Anno Dracula - Kim Newman [57]
‘What do you want with me?’ she asked, first in Mandarin Chinese, then repeating herself in Cantonese. She had spent a dozen years travelling in China, but that had been a hundred-and-fifty years ago. She had lost most of her languages.
‘Cathy,’ she said, ‘take Rebecca and Lily to the Hall. Do you understand me?’
‘Yes’m,’ the new-born said. She was terrified.
‘Do it now, if you please.’
Cathy stood, cradling Lily against her shoulder, and took Rebecca by the hand. The three of them vanished at a trot through the arch, making to double around Fenchurch Street Station and back up towards Aldgate and Spitalfields.
Geneviève looked at the old vampire. She fell back on English. Elders went beyond the need for speech at some point, reading what they needed directly from others’ minds.
‘Well... we’re alone now.’
It hopped and landed immediately in front of her, face to hers, arms on her shoulders. Muscles wriggled like worms under the thin leather of its face. Its eyes were closed but it could see.
She made a fist and punched at its heart. Her blow should have staved through the ribs; instead, she felt she had taken a swing at a granite gargoyle. There were strange bloodlines in China. Ignoring the pain, she half-turned in the vampire’s near-embrace and brought up her leg, jamming her heel into its stomach and pushing, using its solidity to launch herself away. Her hands were out like springs when she landed on the cobbles on the other side of the bridge. She cowered in a street-lamp’s circle of light as if it offered protection. Her ankle hurt too, now. She jumped to her feet and looked back. The Chinese vampire was gone. Either no real harm was meant her or it played with its prey. She knew which she felt the most likely.
19
THE POSEUR
Lord Ruthven stood at a podium, one hand fisted sternly on his extravagantly ruffled breast, the other resting upon an imposing stack of books. The Prime Minister’s Carlyle, Godalming noticed, still had uncut pages. Ruthven wore a midnight black frock coat, frogged at the collar and on the pockets. A curly-brimmed top hat perched on his head; his face was a thoughtful blank. The portrait would be called The Great Man, or some such imposing title. My Lord Ruthven, the Vampire Statesman.
Several times Godalming had sat for painters; he had been possessed of a series of sudden, urgent needs to scratch or blink or twitch. Ruthven was uniquely able to stand motionless all afternoon, as patient as a lizard waiting on a rock for a morsel to crawl within range of a darting tongue.
‘It is a shame we are denied the miracle of photography,’ he declared, lips apparently unmoving. Godalming had seen attempted photographs of vampires. They developed in a blurred manner, the subjects appearing, if at all, as fuzzy silhouettes with corpselike features. The laws that affected mirrors somehow thwarted the photographic process.
‘But only a painter can capture the inner man,’ Ruthven said. ‘Human genius shall always be superior to mechanical-chemical trickery.’
The artist at hand was Basil Hallward, the society portraitist. He deftly sketched a series of studies, a preliminary to the full-length picture. Although more fashionable than inspired, Hallward had his moments. Even Whistler doled out a few kind words for his early work.
‘Godalming, what do you know about the Silver Knife business?’ Ruthven asked, suddenly.
‘The murders in Whitechapel? Three so far, I believe.’
‘Good, you’re up on it. Excellent man.’
‘I just glance at the newspapers.’
Hallward released the Prime Minister and Ruthven sprang from his spot, eager to see the sketches, which the painter clutched to his heart.
‘Come now, just a peep,’ coaxed Ruthven, exerting considerable charm. At times, he was quite the larkish lad.
Hallward showed his pad