Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard by Kim Newman

Author:Kim Newman [Newman, Kim]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General
ISBN: 9780857685360
Google: KH2_BgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Titan Books
Published: 2013-09-05T12:00:00+00:00

4

Penelope found out more about the other group.

One night, after visiting the infirmary to lend Nikita some fashion magazines, she bumped into a vampire she recognised from Europe. Baron Alexis Ziska. He pretended not to remember her.

Ziska had been in London in ’88 with the Prince Consort’s Carpathian Guard. He’d also hung about Otranto, a vague connection of Asa Vajda, Dracula’s annoying Moldavian fiancée. One of those carbon copy elders, he had cut his moustache and cloak too obviously in imitation of the Count. Since Dracula’s true death, the copy had faded. There were black smudges under his red-rimmed eyes.

‘Baron, we must catch up,’ she said.

Ziska grunted.

‘With each other’s news, I mean. What brings you here, to Purgatory?’

The vampire mumbled.

‘I have clearance,’ Penny reassured him. ‘I’m with the Shop.’

At mention of the agency, Ziska suppressed a flush of terror. He was a sender, leaking emotion all over the place. No wonder he was reduced to a hanger-on.

‘Have you found a friend, Lex?’ shouted someone from the ward. ‘Haul her in. She’s bound to be better company than you. Did you bring the fat mice, as I requested?’

The voice came from a bed behind black curtains. Ziska’s face darkened.

‘That sounds like an invitation,’ she said.

Ziska stamped into the ward. Penny tagged along and helped open the curtains.

‘My my, what a pretty one,’ said the thing in the bed. ‘You must introduce me.’

The patient was more coal than flesh, a living skeleton clad in black, cooked meat. The eyes were wetly mobile and the teeth sharp and white. Penny took the patient to be male, a vampire and on the way to recovery.

‘Baron Lajos Czuczron,’ said Ziska, ‘this is, ah, Lady Godalming.’

‘Penelope Churchward,’ she corrected, extending a hand. ‘Penny.’

Charcoal fingers took hers. She let Czuczron kiss her hand by pressing lipless teeth to her knuckles.

‘Enchanté, mademoiselle.’

Czuczron was another Carpathian, a Hungarian. She remembered the name. A sometime member of Dracula’s inner circle, he’d neglected to call on his old master in exile. An invitation to the Royal Wedding, sent care of his old regiment, had been politely declined. She understood he was among the few vampires to prosper under communism. If he was here, he must be on the outs in Budapest.

‘I regret offending your eyes with my present person. I am usually reckoned attractive. A dashing blade. I was staked out on a rock by ungrateful peasants and left for sunrise. Only the intervention of my good and faithful friends preserved me from the cruelty of true death.’

He was on a drip, like Nikita. She assumed he was getting ‘golden’ too.

‘Had I known flowers of undeath like yourself were to be found in America, I should have come to this Virgin Land years ago. It has been an awakening, my dear.’

Ziska hissed, trying to shut Czuczron up.

‘Come, Lex, we are all comrades. We are all nosferatu of the Old World. If this Shop wishes to help our cause, for whatever reasons, it would be impolite to shun them. Dearest Penny, I yearn to rise from this bed and hunt again.

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