Free Anno Dracula Dracula Cha Cha Cha by Kim Newman

out of the chair and was close to him, faster than his eye could register. A cheap dead trick. It was supposed to unnerve and overwhelm.
    Her hands rested on his shoulders and she leaned forward, glasses still dangling from her mouth, for a quick, bloodless kiss.
    Tom felt a thrill of revulsion at the nearness of the dead woman. He let her peck his lips.
    She was gone again, at the other side of the Crystal Room, leaning against a fireplace. Then she was back in her chair, sitting properly, knees together.
    ‘I don’t know what we’re going to tell Princess Asa,’ she said. ‘She’ll probably go spare.’
    However irritated Penelope might be with Count Kernassy and Malenka, her real goat was Princess Asa Vajda, the Royal Fiancée. It was too obvious to think her simply jealous, for Tom knew she didn’t dare imagine herself as even a consort for il principe. Though she’d taken on the organising of the household, she was clearly not one of Dracula’s sluts. Tom had seen them about, mindless dead women in shrouds, and a damn nuisance to any warm man within reach.
    Sometimes Tom thought Penelope hated everyone but was too well brought-up to mention it.
    She had a history, but it was too dull to delve into. It was as if he had walked into a movie theatre during the last reel of a complicated but not very interesting melodrama. His best policy was to ignore it, cluck the occasional agreeable or amusing comment and let the dead sort themselves out.
    ‘Think of it this way, Penny,’ he began. ‘You’ve two free spaces in the chapel for the ceremony. You can bump up some of the poor relations.’
    One of Penelope’s chores was to assemble as many of Dracula’s get as possible for the wedding. Il principe had been profligate for centuries, turning his mistresses and officers, disseminating his bloodline like a dog wetting trees.
    ‘You’ve no idea how superstitious all those Middle European barbarians are,’ she said. ‘Reluctant to plonk their bottoms on a truly dead man’s chair. Some still light black candles for the Devil on Walpurgis Night.’
    By the time of the wedding, Tom wanted to be done with the dead. The ceremony was to be in the palace chapel, probably because the Pope wouldn’t let Dracula use St Peter’s. Otranto would be thronged with dead things.
    The doors of the Crystal Room were flung open. Princess Asa made an entrance.
    She wore six-inch high heels and a black bikini swimsuit, not an atypical ensemble for her. Transparent layers of floor-length shroud were draped over her head, fixed by a wide floppy black hat. Her waist-length hair was as dark as the proverbial raven’s wing. Through all the grey lace, her huge round eyes glowed like red neons. Her cheekbones were sculptured ice, her lower lip was reckoned the lushest in Europe, and her tummy was tight as a drum skin.
    On leashes, she had two mastiffs the size of ponies.
    ‘Signorina Churchward,’ she shouted. ‘Can you not be entrusted with even the simplest task? Can you not fetch a valued friend from the airport without losing him to the mob?’
    Penelope stood, affecting unconcern.
    ‘Are we all to be found in our coffins and destroyed, as in the old times? You moderns remember nothing of the persecutions. Why were precautions not taken? Why was this atrocity allowed to happen?’
    As she spoke, with a hollowly venomous voice, the Princess’s shrouds fluttered around her like anemone fronds. She stalked the room, heels putting penny-sized holes in the old carpet, lace drifting behind in an angry froth, thin white thighs scything.
    Penelope knew better than to shrug.
    ‘Il principe will be distressed,’ shouted Asa.
    Tom wasn’t sure the Princess had ever met her Prince. Theirs was more an alliance than a marriage, with everything negotiated beforehand. She seemed able to speak for him at all times, though. It would be interesting to see how much authority she might actually have.
    One of the dogs snarled at Tom. Animals