Anno Dracula (18 page)

At the Photographers’, surrounded by huge blow-ups of war orphans and devastated Asian villages, Andy got on one of his curiosity jags and started quizzing her about Oscar Wilde. What had he been like, had he really been amusing all the time, had he been frightened when the wolves gathered, how much had he earned, how famous had he really been, would he have been recognised everywhere he went? After nearly a hundred years, she remembered Wilde less well than many others she had known in the ’80s. Like her, the poet was one of the first modern generation of new-born vampires. He was one of those who turned but didn’t last more than a decade, eaten up by disease carried over from warm life. She didn’t like to think of contemporaries she had outlived. But Andy insisted, nagging, and she dutifully coughed up anecdotes and aphorisms to keep him contented. She told Andy that he reminded her of Oscar, which was certainly true in some ways. Penny dreaded being recategorised from ‘fascinating’ to ‘a bore’, with the consequent casting into the outer darkness.

All her life, all her afterlife, had been spent by her own choice in the shadows cast by a succession of tyrants. She supposed she was punishing herself for her sins. Even Andy had noticed; in the Factory, she was called ‘Penny Penance’ or ‘Penny Penitent’. However, besotted with titles and honours, he usually introduced her to outsiders as ‘Penelope Churchward, Lady Godalming’. She had never been married to Lord Godalming (or, indeed, anyone), but Arthur Holmwood had been her father-in-darkness, and some vampire aristos did indeed pass on titles to their get.

She was not the first English rose in Andy’s entourage. She had been told she resembled the model Jane Forth, who had been in Andy’s movies. Penny knew she had only become Andy’s Girl of the Year after Catherine Guinness left the Factory to become Lady Neidpath. She had an advantage over Andy’s earlier debs, though: she was never going to get old. As Girl of the Year, it was her duty to be Andy’s companion of the night and to handle much of the organisational and social business of the Factory, of Andy Warhol Enterprises, Incorporated. It was something she was used to, from her Victorian years as an ‘Angel in the Home’ to her nights as last governess of the House of Dracula. She could even keep track of the money.

She sipped her blood, decanted from some bar worker who was ‘really’ an actor or a model. Andy left his drink untouched, as usual. He didn’t trust blood that showed up in a glass. Nobody ever saw him feeding. Penny wondered if he was an abstainer. Just now, the red pinpoints in his dark glasses were fixed. He was still watching the dancer.

The vampire in the white suit hooked her attention too.

For a moment, she was sure it was
him,
come back yet again, young and lethal, intent on murderous revenge.

She breathed the name, ‘Dracula.’

Andy’s sharp ears picked it up, even through the dreadful guff that passed for music these days. It was one of the few names guaranteed to provoke his interest.

Andy prized her for her connection to the late King Vampire. Penny had been at the Palazzo Otranto at the end. She was one of the few who knew the truth about the last hours of
il principe,
though she jealously kept that anecdote to herself. So far as she knew, only Katie Reed and the Dieudonné chit shared the story. The three of them had earned scars that wouldn’t show on their pale vampire skins, the lash-marks of Vlad Bloody Dracula, dastard and dictator, and stalwart, dauntless, forgiving, gone-and-not-coming-back Charles Bloody Beauregard.

‘The boy looks like him,’ she said. ‘He might be the Count’s get, or of his bloodline. Most vampires Dracula made came to look like him. He spread his doppelgangers throughout the world.’

Andy nodded, liking the idea.

The dancer had Dracula’s red eyes, his aquiline nose, his full mouth. But he was clean-shaven and had a bouffant of teased black hair, like a Broadway actor or a teenage idol. His features were as Roman as Romanian.

Penny had understood on their first meeting that Andy Warhol didn’t want to be just a vampire. He wanted to be
the
vampire, Dracula. Even before his death and resurrection, his coven had called him ‘Drella’: half Dracula, half Cinderella. It was meant to be cruel: he was the Count of the night hours, but at dawn he changed back into the girl who cleared away the ashes.

‘Find out who he is, Penny,’ Andy said. ‘We should meet him. He’s going to be famous.’

She had no doubt of that.

Flushed from dancing and still buzzed with Nancy’s blood, Johnny moved on to the commerce of the night. The first few times he had set up his shop in men’s rooms, like the dealers he was rapidly putting out of business. Spooked by all the mirrors, he shifted from striplit johns to the curtained back rooms where the other action was. All the clubs had such places.

In the dark room, he felt the heat of the busy bodies and tasted ghosts, expelled on yo-yo strings of ectoplasm during orgasm. He threaded his way through writhing limbs to take up his habitual spot in a leather armchair. He slipped off his jacket, draping it carefully over the back of his seat, and popped his cufflinks, rolling his sleeves up to his elbows. His white lower arms and hands shone in the dark.

Burns, on a break, came to him first. The hook throbbed in his brain, jones throbbing in his bones like a slow drumbeat. The first shot of drac had been free, but now it was a hundred dollars a pop. The bouncer handed Johnny a crisp C-note. With the nail of his little finger, Johnny jabbed a centimetre-long cut in the skin of his left arm. Burns knelt down in front of the chair and licked away the welling blood. He began to suckle the wound, and Johnny pushed him away.

There was a plea in the man’s eyes. The drac jolt was in him, but it wasn’t enough. He had the strength and the senses, but also the hunger.

‘Go bite someone,’ Johnny said, laughing.

The bouncer’s hook was in deep. He loved Johnny and hated him, but he’d do what he said. For Burns, hell would be to be expelled, to be denied forever the taste.

A girl in a shimmering fringed dress replaced the bouncer. She had violent orange hair.

‘Is it true?’ she asked.

‘Is what true?’

‘That you can make people like you?’

He smiled, sharply. He could make people
love
him.

‘A hundred dollars and you can find out,’ he said.

‘I’m game.’

She was very young, a child. She had to scrape together the notes, in singles and twenties. Usually he had no patience for that and pushed such small-timers out of the way to find someone with the right money, as curt as a bus driver. But he needed small bills too, for cab fares and tips.

As her mouth fixed on his fresh wound, he felt his barb sink into her. She was a virgin, in everything. Within seconds, she was his slave. Her eyes widened as she found she was able to see in the dark. She touched fingertips to her suddenly sharp teeth.

It would last such a pathetically short time, but for now she was a princess of the shadows. He named her Nocturna and made her his daughter until dawn. She floated out of the room, to hunt.

He drew more cuts across his arm, accepted more money, gave more drac. A procession of strangers, all his slaves, passed through. Every night there were more.

After an hour, he had $8,500 in bills. Nancy’s ghost was gone, stripped away from him in dribs and drabs, distributed among his children of the night. His veins were sunken and tingling. His mind was crowded with impressions that faded to nothing as fast as the scars on his milky skin. All around, in the dark, his temporary get bit each other. He relished the musical yelps of pain and pleasure.

Now, he thirsted again.

A red-headed vampire girl bumped into her and hissed, displaying pearly fangs. Penelope lowered her dark glasses and gave the chit a neon glare. Cowed, the creature backed away. Intrigued, Penny took the girl by the bare upper arm and looked into her mouth like a dentist. Her fangs were real, but shrank as she quivered in Penny’s
nosferatu
grip. Red swirls dwindled in her eyes, and she was warm again, a frail thing.

Penny understood what the vampire boy was doing in the back room. At once, she was aghast and struck with admiration. She had heard of the warm temporarily taking on vampire attributes by drinking vampire blood without themselves being bitten. There was a story about Katie Reed and a flier in World War I. But it was rare and dangerous.

Well, it used to be rare.

All around her, mayfly vampires darted. A youth blundered into her arms and tried to bite her. She firmly pushed him away, breaking the fingers of his right hand to make a point. They would heal instantly but ache like the Devil when he turned back into a real boy.

A worm of terror curled in her heart. To do such a thing meant having a vision. Vampires, made conservative by centuries, were rarely innovators. She was reminded, again, of Dracula, who had risen among the
nosferatu
by virtue of his willingness to venture into new, large-scale fields of conquest. Such vampires were always frightening.

Would it really be a good thing for Andy to meet this boy?

She saw the white jacket shining in the darkness. The vampire stood at the bar, with Steve Rubell, ringmaster of 54, and the movie actress Isabelle Adjani. Steve, as usual, was flying, hairstyle falling apart above his bald spot. His pockets bulged with petty cash taken from the overstuffed tills.

Steve spotted her, understood her nod of interest, and signalled her to come over.

‘Penny darling,’ he said, ‘look at me. I’m like you.’

He had fangs too. And red-smeared lips.

‘I... am... a vampiah!’

For Steve, it was just a joke. There was a bite mark on Adjani’s neck, which she dabbed with a bar napkin.

‘This is just the biggest thing evah,’ Steve said.

‘Fabulous,’ she agreed.

Her eyes fixed the vampire newcomer. He withstood her gaze. She judged him no longer a new-born but not yet an elder. He was definitely of the Dracula line.

‘Introduce me,’ she demanded, delicately.

Steve’s red eyes focused.

‘Andy is interested?’

Penny nodded. Whatever was swarming in his brain, Steve was sharp.

‘Penelope, this is Johnny Pop. He’s from Transylvania.’

‘I am an American, now,’ he said, with just a hint of accent.

‘Johnny, my boy, this is the witch Penny Churchward.’

Penny extended her knuckles to be kissed. Johnny Pop took her fingers and bowed slightly, an Old World habit.

‘You cut quite a figure,’ she said.

‘You are an elder?’

‘Good grief, no. I’m from the class of ’88. One of the few survivors.’

‘My compliments.’

He let her hand go. He had a tall drink on the bar, blood concentrate. He would need to get his blood count up, to judge by all his fluttering get.

Some fellow rose off the dance floor on ungainly, short-lived wings. He made it a few feet into the air, flapping furiously. Then, there was a ripping and he collapsed onto the rest of the crowd, yelling and bleeding.

Johnny smiled and raised his glass to her.

She would have to think about this development.

‘My friend Andy would like to meet you, Johnny.’

Steve was delighted, and slapped Johnny on the arm.

‘Andy Warhol is the Vampire Queen of New York City,’ he said. ‘You have arrived, my deah!’

Johnny wasn’t impressed. Or was trying hard not to be.

Politely, he said, ‘Miss Churchward, I should like to meet your friend Mr Warhol.’