Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha (15 page)

‘Bloody?’

‘No. Well, yes. There was blood. He had a silver wire, thick with the stuff. But his hands were red. Dye, or some sort of stain.’

‘Witnesses describe a red face. Not just a mask, though he wears a domino and a cowl. That used to be a fashion among the more unusual criminals of Paris — Fantômas, Irma Vep, Flambeau. Now, it’s a European tendency — Kriminal, Diabolik, Satanik, Killing. Absurd names, leotards, masks. A little like us, I suppose. These fellows never grew out of dressing up and playing pirates.’

‘He wasn’t playing. He was being.’

‘Yes, yes. Quite, quite. This one is of a different order. He’s not a thief. He takes no souvenirs. I don’t think he’s working through a private pattern, like most mad murderers. I believe him to be an assassin. He is the catspaw of a faction or individual. He kills because he is told to, and he spares some — like you or my old friend Kate Reed — because their deaths have not been included in a well worked-out plan.’

‘Who do you think is behind him?’

Beauregard smiled. ‘Now that’s the question, Commander Bond. If it’s not Smert Spionem and it’s not us, who does that leave? It’s a dreadful temptation to rope in Dracula, isn’t it?’

‘The victims are his friends.’

‘Friends? I doubt if he can have friends. But that’s a question for another night. Certainly, the dead elders are his contemporaries, even his supporters, connections, retainers.
Il principe
is capricious. He spread vampirism throughout the world, made it safe for the undead to live openly. Perhaps he has changed his mind and wishes to drive the undead back into the shadows.’

‘Anibas would have betrayed him.’

‘So would any of the dead elders. As a breed, they aren’t long on loyalty. Dracula has always commanded through fear, not love. He expects treachery at every turn, even feels there’s something wrong if it isn’t constantly lurking. Elders have strength of will, not personality.’

‘What about…?’

‘Geneviève? She’s unique. Haven’t you noticed?’

He had.

‘There are other players,’ Beauregard continued, ‘waiting in the wings, shuffling in the dark. Literally dozens of domestic political or religious factions. Leagues of Vampire Killers, underground or semi-public. Churches and banks and faiths and fancies. The Pope of Rome and the Mother of Tears. The victims are all elders. There are other ancients in the world, institutions which prize their histories. Perhaps some are jealous and wish to be unrivalled in their longevity. Now, there are only a handful of elders. Soon, there will be a great many more, as the new-borns of the ’80s and ’90s settle into permanence. Vampire elders will then be a very significant force. They might even be the ones to decide the shape of human history in the next millennium. We have always feared the rule of the dead.’

He swallowed brandy, and pondered.

There was a crash outside, in the hallway. The front door burst in.

The Walther PPK was out of its holster and in his hand. He crouched cat-like, alert. Beauregard rolled backwards, into shadow. Bond would have to look out for the old man. They might use him as a hostage.

Someone heavy lumbered down the corridor and stood at the door to the study. Clayface entirely filled the door-frame. It had no weapons but its own huge, thick-fingered hands. They were probably deadly enough. Bond fired twice into the fudgy mass of its head. Silver bullets hit with a sound like pebbles thrown into mud, and had about as much effect. The holes closed over. He tried firing at the heart area. No result, either.

‘The Star of David,’ shouted Beauregard.

He took aim on the amulet but something fast slammed his arm, bowling him over. His hand was stamped on and he lost the gun. A sharp toe-point jammed into the side of his head.

The ballerina had come over the balcony.

She kicked him, many times. It was a strange dance, frenzied but poised. He felt jabs of real pain as some sort of razor sliced through his clothes, stinging.

He rolled with the kicks and grabbed an ankle. Her leg felt like cold china. Her pump was tipped with a two-inch silver blade, smeared with garlic.

The knife neared his face. He needed all his strength to hold her off.

Looking up, he saw her pretty, blank face. Dots of red on bone-white cheeks, eyes blinking slowly like clockwork, sausage curls bobbing.

There was inhuman strength in this frail doll.

His elbows bent outwards. The knife almost touched his eye.

They must have a detailed dossier on him. He was of a bloodline susceptible to garlic.

‘Excuse me, Miss,’ Beauregard said.

The old man had scooped up the Walther and rolled his chair across the room, rucking up the carpet. He tapped the ballerina’s outstretched leg with the pistol, and held the barrel to her knee.

The ballerina’s painted expression didn’t change.

Beauregard pulled the trigger. The explosion of the gunshot was enormous, ear-ringing. The gun kicked in the old man’s hands and pushed him back in his wheelchair.

The ballerina’s knee exploded. Shards of china blasted all around. Oiled wires worked up and down inside her wound. Gears and cogs spilled out of the rupture. Her lower leg came loose.

She hopped back, still perfectly balanced. Wires unrolled from her loose shin, stretched tight, and yanked the lower leg and foot out of his hands. Clear oil spilled on the carpet.

The ballerina was a mechanical toy. All three of the team were artificial to some extent.

Bond climbed swiftly to his feet. Instinct had taken over. His fangs were fully extended and his bloodlust was up. Having escaped death, he must feed soon. In turning and training, his circuits had been rewired. After danger, he must have blood.

The ballerina, damaged but incapable of feeling pain, was still dangerous. The third assassin clambered over the balcony, snarling anger.

Beauregard’s chair was trapped by folds of carpet. The centenarian was out of the game, befuddled by the noise of the gun, and the suddenness of the whole thing.

Clayface had come into the room, and blocked the door.

Being big was no guarantee of toughness. Bond launched himself into the air and sank talons into the lumpy ruff that passed for a neck. He gripped the broad waist with his knees, opened wide his maw, and sank fangs into thick flesh, anticipating the rush of blood into his throat.

A muddy, dirty ichor trickled into his mouth. It was not blood.

Heavy arms clamped around him, holding him in an inescapable embrace. He felt strain in his lower back. He was about to be snapped in half.

The impression of a face was close to him. He saw the mouth was just a line scored in mud. The eyes were glittering pebbles in holes. There was life here, but nothing he could feed off or overwhelm. Knowing few men could best Bond, Brastov had sent inhuman assassins.

Beauregard shouted something.

Bond’s ears rang with the blood squeezed into his head. The throbbing was the low bass-line of an electric guitar, rumbling ominous yet driving chords, a signature-tune for death and danger.

He couldn’t understand. What was the old man yelling about?

The Star of David amulet was in front of his face. The assassin’s shoulder was ripped open, indented with the marks of his teeth. Inside, the flesh was wet soil, swarming to fill the hole and smooth over.

A few of Bond’s ribs snapped. Stabs of agony ran up his body.

‘The Star of David,’ Beauregard shouted again.

Bond had no feeling at all below the waist. His ribs knit together with the accelerated healing prowess of a vampire, but broke again and knitted out of true. Jagged pain scratched his heart and lungs.

He spat and spewed, voiding his mouth, and bit into the amulet. A mild sensitivity to religious objects stung his mouth. Clayface’s grip froze. Bond worried at the amulet, pulling it this way and that. He got a better mouth-grip and tore it away completely.

The semblance of life fled. Clayface became a soft statue.

Bond was dropped. He spat out the amulet and took a deep breath, inflating his lungs, expanding his ribcage. He hoped the bones would settle into their proper places.

The ballerina still hopped around, and the third assassin, the flatheaded man, was in the room. He took off his bowler hat.

Bond stood up, stepping to one side.

The bowler flew across the room like a razored discus. The assassin’s snarl showed steel. The hat smashed into the clay statue, embedding itself. The brim must have been reinforced.

Bond took the hat out of the mud wall of the statue’s chest and spun it back. The assassin batted it aside with a growl and loped across the room, arms outstretched. His boot-falls shook the floor.

Beauregard must have imperturbable neighbours.

The assassin paused a moment by the old man, looking down at him, thinking. He was the one with flickers of independent animal intelligence, able to deviate from the plan to take into account unforeseen factors. If it hadn’t been for Beauregard, either of the other killers would have finished Bond.

The assassin raised a hand, prepared to land a killing blow.

Calmly, Beauregard tossed the remainder of the brandy at the greenish face. The tall man shook his head like a dog, blinking and spitting. He was confused. Beauregard blew on his glowing cigar and flicked it up into the man’s face.

A puff of flame engulfed the assassin’s head, singeing his lank black hair to stubble. He clawed at the fire with black-nailed hands, roaring like an animal in pain, blundering around in a blazing panic.

Bond pushed over the statue, which shattered on the polished wood floor of the hallway, then waded through clay fragments towards the exploded front door.

He’d only just made it out of the flat when something landed on his back and clung. A leg wrapped around him, scissoring his ribs, abusing his recently broken bones.

Cold, stiff fingers took his head and shook it, as if trying to wrest it from his shoulders.

The ballerina sang as she tried to kill him, a high, perfect ululation. It blended with the thrumming of his blood, producing an exotic, threatening, promising song. A crimson wash rose over his vision. White porcelain arms, stained with trickling red, writhed to the blood-music.

He threw himself around the landing, slamming his back into the walls, trying to get rid of this strange toy.

The tall assassin, face blackened, stalked out of the flat. His steel teeth clicked together in a slow castanet rattle of death.

Bond floundered back and collided with the barred door of the lift cage.

Had the thug killed Beauregard before coming after him? That old man was the best in the business. He had understood what he was facing and known what to do. If Bond lived to be a hundred, he’d never match that.

He was unlikely to live to a hundred. Ten dagger-point nails were working their way through his gullet. He was on his knees, bent over backwards.

With his free hands, he scrabbled as far behind him as possible, reaching for the lift doors. His fingers brushed the loose bars. He stretched, extending his nails, and got a grip.

The doors parted and he heaved his shoulders, jamming the ballerina into the shaft. She freed one hand from his throat and grabbed a bar, bracing herself. He wriggled and pushed but couldn’t shift her further.

The tall assassin watched with malign interest, cunning sparking in his pained eyes.

There was a rattle inside the liftshaft. Someone was coming up.

10

CAT O’NINE TAILS

M
ildly distracted, Geneviève pressed the button for her landing and looked through her purse for her keys. Though not of a sun-shunning bloodline, she’d run late throughout the day and missed the bank. However the world might change, bankers were not about to alter their opening hours for the benefit of the nocturnal.

She was living off investments which yielded enough to cover her expenses. She was supposed to be getting familiar with Charles’s estate on the assumption that she’d soon be its trustee. She’d made him swear not to leave it all to her. A particularly distasteful species of vampire gold-digging involved ensnaring hapless mortals to the point where they bequeathed you all their worldly goods, waiting for the inevitable, then cashing in and looking around for the next prospect. She didn’t want the world to remember Charles Beauregard as her dupe.

The lift ascended with its usual clanks and rattles. She found her keys. Something in the air caught her attention.

Spilled blood. Spent energy. A hint of cordite.

Damn. It was starting all over again. Couldn’t she leave Charles alone for an afternoon?

Just before her floor, the lift shrieked to a stop. Then, chains hauling, it rose again, by inches. Metal and something else screamed.

Through the cage door, she saw a dangling dress. A broken white mannequin leg kicked.

People were on the landing. Hamish Bond, and a flat-headed goon she didn’t recognise.

A panic hand took her heart.

Was Charles hurt? Worse?

She wasn’t ready. Despite his gentle drifting away, she wasn’t ready to lose him. Just a few more weeks. Days, even. Things had to be settled first. If this was love, it was horrible.