Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [16]
While he had been away pursuing this Great Game, Vlad Dracula had taken London. Prince of Wallachia and King of Vampires, he had wooed and won Victoria, persuading her to abandon her widow’s black. Then he had reshaped the greatest Empire on the globe to suit his tastes. Beauregard had vowed death would not interfere with his loyalty to the Queen’s person, but he had thought he meant his own death.
The carpeted stairs did not creak. The thick walls admitted no noise from the bustling city without. Venturing into the Diogenes Club was like sampling deafness.
The Prince Consort, who had taken for himself the additional title of Lord Protector, ruled Great Britain now, his get executing his wishes and whims. An elite Carpathian Guard patrolled the grounds of Buckingham Palace and caroused throughout the West End like sacred terrors. The army, the navy, the diplomatic corps, the police and the church were all in Dracula’s thrall, new-borns promoted over the warm at every opportunity. While much continued as always, there were changes: people vanished from public and private life, camps such as Devil’s Dyke springing up in remote areas of the country, and the apparatus of a government – secret police, sudden arrests, casual executions – he associated not with the Queen but with Tsars and Shahs. There were Republican bands playing Robin Hood in the wilds of Scotland and Ireland, and cross-waving curates were always trying to brand new-born provincial mayors with the mark of Cain.
On the top landing was a man with a military moustache and a neck the thickness of his head, even in civvies the absolute image of a sergeant-major. Beauregard passed inspection and the guard opened the familiar green door, stepping aside to allow the clubman to enter. He was inside the suite sometimes referred to as ‘the Star Chamber’ before a realisation sank in: Sergeant Dravot, the man on guard, was a vampire, the first he had seen within the walls of the Diogenes Club. For a horrid, sinking moment, he assumed his eyes would get used to the gloom within the Star Chamber and alight upon five bloated leeches, sharp-fanged horrors ruddy with stolen blood. If the ruling cabal of the Diogenes Club had fallen, the long reign of the living would genuinely be at an end.
‘Beauregard,’ came a voice, normally pitched but sounding, even after only a minute in the silence of the Club, like a thunderclap from God. His moment of fear passed, replaced by a mild puzzlement. There were no vampires in the room, but things were changed.
‘Mr Chairman,’ he acknowledged.
It was convention not to address any of the cabal by name or title in their suite, but Beauregard knew he faced Sir Mandeville Messervy, a supposedly retired admiral who had made his name in the suppression, twenty years earlier, of the Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean. Also present were Mycroft, an enormously corpulent gentleman who had been chairman on Beauregard’s last visit, and Waverly, an avuncular figure Beauregard understood to be personally responsible for the downfall of Colonel Ahmad Arabi and the occupation of Cairo in 1882. There were two empty seats at the round table.
‘Alas, you find us depleted. There have, as you know, been changes. The Diogenes Club is not what it was.’
‘A cigarette?’ offered Waverly, producing a silverwork case and offering it.
Beauregard declined but Waverly tossed him the case anyway. He was fast enough to catch it and return it. Waverly smiled as he slipped the case into his breast pocket.
‘Cold silver,’ he explained.
‘There was no need for that,’ said Messervy. ‘I apologise. Still, it was an effective demonstration.’
‘I am not a vampire,’ Beauregard said, showing his unburned fingers. ‘That much should be obvious.’
‘They’re tricky, Beauregard,’ said Waverly.
‘You have one outside, you know.’
‘Dravot is a special case.’
Formerly, Beauregard had considered the ruling cabal of the Diogenes Club impregnable, the ever-beating lion-heart of Britannia. Now, not for the first time since his return from abroad, he was forced to realise