Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [101]
‘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.’
36
THE OLD JAGO
‘There are people in this world of whom even vampires are afraid,’ he said as they walked up Brick Lane.
‘That, I know,’ she admitted.
The elder was out in the fog waiting for his tongue to grow back. When ready, he would come for her again.
‘I’m familiar with all the devils in all the hells, Geneviève,’ Charles said. ‘This is just a matter of invoking the correct demonic personage.’
She did not know what he was talking about.
He led her into one of the narrow, unpleasant-smelling streets that constituted the worst slum in London. Walls leaned together, dropping the occasional brick to the cobbles. Evil-looking new-borns congregated at every corner.
‘Charles,’ she said. ‘This is the Old Jago.’
He allowed that it was.
She wondered if he had gone mad. Dressed as they were – which was to say, not in rags – they were practically parading with a sandwich board marked ‘ROB AND KILL ME’. Red eyes glittered behind broken windows. Rat-whiskered children sat on doorsteps, waiting to fight for the leavings of larger predators. The further they penetrated into the rookery, the thicker the gathering crowds were. She was reminded of vultures. This was not England, this was a jungle. Places, she told herself, were not evil: they were what people made of them. In the dark, something laughed and Geneviève jumped. Charles calmed her and looked about, leaning on his cane as if taking the air at Hampton Court.
Hunched, shambling creatures lurked in courtyards. Hate came off them in waves. The Jago was where the worst cases ended up, new-borns shape-shifted beyond