Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [1]
36. The Old Jago
37. Downing Street, Behind Closed Doors
38. New-Born
39. From Hell
40. The Return Of The Hansom Cab
41. Lucy Pays A Call
42. The Most Dangerous Game
43. Foxhole
44. On The Waterfront
45. Drink, Pretty Creature, Drink
46. Kaffir War
47. Love And Mr Beauregard
48. The Tower Of London
49. Mating Habits Of The Common Vampire
50. Vita Brevis
51. In The Heart Of Darkness
52. The Last Of Lucy
53. Jack In The Machine
54. Connective Tissue
55. Fucking Hell!
56. Lord Jack
57. The Home Life Of Our Own Dear Queen
Annotations
Acknowledgements
Afterword
Dig Deeper Into Anno Dracula
Alternate Anno Dracula
Extracts from Anno Dracula: The Movie
Drac The Ripper
Dead Travel Fast
About The Author
‘We Szekeleys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. Here, in the whirlpool of European races, the Ugric tribe bore down from Iceland and the fighting spirit which Thor and Wodin gave them, which their Berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of Europe, ay, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that the were-wolves themselves had come. Here, too, when they came, they fought the Huns, whose warlike fury had swept the earth like a living flame, till the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood of those old witches, who, expelled from Scythia had mated with the devils in the desert. Fools, fools! What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins? Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race; that we were proud; that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back? Is it strange that when Arpad and his legions swept through the Hungarian fatherland, he found us here when he reached the frontier? And when the Hungarian flood swept eastward, the Szekeleys were claimed as kindred by the victorious Magyars, and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding of the frontier of Turkey-land; ay and more than that, endless duty of the frontier guard, for, as the Turks say, “water sleeps, and enemy is sleepless”. Who more gladly than we throughout the Four Nations received the “bloody sword”, or at its warlike call flocked quicker to the standard of the King? When was redeemed that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova, when the flags of the Wallach and the Magyar went down beneath the Crescent, who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the Turk and brought the shame of slavery upon them!... Again, when, after the battle of Mohacs, we threw off the Hungarian yoke, we of the Dracula blood were amongst their leaders, for our spirit would not brook that we were not free. Ah, young sir, the Szekeleys – and the Dracula as their heart’s blood, their brains and their swords – can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach. The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace; and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.’
Count Dracula
‘I have studied, over and over again since they came into my hands, all the papers relating to this monster; and the more I have studied, the greater seems the necessity to utterly stamp him out. All through there are signs of his advance; not only of his power, but of his knowledge of it. As I learned, from the researches of my friend Arminius of Buda-Pesth, he was in life a most wonderful man. Soldier, statesman and alchemist – which latter was the highest development of the science-knowledge of his time. He had a mighty brain, a learning beyond compare, and a heart that knew no fear and no remorse. He dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay. Well, in him the brain powers survived the physical death;