by Kim Newman
She padded on, leaving shallow prints of tiny feet.
‘Does it ever bother you that you can’t do anything?’ Dru asked me, and perhaps also Kostaki. ‘Turn to pudding or wake up shrubbery or see through walls? Weep tears of gold or breathe out steam? Memorise railway timetables before they’re published? Play at being a big spider or a hive of bees?’
‘Staying alive is enough of a talent for me,’ I said.
‘It’s as well to be satisfied… but not too satisfied.’
Kostaki walked on, not wanting to be detained by conversation. As ever, I had a sense Dru was saying something important if only I troubled to listen and work out hidden clues.
Popejoy caught up with us. His striped shirt was stretched over his brawny torso.
‘Hello, sailor,’ said Dru, with naked interest.
Bashfully, he took off his hat and went ak ak ak ak ak ak.
Dru tittered at whatever he’d said with sly, flirty encouragement. ‘I’ll wager you’ve a sweetheart in every porthole,’ she said.
‘I loves to go swimmin’ with all of the wimmin,’ he admitted, bashfully.
Popejoy blushed, shifted his weight from one foot to the other and put his hat back on. His pipe-bowl glowed and smoke seeped out of his mangled mouth. Death Larsen’s rope-end twisted his face like putty. I’d not been able to make him pretty. I trusted he wouldn’t find a clean mirror and sue me for malpractice. At sea, before Larsen decided to take him down a peg or two, he was often assigned extra watch duty because of his horizon-scanning vision. He’d have to find something else to be known for. Thumping ‘palookas’ and making goo-goo eyes at weird thin women?
A rift opened nearby and a row of warehouses fell into it.
A few long-limbed yōkai tried to crawl out of the crack. Black Ocean soldiers kicked them back in again. The edge crumbled and collapsed, and masked men tumbled into the chasm too. Any dragon hatchling under Yōkai Town wouldn’t go short of snacks.
‘It’s getting worse,’ I told Kostaki. ‘As you said it would. Everything here is trying to kill us.’
23
A KNIGHT TEMPLAR IV
Kostaki walked through a dream of battle.
Lady Geneviève was fetched. Not rescued – she would have been safer where she was. But fetched. The Princess needed her. And so did…
Kostaki could not remember who else needed the lady elder.
‘Ten thousand years!’
A pikeman charged out of drifting smoke, yelling. Kostaki stepped aside and slashed the backs of the soldier’s legs, cutting deeply into meat and muscle. His battle cry ascended sharply in pitch. He staggered on like a drunk, blood spurting through rush-matting puttees. His pike angled down and stuck into a pile of bricks. He slumped to his knees, the fight cut out of him.
‘Ten thousand years,’ he repeated.
Someone else killed the soldier. Goblin yōkai gathered to drink from his still-bleeding legs.
Kostaki’s instinct was to kick the jackals away. There was no discipline here. No chain of command. Even without earthquakes and icebergs, the whole camp was the Teahouse of Blue Leaves at chucking-out time. Every man for himself and God against all. East against West, yōkai against vampires, Christian against Buddhist, bird-head against frog-face. If the Black Ocean murder party fell, the prisoners would obligingly kill each other. His job done for him, Majin only need step onto the field when the smoke cleared to finish off the wounded and execute the survivors.
Kostaki was ashamed to be part of such a leaderless rabble. Dracula would not have allowed this.
Had the enemy taken their queen? Cut off the guiding light?
Princess Casamassima was under ice. But not yet a ghost, for all her insubstantiality. She survived. She was not an ornamental vampire.
In Panama City, Kostaki had seen her feed.
On a busy street, just after moonrise, a sunburned muchacho approached, doffing a big gold hat and showing a big gold grin, humbly recommending a cantina where the lovely señora would be well served. Christina tried to step around the pavement pest, but Gold Hat jabbed a pistol into her back and shoved her into an alley. He pushed her face to a wall and tore a brooch from her lapel. Then he pressed his pelvis against her rump, reaching into her blouse. She hissed. ‘Ay, Chihuahua, Carlos,’ exclaimed the bandit, ‘the gringa is a spitfire! I love it when they bite!’ Carlos – a pockmarked, tattooed brigand – held a razor to Kostaki’s throat. Christina, slippery as a wet mink, twisted in Gold Hat’s grip and slid long teeth into his jugular vein. Gulping his blood as if drinking from a fountain, she wound herself around her assailant. Kostaki heard his ribs pop in her python embrace. Razor Carlos scraped his useless blade across Kostaki’s neck. Christina glowed as Gold Hat blanched. His skin, hair and moustache – even his eyes! – turned the colour of milk. The shining Princess didn’t just blanch his flesh. His colourful patterned serape became white enough to be used as a flag of surrender. Kostaki spat blood in Razor Carlos’s face. The cur ran off, calling to all the saints and the Virgin herself for protection. The Princess rose from her impromptu feast, and pinned her brooch back on. Briefly, through a film of blood, her front teeth flashed gold.
‘I love it when they die,’ she said. Death’s blood turned her aura into a rainbow. They left the corpse in the alley for the dogs and the police. He had to talk the Princess out of visiting the recommended cantina. One bled-white cutpurse was of no consequence, but a roomful of albino dead would be ostentatious.
Since Panama, Christina Light had only become more formidable. In their first battle, Majin gave the Princess a red eye and a dead arm. That wouldn’t deter her from a rematch. She got stronger and stranger with each passing night. Most shapeshifters were there and back but she was on and on and on.
He imagined her smiling with Lieutenant Majin’s mouth. Wearing his cape, cap and gloves.
It could happen. A vampire like that was dangerous enough to respect.
She would be hard to break, but worth the effort. The Master would make Lady Light First among Three. With Geneviève and Miss Zark.
That hit Kostaki like a bullet. Not his thoughts – not a thing he would ever think – not as he was now.
But soon.
A cloaked bat-shadow fell on him. Not on the ground around him. But on his mind.
A human-headed pig trotted at speed down the road, panicked and grunting, a deep cut across his face and sword-slashes on his flanks.
The blood was gold.
No, red!
Gold.
He remembered Dorakuraya bleeding gold.
He remembered something else… something more.
A vision and a reward. Justice done, and a restitution.
Dracula had spoken with him. Had given him his orders.
He was a Templar, and he had his quest. By the square, by the level, by the plumb rule, by the compasses, by the all-seeing eye. A monster to be slain! A witch to be brought to heel. A master to serve. An empire to be won.
Was that real? He no longer knew. It might have come to him in delirium. After so long a fast, dreams were death’s blood to him. An intoxicant, sustenance, a necessity.
Until further orders, this was his command – even if he commanded only himself.
More pikemen charged at him – screaming, clumsy, maddened. He executed them with precision, cutting so lightly it took moments for them to realise they were dead. Blood blossomed from arterial wounds, spurted from pricked veins, leaked from deep stabs. His fangs, sharp as his carrack, were unblooded – aching ivory, unsheathed and deadly. Still more masked enemies came. Samurai with swords, riflemen with fixed bayonets, knife-fighters. More skilled, just as easy to kill.
He shrugged off arrows. This was his old life again! His face was flecked with blood. His bald pate, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. His fangs sliced into his lips. He spat at the foe.
Beneath the fearsome demon masks were frightened men. Many turned and ran, but that did not save them. He cut spines as easily as thr
oats.
As he fought, Kostaki sang one of Danny Dravot’s songs:
‘The Dragon’s Son goes forth to war
A golden crown to gain;
His blood-red banner streams afar—
Who follows in his train?
To meet the tyrant’s brandished steel
The lion’s gory mane;
Who’ll bow their heads the death to feel
To follow in his train.’
Others fell in behind him. Popejoy, sleeves rolled up, delighted to be in a real roughhouse fight at last. Miss Zark, twirling her daggertopped umbrella. Invisible Suzan, a sensual absence in drifting smoke, triple-pronged sai floating at arm’s length. Smiler Watson, grinning in terror, swearing at Pathans, not knowing Tokyo from the Khyber Pass. Arcueid Moonstar, with a slingshot and a drawstring bag of marbles. The defrocked priest Rikard Moritz, whirling a chain with the skill of a dock-front rowdy. Two parrot warriors, with trumpet-barrelled rifles. Meiko, his least favourite bakeneko, claws out, lasciviously eyeing him sideways. Yōkai Kostaki didn’t know, vampires he did. An arrowhead formation, with him at the tip. Black Ocean marauders fell before them – tossed aside, stabbed or torn, unmasked, trampled underfoot, their ‘ten thousand years’ cut short.
His comrades sang their own battle songs, joining their voices with his.
‘I am what I am, and that’s all that I am,’ sang Popejoy – cracking masks with punches to faces. Moritz sang the ‘Dies Irae’. Smiler knew Danny’s song, with different words. Miss Zark counterpointed with a music hall song:
‘“Wotcher”, all the neighbours cried—
“Who yer gonna meet, Bill,
Have yer bought the street, Bill?”
Laugh – I thought I should ’ave died…
Knock’d ’em in the Old Kent Road.’
Then the tip was separated from the arrow.
Kostaki was too far out in front. A rift cracked across the street, cutting him off from the others. Meiko hissed and pointed in warning.
Kostaki turned to look, just as something slammed into his chest. He went down on his bad knee, momentarily blind from pain.
He looked up at a samurai in filthy patchwork robes. His mask was made from human faces – several men and at least one woman. A striped mane streamed from a skullcap of stitched-together scalps. His weapon was a slaughterhouse hammer.
Kostaki parried the next blow with the flat of his carrack, feeling the impact in his whole arm. He let the hammer’s handle slide down the blade to get pinched in one of the hilt’s crab-claws. With a practised wrist-twist, he yanked the sledgehammer from the samurai’s hands.
The slaughterman produced two long skewers and aimed them at Kostaki’s chest.
Then… the samurai toppled, felled like a tree.
Smoke and dust cleared. Kostaki saw a vampire standing over him, sword in hand.
Grinning, Komori stuck out his free paw and pulled Kostaki up.
Mr Bats had saved his life – or, at least, his face. The slaughterman wouldn’t wear any of his skin.
Men and monsters fought all about him – which was he?
The earth bucked and more buildings fell.
He tasted blood on his lips – his own, and the men he’d killed. After so dry a season, even the merest pinch of blood was lightning behind his eyes.
He felt himself to be invincible. Here, at last, he admitted it. He was what he was.
A vampire. That was all.
He thirsted.
24
YOKAI TOWN, DECEMBER 22, 1899 (CONTINUED)
The gate was open, but no one escaped through it. Oni-soldiers, more disciplined than the first wave, marched in with rifles. The wounded tried to crawl away, over the dead. They were crushed under boots or jabbed with pikes.
From the head of the statue, Lieutenant Majin conducted carnage. Phantom flames poured from his seiman sigils.
I was close enough to see his face. As smug and calm as at the Suicide Garden. He was feeding off this explosion of hatred, death and terror. He was just another vampire. Butterflies whirled about his cloak. Bullets evaporated before they reached him.
Skirmishes raged through the streets of Yōkai Town.
On Mermaid Ancestor Place, amid overturned carts and strews of trampled produce, I ran into an unmasked Black Ocean soldier bleeding so profusely my fangs pricked like nails. His hands pressed folds of flesh that used to be his cheeks.
Someone had given Kuchisake a pair of shears.
The soldier went down on his knees, pale from loss of blood, and hung his head. His traditional coiffure – shaven pate and tightly folded queue – came undone. Mr Yam bit into his hackles and sucked, chewing thick neck and shoulder muscles. The Black Ocean man dropped his hands away from his face and his jaw fell off.
Had he thought Kuchisake pretty or not?
Soused on death’s blood, the jiang shi detached his mouth from the corpse and kicked it aside.
I got back on my feet and ran onwards.
I found Kostaki fighting, back to back with Mr Bats. Sabre and katana, against the Black Ocean. Vampires and yōkai alike rallied to their lead. Dancing sai – wielded by unseen hands – speared the breastbones of masked men, lifting them in the air then throwing them aside. We gained ground step by step, even as it buckled and shook under us. I parried sword strokes and tried to slip through the battle without getting hurt or hurting anyone.
Most of our party pressed towards the statue. I scouted back towards the temple. I assumed Christina would be there. She had, after all, sent for me. Dru came along, dragging her new beau. As she hung from his swollen arm, Popejoy punched oni-soldiers off their feet. We reached the lower slopes of the new-formed ice mountain. Higo Yanagi – woman and tree – were rooted, drifts piling up around them.
Popejoy thumped a big-bellied, fierce-bearded bruiser who was going after Higo with an axe. The willow woman sighed. The sailor had made another conquest. It must be the tight striped sleeveless shirt. Would Dru be jealous? Both ladies cosied up to their protector as he stood his ground. Popejoy squared off against the amateur lumberjack. He made fists the size of medicine balls. Sumo wrestling versus bare-knuckles pugilism. They traded mighty blows and fearsome holds. Popejoy got as good as he gave.
Higo watched the fight, hands knitted, eyes wide with adoration. Dru, distracted again, sat cross-legged on a drift and drew nursery pictures in the snow with a twig. A happy cat. A house with a curl of smoke. A mouse with a sword. An angel, radiating lines like a picture-book sun. A big clock, nearing midnight. A dragon. Only Drusilla could discover a new craze in the middle of a war.
An unmasked, flushed oni-soldier came at her, swinging the bearded grappler’s axe. She put up her hand in a halt gesture. Willow branches wrapped around the impudent art critic, hauling him off his feet. The axe fell from his grip. Higo’s tendrils grew inside the soldier like cancerous weeds and poked out through his eyes. Dru used his blood to colour in her pictures.
‘In the song about the Ice Lady, the most important person has no name,’ said Dru.
I paid attention, which is what she wanted.
Dru used blood to dot the eyes of her mouse. ‘The School Mouse,’ she said. ‘One of the ten tiny tots… and not here yet.’
She’d said something about a mousey girl once. Was this that again?
‘Christina will have her to tea… or have her for tea. I can’t quite make it out.’
I was suddenly surrounded by thin wooden-faced fellows with sticks. They looked like Mr Punches stretched out on a rack, long-featured as Easter Island statues, with spikes in their shoulders and nails through their hands. They danced on a web of wires. I glanced up, expecting a jorōgumo and saw a black-eyed little girl squatting in Higo’s branches, just above the dangling dead man. Her dress was purple velvet and bright little buttons sparkled on her boots. Many layers of gauzy veil were wired into her explosion of ringlets.
Tsunako Shiki. Kostaki’s little pest.
I cut wires, but n
ot the right ones. Tsunako laughed as I was ensnared and strung up by her apparatus, a reluctant addition to her cast of puppets. My arms and legs jerked as she twitched wires. Using a throat-swizzle, she squawked, ‘That’s the way to do it!’ and laughed – like merry hell clearing its throat – as her toys repeatedly hit me with batons. The blows weren’t strong, but I hated this game. Kostaki was right about Tsunako. Dru saw my antics and, clapping with unhelpful delight, sang, ‘Wiv a ladder and some glarses, you could see the ’Ackney Marshes, if it wasn’t for the ’owses in between!’ Wires bit my wrists and ankles and I nearly dropped the katana. Then Tsunako lost interest and let me go. Puppets fell on the snow, unstrung and cracked. I crawled out of a tangle of wire.
What was that child playing at?
A roar went up near the statue. I was caught in a crowd of combatants, surging away from the ice mountain. I fought against the tide for a moment, but gave in and was swept towards the gate. Over the heads of angry yōkai, I saw Majin, outlined by red smoke – still in command.
Francesca Brysse and a cadre of bleary, just-out-of-the-coffin vampires tore through a guard post at the foot of the statue-tower, glutting themselves on Black Ocean blood. Sava Savanović’s severed head was kicked out of the scrum, still wearing his knit cap. Few of our newly awakened refugees were armed with anything but teeth and nails. They had not expected to be hauled out of lassitude and tossed into a pitched battle. Some – our complement of murderers and barbarians – thrived on a chance to let loose the wolf in their hearts. They killed without conscience, fed without a second thought. Others – out of favour with Dracula because they strived to live as civilised men and women – would be crippled by shame if they survived the night. They had no choice but to act like monsters.
What had Christina told the awakened? If she’d told them anything.
Where was the Princess? I couldn’t hear her in my head.
We pushed oni-soldiers almost to the gate. Brysse rallied the vampires behind her. A mass break-out was possible until Majin decreed the lid be clamped on the kettle. Wheels turned and chains pulled the heavy gate shut. Masked men now trapped in Yōkai Town had a moment to panic before they were overwhelmed, disarmed and killed. Brysse howled in savage frustration, blood thick on her face like war paint.
