Anno Dracula

the steps, chain clanking with her.

Vlad Tepes – Prince Consort no more – was on his feet, cloak rippling around him like a thundercloud. Tusklike teeth exploded from his face, and his hands became spear-tipped clusters. Beauregard, Genevieve realised, was dead. But the monster’s power was dealt a blow from which it could never recover. The Empire Vlad Tepes had usurped would rise against him. He had grown too arrogant.

The Carpathians were on Beauregard already, talons and mouths red and digging.

Genevieve thought she was to die too. Beauregard had tried to keep her from harm by not involving her in his designs. But she had been too stubborn, had insisted on being here, on seeing Vlad Tepes in the lair he had made for himself.

He came down from his throne for her, foul steam pouring from his mouth and nostrils.

But she was older than him. Less blinded by the ignorance of his selfish fantasies. For centuries, he had thought himself special, as a higher being apart from humanity, while she knew she was just a tick in the hide of the warm.

She ducked under his hands, and was not there when he overbalanced, falling to the floor like a felled tree, marble cracking under his face. He was slow in his age, in his bloated state. Too much indulgence. Too much isolation. Veins in his neck burst, spurting blood, and knitted together again.

While Vlad Tepes was scrambling to right himself, the rest of his court were in confusion. Some returned to their bloody pleasure, some fell insensate.

She could do nothing for Beauregard.§

Ruthven was uncertain. With the Queen truly dead, things were going to change. He could have barred her way from the palace, but he hesitated – ever the politician – then stood aside.

Merrick had the doors open for her, and she escaped from the infernal heat and stench of the throne-room. He then slammed the doors shut, and put his back to them. He had been part of Beauregard’s conspiracy, also willing to give his life for his sovereign. He nodded to the main doors, and made a long howl that might have meant ‘go’.

She saluted the man, and ran from the Palace. Outside, in the night, fires were burning high. The news would soon be spreading.

A spark had touched the gunpowder keg.

* This is one tiny change made between ‘Red Reign’ and Anno Dracula. In the novella, Genevieve (who – like her extracontinual cousin in the Jack Yeovil books – didn’t have an accent) has met Dracula before, and always knew about his ambitions as a conqueror. In the novel, Genevieve and Dracula only know each other by reputation. The main reason for this alteration is that I needed to drop the roll-call of vampire hangers-on, since they all got their mentions elsewhere in the book.

§ Yes, in my first draft, Beauregard dies. When I came to it again, I felt we – and Genevieve – had come to know him too well to let him go so easily. I hadn’t outlined the subsequent books, so I didn’t know he would figure so largely in them.

Extracts from Anno Dracula: The Movie

Shortly after Anno Dracula was published, I did a draft of a film script for producers Stuart Pollak and Andre Jacquemetton (who appear in Johnny Alucard). In this, I made a few tweaks to the plot and reordered the importance of some of the supporting characters. These extracts concentrate on scenes which are either original to the script or changed from the novel.

EXT. NIGHT.

A severed head, somewhat resembling Peter Cushing, is impaled on a spear. Exposed to the elements for a while, it is dilapidated. Pale moonlight emphasises hollow eyesockets. A wind blows.

A caption in Hammer Films Gothic crawls across the screen.

STENTORIAN NARRATOR

In 1885, Count Dracula travelled from his castle in Transylvania to London, intent on founding a new order of beings whose road leads through Death not Life. The story has it that Professor Van Helsing gathered together stalwart Englishmen and women to defeat the vampire, expelling him from these shores, ultimately destroying him. But what would London, what would the world, have been like if Van Helsing had failed? This is the city that might have been if the Count had prevailed. Dracula has taken by force Queen Victoria as his bride, and declared himself Prince Consort and Lord Protector of Great Britain and her Empire...

Music: the stirring preamble to ‘Rule Britannia’. A solo voice, strong but feminine, begins ‘When Britain first at Heaven’s command, arose from out the azure main, this was the charter, the charter of the land, and guardian angels sang this strain...’

We pull back to see that the spear is one of a row standing outside Buckingham Palace. The building is illuminated by barbarian torches. Other poles support impaled corpses. At the doors stand wolf-faced guards in full uniform.

‘Rule Britannia, Britannia rules the waves, and Britons never never never shall be slaves...’

EXT. BUCKINGHAM PALACE. NIGHT.

A heraldic shield: the lion and unicorn of Britain transformed into gape-mouthed monsters, overlaid with the bat standard of Dracula. This device is on the door of a carriage, drawn by black horses down the driveway. A GUARDSMAN salutes the carriage, He has a bestial snout, red eyes, vampire fangs. The main gates open, and the carriage trundles into Birdcage Walk.

EXT. LONDON. NIGHT.

The carriage proceeds through the streets. We glimpse scenes of a transformed Victorian London. Lamp- lighters touch sparks to gas-jets producing puffs of flame, well-dressed toffs bothered by street urchins, policemen march in pairs, an organ grinder plays for a horned imp. An effete DANDY, in extravagant black clothes, tries to fend off a plump WHORE: his face is skull-white but for penny-sized rouge spots on his cheeks; he too has fangs.

About a quarter of the people we see on the streets are vampires.

Some newly-raised from the dead, Victorians with large teeth; others are medieval monsters imported by Dracula. Some part-animal, others visibly decrepit or mutated, some lithe and alive in un-death. All eyes turn as the carriage passes. Some shrink in fear, some doff hats, others peer with curiosity. A WOMAN crosses herself; a POLICEMAN batters her with a truncheon.

At a crossroads, a party of Carpathian soldiers, directed by RUPERT OF HENTZAU*, a dashing vampire, erect a sharpened wooden stake. A CONDEMNED MAN, dressed in a nightshirt, struggles as the soldiers hoist him up and impale him on the stake. Blood gushes on the pavement. A vampire CHILD darts out of the crowd, laps it up like a dog, and is shooed away.

HENTZAU (reading aloud from a proclamation)

So perish all who defy the rule of Prince Dracula, Lord Protector of These Isles.

We rise above the coach as if on batwings, and look over the city. This is the West End, the well-lit civilised area, hectic with theatre crowds and night life. Human-sized wing-shapes flit between the taller buildings. The river, glinting red in the light as if its waters were blood, snakes through the city. This is the beating heart of an empire. We travel into the dark, away from the light.

EXT. WHITECHAPEL. NIGHT.

We descend into Commercial Road. Moonlight shines through thin wisps of fog on to wet cobbles. We pass a pub, the Ten Bells, from which raucous laughter and pianola music emerges. We pass Toynbee Hall, an educational institute. We pass street people –urchins, policemen, whores, loafers, slummers. We slip up to an alley, where a woman’s voice sounds, a wordless ululation related to ‘Mack the Knife’. Fog swirls thicker. It is a rich yellow, with drifts of red.

We have been following a glimpsed, shadowy figure. JACK, a man in a top hat with a black ulster, carries a medical bag. We do not see his face§. His bag chinks, as implements shift inside. He wears black gloves. JACK pauses at the entrance to the alley, struck by the strange song.

His silhouette frames against a poster. REWARD OFFERED FOR INFORMATION LEADING TO THE ARREST OF ‘SILVER KNIFE’, THE WHITECHAPEL MURDERER. Small print details the murders of Annie Chapman and Polly