by Kim Newman
‘Those look too blunt to do much damage,’ said Christina.
‘The point’s sharp,’ I said. ‘It goes in easily, but it’s supposed to be difficult – agony, in fact – to draw across the stomach to commit suicide.’
‘This is hara-kiri?’
One of the Japanese words everyone knows.
‘More politely seppuku,’ I said. ‘Though there’s nothing polite about it. Let’s leave, Christina. We don’t need to see this.’
‘What’s this place called?’
‘Jisatsu No Niwa. Suicide Garden.’
No wonder only poisonous things lived in this park.
‘I shall stay,’ said the Princess, hugging herself under her furs.
‘You can’t want to watch this.’
‘Not want. Need, Gené. Duty. Perhaps you wouldn’t understand.’
‘I didn’t mean you couldn’t understand Japan, but that it’ll take time. This… this shouldn’t be understood. This should be stopped.’
Yet I made no move to intervene. It wasn’t just the prospect of mass execution-by-suicide – though I can’t say it ranked high on my list of Unmissable Wonders of the Orient. What worried me was an inkling of why the ceremony was held here. This suicide club drew members from around the city, from all classes of people.
An ice-bud of terror bloomed in my heart. I did not want this spiritual lesson.
The disgraced army officer slid the knife into his stomach, made the sideways cut, and fell over into the cascading mess of his insides.
The smell made my eyes bleed. Heightened senses can be a curse. I’ve been a doctor long enough to know the stenches too well: on the battlefield, in the hospital ward, at the scene of the crime. Every single time, it’s a struggle. For the beast inside, spilled blood is the spell of Circe. We vampires love to claim kinship with noble wolves or mysterious bats but when there’s gore in the trough, we’re just swine.
The samurai threw his blunt knife at the tengu. It bounced off his beak. Majin pricked the unrepentant brigand’s neck from behind. A red geyser rose, splashing the tengu and the next suicide in line.
An empty kimono dashed from the crowd and knelt before the samurai. His wound rained blood on the invisible geisha. Suzan Arashi’s head appeared – face a scarlet mask, elaborate hairdo a gory hood. Even her eyes showed up – as red lamps.
Knives were stuck into stomachs, tentatively or decisively. To cheers or jeers. The job was done perfectly or botched terribly. The embezzler couldn’t bring himself to do the deed so Majin chopped off his head. Something small and many-armed seized the head and scuttled away with the prize. Chittering, shrieking creatures gulped at spilled, spoiled blood.
My fangs cut my lips. Red thirst tore at my chest, my stomach, my brain.
Fangs hurt, by the way. In anticipation of feeding, my teeth sharpen and cut through the gums like ivory needles. I’ve seen cases where a vampire’s entire skull liquefies and flows into a new shape, reforming as a knotty tangle of impossible teeth strung together by exposed nerves. Imagine that coming at you, with panicked eyes and an exposed brain.
The servant who took the place of his daimyō’s son neatly ended himself. At that moment, if I could have reached him, I’d have dripped my blood onto his lips while sucking him empty, so he could rise and seek revenge on the vile, pampered bastard who put him here while striding off to a life of prestige, position and other servants’ sisters. But Brysse got to him first. She sprang over the crowd with athletic grace, clashed claws with the cat-granny, and sank fangs into the servant’s still-pulsing throat.
My sharpening nails cut my own fingers.
Whelpdale was also in the melee with the yōkai, as much blood on his face and clothes as in his mouth. Even aristocratic monsters waded into the horror to get their portion. O-Same swooped, setting light to fur and feathers, and swept the adulterous wife up into the air. The woman burst into flames as the shito-dama absorbed her essence. Cinders and soot fell into the stream and a kimono burned like a twist of paper. The cat-girls played with their prey, the cadet singled out from his class, letting him run between them, holding his arms across his sundered stomach. They put scratches in his clothes and face until, overcome by pain and exhaustion, he collapsed. Then they pounced – tail stubs up in the air, whiskered faces in his open wounds. A silent, shamed army officer was caught in the coils of Lady Oyotsu’s neck, a goat trapped by a boa constrictor. She darted at his throat from several angles, biting over and over. Her rice-powder make-up was smeared off in lumps by spurts of blood. The Mantis – a warm woman! – pricked an inefficient clerk’s neck for the bitter joy of it, then pushed the bleeding, dying man into the arms of true vampires. She was avenging some long ago wrong, over and over. No matter how many died, it would never be enough.
The only thing that stopped me joining the carnage was Christina’s hand on my shoulder. I know she is as bloodthirsty as the rest of us… but she has control. An iron will I hadn’t appreciated.
‘We can’t,’ she said to me. ‘This is beneath us.’
I agreed with her, but finer feelings were asleep, like the upper head of Ryomen. The conscienceless, appetite-driven monster in my chest took charge. Open a vein in the next room and I cease to be Dr Dieudonné. I am Grendel, I am Cronus. I am a berserker.
I am – hateful to think it – Dracula.
I fought Christina but she was strong. She shone now – light pulsed under her skin, poured through her eyes and mouth. Her bones showed, like coals in a fire.
She had fangs but also a halo – a sparking circle of electricity.
‘Are you a vampire or an angel?’ I asked.
‘I am Light,’ she said. ‘Remember.’
Her rays were calming. She made me look at the Suicide Garden.
The park was strewn with corpses, intestines, puddles of blood with yōkai lapping at them. A dead girl, face down in the stream, driven against the grille by the current. Feeding took place – a rhythmic, gentle sucking on the dying and a savage rending of the dead. Some yōkai were killed too – torn apart in the frenzy, or exploded by their own gluttony.
The westernised official who preferred not to endow a clinic was bent over the bridge wall, pinstripes and drawers around his ankles. A crouching kappa extended a barbed tongue deep into his bowel. The official screamed for mercy. Lieutenant Majin smartly chopped off his head.
I didn’t want to see any more.
I am a monster. A vampire. I know this. But this is not how it has to be. This is not how I have been. This is not what I want. This is not the only truth.
Striding through the abattoir, smiling like a nasty child, the Lieutenant was every inch the Demon Man. He had not a speck of blood on him, except his boots and his sword. Even his gloves remained unnaturally white.
But he was feeding. The way vampires feed.
He drank pain and terror. From the spoiled blood, from the ozone in the air, from the vileness pulled out of the guilty and the innocent. He primped like a peacock.
Was this how he survived? Drawing sustenance from horror.
He looked at the vampires – faces in meat and muck and blood – and laughed. At that moment, he was as far above them – above us – as any emperor. How could such a creature bow to any earthly power?
‘That’s it,’ said Christina. ‘He doesn’t.’
I hadn’t spoken aloud. I had been shouting with my mind.
‘He’s in here, with us,’ said Christina. ‘Only we are witnesses. Look, no one on the walls. His troops behind the gate, his masters nowhere to be seen: the Emperor, Black Ocean, generals, admirals. They don’t know about this… or don’t want to know. Majin has no masters. He dares to think he can look down on all the world. We can use this, Gené. It’s pride… and I know a thing or two about that. A weakness that looks like strength. Dracula has it too and it’ll be the end of him. I’ll bet Majin polishes his boots himself. Has a batman to do it for him, but is never satisfied. The same with his bloody sword. He burnishes
it like a mirror and contemplates his lovely, lovely eyes. Have you ever seen a fellow who cares so much for his looks? He is swollen to bursting with self-regard… ready to be pricked?’
Her light was calming. My fangs retracted. I swallowed bloody spittle. I drew in my nails.
Some of the feeders slunk or crawled away, ashamed or hotly self-deluded. Replete and sluggish or unsatisfied and jittery. Brysse washed her bloody hands in the stream, splashing like Ellen Terry as Lady Macbeth. Whelpdale, bent out of shape, struggled to get his arms and legs to work so he could stand up. Both Ryomen’s mouths were dripping. The bakeneko twisted their heads around and licked blood off their own fur and each other’s faces.
Finally, Majin looked at us. For the first time, noticed us.
Noticed Christina.
I was wrung out, on my knees. Christina stood, shining. Majin sheathed his sword and touched his cap – a salute. Christina had what she wanted. His attention.
He lowered himself into a crouch, like the stance of a sumo wrestler, cape around him like owl wings. Carefully, finger by finger, he took off his gloves. The seiman sigils were tattooed on his hands. His nails were polished blue. He pressed fingertips to the springy earth… all the while looking at Princess Casamassima.
I heard – no, I felt – a rumble, deep underground. A shifting of rocks and dirt.
Those who could fled Jisatsu No Niwa. Only the dead and the insensible remained – and Majin and Christina.
I counted myself insensible.
Rifts appeared, radiating from Majin’s hands. His sigils burned red, like hot wires under his skin. He poured something of himself into the earth, as if warming buried dragon eggs. Much of what he had drawn from the blood orgy was given away, purged into the ground. Those eggs cracked. Dirt was breathed in, then expelled as subterranean fire. The bridge fell apart and tumbled down. A small red-leafed scuttling tree – a yōkai bonsai! – fell, smoke belching from mouths among its exposed roots.
The quake struck.
I’ve been in earthquakes before, but only natural ones. All Saints’ Day, Lisbon, 1755. The Rann of Kutch, 1819. They weren’t like this. The world – not just the physical world, but everything – seemed torn in half, like a sheet of paper. It took seconds, but I can feel it now, hours later. We all have a connection to the earth. Perhaps vampires, who have escaped being buried in it, more than most. We owe the grave a debt we are defaulting on. It’s why some elders sleep on a layer of their native soil. A quake is a sharp reminder of that tie. Earthquakes spur philosophers to deep thought. In the immediate aftermath, men with spades or buckets of water are of more use.
A chasm gaped in Suicide Park. The stream poured into the new abyss. Corpses slid to the edges, then rolled over them. A few yōkai, lost in blood-dreams, were swallowed too.
A fluttering cloud rose from the crack. Butterflies!
Christina still defied Majin. She rose inches off the ground, partially insubstantial. As painful to look at as a furnace, wavering inside her shimmer. What Kate Reed told me was true – the Princess could turn into animated light.
A living star.
The butterflies whirled around her, streaming like ribbons, blotting out her light. The ribbons tied and for a moment she was enveloped in blue beating wings. A light burst scattered them like chaff. Wings turned to flickers of flame.
Christina wiped her face. Tiny wounds healed.
Majin stood and put his gloves on. He gestured like an orchestra conductor who has volunteered to command the firing squad at the execution of his most hated critic.
A dead tree broke apart, roots erupting, branches cracking. The largest branch fell like an axe, shearing through Christina’s right arm, severing it from her shoulder.
She was flesh again, screaming and bleeding. Her cries cut through my lull of fascination. I blinked away the light-spots burned into my vision. The tang of vampire blood quickened me. I was sober.
I had to be a doctor again.
I examined Christina. Her arm wasn’t completely detached – thread-like golden veins connected it to her shoulder. Glowing discharge oozed from both stumps. I pushed the head of the humerus against the glenoid cavity and twisted the bone until it set, trusting the muscles to swarm around the rotator cuff. I could tell by the piercing quality of Christina’s yelp that everything in her shoulder was in its proper configuration. Her shapeshifter body should do the rest. Her clothes were ruined, though. Gold blood soaked into – and ate through – her beautiful fur cloak.
Lieutenant Majin walked over to where I was working on Christina and observed, taking a student’s interest in my efforts. He could have cut us both down with his silver sword but let us continue. Another gesture of contempt. I glimpsed the blurry, distorted fudge of my not-quite-a-reflection in his shiny boots.
Christina was a poor patient.
She was badly injured a few years ago in an act of defiance at the Tower of London – her own damn fault, according to the reliable Kate Reed – and I believe never properly healed. However, she has been reluctant to submit to even cursory medical examination. If I went near her with a stethoscope, she reacted like a superstitious Carpathian elder confronted with a peasant girl holding a blessed crucifix. The strange, glittering Oblensky bloodline makes diagnosis thorny – but something is wrong with her. The Princess finds it difficult to retain the semblance of human form.
In pain even after I’d set her arm, she wavered. Her inner light was furious. A fire-shape like O-Same’s demanded to be born from her body – seeking the freedom of the air, leaving behind the corporeal, transcending personality. I was worried Christina might turn into a scatter of stars. More poetic than crumbling to red dust, but still true death. I had no idea how to treat her condition. Beef tea and Carter’s Little Liver Pills were likely to have a limited effect.
Christina gripped my blouse with her left hand and pulled me close to her.
‘Don’t let me fall apart, Geneviève,’ she said.
I understood her fear. Shapeshifting – not a trait of my bloodline – is dangerous, often fatal. Newborns whose turning doesn’t take, dissipate into grave dirt or transform into perfectly formed but dead wolves or bats. I’ve seen that too often. At the other end of unlife, senile elders forget what it’s like not to be a pool of fog or a swarm of rats and never come back from a shift. I think Christina is haunted by what happened to her husband. She bridles whenever Drusilla brings it up.
‘Just keep me awake and I can fix myself.’
I looked around, as if expecting my medical bag – back in my trunk in the dorm – to be magically there. I doubted Majin would dash off on an errand of mercy to fetch my kit.
Christina convulsed, as if shocked. Her right arm was limp. I talked to her, asking her to pay attention. I apologised for being cold to her and laughing at her plans. I insulted her for being a bore and a snob and a princess. I promised loyalty to the Revolution – any revolution! – and swore to be her friend, if only on the condition she didn’t close her eyes and go away inside herself.
I hadn’t changed my opinion, really. Maybe I saw her courage for the first time – it was usually masked by ruthlessness. She had kept me out of the bloody trough, saved me from debasing myself. She was still infuriating, but wasn’t simple – not a Punch cartoon of a hypocritical radical prig.
She was my patient.
I’ll do a lot for my patients.
Her eyes closed. They glowed through shut lids. The convulsions stopped, stilling like the quake. She was receding. I worried that her light would go out.
Something waved near my head. I looked at it.
Lieutenant Majin dangled a scorpion. He had pinched its head flat between his thumb and forefinger, but its tail still thrashed.
I bared my fangs at him, but he smiled, almost sweetly, and nodded.
‘Medicine,’ he said – in English.
I realised what he meant me to do. Gingerly, I took the scorpion – vampires are resistant to natural poisons, but not
completely immune – and jabbed the tail-sting into Christina’s chest.
The venom struck like lightning. Violet fire lit up the veins of Christina’s neck and face. Her eyes and mouth snapped open. She sucked in a great breath.
Sitting up, she knocked me backwards. Her right hand lay dead as a fish in her lap but she grasped the air with her left.
She struggled against the poison. Half her head swelled like a puffball and she bled purple from her right eye.
She needed something to fight, to bring all of her back, to focus herself, the way a magnifying glass turns a shaft of sunlight into a burning beam.
Then she let out breath, exhaling a long string of Italian words she hadn’t learned at the Palazzo Casamassima – unless it was in the stables.
She said things about my mother, my preferences and my person. Then she stopped and said, ‘Thank you, Dottore.’
I was about to give credit to Majin – but when I turned, he was gone.
12
A KNIGHT TEMPLAR III
‘Tonight’s a rum ’un, Brother Taki,’ said Dravot. ‘Deathly ’ush all over. Too deathly, to my way of thought. The usual ’aunts is abandoned. Yokomori Street deserted. No tarts, no staff, no punters. The gamblin’ flotilla lies derelict. You can hear an ’ummingbird fart in the marketplace. If I knew no better, I’d say our yokey pals was convenin’ a chinwag on the sly. No foreign devils invited. First order of business up for discussion – the cuttin’ of our gaijin throats and the reportin’ of our demises as a sad inevitability.’
Kostaki had also noted the scarcity of yōkai on the streets. But vampires of their own party were in short supply too. Which troubled him more.
When people weren’t where they should be, his knee hurt.
At the warehouse, Albert Watson grumbled at his post. His watch should have ended an hour ago. Francesca Brysse, a vampire Kostaki didn’t trust, was supposed to relieve him. She hadn’t reported for duty.
They were forced to rely too much on civilians.
