hampers maintenance of a social calendar. Murder brought us together. Murderers keep us apart.
The only picture I have of you is on the ‘wanted’ poster issued by Special Branch. I keep it folded in this log as a place-mark. They use a studio portrait taken on the occasion of one of your engagements. You are handsome, if stiff. A photographer’s brace pinches your neck. A sliver of Penelope’s shoulder edges in. Or is it Pamela? Penelope, I think. I discern incipient irritation. That’s it for Penelope, as usual: cut out of the picture. I trust she remains an ornament of night society, prospering all the more for being thoroughly disengaged from you. Also, I hope you’ve altered your appearance since the photograph was taken. Caleb Croft won’t forget your face. I’d regret the loss of your whiskers less than I should the loss of your head.
As for the picture on my wanted poster… I don’t recognise myself. In photographs, as in mirrors, I show as a wedge of fog – so I am a problem sitter. Who did the sketch of me? Some lightning-fast scribbler who specialises in studies of brazen baggages in the dock for the Police Gazette. He makes me look a perfect horror. For all I know, it’s a fair likeness.
