Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [165]
An engraved invitation to the Palace had been delivered personally into her hand. As acting director of the Hall, she was busier than ever. A new strain of plague was running through the new-borns of Whitechapel, triggering off their undisciplined shape-shifting powers, creating a horde of short-lived, agonised freaks. But a summons from the Queen and the Prince Consort was not to be ignored.
Presumably, they were to be honoured for their part in ending the career of Jack the Ripper. A private honour, perhaps, but an honour nevertheless.
Genevieve wondered if Beauregard would be proud to meet his sovereign, or if her current state would sadden him. She had heard stories of the situation inside the Palace. And she knew more of Vlad Tepes than most. Among vampires, he had always been the Man Who Would Be King.
The carriage passed through Fleet Street – past the boarded-up and burned-out offices of the nation’s great newspapers – and the Strand. There was no fog tonight, just an icy wind.
It had been generally decided, in the ruling cabal of the Diogenes Club, that the identity of the murderer should be withheld, although it was common knowledge that his crimes had come to an end. Arrangements had been made at Scotland Yard, the Commissioner’s resignation exchanged for an overseas posting, and Lestrade and Abberline were on fresh cases. Nothing much had changed. Whitechapel was hunting a new madman now, a murderer of brutish disposition and appearance named Edward Hyde who had trampled a small child and then raised his ambitions by shoving a broken walking-stick through the heart of a new-born Member of Parliament. Once he was stopped, another murderer would come along, and another, and another...
In Trafalgar Square, there were bonfires. The red light filled the carriage as they passed Nelson’s Column. The police kept dousing the fires, but insurrectionists started them up again. Scraps of wood were smuggled in. Items of clothing even were used to fuel the fires. New-borns were superstitiously afraid of fire, and did not like to get too close.
Beauregard looked out with interest at the blazes, heaped around the stone lions. Originally a memorial to the victims of Bloody Sunday, they had a new meaning now. News had come through from India, where there had been another mutiny, with many warm British troops and officials throwing in their lot with the natives. Sir Francis Varney, the unpopular vampire Viceroy, had been dragged from his hiding place at the Red Fort in Delhi by a mob and cast into just such a fire, burned down to ash and bones. The colony was in open revolt. And there were stirrings in Africa and Points East.
Crowds were scuffling by the fires, one of the Prince Consort’s Carpathian Guard tossing warm young men about while the Fire Brigade, perhaps half-heartedly, tried to train their hoses. Placards were waved and slogans shouted.
JACK STILL RIPS, a graffito read.
The letters were still coming, the red-inked scrawls signed ‘Jack the Ripper’. Now, they called for the warm to rally against their vampire masters. Whenever a new-born was killed, ‘Jack the Ripper’ took the credit. Beauregard had said nothing, but Genevieve suspected that the letters were issued from the Diogenes Club. She saw that a dangerous game was being played in the halls of secret government, factions conspiring against each other, with the ruination of the Prince Consort as an end. Dr Seward might have been mad, but his work had not been entirely wasteful. Even if a monster became a hero, a new Guy Fawkes, a purpose was being served.
She was a vampire, but she was not of the bloodline of Vlad Tepes. That left her, as ever, on the sidelines of history. She had no real interest either way. It had been refreshing for a while not to have to pretend to be warm, but the Prince Consort