Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [151]
If Beauregard died now, he would have done enough.
Dracula raised a hand, the useless chain dangling from his wrist, and pointed at Beauregard. Beyond speech, he spat out rage and hate.
The late Queen had been the Grandmother of Europe. Seven of her children still lived, four of them warm. By marriage and accession they linked the remaining Royal houses of Europe. Even if Bertie were set aside, there were sufficient claimants to contest the throne. By a nice irony, the King Vampire could be brought low by a gaggle of crowned haemophiliacs.
Beauregard walked backwards. The vampires, suddenly sober, gathered. The women of the harem and the officers of the guard. The women pounced first and bore him on to the floor, ripping...
... Charles had tried to save her from harm by keeping her out of the designs of the Diogenes Club, but she’d stubbornly insisted on seeing Dracula in his lair. Now they would probably both die.
She was thrust aside by Dracula’s women. They were on Charles, claws and mouths red. She felt the razor-kiss of their nails on his face and hands. She pulled one hell-cat – that Styrian bitch Countess Barbara de Cilly, unless Geneviève was mistaken – from the fray and pitched her screeching across the room. Geneviève bared her teeth and hissed at the fallen woman.
Anger gave her strength.
She strode to the huddle that had formed over Charles and hauled him free, thumping and stabbing with her hands. In their lair, the courtiers were soft, replete. It was comparatively easy to cast aside Dracula’s women. Geneviève found herself spitting and shrieking with the other she-creatures, pulling handfuls of hair and scratching at red eyes. Charles was bloodied, but still living. She fought for him as a mother wolf fights for her cubs.
The hell-cats scrabbled backwards, away from Geneviève, giving her room. Charles stood by her, still in a daze. Hentzau stood before them, Dracula’s champion. His lower body was human, but he had an animal’s teeth and claws. He made a fist and a point of bone slid from his knuckles. It grew long and straight and sharp.
She stepped back, out of range of the bone-rapier. The courtiers retreated, forming a circle like a prize-fight crowd. Still shackled to his dead Queen, Dracula watched. Hentzau whirled about, his sword moving faster than she could see. She heard the whisper of the blade and, moments later, realised her shoulder was opened, a red line trickling on her dress. She snatched up a footstool and raised it as a shield, parrying the next slice. Hentzau cut through cover and cushion, fixing his blade-edge in wood. As he pulled free, horsehair bled from the gash.
‘Fighting with the furniture, eh?’ Hentzau sneered.
Hentzau made passes near her face and locks of her hair floated free. From somewhere by the doors came a shout, and something was thrown to the floor before Charles...
... the strangled voice was John Merrick’s. At his feet was his sword-cane. The poor creature had wrested it from the custody of a footman. Beauregard had not expected to survive his Queen. For him, these seconds were an afterlife.
The Guardsman who had extruded a sword from his skeleton closed on Geneviève. Hentzau did not reckon a warm man worth the worry. He was light on his feet, a fencer’s muscles moving in his knees, his sword-arm keen enough to fetch off a head.
Beauregard picked up his cane and drew the silver-edged sword. He understood how the Ruritanian must feel, with a weapon as an extension of his arm.
With a tap, Hentzau whisked Geneviève’s stool from her hands. He grinned and drew back for a thrust at her heart. Beauregard sliced down, knocking Hentzau’s point out of true, and slashed back, the edge of his blade slipping under the Guardsman’s jaw, sliding through coarse fur, opening skin and scraping bone.
The Ruritanian howled in silver pain and turned on Beauregard. He launched an assault, sword-point darting like a dragonfly. Even in agony, he was fast and accurate. Beauregard parried a rapid compass of attacks. Suddenly, a thrust came. He