by Kim Newman
Being caught in the crossfire during the gunfight at the O.K. Corral was enough of the romance and excitement of the Wild West to last a long lifetime. When I let him dig a bullet out of my head, I didn’t know John Holliday was only a dentist. My wound healing over while ‘Doc’ had hot tongs in it made the procedure extremely painful. I told him all French girls mended quickly and got out of town before sun-up. Arizona Territory is full of silver mines.
I asked Gokemidoro to translate for our party while I was unavailable. Lines of communication must be kept open. Kostaki wasn’t ready to trust the split-faced kyuketsuki, but interpreters were in short supply. The lips of Goké’s head-cleft pursed as he nodded, accepting the job.
Kostaki tried to explain to Kawataro that I couldn’t have killed the General. He held up his forefingers like my tiny fangs and wiggled them around, then made fearsome tusks of his bunched fingers and jabbed them viciously. I saw his point, but the kappa lord was in no mood to consider suspects beyond the obvious. Marshal Morgan Earp of Tombstone had been just the same – though he had the excuse of the shaman Misquamacus gestating in his goitre and whispering in his mind. Kostaki grunted terse sentences, which Goké translated into well-argued paragraphs. If I needed a lawyer, he was my man – especially if he took his dark glasses off to address the magistrate.
The four militiamen escorted me away from the shrine. Kuchisake smiled at my removal. Her chin dropped to her sternum, exposing alarming mauve tonsils. Can she swallow a watermelon whole?
This was my fault for playing sleuth. I should have had enough of the game in Whitechapel. I worked in the office next to Jack Seward’s for months without realising he was the Silver Knife. This time, I had proudly pointed out the clue that made me look guilty. Inspector Lestrade would snort through his whiskers at that.
That scroll wound straight from the dorm to the shrine – a lure into a trap? I had skipped along the bloody trail.
Who gained from making trouble for me?
Conceivably, almost everyone. It was awfully convenient that Drusilla suddenly took it into her head to say something easy to understand. Majin might have marked me down as a useful scapegoat; another scrap to toss to the sharks to whip up a feeding frenzy. Christina had made an effort to woo me over, which could be like petting the dog you’re about to shoot. If Dravot had sealed orders to have me indicted for murder, he’d do it in a wink and not ask questions. And arresting me let Lord Kawataro crow over Lady Oyotsu that he had been right about the foreign devils, boosting his position in Yōkai Town.
At that, I doubtless had enemies I’d not met yet. The Black Ocean Society. Could one of us be a sham refugee like the Americans were afraid of – acting as the long-distance Renfield of Dracula or Lord Ruthven? Kostaki and I had chewed that over and not come to reassuring conclusions.
Whoever was behind this could do to a yōkai whatever had been done to General Nurarihyon. And prevail on a dying man to accuse me.
I was encouraged into a shallow boat and ferried out to Castle Kawataro. The kappa with the bo stood at the stern and poled us away from the waterfront, then the others took up oars. They rowed the boat between walkways and under low bridges. The sounds of clicking stones, laughs and cries and arguments, and raucous music – Japanese and Western – spilled across fog-shrouded water from gambling halls.
Though the mass of junks, lean-tos and artificial islands extends well away from the shore, a stretch of clear water separates it from the castle. The roisterers and reprobates of the emerald lantern district dare not encroach on Lord Kawataro’s domain.
We slid through a gateway into an enclosed harbour. More kappa militia lined the jetty, aiming muskets and pikes at the dangerous vampire woman. Prodded with the blunt end of a sai, I got out of the boat.
A dog-headed turnkey of the inugami bloodline hauled open a heavy iron door. I stepped into a cave-like hall lit by torches in sconces. A wide ledge ran around a saltwater pool. A rattling and splashing of excitement greeted me. Bamboo cages were suspended on chains dangling from crossbeams; some were completely submerged, others half out of the water. A few held wretched yōkai. The tengu we had met on our arrival at Yōkai Town was a caged bird – wrist bandaged, feathers sodden, beaky countenance miserable. Kappa and tengu do not get along.
The inugami cranked a handle and a cage rose from the pool, a larger version of the box Dru keeps her cricket in. Eels flapped in the bottom, then slithered between bamboo poles and slipped into the water. Winding ripples broke up reflected firelight. Murals of sea battles painted around the room seemed to flicker into life. The kappa with the nunchaku helped me swing out from the ledge to stand on top of the cage. The kappa with the bo used it to open a trapdoor at my feet. My escorts made gestures, indicating I should drop into my cage like a good little birdie.
Didn’t they know I understood Japanese? Or were they under orders not to talk to me? Kawataro might believe I could exercise siren-like power over lesser yōkai – as was claimed for Nurarihyon or Gokemidoro. Of course, he also thought I could suck someone empty. The militiamen must be terrified.
I lowered myself into the cage and got my boots full of water. The trapdoor was flapped shut and fastened with a rusty padlock. I held the bamboo bars and looked out at my captors. The turnkey worked the pulley and the cage sank until I was up to my chest in brine. My escorts were happier now I was put away and clashed their weapons together musketeer-all-for-one style. Then they executed a strange shell-wiggling dance step while flapping free flippers at each other in handshakes sillier than Kostaki and Dravot’s Masonic pas de deux. The inugami barked approval of their antics and tittered in a rassin-frassin-grassin dialect pitched so high only other dogs – and, as it happens, vampires – could hear him.
Eels swam between the bars, scraping me with skin like wet sandpaper.
So, it had come to this. Jugged, like a hare.
* * *
My medical bag was confiscated. I supposed the militia were looking in it for the fearsome murder weapon I used on General Nurarihyon. Lord Kawataro – a parade soldier, not a policeman – didn’t think to have me searched. Even Lestrade would have made me turn out my pockets. I still had the scissors I was carrying so Kuchisake couldn’t steal them for use in her campaign to put big smiles on everyone’s faces. Underwater, out of sight of the guards, I experimentally snipped one of the waxed string knots holding the poles of my cage together. I could get free if I wanted to. With seawater lapping my chin, it was a temptation – but escaping would make me look even more guilty.
My best bet was to sit – or float – quietly until the murderer struck again. A position as uncomfortable morally as my cell was physically. I didn’t want anyone else to get killed, but I was stuck here until they did. I imagined pleasant, if unlikely outcomes. The murderer caught red-fanged before his (or her) next victim was much harmed. If an innocent being merely assaulted led to my freedom, I could square it with my conscience. However, a trail of ravaged corpses was more likely. Even that might not lead to my release. The Pope and the Emperor of Japan aren’t the only temporal powers who subscribe to a doctrine of infallibility. Most authorities literally can’t be proved wrong. Justice for all is more trouble than it’s worth. Convicts proved innocent of the original charges in the morning are found guilty of a raft of other offences in the afternoon. Innocence is no guarantee of release and reunion with loved ones and thanks to the campaigners who’ve overturned the case. All too often, the result is a longer sentence, fewer rations and a closer acquaintance with the wheel.
I would soon be thirsty enough to bite eels.
At least they hadn’t put an iron mask on me.
My nearest neighbour was the tengu. I tried to start a conversation. He squawked in panic and flapped to the other side of his cage, terrified to be so near a monster.
I whiled away the hours compiling mental alphabets. Usually, the lists are easy, except for Q, X and Z, so I start by filling in those letters, and often skip the rest.
&
nbsp; Places I’ve Visited: Quebec, Xochimilcho and Zinj.
Languages I’ve Learned (and Mostly Forgotten): Quiripi, Xârâcùù and Zulu.
Dances I’ve Failed to Master: quickstep, xibelani and zwiefacher.
Authors I’ve Read: de Quincey, Xenophon and Israel Zangwill (Zola is too obvious).
Vampires I Like (tricky): no, nothing and nope.
Vampires I Hate (easier): Quinn, Xanhast and Zargo.
Old Lovers: now that’s just depressing, though a lawyer I bled in Massachusetts might have been called Quincy Something.
People I Would Consider or Have Considered Possible Lovers, Even
When There Is or Was No Likelihood of Anything Coming of It: Arturo Quire, James Xavier and – despite not earning a place in the Vampires I Like alphabet above – Zepia Oberon.
Adjectives Which Have Been Applied to Me: quixotic, xenophilic and zany.
Adjectives Which Have Not Been Applied to Me: quartzy, xanthic and zaftig.
Prisons In Which I’ve Been Unjustly Incarcerated: Stonehaven Tollbooth, Yuma Penitentiary and Castle Zenda.
What does it say about my life that it’s easier to list prisons than lovers?
Time passed. I thought about slipping underwater and sleeping. I didn’t think I’d drown.
Without falling into lassitude, I lulled into a state of non-thinking.
18
BEFORE DRACULA (CONCLUDED)
Nicolas Cerral got up a petition to have me reinstated. Most of the ghouls signed, and about half the other medical students. Several of the women knew better than to put their names to it, realising what Cerral didn’t – any excuse would be found to get rid of them too. All our lecturers were asked to support me, but only Charcot and Cataflaque did. Some deemed it beneath their station to get involved with administrative affairs. The conservatives airily implied those pestering reformers should have expected this. Let a woman through the front door, and all manner of fantastical creatures will flood in after. Why, we’ll be giving doctorates to performing seals next!
The petition was politely set aside on a technicality. The university couldn’t reinstate someone who didn’t exist and therefore had never been instated or dismissed. If the matter were pressed, Assistant Clerk M. Modéran would reluctantly be obliged to refer it to an office more inclined to involve the police in matters of fraud and forgery – and skeletons in cupboards. I had to ask Cerral to stop agitating on my behalf. He was incensed, but I saw he was the alone. Fellows initially willing to stand up were uncomfortable with how far he had taken things. They had to think of their as-yet-unearned degrees. All they wanted was to let the matter drop and get on with their future brilliant careers, unencumbered by vampire associations.
That Hallowe’en, police raids on several Paris addresses revealed the authorities had taken steps to address ‘the vampire question’. My evening passed without incident. I was not piqued to be left out. I assumed I had been investigated and determined to be relatively harmless. Eva Van Meerhaegue, a vampire I’d never heard of, was arrested in Montmartre and accused of several murders. She had a lair in the shell of the old Théâtre des Vampires and was mixed up with the decadent Des Esseintes set. Styling herself la Papesse Rouge, she demanded blood tribute from besotted worshippers. Rituals of sacrifice were mentioned at her sensational trial. She may well have been guilty. Guillotined at dawn, she turned to dust. Her acolytes, all warm, were convicted of lesser crimes, except the one who informed on her, who went free. Several were killed in prison; guilty of vampirism by association.
The fate of Eva Van Meerhaegue put the Marquis de Coulteray into a panic. The Vampire Ascendancy wasn’t ascendant enough for him. After his first gush of enthusiasm, he found it a disappointment. Not least because, for all his efforts, he couldn’t ride Dracula’s coat-tails to the position he deserved. Where was his castle? His treasure? His willing acolytes?
De Coulteray’s attempts to get to London were thwarted. British ports remained closed. The boat train was not running. Navies lined up against each other in the Channel. Sunburned soldiers withdrawn from North Africa were sent on manoeuvres in rainy Brittany, as if the Hundred Years’ War were about to resume. You’ll love this: by virtue of not dying since 1812, I was still listed (under the name of Guillaume Dieudonné) as an army reservist. Somehow, I was tracked down and served notice that, in the event of hostilities, I would be called up to serve as a military surgeon by the Conseil de Santé des Armées. The military were prepared to accept my qualifications and address me as ‘Doctor’. Thanks to seniority, I would be mustered in at the rank of major.
More than ever, the Marquis was convinced that the Vatican/Rothschild-funded Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith was coming for him. He changed addresses and gave out false ones, moving from bolthole to bolthole, but still intermittently bombarded me with dire warnings, predictions and worries. His elation at the rise of Dracula dissipated. He was sick with fear he would perish in the period of terror before establishment of the worldwide vampire utopia where we would be lords of all and the warm kept like cattle. To wait so long in shadow only to be staked or decapitated when the promised land was so close was a frustration that could not be borne.
As de Coulteray dashed about the city, I was in limbo. With my documents refused, I was an unperson – an undead unperson. Unless war was declared, my military status was as a secret weapon. Kept in an icehouse while governments denied its existence. Accustomed to shifts at the morgue and a full programme of lectures at Pitié-Salpêtrière, I found idleness not to my taste. I missed my studies, my work. I no longer had the company of the dead and my fellow ghouls. I just had ghosts.
I was even sorry to lose my benighted imaginary parents.
I thought about the Number – not the imaginary High Table of Vampire Elders. My Number. The Three.
Dafydd, Sergei, Annie.
Being known for what I was meant my victims were with me constantly. The quizzing of the ghouls would be repeated. It was not avoidable.
I have seen you kill a man, Charles. An unarmed man. Oh, I recognised an act of mercy. Like all doctors, I understand sometimes swift death is the only medicine.
I have never asked you how many others you have killed.
You understand what it is to be asked the question, though. Everyone who meets you and has a sense of your service to the Crown has an impulse – a child-brain urge – to ask.
I spent time in my own house. Neighbours crossed the road to avoid walking past my front door. Children were told to play in other streets away from the haunted house and the monster with the face of a girl. At Christmas, presents were thrown through my windows at odd hours.
A new year came: 1886.
A clearer picture of what was happening in England formed, as more news became available. Overseas post resumed. The new British stamps – printed in two colours! – excited almost as much comment as the letters that bore them. The Queen’s profile was minutely examined. Some claimed a tiny mark at the corner of Victoria’s mouth was a fang. British newspapers and publications again reached Paris. Fleet Street, obviously subject to official censorship, learned how to fit real stories between the lines of bland items about court affairs, parliamentary subcommittees and royal romances. The jingo papers turned virulently vampirish. ‘Shame the Nay-Sayers’, ‘Hang All Traitors’ and ‘Smash the Shoe-Throwers’ headlines ran above illustrations of Dracula looking grim, cruel and smug.
The boat train was reinstated for government officials and a very few journalists and dignitaries. De Coulteray couldn’t raise the exorbitant bribe that would have got him a seat though he told me other elders – the well-connected Countess Báthory and the snob Count von Krolock, for instance – secured first-class carriages and cabins for themselves and their entourages. They prospered under Dracula, ensconced in the finest London addresses, the Elephant’s Castle and the Earl’s Court. The Marquis believed he was snubbed because of his pishacha bloodline. Dorga was venerated in India by princes wh
en Transylvania was populated by cavemen and no Roman had set sandal in what would become Romania, but Carpathians were intolerant of ‘muddied’ Asian bloodlines.
After the royal marriage, the Liberal Gladstone resigned – or was made to resign – as prime minister. A snap election (with a very low turnout) was won by the Conservative Lord Salisbury, who immediately stood down and was replaced (controversially) by Lord Ruthven. An elder vampire, but a newborn Tory. His documents wouldn’t be scrutinised for fraud or forgery, despite a reputation as a rogue among rogues. Until he attained high office, other vampires wanted little to do with the eternal cad. If you let him visit your castle, he’d have the brass handles off your coffin while you were resting and couldn’t be trusted around your mistress, stableboy or a locked desk with your cheque book in it. Now he was Dracula’s Grand Vizier. Following unrest on the streets, Ruthven found it expedient to beseech the Prince Regent to step in. No sane person would appeal to Dracula for ‘calming measures’. The Carpathian Guard were deployed to support (then supplant) police forces and home regiments of the British armed forces. The French press noted the Guard were initially charged with protecting citizens from anarchists and crusaders, but took a broader view of their mission and conducted themselves like a conquering army. Parallels were drawn with Prussian behaviour in the late war. This was the crackdown.
After only a few months, there were new norms… and many new vampires. London theatres and pubs reopened. Vampires were everywhere, setting styles in costume and deportment. Famous faces disappeared briefly from the public eye to return as newborn vampires and were presented at court. There were drolleries about these debutantes and, yes, Oscar Wilde was mentioned often. Punch caricatured him crawling head-first down a wall and tangled in ivy. Famous beauties like Lillie Langtry were hailed as ‘preserved for the nation’ in the rotogravure while death notices in small print listed those whose turning ‘did not take’. Serious journals noted other famous names who disappeared and did not show up again in black velvet with sharper teeth and a red glint in their eye. Where was Adam Adamant? Friedrich Engels? Sherlock Holmes?
