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Authors: Kim Newman

Anno Dracula

BOOK: Anno Dracula
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Praise for Anno Dracula:

“Kim Newman’s
Anno Dracula
is back in print, and we must celebrate. It was the first mash-up of literature, history and vampires, and now, in a world in which vampires are everywhere, it’s still the best, and its bite is just as sharp. Compulsory reading, commentary, and mindgame: glorious.”

— Neil Gaiman


Anno Dracula
couldn’t be more fun if Bram Stoker had scripted it for Hammer. It’s a beautifully constructed Gothic epic that knocks almost every other vampire novel out for the count.”

— Christopher Fowler

“Bloody excellent. Kim Newman has exsanguinated the best of fact and fiction and created a vivid vampirous Victorian world uniquely his own. This clever, delicious extravaganza – Hammer Horror meets
True
(Blue)
Blood
– is just the tonic for the year of a Royal Wedding.” — Stephen Volk


Anno Dracula
is the smart, hip Year Zero of the vampire genre’s ongoing revolution.” — Paul McAuley

“A brilliantly witty parallel-world saga... builds sure-footedly to a bravura climax which entirely redefines ‘Victorian values’.”


Daily Telegraph

“A
tour de force
which succeeds brilliantly.” —
The Times

“A marvellous marriage of political satire, melodramatic intrigue, gothic horror and alternative history. Not to be missed.”


The Independent

“The most comprehensive, brilliant, dazzlingly audacious vampire novel to date. ‘Ultimate’ seems an apt description...
Anno Dracula
is at once playful, horrific, intelligent and revelatory... Newman’s prose will remain gloriously unique.” —
Locus

COMING SOON:

ANNO DRACULA: THE BLOODY RED BARON

ANNO DRACULA: DRACULA CHA CHA CHA

ANNO DRACULA: JOHNNY ALUCARD

ANNO DRACULA

ISBN: 9780857685339

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark St

London

SE1 0UP

First edition: May 2011

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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.

Kim Newman asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

Copyright © 1992, 2011 by Kim Newman.

Visit our website:

www.titanbooks.com

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[email protected]
, or write to us at the above address.

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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.

Printed and bound in the USA.

For Steve Jones, the Mammoth Bookkeeper of Vampires

Contents

1. In The Fog

2. Genevieve

3. The After-Dark

4. Commercial Street Blues

5. The Diogenes Club

6. Pandora’s Box

7. The Prime Minister

8. The Mystery Of The Hansom Cab

9. A Carpathian Quartet

10. Spiders In Their Webs

11. Matters Of No Importance

12. Dawn Of The Dead

13. Strange Fits Of Passion

14. Penny Stamps

15. The House In Cleveland Street

16. A Turning Point

17. Silver

18. Mr Vampire

19. The Poseur

20. New Grub Street

21. In Memoriam

22. Good-Bye, Little Yellow Bird

23. Headless Chickens

24. A Premature Post-Mortem

25. A Walk In Whitechapel

26. Musings And Mutilations

27. Dr Jekyll And Dr Moreau

28. Pamela

29. Mr Vampire II

30. The Penny Drops

31. The Raptures And Roses Of Vice

32. Grapes Of Wrath

33. The Dark Kiss

34. Confidences

35. A Dynamite Party

36. The Old Jago

37. Downing Street, Behind Closed Doors

38. New-Born

39. From Hell

40. The Return Of The Hansom Cab

41. Lucy Pays A Call

42. The Most Dangerous Game

43. Foxhole

44. On The Waterfront

45. Drink, Pretty Creature, Drink

46. Kaffir War

47. Love And Mr Beauregard

48. The Tower Of London

49. Mating Habits Of The Common Vampire

50. Vita Brevis

51. In The Heart Of Darkness

52. The Last Of Lucy

53. Jack In The Machine

54. Connective Tissue

55. Fucking Hell!

56. Lord Jack

57. The Home Life Of Our Own Dear Queen

Annotations

Acknowledgements

Afterword

Dig Deeper Into Anno Dracula

Alternate Anno Dracula

Extracts from
Anno Dracula: The Movie

Drac The Ripper

Dead Travel Fast

About The Author

‘We Szekeleys have a right to be proud, for in our veins flows the blood of many brave races who fought as the lion fights, for lordship. Here, in the whirlpool of European races, the Ugric tribe bore down from Iceland and the fighting spirit which Thor and Wodin gave them, which their Berserkers displayed to such fell intent on the seaboards of Europe, ay, and of Asia and Africa too, till the peoples thought that the were-wolves themselves had come. Here, too, when they came, they fought the Huns, whose warlike fury had swept the earth like a living flame, till the dying peoples held that in their veins ran the blood of those old witches, who, expelled from Scythia had mated with the devils in the desert. Fools, fools! What devil or what witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins? Is it a wonder that we were a conquering race; that we were proud; that when the Magyar, the Lombard, the Avar, the Bulgar, or the Turk poured his thousands on our frontiers, we drove them back? Is it strange that when Arpad and his legions swept through the Hungarian fatherland, he found us here when he reached the frontier? And when the Hungarian flood swept eastward, the Szekeleys were claimed as kindred by the victorious Magyars, and to us for centuries was trusted the guarding of the frontier of Turkey-land; ay and more than that, endless duty of the frontier guard, for, as the Turks say, “water sleeps, and enemy is sleepless”. Who more gladly than we throughout the Four Nations received the “bloody sword”, or at its warlike call flocked quicker to the standard of the King? When was redeemed that great shame of my nation, the shame of Cassova, when the flags of the Wallach and the Magyar went down beneath the Crescent, who was it but one of my own race who as Voivode crossed the Danube and beat the Turk on his own ground? This was a Dracula indeed! Woe was it that his own unworthy brother, when he had fallen, sold his people to the
Turk and brought the shame of slavery upon them!... Again, when, after the battle of Mohacs, we threw off the Hungarian yoke, we of the Dracula blood were amongst their leaders, for our spirit would not brook that we were not free. Ah, young sir, the Szekeleys – and the Dracula as their heart’s blood, their brains and their swords – can boast a record that mushroom growths like the Hapsburgs and the Romanoffs can never reach. The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace; and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.’

Count Dracula

‘I have studied, over and over again since they came into my hands, all the papers relating to this monster; and the more I have studied, the greater seems the necessity to utterly stamp him out. All through there are signs of his advance; not only of his power, but of his knowledge of it. As I learned, from the researches of my friend Arminius of Buda-Pesth, he was in life a most wonderful man. Soldier, statesman and alchemist – which latter was the highest development of the science-knowledge of his time. He had a mighty brain, a learning beyond compare, and a heart that knew no fear and no remorse. He dared even to attend the Scholomance, and there was no branch of knowledge of his time that he did not essay. Well, in him the brain powers survived the physical death; though it would seem that memory was not all complete. In some faculties of mind he has been, and is, only a child; but he is growing, and some things that were childish at the first are now of man’s stature. He is experimenting, and doing it well; and if it had not been that we have crossed his path he would be yet –
he may yet be if we fail
– the father or furtherer of a new order of beings, whose road must lead through Death, not Life.’

Dr Abraham Van Helsing

1

IN THE FOG

Dr Seward’s Diary (kept in phonograph)

17 SEPTEMBER.

Last night’s delivery was easier than the others. Much easier than last week’s. Perhaps, with practice and patience, everything becomes easier. If never easy. Never... easy.

I am sorry: it is difficult to maintain an orderly mind and this marvellous apparatus is unforgiving. I cannot ink over hasty words or tear loose a spoiled page. The cylinder revolves, the needle etches, and my ramblings are graven for all time in merciless wax. Marvellous apparatuses, like miracle cures, are beset with unpredictable side-effects. In the twentieth century, new means of setting down human thought may precipitate an avalanche of worthless digression.
Brevis esse laboro,
as Horace would have it. I know how to present a case history. This will be of interest to posterity. For now, I work
in camera
and secrete the cylinders with what remain of my earlier accounts. As the situation stands, my life and liberty would be endangered were these journals exposed
to the public ear. One day, I should wish my motives and methods made known and clear.

BOOK: Anno Dracula
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