Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [147]
Geneviève saw into Mina Harker, and realised the woman was condemned – had condemned herself – to exist with the consequences of failure. Her failure to resist Vlad Tepes, her circle’s failure to trap and destroy the invader.
‘I had not expected to find you here,’ Charles blurted.
‘Serving in Hell?’
They were at the end of the hall. More doors loomed above them. Mina Harker, eyes like burning ice, looked at them both as she struck a panel, the rapping of her knuckles as loud in the echoing space as shots from a revolver...
... Beauregard remembered the warm Mina Harker, unfussy and direct when set beside Florence, Penelope or Lucy, siding with Kate Reed in the belief that a woman should earn a living, should be more than a decoration. That woman was dead and this white-faced court servant was her pale ghost. Seward had been a ghost too, and Godalming. Between them, the Prince Consort and the skull on the pike had to account for a great deal of human wreckage.
The inner doors opened in noisy lurches and a startling servant admitted them to a well-lit antechamber. The extensive and grotesque malformations of his body were emphasised by a tailored particoloured suit. He was not the new-born victim of catastrophically failed shape-shifting, but a warm man suffering from enormous defects of birth. His spine was drastically kinked, loaf-shaped excrescences sprouting from his back; his limbs, with the exception of the left arm, were bloated and twisted. His head was swollen by bulbs of bone, from which sprouted wisps of hair, and his features were almost completely obscured by warty growths. Mycroft had prepared Beauregard for this, but he still felt a heart-stab of pity.
‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘Merrick, is it not?’
A smile formed somewhere in the doughy recesses of Merrick’s face. He returned the greeting, voice slurred by excess slews of flesh around his mouth.
‘How is Her Majesty this evening?’
Merrick did not reply, but Beauregard imagined expression in the unreadable expanse of his features. There was a sadness in his single exposed eye and a grim set to his growth-twisted lips.
He gave Merrick a card and said ‘Compliments of the Diogenes Club.’ The man understood and his huge head bobbed. He was another servant of the ruling cabal.
Merrick led them down the hallway, hunched over like a gorilla, a long club-handed arm propelling his body. It apparently amused the Prince Consort to keep this poor creature on hand. Beauregard could not help but feel an additional disgust for the vampire. Merrick knocked on doors three times his height...
... she realised, ridiculously late, that Charles was not afraid of whatever he would face in the Palace. He was afraid for her, afraid of the consequences of something soon to happen. He took her hand and held it tight.
‘Gené,’ Charles said, voice just above a whisper, ‘if what I do brings harm to you, I am sincerely sorry.’
She did not understand him. As her mind raced to catch up with him, he leaned over and kissed her, on the mouth, the warm way. She tasted him, and was reminded of everything...
... her voice was cool in the dark.
‘This can be for ever, Charles. Truly for ever.’
He remembered his meeting with Mycroft.
‘Nothing is for ever, my darling...’
... the kiss broke, and he stood back, leaving her baffled. Then the doors were opened and they were admitted into the Royal Presences.
Ill lit by broken chandeliers, the throne-room was an infernal sty of people and animals, its once-fine walls torn and stained. Dirtied and abused paintings hung at strange angles or were piled loose behind furniture. Laughing, whimpering, grunting, whining, screaming creatures congregated on divans and carpets. An almost naked Carpathian wrestled a giant ape, their feet scrabbling and slipping on a marble floor thick with discharges. The stench of dried blood and ordure was as strong as it had been in Number 13 Miller’s Court.
Merrick announced them to the company, palate suffering as he got out their