01 - Goth Opera

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GOTH OPERA by PAUL CORNELL
First published in Great Britain in 1994 by Doctor Who Books an imprint of Virgin publishing Ltd 332
Ladbroke Grove London WI 05AH
Copyright (c) Paul Cornell 1994
The right of Paul Cornell to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright Designs and patents Act 1"388.
"Doctor Who" series copyright (c) British Broadcasting Corporation 1994
ISBN 11 4262 20418 2
Cover illustration by Alister Pearson
Typeset by Galleon
Typesetting printed and bound in Great Britain by Cox & Wyman Ltd, Reading, Berks
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired
out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior written consent in any form of binding or cover other
than that in which a is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the
subsequent purchaser.
PREFACE
Welcome to the first of a new series of Doctor Who novels.
I'm sorry. You've probably heard all this before, several times. But for the benefit of those of you
who have been in suspended animation for the past five years, here it is again. The last new Doctor Who
television story was broadcast in Britain at the end of 1989. A little less than two years later,
having published novelizations of just about every one of the stories shown on television since the
series started in 1963, we launched the New Adventures: original, full-length Doctor Who novels that
related the Doctor's continuing exploits, picking up the trail where television had abandoned it.
Indulge me for a moment: let me tell you about a publishing success story. Yes, the series
has become established, extending across ever-wider stretches of bookshops' shelves. But that's not the
point. As a Doctor Who fan, I find the most satisfying aspect of the New Adventures is that they have
helped to keep Doctor Who alive (and kicking, sometimes) - and not in a nostalgic, introspective way, but
by setting the Doctor in stories that are, I hope, interesting and challenging for the mature and
sophisticated audience that Doctor Who fandom has developed into.
And as a publisher, I find the New Adventures exciting because they have provided a showcase for a
gang of talented young authors who deserve to be in print. Our policy has always been to encourage
book proposals from anyone - absolutely anyone - who's prepared to follow our guidelines. In these
straitened times the New Adventures constitute one of the few places where new SF writers can work,
experiment, show off - and get published.
And now: here we go again.
Except that the Missing Adventures are not the New Adventures all over again. Yes, they will be
full-length original novels, written for a readership that is older than you and I were when we started to
watch Doctor Who on television. And - of course - we will continue to encourage new talent.
But these are new stories with old Doctors. Each Missing Adventures will slot seamlessly into a
gap between television stories, and we will attempt to ensure that the Missing Adventures have the
flavour of the television stories in which they are embedded.
This book, Goth Opera, the first of the Missing Adventures, demonstrates the principles of the
series. It is written by Paul Cornell, one of the brightest stars of the New Adventures galaxy (his first
published novel was the fourth New Adventure). But he hasn't written just another New Adventure. In
Goth Opera you will find a complex story beautifully told - but you won't find experimental techniques,
ultra-fast cutting between scenes, enigmatic dialogue, and the other modern styles featured in some
of the New Adventures. The Doctor Who television stores weren't like that, and neither will the
Missing Adventures be.
As an added bonus, this first Missing Adventure and the simultaneously published New Adventure
share a storyline. Goth Opera is, in a way, the sequel to Blood Harvest by Terrance Dicks, although they
can be read and understood separately. Except that Goth Opera features the fifth Doctor, while
Blood Harvest has the seventh Doctor, so in a sense Blood Harvest is the sequel to Goth Opera. It
certainly confuses me.
There'll be a month without a Missing Adventures after this one, and after that there will be one
Missing Adventure a month, all being well. Look out for the distinctive blue diamond logo and more
stunning Alister Pearson artwork.
Finally - yes, really, we're getting near the end - I must stress that when I say "we" I
sometimes mean Virgin Publishing as a whole, and even its predecessor companies. But usually I mean
myself, Rebecca Levene who edits, and Andy Bodle who assists. And these days, of that triumvirate, I
play the smallest part.
Peter Darvill-Evans Fiction Publisher, Virgin Publishing Ltd.
With thanks to: Kini Brooks, Sarah Groenewegen, Claire Longhurst, Trog, Mark Wyman
FOR TERRANCE
PROLOGUE
The beacon on top of the Siemens Tower blinked red every twenty seconds. At a certain eye-level, it formed
part of a chain of blinking lights, igniting one by one as the sun set over the city. Russet light sparkled off
Piccadilly station, ran in a great amber river down Oxford Road, made the crescent estates of Moss Side into
tangles of lengthening shadows. In the city, people were going home, pulling on coats and gloves, and
locking shops. The pubs were filling up and the bus station was busy with commuters.
In the chilly clear autumn air two figures danced, swooping past the tower like sparrows, calling and laughing.
Against the darkening blue of the sky they were like two charcoal sketches, the drifting debris of some
distant bonfire. They didn't care if they were seen.
Madelaine lowered her arms to her sides, holding down her long black dress, and sped towards the beacon
tower. She grabbed it as she shot past, spinning around the pole at a speed which made the bones in her
arm pop out of their sockets. She let go again, her hand a floppy glove, and whizzed off into the sky under her
own momentum, shaking her joints back together. Her black-lipsticked grin was wide with laughter.
Jake stopped, standing a few feet above the roof of the skyscraper. "Manchester!" he called, spreading his
arms wide. "So much to answer for!"
"I like it!" Madelaine flew to him, embracing him so that they both fell onto the roof. "Thank you for bringing
me here." They'd slept on the journey up, in a freight wagon on a train out of Bristol.
"No need to thank me, like." Jake cradled her head with his arm, and they lay back against the concrete,
looking up at the sky. "This is where I come from. Mum and Dad still live here, down in Rusholme."
"Want to visit them?"
"No. Best not to." He frowned quickly, because he'd thought of bad things to do with his past. He tried not to
show her all that.
Madelaine had met Jake one night at the King's Bridge Inn, a pub in Totnes. She'd lived in the town with her
Mum and Dad, spending more time with her friends than at home. The town was what kept her going, a round
of gossip and people she'd always known. You hung around Vire Island, out in the middle of the river, or down
at the Rumour bar. You could be really buoyed up by it some nights, or sometimes you could be very lonely
in it, held back when everybody else said they'd be leaving soon. The inn had a ghost, it was said, a serving
maid who'd died on the premises. That, and the books you could grab off the shelves above the tables, and
the little corners and stairwells for gossip was enough to attract her crowd, the goths and the metal-heads.
They had bands upstairs too, one of the few places left in town that did. They used to have a laugh, but
Madelaine always thought that there was something missing in her life, and as soon as she saw him she
knew that that thing had been Jake.
He'd been with a group of mates, and they'd said they were down for the surfing, with a VW van parked
somewhere. But they didn't look like surfers. The other lads had treated her like she was invisible, talking over
her and ignoring her. He was different. He had a face that held a permanent grin somewhere, even when he
was sad. His hair was all over the place, a mess of black and shiny stuff that set off his grey eyes. He had a
lovely northern accent and shoulders that looked like he'd stuffed a pair of great wings under his leather
jacket.
"Come on over to the beach with us," he'd said. "You'll be all right." His friends had bellowed with laughter at
that and Madelaine said no, asking if he was going to be around the next day. He'd shrugged, grinning again,
and grunted something non-committal. As she got back into conversation with her friends he left, not looking
back. His mates stayed at the bar, drinking pints down in one gulp and then getting another round in. They
didn't seem to be getting pissed, either.
She stopped in at Rumours on her way back home, but nobody she wanted to see was about. Then she'd
wandered down through the dark walkway behind the supermarket, heading sadly back to her house. The
walkway had a square gap in it beside the railing where people chained their bikes. Maddy always stopped in
the gap to look up into the sky. She'd been into astronomy when she was little, always wanting to go into
space. Wouldn't mind now, really.
The lads stepped forward. They were standing on the roof, around the edge of her gap, looking down at her
with intent.
"What're you doing up there?" she'd asked.
They swooped on her. They grabbed her by the hem of her skirt and pulled her up into the sky. High up, until
she could see the whole of the peninsula in the moonlight, the sea and everything. They went through a
cloud, and it was like a cold mist, soaking her. She was screaming through all this, strange as it sounded
now.
One of the men had started to suck at her fingers. The most horrible part of it all was that they weren't
threatening her or telling her to be quiet or anything. They were just ignoring her.
He arrived as they were pulling the scarf away from her neck. His entrance, rising up through the cloud until it
looked like he was standing on it, was spectacular enough, but he didn't attack them or even shout at them.
"Come on lads," he said. "Not this one, eh?"
"Frigging hell, Jake . . ." one of the creatures moaned. "It's only a woman. Have an arm, if you want."
"I was talking to her, lad. I don't like to talk to my food."
"Oh, and she was really interesting, I suppose. Really of great interest, all her stories about travel." The last
word raised a laugh from the others.
"She's never gone anywhere," Jake mumbled, looking down at the cloud. "But she's all right, okay? She's just
a nice girl."
"I'm sure she is, my son, but, in case you haven't realized, that's the whole point of being vampy. She's a
nice girl, and we - don't - care." The man holding her had an accent like Michael Caine, an affected Cockney.
The little details of it all were continually scaring Madelaine out of the idea that this was a dream.
"Look, how about if I - "
"Make her one of us and live happily ever after? You can only do that to three people in your whole existence,
mate. I've met kids like you before. You've got the teeth, but you're still back in the daylight in your head. You
dream about cashpoints and Sega and foreign travel."
Jake nodded. "You're right there. I had this dream yesterday about going on an 18-30 holiday. Woke up
sweating." He spread his arms out towards the others. "Give her here, I'm claiming her as one of my three."
"It all gets written down, you know. You won't thank me when she goes on telly and shows off her teeth." The
man who'd been holding her pushed Madelaine away, and she fell.
Falling from high up, fluttering on the edge of unconsciousness, she'd been more scared than ever before in
her life. She'd spun, over and over, her skirts and hair fluttering like a falling flag.
He caught her as quickly as he could. She shouted again, beating at him with her hands.
"Are you happy at home? Get on with your Mum and Dad, like?"
"Yes!" she screamed. "Yes!"
"Then I'm really sorry. Can't do anything else. Calm down, now, calm down."
Their eyes met, and like a big hand had grabbed her head, she was suddenly calm. A strange taste rushed
into her mouth, all that biological fear with nowhere else to go. "You're a vampire," she said.
"Yeah."
"What's all that stuff about travel?" "Something humans do. Go on package tours, watch TV, buy crisps.
Whatever the running joke is this week."
"Let me go. Let me go home."
"Sorry. I can't."
He pushed her hair back, and leaned forward to her neck. There were two sharp injections, a sudden small
pain, and a powerful sucking sensation. Madelaine was paralysed. She tried to move her fingers as the
sucking went on, but she couldn't. She could feel his teeth, his normal teeth, against her skin.
It went on too long and she opened her mouth, wanting to laugh or cry, or at least give some sign that she
didn't believe in this. "Don't kill me, don't kill me," was all she could whisper.
When it was over, he turned his face aside and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "You're one of us
now," he'd said.
They landed in Dartington and walked through the gardens, Jake explaining all the rules and the dangers.
She'd hated him for five days.
On the roof now, Madelaine laughed and put Jake's fingers to the old wounds on her neck. They'd been
together four years now. "I was just thinking about how it all happened," she told him. "It doesn't turn you on,
being bitten, like in the films."
"It can." Jake grinned. "If you make it like that. But I wanted it to be honest. You'd got into a mess, I sorted it
the only way I knew how. You're still glad, aren't you?? "Yeah. It's the flying that I like. That's still great."
"Aye, you never lose that. Right, then - " Jake clapped his hands and stood up, taking a deep breath of night
air.
"Dinner?"
"Dinner." She took his hand and he pulled her upright.
"Chinese?"
"Indian."
All right, Indian then. But can we find one with leukemia?"
"Leukemia? That's a long shot, an Indian leukemia victim. They're not going to be out and about, are they?
Where'd you get a taste like that?"
"Party of Lace's. He passed a cup round. That's what he said it was."
"We'll try, all right? But only if we find one walking down the street. I don't want to work too hard. I was
thinking of a kid, myself."
"A pretty young Indian girl? You be careful." She punched him playfully in the chest, breaking one of his ribs.
He flexed his back and the bone melted back together with a theatrical popping sound. "Aye, well, I was
thinking I might convert a couple more of you soon, build myself a harem."
Madelaine pretended to sulk. "I'd leave you."
"Never. We're together forever, you and me." He whistled a couple of bars of an old pop tune. "Long as you
keep on leaving me the drumsticks."
"Perhaps we could find somebody famous? I wouldn't mind a bit of Morrissey. What do you think his blood
would taste like?"
"Milky tea, love. You know we can't off anybody famous, it'd draw attention to ourselves, get us on the news
and all that. Do you remember the article in that magazine?"
Maddy laughed. " "Vampire hunters in Stoke-on-Trent report that British vampires now number 1225, up 65 on
last year's figure!" D'you think they watch us with binoculars and put tags on our ankles when we're not
looking?"
"I wonder if Russ down in Burslem's seen it? He might go and give them a fright. Make it 67 up on last year.
1225 indeed, it must be more like 300. 400, maximum."
Maddy laid her head on Jake's shoulder. "I've started to think about kidneys..." she murmured. "Stop me,
won't you, you know they're bad for me."
Jake patted her head. "I'll take both of them, and you can have some nice healthy liver instead."
They would have flown off to find meat then, but a new sound split the air atop the tower: the sound of time
and space being ripped apart.
It was a sound the lovers had never heard before. They watched in amazement as a new pylon appeared on
the roof top, a red light flashing on top of it. The light stopped flashing when it was fully materialized.
The side of the pylon opened, and out stepped a woman.
She was tall and straight-backed, wearing a neat black trouser-suit and a silver belt. From it hung a number
of utility packs. Her hair was bound severely back to her head, and her features were sharp and inquisitive.
Strangely, she sported a bruise across her cheek. She'd done nothing to hide it. The only ostentation about
her was a necklace of golden spheres. "Ah." she said to Jake, smiling politely. "There you are."
"You were expecting us, like?" Jake advanced with a cheeky grin, the courage that indestructability gave you.
"Somebody like you, yes. My name is Ruathadvorophrenaltid. Call me Ruath. And you are?"
"Jake Hedges, this is Madelaine Worth." Jake waved a hand at Maddy, who curtsied, adopting that look of
dangerous hunger which always produced such a good effect in their prey.
Ruath didn't blink at it. "You are vampires, am I right?"
Jake laughed. "Well, we don't like to boast."
"Good. I thought this would be the right time to find some of you. Always at the high points, overlooking the
feeding grounds. This is a good omen." She noticed the curiosity on their faces, and indicated the pylon
behind her. "I'm a Time Lady of Gallifrey. That's a TARDIS. Do you know what one of those is?" Jake and
Madelaine shook their heads. "How soon they forget."
"Why did you want to find us?" asked Maddy.
"I've made a study of you. You're so important, as a species that is. Great things are about to happen. Can
you not summon some more of your kind?"
"If you want. It's possible that they'll rip you apart, like."
"No it isn't. I'm here because of destiny. They'll listen to what I have to say."
"You asked for it. Madelaine, do you want to do it?"
"Okay." Glancing suspiciously at the stranger, Maddy stepped to the edge of the roof. She took a deep
breath and clenched her teeth. There came a little popping sound from her throat. She let go the breath, and
blew out a bright stream of red, a bloody mist that dissipated on the wind. She ran round the roof, spitting it
as she went, until a circle of the stuff had disappeared into the night air. "Eck! She stopped, and put a hand
to her throat. "Now I really need my dinner."
"Here," Jake opened up his wrist and offered it to her. "Have some of mine for a bit, I want to see how this
turns out." Maddy dashed over and sucked quickly on the open vein, gargling with it.
Ruath watched them, shaking her head, a sad smile on her face. "Beautiful," she whispered. "Beautiful."
They only had to wait a few minutes. Ruath spent the time examining Jake and Madelaine with an
enthusiast's glee, feeling their teeth, peering into their eyes and generally fussing over them in a way which
Maddy found disturbing. Jake seemed entertained by it, though.
The first one to arrive was a fat, bald man. He materialized out of a mist that had been hanging around the
edge of the roof. "What's this then, party?" he chuckled, rubbing his hands together at the sight of Ruath.
"No," Ruath told him, "I bring - "
"Where are you two kids from, then?"
"Down south. We're here for the beer."
"Listen to me - " Ruath began, her voice rising a notch.
The man shot out a finger, embedding it in Ruath's throat. "Shall I be mother? he asked.
Ruath calmly pulled something from her belt, and thrust it into the man's face. It was a book with an elegantly
designed round symbol embossed on its ancient cover.
The newcomer threw up his hands and stepped back, bellowing in shock. Jake and Madelaine took a step
back as well. They could feel the force of the symbol.
"The Great Seal of Rassilon!" shouted Ruath. She advanced on the man until he stood on the edge of the
roof, on the verge of flying away. "I do not have time for these games. I know the secrets of your past, and
have important news concerning your future. If you listen to me, you can rule this world and others. If you
prey on me, you will remain ignorant and vulnerable. I am of the Time Lords. I come from another world, do
you understand?"
"I understand." The voice came from behind Ruath. Standing there was an elegantly dressed young man in
leather gloves and sports jacket. He doffed his cap to Ruath. "Pleased to meet you. The children of the Great
Vampire are bound to the ring and the tradition."
Ruath quickly reached into her pouch again, and slipped a ring onto her finger. She held it out in the direction
of the gentleman. "Thank goodness somebody knows the form. Kiss the ring."
"Of course." He went down on one knee and gently touched the silver band with his lips. Then he looked up
at the others. "I advise you to do the same. Haven't you read the books? This lady is the herald of our jolly old
saviour."
Ruath held the ring high over the other vampires. They all knelt. "Bring me the blood of a virgin," she told
them. "And I will show you the truth of what I say."
Jake glanced at Madelaine. "It's the night for tall orders, isn't it?"
They spread the pool of blood in a circle on the roof, directed by the man in the cap, who introduced himself
as Jeremy Sanders. He'd shaken hands with the bald man, pleased to meet his "competition in the
Withington area". Ruath expected more vampirekind to arrive, but Jake explained to her that only a couple per
major city was the norm.
"More than that, and it gets out of control. You get everybody biting each other, passing it on without killing.
Soon your food supply's gone and you all starve. You're taught that by whoever initiates you, only make three
of the kind as you go. Space them out as well, so you're not all fighting over the same meat."
"Ah, but do you know who the father of you all is? Ruath looked around the group. "The only vampire on Earth
at one point. Anyone?"
"Count Dracula?" suggested Maddy sarcastically.
"No. No, that legendary figure's progeny all died out."
"The Great Vampire." Jeremy smiled. "You wear the ring of his cult." .
"Not the Great Vampire. But I'm impressed by your knowledge."
"Ah. when I was initiated into the Undead back in the forties, everybody knew the form. We were expecting
you almost immediately. Got a little miffed by the passing of the years, it must be said."
"Let me show you." She took a bottle from her pouch and let three drops of a clear liquid fall into the pool of
blood. The red liquid shifted and stirred, as if it suddenly had a life of its own. Colours and textures swirled
across its surface. "Activation code. Bioplasmic data-processors, go go go." She looked up as the blood
started to glitter and swirl faster. "It has to be virgin blood, no hint of anybody else's genes. My little datapod
virus structures hook into the memories of individual cells and go back into racial memory, interrogating it and
following the trail back until they find what I've told them to find. Somewhere back in this person's ancestry,
somebody will have touched somebody who's seen what we want to see."
The vampires looked blankly at her.
"It's magic," she told them.
"That's all right then," the bald man muttered. "For a minute, I thought it were going to be something
complicated."
The pool shimmered and suddenly flattened into a vibrating flat surface. "There he is!" gasped Ruath.
In the pool, a picture had formed. A bearded man, running and snarling. The background was some sort of
store-room. There was a flash of a crate. The man sped across what looked like a casino, past card tables
and the like, and threw himself through the glass of a window, shattering it. The scene changed. Now they
were in a darkened alleyway, beside a street sign of American design. Something about the look of the place
suggested the nineteen thirties. The man lashed out at the viewer, and the picture whizzed aside in a burst of
red.
"Like his style," whispered Jake. "Who is that?"
"Yarven." Ruath breathed, rippling the pool. "Lord Yarven. The assassin of Veran and the last Undead survivor
of E-Space."
"Thought that was a car."
"Hush. Watch." The picture switched to the hold of a ship. The point of view was peering down into an
earth-filled box. A hand shot up and pulled it into darkness.
"That's an initiation," Jeremy murmured. "Too much style for a killing."
A series of attacks followed, all from the victim's point of view. The setting changed from aboard ship to a
familiar background of Big Ben and the Thames. But the details were strange, old-fashioned cars and men in
trilbies shuffling by in the night.
"This is the early nineteen forties, by your calendar. Yarven came to this country during that decade, and
initiated many of your kind into being. He was not exercising your restraint. He sought to create an army of
the night. But what happened to him?"
The picture shifted suddenly to the hold of an aircraft. Somebody was grabbed, struggled in the darkness. A
hatch was pulled open. Yarven stood suddenly framed in the doorway of the aircraft, an elegant figure in a
dressing-gown and cravat. The viewpoint dropped away, down into the night. Yarven fell with it, spinning past
in an elegant dive.
"Where's he going?" murmured Ruath.
The next viewpoint was crouched in a forest, a Sten gun propped in front of it. Yarven was running towards the
bushes. The observer stood up and apparently shouted a warning, for Yarven turned and looked. He said
something with a curl of his lip.
The observer opened fire. Yarven's body flew backwards, bloody debris blasted out of his torso. The observer
stepped forward.
Yarven stood up again, roaring, and snapped the gun with his fingers. He thrust a claw straight at the
observer, and the picture became black and red. Suddenly, another point of view on the same scene, a
partisan in a heavy coat and scarf kneeling before Yarven, his face a mess of blood. The vampire was caught
unawares, looking around him in surprise. Into the picture was thrust a crucifix. From the forest all around
came serious-faced countrymen, holding up the silver crosses they carried around their throats.
"Oh no, I can't look..." whispered Madelaine. "This is like a horror movie."
The burly men grabbed Yarven and dragged him through the forest. He was roaring and struggling, but their
grip seemed to increase with his resistance.
"They've got faith, the sods," said Jake.
"I'm beginning to recognize this," grinned Jeremy, smoothing his moustache. "Just as the prophecies predict,
what?" The observer was watching as two of his countrymen dug out a pit. Yarven was offered a blindfold,
which he declined angrily. He seemed more irritated than frightened. A couple of the partisans were tying logs
together.
Yarven stood before the pit, and bullets burst once more across his body. He fell back into it, and the
partisans rushed forward, throwing silver crucifixes after him. A giant cross made of two great logs was
thrown down on top of him, and the pit swiftly filled in. The last scene was of one of the men blessing the
ground. He crossed himself before he turned away.
The picture clouded and became blood once more. Jake laughed in amazement. "The idiots. They haven't cut
off his head, there's no stake. Bloody hell, he must still be conscious down there!"
"That's so cruel." Madelaine shook her head in anger.
"I see what you mean," Jeremy straightened up. "That's the story of - "
Ruath raised a finger. "Let me read it. " She opened the book with the Great Seal on its cover, and found the
place she'd marked. "Here it is. "And those who will the destruction of the vampiric races must be ever
vigilant. The records of the Dark Time state that there shall come among their number one who was never
completely killed. He will be entombed in a pit, not alive and not dead, on the world that will be called
Ravolox." " Ruath looked up. "That's another name for Earth." She found her place again. " "He will be joined
with a Prydonian Lady, and the two of them shall cause much suffering, for he is the one the Great Vampire
predicted at his meeting with Rassilon, the one who will succeed him and be consumed in the maw of time
that his people may prosper. They will call him the Vampire Messiah." "
She closed the book triumphantly. "The Dark Time was when my people used their abilities to discover what
should not be discovered. This isn't mystical nonsense, but an actual report of the future. I am that Prydonian
Lady, and it is my destiny to set your people free."
"The Vampire Messiah . . ." The bald man smiled broadly. "Even I've heard of him. Chap who initiated me said
he'd come and save us all."
"Indeed." Ruath put a finger to the pool of blood, and it curled into a ball in her hand. "This will show us where
to find him." She pointed to her TARDIS. "Shall we?"
Ruath's TARDIS materialized in the shelter of a low stone wall, its shape now that of an old well. She pushed
aside the wooden well cover and hopped out. "Come on out," she called back. "It's dark."
A dense mist rose out of the well and resolved itself into the four vampires, who looked around themselves in
amazement. They were at the edge of a forest. Nearby was a town with a battered clock tower. Across the
night, tracer fire was rattling down out of the hills onto the buildings. Every now and then a small explosion
bloomed in the square. The noise was terrifying.
"Bosnia," Madelaine sighed. "Cheers."
"It's not Bosnia," Ruath glanced at her map. "It's technically Croatia, but that's the whole nature of the current
dispute. Now, we need to go . . ." she felt the ball of blood move in her palm, "that way." She set off: The
others followed.
"That thing," the bald man whispered, pointing back to the well. "It's bigger on the inside than the outside."
They made their way through the trees cautiously, Jake stopping to sniff" the air at intervals. "There's a lot of
people about, all different sorts, all over the place."
"And judging by what happened to Yarven," Jeremy purred, "they've got a lot of faith. Fighting men generally
do.
"Those we saw were Catholic partisans, one of the many factions assembled under the banner of one
General Tito in the nineteen forties." Ruath pursed her lips. "Which shows what a strong leader can do,
considering that the country eventually chose Communism. The local culture has been heavily influenced by
vampires, there must have been a great number of them in the area at one point. That's why the partisans
knew some of the lore. Fortunately not enough."
"Well, they won't believe in us any more, will they?" Maddy muttered. "Nobody does." She was getting
irritated by the clear sky. Sometimes she liked the little pricking sensations that stars, distant suns,
produced on her skin. But not tonight. There were people in these woods who might be able to actually do
them harm. After years of invulnerability, that was a very worrying thought.
Ruath smiled. "Really? In this current conflict, Serbian spokesmen have alleged that an army of the Undead
will arise to help them in their final battle."
The vampires laughed. "The cheek of them!" chuckled Jake. "We'll mop up afterwards, ta very much."
As the others moved forward, fanning out to better sniff the air, Madelaine tugged at the arm of Jake's Jacket.
"Why are we doing this?" she whispered.
Jake shrugged. "Something to do. Where would you rather be?" "Back in Manchester or somewhere. That
woman's out of her tree, you can see it in her eyes."
"Listen." He put a gentle hand on her shoulders. "If things get rough, we'll just take off and go somewhere
else, okay?" Madelaine smiled, not particularly convinced. "I just don't want to lose you. I don't want us to get
hurt for nothing."
"No chance. I'm not signing up for anything, I just want to see what this is all about."
Ruath had looked back to them, a sharp little glance that Madelaine felt was directed at her. "Hurry up," she
said. "We haven't got all night."
After ten minutes or so, the party came to a familiar clearing. The ball of blood in Ruath's hand pulsed and fell
into liquid. She wiped it from her hand, conscious of the sudden attention of the Undead around her. "We're
here. Look for the pit."
The bald man fell to his knees and sniffed the ground, scuttling about like a hunting dog. At one point, he
raised his head. "Eric," he said.
"Sorry?" Ruath frowned.
摘要：

GOTHOPERAbyPAULCORNELLFirstpublishedinGreatBritainin1994byDoctorWhoBooksanimprintofVirginpublishingLtd332LadbrokeGroveLondonWI05AHCopyright(c)PaulCornell1994TherightofPaulCornelltobeidentifiedastheAuthorofthisWorkhasbeenassertedbyhiminaccordancewiththeCopyrightDesignsandpatentsAct1"388."DoctorWho"se...

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