Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [148]
Upon the raised hand, an enormous gemstone ring held the burning reflections of seven fires. She recognised the Koh-i-Noor, or Lake of Light, the largest diamond in the world, and the centrepiece of the collection known as the Crown Jewels. Her eyes were drawn to the shining light, and to the vampire who wielded it. Prince Dracula sat upon his throne, massive as a commemorative statue, his enormously bloated face a rich red under withered grey. Moustaches stiff with recent blood hung to his chest, his thick hair was loose about his shoulders, and his black-stubbled chin was dotted with the gravy of his last feeding. His left hand loosely held the orb of office, which seemed in his grip the size of a tennis ball.
Charles shook in the presence of the enemy, the smell smiting him like blows. Geneviève held him up and looked around.
‘I never dreamed...’ he muttered, ‘never...’
An ermine-collared black velvet cloak, ragged at the edges, clung to Dracula’s shoulders like the wings of a giant bat. Otherwise he was naked, his body thickly coated with matted hair, blood clotting on his chest and limbs. His white manhood coiled in his lap, tipped scarlet as an adder’s tongue. His body was swollen with blood, rope-thick veins visibly pulsing in his neck and arms. In life, Vlad Tepes had been a man of less than medium height; now he was a giant.
A warm girl ran across the room, pursued by one of the Carpathians. It was Rupert of Hentzau, his uniform in tatters, a ruddy flush on his face. The plates of his skull dislocated as he shambled, distorting and reassembling his face. He brought the girl down with a swipe of a paw, scraping silk and skin from her back. Then he began to tear at her back and sides with triple-jointed jaws, taking meat as well as drink. As Hentzau fed he became wolfish, wriggling out of his boots and britches, his laugh turning to a howl. The girl was instantly dead.
Dracula smiled, yellow teeth the size and shape of pointed thumbs. Geneviève looked into the broad face of the King of Vampires.
The Queen knelt by the throne, a spiked collar around her neck, a massive chain leading from it to a loose bracelet upon Dracula’s wrist. She was in her shift and stockings, brown hair loose, blood on her face. It was impossible to see the round old woman she had been in this abused creature. Geneviève hoped her mad, but feared her well aware of what was happening about her. Victoria turned away, not looking at the Carpathian’s meal.
‘Majesties,’ Charles said, bowing his head.
An enormous fart of laughter exploded from Dracula’s jaggedly fanged maw. The stench of his breath filled the room. It was everything dead and rotten.
‘I am Dracula,’ he said, in surprisingly unaccented and mild English. ‘And who might these welcome guests be?’
... his head was in the eye of a nightmare maelstrom. In his heart was steel resolve. All he saw made him justum et tenacem propositi virum, a man upright and tenacious of purpose. Later, if he still lived, he might succumb to nausea. Now, in this vital moment, he must have complete control of himself.
Never entirely a soldier, Beauregard had learned strategy at school and in the field. He knew, without seeming to notice, the relative positions of all in the throne-room. Few of them mattered, but he was especially aware of Geneviève, Merrick and, without quite knowing why, Mina Harker. All, as it happened, were behind him.
The man and the woman on the dais were the focus of his attention; the Queen, whose visible distress gripped his heart, and the Prince, who sat at his ease on the throne, embodying the chaos about him. Dracula’s face seemed painted on water; sometimes frozen into hard-planed ice, but for the most part in motion. Beauregard discerned other faces beneath. The