Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [100]
‘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