Anno Dracula

A DYNAMITE PARTY

Look at them,' said von Klatka, nodding at the wagon. 'Terrified of us, are they not? It is good, no?'

Von Klatka was enjoying himself too much. The Carpathian Guard had been called into the park too late to do much more than gloat. It was the best kind of victory, Kostaki reflected, with spoils but no losses. The police had already rounded up and penned most of the trouble-makers.

A row of worried faces peered through the bar-like slats of the nearest wagon. It held the women. Most wore white vestments with red crosses on the front.

'Christian Crusaders!' von Klatka sneered, 'fools!'

'We were the Christians once,' Kostaki said. 'When we followed Prince Dracula against the Turk.'

'An old battle, my comrade. There are new enemies to be conquered.'

He approached the wagon. The prisoners whimpered, cringing away from the slats. Von Klatka grinned and snarled. Some woman stifled screams and von Klatka laughed. Was there honour in this?

Kostaki saw a familiar face among the milling policemen.

'Scotsman,' he shouted, 'hail and well met.'

Inspector Mackenzie turned from his conversation with a turnkey and saw Kostaki bearing down on him. 'Captain Kostaki,' Mackenzie acknowledged, tapping the brim of his hat. 'You've missed the merriment.'

Von Klatka prodded between the bars of the wagon, a naughty child in the zoo. One of the prisoners fainted and her comrades called for God or John Jago to protect them.

'Merriment?'

Mackenzie snorted bitterly. 'You might think it so. Not enough blood spilled for your tastes, I imagine. No one killed.'

'I am sure the omission will be remedied. There must be ringleaders.'

'Examples will be made, Captain.'

Kostaki sensed the warm policeman's discomfort, his swallowed anger. Few alliances truly lasted. It must be difficult for this man to reconcile his duties with his loyalties. 'I respect you, Inspector.'

The Scotsman was surprised.

'Have a care,' Kostaki continued. 'These are awkward times. All positions are precarious.'

Von Klatka reached into the wagon and tickled a shrinking girl's ankle. He enjoyed his sport. He turned to Kostaki, grinning for approval.

A vampire emerged from the shadows of the park. Kostaki immediately saluted. General Iorga  -  a blusterer if ever there was  -  had been caught in the rioting; now, he strode about, with that arrogant devil Hentzau in tow, as if fresh from winning the Battle of Austerlitz. Iorga grunted to get von Klatka's attention and was rewarded with another salute. He was one of those officers, as common in the armies of the living as of the un-dead, who need constant reassurance of their importance. What of his time was not spent snivelling to his superiors was taken up with being beastly to his subordinates. For four hundred years, Iorga had vowed eternal fealty to the cause of Dracula, and for as long he had secretly hoped someone would hoist the impaler on one of his own stakes. The General saw himself as King of the Vampires. In this, he was alone: set beside the Prince, General Iorga was a featherweight.

'There will be a celebration in the barracks tonight,' Iorga told them. 'The Guard has triumphed.'

Mackenzie shifted his hat to shade his disgusted face, but did not contradict the General in his poaching of credit for the rout of the rioters.

'Von Klatka,' Iorga said. 'Cut out half a dozen of those warm women and escort them to our barracks.'

'Yes sir,' von Klatka replied.

The prisoners cried and prayed. Von Klatka made a great show of leering at each of the prisoners, rejecting this one as too old and fat, that one as too thin and stringy. He called Kostaki over for an added opinion but he pretended not to hear.

Iorga and Hentzau strode off, capes flapping behind them. The General aped the Prince's dress, though he was too plump to carry it off properly.

'He reminds me of Sir Charles Warren,' Mackenzie said. 'Struts around spitting orders with no idea what it's like out here at the sharp end.'

'The General is a fool. Most above the rank of Captain are.'

The policeman chuckled. 'As are most above the rank of Inspector.'

'We can agree on that.'

Von Klatka made his choices and the turnkey helped him haul the girls  -  for they tended to be the youngest  -  out of the wagon. They clung together, shivering. Their vestments were unsuitable for a chilly night.

'Good fat martyrs they make,' said von Klatka, pinching the nearest cheek.

The turnkey produced handcuffs and chains from the wagon and began to bind the chosen together. Von Klatka slapped one on the rear and laughed like a gay devil. The girl fell to her knees and prayed for deliverance. Von Klatka bent over and poked his red tongue into her ear. She reacted with comic disgust and the Captain was seized by convulsions of laughter.

'You, sir,' one of the women said to Mackenzie, 'you're warm, help us, save us...'

Mackenzie was uncomfortable. He looked away, putting his face in the dark again.

'I apologise,' Kostaki said. 'This is an absurdity. Azzo, get those women to the barracks. I shall join you later.'

Von Klatka saluted and dragged the girls off. He sang a shepherd's song as he led his flock away. The Guard were quartered near the Palace.

'You should not be asked to stand by for such things,' Kostaki told the policeman.

'No one should.'

'Perhaps not.'

The wagons trundled off, the prisoners to be distributed around London's jails. Kostaki assumed most would end up on stakes at Tyburn or put to hard labour in Devil's Dyke.

He was alone with Mackenzie. 'You should become one of us, Scotsman.'

'An unnatural thing?'

'What is more unnatural? To live, or to die?'

'To live off others.'

'Who can say they do not live off others?'

Mackenzie shrugged. He had out a pipe and filled it with tobacco.

'We have much in common, you and I,' Kostaki said. 'Our countries have been devoured. You, a Scotsman, serve the Queen of England, and I, a Moldavian, follow a Prince of Wallachia. You are a policeman, I a soldier.'

Mackenzie lit his pipe and sucked in smoke. 'Are you a soldier before or after you're a vampire?'

Kostaki considered.

'I should like to think I am a soldier. Which are you first, policeman or warm?'

'Alive, of course.' His pipe-bowl glowed.

'So, you have more kinship with this Jack the Ripper than with, say, Inspector Lestrade?'

Mackenzie sighed. 'You have me there, Kostaki. I confess it. I'm a copper first and a living man second.'

'Then, I repeat myself: join us. Would you leave our gift to braggarts like Iorga and Hentzau?'

Mackenzie considered. 'No,' he said, at last. 'I'm sorry. Maybe when I'm near death, I'll see things differently. But the Lord God didn't make us vampires.'

'I believe the contrary.'

There was noise in the near distance. Shouts of men, screams of women. Steel on steel. Something breaking. Kostaki began to run. Mackenzie tried hard to keep pace. The din came from the direction von Klatka had taken. Mackenzie clutched his chest and gasped. Kostaki left him behind and covered the distance in moments.

After sprinting through bushes, he found the scuffle. The girls were loose and von Klatka was on the ground. Five or six men in black coats, scarves tied over their faces, held him down, and one white-hooded fellow sawed at his chest with a shining dagger. Von Klatka yelled his defiance. Stuck in the ground was a stick from which hung the flag of the Christian Crusade. One of the masked men pointed a pistol. Kostaki saw the puff of smoke and prepared to shrug off yet another bullet. Then he felt a burst of pain in his knee. He had been shot with a silver ball.

'Back, vampire,' said the gunman, voice muffled.

Mackenzie was with them now. Kostaki was ready to lunge forwards but the policeman held him back. His leg was numb. The bullet was lodged in his bones, poisoning him.

One of the freed women kicked von Klatka in the head, doing no damage at all. The man straddling the vampire had wrenched free his cuirass. With slices from a silver knife, he exposed von Klatka's beating heart. He was handed something like a candle by one of his comrades, and thrust it into von Klatka's rib-cage.

'For Jago,' the crusader shouted, mouth moving behind his cloth mask.

A lucifer flared and the crusaders scattered away from their handiwork. There was a circle of blood around von Klatka. He held his chest together, wounds closing. The candle stuck out from his ribs, a hissing flame at its end.

'Dynamite,' Mackenzie shouted.

Ezzelin von Klatka grasped at the burning fuse. But too late. His fist closed around the flame just as it expanded. A flash of white light turned night to day. Then a strong wind and a roar lifted Kostaki and Mackenzie off their feet. Mixed in with the blast were gobbets of vampire-flesh and scraps of von Klatka's armour and clothes.

Kostaki scrambled to his feet. First he made sure Mackenzie, who was holding his abused ears, was not seriously hurt. Then he turned to his fallen comrade. The whole of von Klatka's torso was blown to fragments. His head was burning, his flesh putrefying fast. A gaseous stench burst from his remains and Kostaki choked on it.

The Christian Crusade flag was fallen, dotted with burning specks.

'A reprisal for the attempt on Jago,' Kostaki said.

Mackenzie, shaking his head to try and get the ringing out of his ears, paid attention. 'Most likely. Dynamite's an old Fenian trick and there are a lot of Irish in with Jago's crew. Still...' His thought trailed off. There were people running towards them. Carpathians, roused from the barracks, breastplates hastily misbuckled, swords drawn.

'Still what, Scotsman?'

Mackenzie shook his head.

'The fellow who spoke, the one with the dynamite...'

'What of him?'

'I could have sworn he was a vampire.'