Anno Dracula 1999 Read online

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also By Kim Newman and Available from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  December 31, 1999

  Unknown Male - Richard Jeperson (Geist 97)

  Unknown Female - Nezumi (Mouse)

  Richard Jeperson

  Unknown Male - Harold Takahama

  Richard Jeperson

  Detective Yoshitaka Azuma

  Richard Jeperson

  Harold Takahama

  Nezumi

  Detective Azuma

  Richard Jeperson

  Harold Takahama

  Nezumi

  Richard Jeperson

  Dr Kiyokazu Akiba

  Nezumi

  Dr Akiba

  Nezumi

  Don Simòn De Molinar Y Vazquez

  Richard Jeperson

  Si Molinar

  Nezumi

  Si Molinar

  Dr Akiba

  Harold Takahama

  Yoshio Mizuno - Astro-Man (Yurei 139)

  Harold Takahama

  Richard Jeperson

  Si Molinar

  Nezumi

  Si Molinar

  Nezumi

  Detective Azuma

  Richard Jeperson

  Harold Takahama

  Richard Jeperson

  Detective Azuma

  Nezumi

  Detective Azuma

  Richard Jeperson

  Harold Takahama

  Nezumi

  Dr Akiba

  Richard Jeperson

  Detective Azuma

  Nezumi

  Richard Jeperson

  Nezumi

  Richard Jeperson

  Harold Takahama

  Detective Azuma

  Nezumi

  Takashi Kamata (Drift Kaiju)

  Harold Takahama

  Richard Jeperson

  Nezumi

  Richard Jeperson

  Detective Azuma

  Harold Takahama

  Dr Akiba

  Richard Jeperson

  Nezumi

  Detective Azuma

  Richard Jeperson

  Nezumi

  Richard Jeperson

  Nezumi

  Richard Jeperson

  Si Molinar

  Dr Akiba

  Nezumi

  Wingman Paul Metcalf

  Richard Jeperson

  Harold Takahama

  Detective Azuma

  Nezumi

  Harold Takahama

  Paul Metcalf

  Detective Azuma

  Richard Jeperson

  Dr Akiba

  Paul Metcalf

  Nezumi

  Detective Azuma

  Richard Jeperson

  Nezumi

  Harold Takahama

  January 1, 2000

  Richard Jeperson

  Si Molinar

  Nezumi

  Harold Takahama

  Richard Jeperson

  December 31, 1999

  Geneviève Dieudonné

  Acknowledgements

  Also Available from Titan Books

  ANNO

  DRACULA

  1999

  DAIKAIJU

  ALSO BY KIM NEWMAN AND AVAILABLE FROM TITAN BOOKS

  ANNO DRACULA

  ANNO DRACULA: THE BLOODY RED BARON

  ANNO DRACULA: DRACULA CHA CHA CHA

  ANNO DRACULA: JOHNNY ALUCARD

  ANNO DRACULA: ONE THOUSAND MONSTERS

  ANNO DRACULA: SEVEN DAYS IN MAYHEM (GRAPHIC NOVEL)

  ANNO DRACULA 1899 AND OTHER STORIES

  THE NIGHT MAYOR

  BAD DREAMS

  JAGO

  THE QUORUM

  LIFE’S LOTTERY

  THE MAN FROM THE DIOGENES CLUB

  PROFESSOR MORIARTY: THE HOUND OF THE D’URBERVILLES

  AN ENGLISH GHOST STORY

  THE SECRETS OF DREARCLIFF GRANGE SCHOOL

  ANGELS OF MUSIC

  THE HAUNTING OF DREARCLIFF GRANGE SCHOOL

  VIDEO DUNGEON (NON-FICTION)

  ANNO

  DRACULA

  1999

  DAIKAIJU

  KIM NEWMAN

  TITAN BOOKS

  KIM NEWMAN

  ANNO DRACULA 1999 DAIKAIJU

  Print edition ISBN: 9781785658860

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781785658877

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: October 2019

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2019 by Kim Newman. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  For Sean Hogan

  Rekishi wa nandomonandomo shizen ga ningen no oroka-sa o shiteki suru hōhō o shimeshite imasu.

  Blue Öyster Cult

  MR RICHARD JEPERSON… PLUS ONE

  THE DIOGENES CLUB,

  LONDON SW1Y 5AH

  UNITED KINGDOM

  MISS CHRISTINA LIGHT REQUESTS THE PLEASURE OF YOUR COMPANY TO SEE IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM.

  AT DAIKAIJU PLAZA, CASAMASSIMA BAY, TOKYO, JAPAN.

  DECEMBER 31ST, 1999 – DUSK TILL DAWN.

  SIGNIFICANT ANNOUNCEMENTS WILL BE MADE.

  DRESS CODE: CYBERFORMAL.

  INVITATION NOT TRANSFERABLE.

  RSVP.

  Miss Mouse, this means you…

  DECEMBER 31, 1999

  UNKNOWN MALE - RICHARD JEPERSON (GEIST 97)

  The sky above the city was the colour of arterial blood splashed across a shower curtain.

  Nightfall in the Land of the Rising Sun.

  Richard was in downtown Tokyo.

  One song shrilled from every speaker. A remix of Prince’s ‘1999’ by the girl group Cham-Cham. The single might as well have been pressed on tissue paper. Its zeitgeist window was an arrow-slit. The multi-tracked rinky-dink organ riff made his fillings throb.

  Lu lu too sousand zeiro zeiro Pātī wa owari – oops! – jikan ga nai…

  Holograms of the flounce-sleeved bubblegum trio wavered above mini projectors concealed in the oddest places. Drinking fountains, food stall hotplates, rubbish bins. Two phantom soprani and a vampire contralto. Miniature dancing ghosts.

  Kon’ya wa pātī siyou 1999 fuu ni…

  Mima, the vam in Cham-Cham, was a crossover artist. Her pearly fangs were kawaii – cute. Many warm girls (and not a few boys) wore plastic choppers and purple wigs to copy her. She started underground in the bloodletting bars of the Bund, then mainstreamed into the warm wide world. The pretty, unthreatening face of Asian v
ampirism. Poster child for the handover. In peppy public service ads underwritten by Red Label Sprünt, Mima ran through FAQs with a funky anime bat. ‘Give you strawberry kisses when the Wall comes down,’ she sang. That sawtooth smile wasn’t wholly reassuring.

  The song would get heavy play at Christina Light’s party. Blatant was ‘in’ this season. Every season, really. Cham-Cham ‘1999’ was as inevitable as ‘Auld Lang Syne’. Should Richard have Nezumi commandeer the karaoke mike and warble ‘Three Wheels on My Wagon’ till dawn? It would not be worth the diplomatic fallout. The Diogenes Club didn’t want to have to explain itself to Peter Mandelson. The Prime Minion could turn into fog and seep through keyholes.

  A velvet rope hung across the footpath to the checkpoint. Security measures were in place until midnight.

  A yōkai steward waddled over to inspect invitations.

  ‘Richard Jeperson,’ he declared. ‘I’m on the list. I’m on a lot of lists. Best Dressed, Most Eligible, Most Likely To…’

  Extra eyes glinted in the gatekeeper’s cheek-folds, like threepenny bits stuck in a fleshy pudding. The sexless goblin wore an English/Japanese nametag. Hyakume/. It shook a glitchy electronic clipboard. Kanji scrolled across greenscreen, fast as the credits of an overrunning live soap.

  The back of Richard’s mind tickled.

  One of those! A brain peeper.

  More reliable than a photoelectric reader.

  The steward accepted his verites.

  Nezumi, his plus one, also passed muster.

  The rope was lifted and they joined the next queue for the Gate. Though they didn’t need to show passports, they were leaving Japan. The Bund, as any fule kno, was vampire territory. Until the handover.

  Here be monsters.

  Of course, everywhere be monsters. That was the twentieth century for you.

  The Wall encircled the enclave, a relic of less tolerant times. Sniper towers repurposed as snooper towers. Swivelling cameras scanned the crowd for mischief.

  Decapitated triffids guarded the Gate. Kadomatsu. Strawbound bamboo sheaves. Temporary homes for harvest spirits, to be burned on January 7 freeing the appeased gremlins. A more uplifting end to the festive season than leaving a needle-shedding fir tree on the pavement for the Chelsea bin men.

  The Bund was a temporary home for less airy creatures.

  At midnight, the hundred years were up. The Treaty of Light expired. Christina Light – formally, the Princess Casamassima – was an exponent of the grand gesture. Her first idea was to blow up the Wall as the chimes sounded, but advisors suggested she not set off explosives at the height of a city-wide party. Demolition was due to begin next Tuesday, handled by professionals more concerned with job safety than staging spectacle for TV news.

  Richard saw stencilled human blast-shadows at the base of the Wall, a fools’ dance amid a swarm of dayglo graffiti.

  One shadowman moved, detached from his conga line, and scaled the brickwork. He was not ominous street art, but a two-dimensional vampire.

  Only in Japan…

  The Wall was in poor shape. Funds for maintenance must have been hard to justify these last few years. Christina Light had already arranged a promotional tie-up with Sprünt GmbH to sell souvenir bricks. The energy drink came in blue and red cartons, with different additives for warm and vampire palates. All over the world, Blue Label Sprünt was a gold-mine and Red Label a loss-leader. Richard doubted gumming chunks of brick to Red Label cartons would change that, but the one-time socialist firebrand had a gift for turning a profit from every little thing.

  Handy right now.

  This bash must be costing Light Industries a packet. The millimetre-thick invitations had gilt edging and an inset microchip. They doubled as phone cards and trebled as tracer bugs. Disabling the chip voided the invite. His was going into the nearest flush toilet as soon as he was accredited at the bar.

  Before the Gate, they had to submit to a pat-down.

  Nezumi unslung her portable poster tube and handed it over. A security flathead popped the stopper to peep inside. The tube was returned without comment. Nezumi shouldered it like a rifle. It wouldn’t be the strangest bit of kit waved through tonight.

  The flathead assessed the white-haired girl. Him: wide-shouldered, sharkskin suit. Armpit bulge, curly wire earplug. Her: slight, school uniform. Skirt, blazer, boater, knee-socks.

  Richard knew who his money was on in a scrap.

  A long shadow fell across the rope.

  ‘Voltan,’ declared a one-eyed elder. ‘Aside, vassal. I’ve urgent business within.’

  He sounded as if he’d smoked fifty gaspers a day since Mr Benson copped off with Miss Hedges.

  Hyakume waved its e-board. Flatheads scratched holsters.

  From under his cloak, Voltan fished out a laminate on a lanyard.

  The goblin’s face-folds stretched tight. Voltan’s eye roamed.

  Forged invitations to the Light Industries mireniamu party were circulating. Bootleg chips held up for twenty minutes before burning out. A thousand yen in the Chatsubo Bar.

  No wonder the Princess had a mindworm on the Gate.

  Hyakume farted contemptuously around its lesser eyes. The official didn’t care if Voltan was Count Chocula or the Duke of Earl. It knew a chancer with a snide invite when he brainscanned one.

  The elder drew up to his full height – eighteen inches of the tally were stack heels and tall hat – and boomed, ‘Don’t you know who I am?’

  Hyakume was unimpressed. Its wattle sacs inflated.

  ‘That question has two possible answers, chum,’ Richard interpreted. ‘You wouldn’t like either of ’em.’

  Voltan’s mouth gaped. He had top and bottom fangs but no other teeth.

  He fixed his cold eyes on Richard.

  Nezumi angled her poster tube, declaring that he was under her protection.

  Venturing into v-territory, it made sense to bring a vampire of his own – or at least, one sponsored by the Diogenes Club. Nezumi embodied school spirit. Big on not letting the side down. If provoked, his yojimba was a lovely little mover. Mistress of the Six Painless But Fatal Cuts.

  ‘I have been vilely insulted,’ said Voltan. ‘The Hunchback shall hear of this!’

  Richard was with British Intelligence. His calling was to be well-informed. He could rattle off the dirt on most of the world’s rascals. He knew Voltan’s record. 1945: arrested by Occupation Authorities in Bucharest for selling adulterated blood products. 1973: cashiered from the Mexican National Guard for malfeasance. But he had no clue who this Hunchback was when he was at home.

  Nezumi’s thumb squeezed the top of the tube.

  Voltan’s face darkened. Stiff hair crept across his cheeks.

  He was holding up a queue. Intolerable in Japan. Shaven-headed, saffronsashed functionaries with fighting poles chivvied him off the red carpet.

  ‘You’ve not heard the last of this,’ Voltan ranted.

  Nezumi solemnly waved a bye-bye at the elder she hadn’t had to kill.

  Voltan was wrong. This was the last they’d hear of him.

  Tomorrow would be a shiny new millennium. Relics like Mr Tall and Shouty – and his bloody Hunchback – would get stuffed head-first into Trotsky’s Dustbin of History. On top of Comrade Trotsky, come to think of it. And skiffle. That was never coming back. Or little blue bags of salt in potato crisps.

  Richard had a sympathy twinge for Voltan, stuck behind the rope while the Space Ark lifted off without him. The elder hobbled away.

  Sometimes, Richard felt close to the Trotsky Bin himself.

  Never more so than tonight, with the century’s expiration stamp flashing everywhere. Digital displays counted down. Retro clocks ticked on.

  At midnight, hana-bi – fireworks!

  UNKNOWN FEMALE - NEZUMI (MOUSE)

  ‘Going home for the holidays?’

  An innocent enough question, asked by dorm-mates when they saw her packing.

  Nezumi replied – honestly – that she couldn
’t say. Girls giggled at her spaciness then remembered she was a thousand years old and stopped.

  Her warm friends were a tiny bit afraid of her.

  Sad, but she was used to it.

  This was the holidays and she was in Japan, where – more than a thousand years ago – she was born.

  Was she home?

  Words lost meaning over time. Faded kanji looked like splotches.

  Home.

  Country.

  Nezumi was last here just after the War.

  Another splotch word.

  War.

  Now, that meant the Second World War.

  You’d think one world war would be enough, but no, people had to have another. Maybe world wars were like sweets. You can’t have only one. Even if they’re bad for you.

  Vampires knew the lure of things that were bad for you.

  Still, ‘the War’ had meant the Second World War for over twice as long as it had meant the First World War. That had to be progress.

  Then again, Mr Jeperson said ‘the double Ws’ weren’t the wars that counted.

  There had been others, which few who didn’t fight in even noticed.

  She still served.

  Her principal in 1945 was Mr Edwin Winthrop, another Man From the Diogenes Club. A British agent had disappeared while looking for Dr Jogoro Komoda, code-named the Key Man. In Europe, Russia and America competed to net the ‘best’ Nazi mad scientists. The Western Allies had a freer run at Japan’s von Brauns and Merkwerdichliebes.

  Tracts of the city were burned ruins. GIs swarmed through bathhouses and gaming parlours. Japanese who’d only heard about Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn’t fully understand why their indomitable fortress nation had surrendered to barbarians. Tokyo had been bombed and the Emperor didn’t give in. Why was this different? Only first-hand witnesses knew the world had changed.

  A defeated people saw Nezumi as a traitor before they saw her as a vampire.

  The agent was found folded into a cupboard, eye sockets empty, mouth open wide enough to fit in a coconut. Dr Komoda, a surgeon who turned mutilated soldiers and captive vampires into living weapons, surrendered to the Americans. Nezumi supposed he continued his programme under new sponsorship. The War was over, so his operations couldn’t be war crimes any more.

  While in Tokyo, Mr Winthrop sent a note to the Princess Casamassima ‘to check in after the fuss and bother’. She came to the Gate to thank him for the courtesy but did not invite him into the Bund. A famous beauty of the 1890s, the Princess seemed paper-thin to Nezumi, so pale as to be almost transparent. It hurt to look at her. One of her eyes was a red blood marble. She’d fought for her ground.