Anno Dracula (60 page)

Crainic thought the game had shifted again, and he had been duped into standing in the wrong corner. Newcastle shrugged.

‘And the roads are bloody impossible,’ continued the Baroness. ‘This is not how things will be run in the coming vampire state, mark my words.’

Even Orlok’s talons curled in irritation.

‘Now, if Holly would come back,’ said Alucard.

The Baroness Meinster shut her eyes and Holly Sargis opened them. The shift was instant, over in a ripple. James Cameron couldn’t have done better.

Newcastle pantomimed thigh-slapping astonishment and delight.

‘An astoundingly successful disguise.’

‘A poor word, Don Sebastian. Holly does not
disguise,
she
becomes.
As far as is possible, we were in the presence of the genuine Baroness Meinster. Or Feraru.’

In the Baroness’s dress and hat, Feraru sat there.

Then the famous rock singer.

The child.

Kit Carruthers.

The businessman.

Holly took off the coat. Black angel wings extended through vents in her blouse.

Alucard’s protégé had an unexpected face in her repertoire. He understood how close Holly and Kit had been, how much they’d lived in each other’s skins. Kit was not a welcome revenant, but it was as well to know he was there.

Most of the company applauded. Frost flapped his hands like seal-flippers and thought of feeding. Newcastle wanted to find out if Holly had representation. Iorga was sadly amazed at the things young people could do these days.

‘I trust you are all convinced we can get close to Baron Meinster.’

A chorus of yeses and appreciatory grunts. Alucard made eye-contact with the unforthcoming heavy-hitters, Orlok and Barlow. They understood.

Another demonstration was needed, though.

Dracula rose in him again, a black cloud inside his eyes, commanding. Alucard became a passenger in his own brain.

The Father surveyed the company, saw the weaknesses, the fears, the potential and actual betrayals. He remembered the slice of silver through his neck and took Penny’s secret from her: she’d been there at Dracula’s last death, sharing responsibility. He saw the envy that curled around the loyal Iorga’s heart, the dreadful need to be a man he was not. He accepted Holly as his get. He drew on the fealty of the other vampires, elders all. It was as in the old days, when his lieutenants followed him without asking themselves whether they did so out of love, fear, ambition, nobleness or need. They recognised him as the dark star of their world and pledged their swords to his dragon standard.

Dracula was a memory again.

Alucard stood and looked at the quieted group. They had seen his true face, the face behind his eyes. Barlow, the most reticent, all but whistled. Any ties he had to the Shop were torn. Newcastle saw him as the ultimate escape route, the one that led to mastery of his destiny, an end to running and hiding. All those in this room made before 1888 were his entirely. Frost would stick with whoever kept him bloated with blood, cash and drac. Penny and Holly, who could never truly accept Alucard as the King of the Cats Incarnate, were vital to the plan. Their flickers of independence and initiative were strengths that the blindly loyal or devoutly selfish could never have.

‘One more thing,’ said Alucard, lifting the bust of Irving Thalberg as he had on the night he had accepted it from Richard Zanuck, cradling it by the base. ‘This
is
an Academy Award.’

Frost laughed at the incongruity, but the chuckle died.

Alucard stalked around the table.

‘It is an honour bestowed by peers,’ he said.

Visser was drenched with sweat, a tangy stench all around him. Newcastle and Iorga, either side of the warm man, edged away from him, shifting their chairs.

‘It recognises “the most consistent high quality of production”.’

Alucard stood behind Visser, looking down at his bald pate. Piggy eyes turned up at him, black raisins in a dripping mask of dough.

‘Sometimes, my friends,’ Alucard said, to the vampires in the room, fangs sharp and exposed, ‘we
nosferatu
forget what we are. We have worked hard for acceptance, to find a place in this world without Dracula. Now we should remember everything, we should not be ashamed. We should exult.’

Visser hawked up a nervous laugh, then a grin grew. He began a shrug.

Alucard brought the Thalberg down on Visser’s head, scraping skin from skull. A blurt of blood splattered across the polished tabletop. Shocked and instantly high, Frost licked his lips and restrained himself from lunging. Alucard picked the twitching private eye up one-handed and hefted his considerable bulk onto the table, dragging him feet-first along its length. Others stood up, knocked over chairs, and got out of his way. Visser’s kicking cowboy boot smashed a jug of
sanguinello,
which slicked the table under him. Alucard let go of Visser’s damp shirt-front and smashed his face with the now-messy award, raining three precise blows to obliterate nose and eyes.

Alucard bent over and chewed a hole in Visser’s wattles. He drank the blood of the dying man and stood aside, nose and chin red. The others stood, red in their hungry eyes and sharp white in their humourless smiles. He was proud of his monsters.

‘Be vampires again,’ he ordered.

They fell on the warm man, and drained him.

‘Come to me, my Patty-Pat,’ said the apparently youthful fellow on the heart-shaped bed, extending a lacquer-nailed hand. ‘My babies have missed you ever so lots. We were ready to curl up and diedy-die, were we not, preciouses? Yes, we were.’

Baron Meinster was propped up on a dozen red satin pillows. They looked like cherry chocolates from
Land of the Giants.
The vampire poodles were attached to his quilted violet bed-jacket, one as an epaulette nuzzling his ear with a fat worm of crimson tongue, the other a brooch hung on his chest with paw-hooks. The Baron’s elaborate hair was set with papers and pins. On his forehead, giving him a four-eyed look, was a pink velvet sleep-mask with Audrey Hepburn eyelashes.

Patricia Rice, the tiniest guiding spark of Holly inside her mind, kicked off court shoes and padded across the deep pile pink carpet. The Baron always insisted on hotel rooms reserved for visiting royalty, but the Chateau Marmont had palmed off their ‘Honeymoon Princess’ suite on him. If the gesture was supposed to be an insult, it sailed right under his radar. He adored the riot of pink and gilt, the red and white flower arrangements, the heart-shaped Charles and Diana portrait. The would-be King of the Cats was besotted with the Princess of Wales and read every magazine that put a picture of her on the cover. Patricia would cheerfully have chewed through Di’s windpipe.

She slipped onto the bed and close to the Baron, who kissed her cheek and nipped her neck. A poodle got in the way and squealed.

‘Did-ums hurt ums-self?’ he cooed, kissing the rat-sized dog and petting it gently, licking through its soft fur with a long tongue and gazing with love into its huge, watery eyes. The dogs were fed only on golden, a damfool expense.

If it came to it, Penny advised Holly to lie back and think of Transylvania, but it wouldn’t. The Meinster marriage was traditional European politics, more an alliance than a passion. Each time she wore the Baroness’s self-shell, Holly was surprised by how much of Meinster’s business he entrusted the woman with. The Baron’s talent was persuading other people, usually women, to do things he found tedious.

It was a mistake to think of Meinster as dumb. Foolish, perhaps, but not dumb. He’d lived for decades underground, surviving Puritans, Nazis and commies. He had come through a cluster-massacre of vampire elders in 1923 and not been put off his political ambitions. He’d been raked over by the scandal sheets for men’s room arrests. He’d shrugged off the waspish witticisms of his ex-lover, Herbert von Krolock, who had a Vegas nightclub act built on gossip about him. Not so long ago, American news media had called Meinster a terrorist - he’d occupied an embassy and taken hostages. Only a concerted press campaign had reformed him into a freedom fighter.

When Dracula died, the Poodle Prince was best prepared to step up and become King of the Cats. Even now, Meinster knew he was in an undeclared contest with John Alucard for the title, and that moves were being made against him. Patricia was supposed to have been his eyes and ears in the enemy camp.

‘Have they got Crainic, Patty-Pat?’

‘Yes,’ she allowed.

‘I knew it. When they had Feraru killed, it was obvious. The Englishman was the only one who’d have stayed loyal to the Cause. We can buy back Striescu if we want to. But Crainic will have to be convinced. Be careful around him,
liebling.’

‘I’m not afraid. Not with you to protect me.’

‘So you shouldn’t be. But be cautious. I am inside these people, all of them. I know what they’re like. Waverers in the wind. Out for themselves above all. No sense of the worth of the Cause. To them, Transylvania is just a place name on a map. The soil isn’t in their veins. They’ll serve us, but only if we are strongest.’

The poodle at his chest chewed his jacket. He stroked its ears flat.

‘And who’s King of the Cats?’ he asked the dog.

The poodle yelped a sound that might have been ‘You are!’

‘Yes I are, aren’t I? Isn’t that clever, Patty-Pat. I’ve been training my babies to speak. When I am King, I shall declare them first ministers just to see the looks on the sour faces of Crainic and his cronies. And you shall be my Queen.’

Patricia was excited by the prospect.

Once, long ago, she’d been dead set against queens and kings. Now she was on the point of becoming royalty. It was an inevitability of history. She’d been wrestling with that even in her Marxist days. This was just a logical outcome of her thinking.

Her coronation robe would be a stunner. She would make Meinster forget Princess Di.

‘This John Alucard? What is he like?’

The name cut through Patricia like a code-word and woke up Holly. She looked at the big vampire baby in the bed with her and picked her words carefully.

‘Powerful,’ she said. ‘Not old, like Orlok or Iorga, but of good bloodline. He reminds me of you. Some say he is Dracula’s get. Like you.’

Baron Meinster’s face was a paper mask. He claimed he’d been personally turned by the Count, but details changed with each telling.

‘But he is an American? Dracula never set foot here.’

‘He seems American. Perhaps in the War?’

‘Ah yes, the War. So much goes back to that.’

‘You should meet him.’

Meinster wasn’t hot for it. Holly had known he wouldn’t be. The Baron was torn between dealing with Alucard through unreliable tools and risking a face-to-face which might end up with him forced to back down.

‘He likes you, though, Patty-Pat. And you’ll never go the way of Crainic. I made you, and I alone care for you. We are equal partners in our future.’

She stroked a poodle’s head.

The thing bit her, leaving two red marks in her hand. It had pinprick fangs. The bite stung.

She almost shifted, almost showed Holly’s face.

‘Naughty beast,’ chided Meinster, indulgently, wiping the dog’s bloodied mouth. ‘Mustn’t snack off Patty-Pat. She’s ours to play with, not yours.’

She laughed, Patricia’s high-pitched (annoying) laugh.

‘What is it, my darling?’

‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘The bite tickled.’

The poodle, alone of all creatures, saw through Patricia to the Holly beneath.

The Rock
cell-block set filled the Monroe Stahr Stage, largest soundstage on the Miracle lot, like a black cathedral: slab after slab of fibreglass granite, tier after tier of plastic silver-barred doors, a steady glisten of wet-look gel. Batteries of coloured lights came on, casting atmos shadows throughout the vaulted space. Massed smoke machines choked out dragon-breath clouds of oily grit.

Alucard and Gorse stood on the studio floor.

Christopher Neville, this week’s career limbo director, was up on the camera crane arguing with his operator. Lucky Cameron, Sylvester Stallone’s ‘unbreakable’ stunt double, walked through a fight rehearsal with Brion James, Brian Thompson and Jenette Goldstein. The villain actors were hampered in action by the futurist Nazi body-armour the wardrobe department decided looked better on prison screws than the bland blues Alcatraz guards actually wore. Caine, the combat advisor, showed the players how to make quarterstaff- and sword-moves with lengths of pipe or electrified night-sticks.