The Third Section Part 19

Yudin's breathing was slow and calm, belying the excitement he felt. He needed to be lucid, and to keep a steady hand, so that what he was doing could be achieved swiftly. He did not know when Prometheus perhaps others too would return, but it would most certainly be before dawn. Even so, Yudin knew that the antic.i.p.ation he had felt when setting out earlier that evening would not go unfulfilled, though his victim was utterly different from what he had expected.

It was the breath of the voordalak that came in the loudest, shortest, most unsteady bursts. It was the breath of the terrified, the breath that prepares the body for action and yet which the body chokes off before it is complete. Yudin pondered why a vampire should breathe like that. A vampire could be terrified, he had verified that many times, but it had so little need for air that a change in breathing was quite unnecessary. Perhaps it was merely a memory of being human, the body reacting to events in a way that would once have been helpful but was now merely for show like a dog half-heartedly kicking the earth over its faeces as a memory of the wolf that it once was.

'So, you're Mihailov,' said Yudin. 'I'll have to take your word for it. I don't remember the name, but I never forget a face.'

'I'll never forget yours,' Mihailov replied. Yudin glanced up and saw the hatred in his eyes. He had been easy to capture, and easy to persuade to talk, at least to reveal his name, but the rest would come. Mihailov's goal was vengeance, and vengeance was a meagre feast if its victim was not fully aware of the reasons for it.

Yudin tugged at Mihailov's feet. All seemed secure. He had only used rope to bind him. Normally he would have used thick chains on a creature with the strength of a voordalak, but when packing his little black-leather bag he had been intending only to deal with humans. Fortunately, most of what he had brought would still prove useful. To compensate, Yudin had found a way to ensure that Mihailov could apply no leverage to his bonds and the Saviour had a.s.sisted. To one side of the iconostasis, a little way back into the nave, a stone statue of Christ, life-sized, stood with His arms open in a sign of welcome. Yudin had hooked the rope that bound Mihailov's wrists together over Christ's right arm and let it nestle in the crook of His elbow. He had been worried for a moment, but it seemed the Lord was able to bear the weight even of this most abominable of sinners.

Mihailov's arms were stretched above his head and his feet dangled at about the level of Yudin's knees. His shoulders would have been dislocated by his own weight, but his torn ligaments and tendons would be healing now, leaving his shoulders permanently misshapen. It would make it even less likely that he could free himself. Yudin had held captives in this sort of pose many times before, enjoying the air of helplessness that it lent them. The manacles in the cell back at the Kremlin achieved much the same. It was a long time, though, since he had enjoyed the scene with a fellow voordalak as the centre of attention.

'You remember me from Chufut Kalye, I take it?' said Yudin, going back over to his bag.

'We all remember you.'

'All? How many is all?'

'How many of us were there?'

Yudin began to rummage through his possessions, but then realized he would probably need everything. He picked up the bag and brought it back over. 'Oh, dozens, I should say. But I can't believe that all of you escaped.' He put the bag down close to Mihailov's feet. 'I've only seen the two of you in Moscow.'

'Then at least two of us escaped.'

'How?'

'Some soldiers fought. One of them bled heavily. It seeped down and revived us.'

'Even so,' said Yudin, laying out his paraphernalia on the step in front of the iconostasis, 'you were still trapped.'

'We had almost dug our way free soon after you left us. And over the years the earth had shifted. It was easy enough.'

'On a dead man's blood?' Yudin knew that both the flavour and the nourishment of blood died quickly.

'Once we had escaped, we drank from his foe. Then we had the strength to move on.'

'The one who bled,' asked Yudin, 'where did he bleed from?'

'Where?' Mihailov seemed confused, as well he might be.

'Where on his body?'

It took a moment's thought. 'His thigh.'

'Good,' said Yudin. 'A good place for it.' He looked up. 'So then you came here, in pursuit of me?'

'We went to Sevastopol.'

'A bucket,' said Yudin, as though talking to himself, but knowing he would be heard. Mihailov's face showed the puzzlement he had hoped for. 'I need a bucket.' He cast his eyes around, searching. 'Go on,' he said more loudly. 'Why did you go to Sevastopol?'

'His son was there.'

Yudin saw what he was after in a dark corner. He hurried over. For all his bravura, he was afraid that Mihailov's comrades might return at any minute. He needed to be swift. 'Whose son?' he called over his shoulder.

'The three-fingered man's.'

'Aha!' said Yudin, as much at what he saw as what he had heard. It was a pewter font, quite a large one big enough to drown the baby if the priest so desired. The semicircular handle, lying on one side and aligning perfectly with the rim, reminded Yudin of a witch's cauldron. The entire font rested on a wooden stand, but he didn't need that. He lifted it off and placed it on the floor, then began to drag it by the handle back over to Mihailov. 'You thought he'd help you? Like father like son?'

Mihailov waited until the sc.r.a.pe, sc.r.a.pe, sc.r.a.pe of the font against the mosaic tiles had stopped before replying. 'We thought he might.'

'But he didn't.' Yudin's voice remained calm, but his mind quickly a.n.a.lysed the possibility that Dmitry had sided with them. It seemed preposterous. Dmitry was devoted to those he regarded as his friends. Even if they'd told him every detail of Yudin's past, even if he'd believed it, he'd have come to Yudin and offered him a chance to explain. But when they'd met, Yudin had noticed no trace of change in Dmitry's att.i.tude towards him. Even so, it was not a possibility entirely to be ignored.

'He didn't,' confirmed Mihailov, but on a matter such as that, he was not to be trusted.

Yudin began to pull off Mihailov's boots, making sure that as he did so he exerted maximum force on the creature's shoulders. 'I take it Prometheus is your leader.'

'Prometheus?'

'Tyeplov,' Yudin clarified, moving on to the second boot.

'He's the one who hates you most.'

'I'm glad to hear it.' Yudin stood upright. 'Now,' he said, 'this is where it all gets a bit friendly.' He reached up and took hold of Mihailov's belt in his left hand, pulling it away from his body. In his right hand he held his knife, which he used to saw through the belt and then to continue to cut through the breeches right down to the crotch. With a quick pull, Yudin had removed them. He threw them into a corner. The voordalak was naked from the waist down. His genitalia hung limp and ugly, distracting Yudin and making him regret having exposed them. But it was too late.

'He'll be here soon,' said Mihailov.

'Good,' replied Yudin. 'And I take it you all bear the same loathing for Raisa Styepanovna that you do for me.'

'She's a fool, but she must still be punished. What we do will act as a warning to others.'

'As will this,' replied Yudin. He selected a couple of items of equipment and then stepped close to Mihailov's leg, holding it behind the knee. With the scalpel he made a small, precise cut on the inside of the thigh. Blood flowed quickly from it, sticking to the skin of his leg as it ran down towards the ground. Yudin pressed the catheter into the wound, but before he could get it in place, the bleeding stopped as the cut began to seal itself. Within seconds it was as though the damage had never been done. 'd.a.m.n!' said Yudin. 'You're healthy.'

'We have eaten well here.'

Yudin glanced over at the man who would have been Mihailov's next meal. He had abandoned his attempts at the Beautiful Gate and had turned his attention at last towards the narthex and the door beyond. He had not got very far, and now lay still. But he was not unconscious. His head was on its side and his eyes were fixed on the two vampires.

'And you've been here since what September?' It was only a guess that they had stayed in Sevastopol until it had fallen. He cut again into Mihailov's skin. The voordalak did not flinch. He could have little idea what Yudin planned. This time he made the incision wider, to give himself more time. It was untidy, but that didn't matter.

'We've been here long enough.'

Now the gla.s.s tube slipped in before the wound could heal. Even so, the voordalak's flesh did its best, reducing the lesion to a tiny hole, which would itself have vanished had not the catheter prevented it. The gla.s.s became red in a moment as it filled with blood. Yudin stepped back so as not to spill any upon himself. The blood shot from the end of the tube and splashed on to the tiles of the church floor. Yudin watched for a moment, enjoying the desecration, even though he knew there was no one present to be offended by it. Then he pushed the font over a little with his foot until it was directly beneath Mihailov and able to catch his blood. At first it made a tinny rattle as it hit the metal, but once the bottom was covered with the liquid the remaining blood made a light splashing sound as it fell. If it weren't for the colour of the fluid, anyone would think that Mihailov was taking a p.i.s.s.

'You came straight to Moscow?' asked Yudin.

'What are you doing?' asked Mihailov.

'I'm killing you. Slowly. Now answer my question.'

The voordalak remained impa.s.sive at the announcement of his imminent death, perhaps doubting Yudin's ability to fulfil his promise. 'That's right. We had to travel slowly, but we ate well along the way.'

'And tonight you decided to act?'

'No we were still formulating our plans.'

That was good news, if it were true. If tonight they had been planning on making a move against Yudin, then this all might be part of a trap. As it was, it seemed that Yudin was in charge of the situation. Mihailov could, of course, be lying, but with each drop of blood that drained from him, his will would weaken. That meant that now was the time to ask the more important questions.

'How did you know where to find me?'

'Tyeplov knew.'

Not a very satisfactory answer, but then another, similar question occurred to him. 'How did you know that Dmitry Alekseevich was in Sevastopol?'

'Tyeplov knew.'

'How did he know?'

There was no answer. Yudin grabbed the catheter and pushed it a little further into the artery, taking care not to break it. Mihailov winced. He was weary now. Yudin knew he must not drain too much blood, or Mihailov would lose consciousness altogether. His body would manage to regenerate the vital fluid, just as it could restore any other part of itself that was lost or injured, but that would take time. With some effort, a perfect balance could be achieved, with blood flowing out at the same rate it was created. But even that would not last long. The effort of producing blood would further weaken the creature, in much the same way as if it were starved.

Yudin put his thumb over the tip of the catheter and stopped the flow. He counted a minute and then released it. The trickling and splashing of the draining blood began anew, pulsing in time with the beat of Mihailov's faltering heart. Yudin looked at the blood on his hand. If he hadn't been aware of its origin he would have been more than tempted to lick it up, but he knew that vampire blood tasted foul it had already been consumed once. It would be like offering urine to a human in place of wine. He wiped his hand clean on Mihailov's discarded breeches.

'How did Tyeplov know?' he asked again.

'Zmyeevich told him.'

Yudin's blood ran cold. This was no act of petty vengeance by a group of inconsequential voordalaki who had escaped the laboratory. It was vengeance to be sure, but of a far more awful nature. Zmyeevich was the most powerful vampire there had ever been, and Yudin had deceived him, and used him, and caused him pain. He suddenly felt far less sure that it was he who was in charge of events.

'Zmyeevich was with you? In the Crimea?' He asked that question out of fear of the answer to a slightly different question: whether Zmyeevich was still with them, in Moscow.

'No.' Mihailov tried to shake his head, but didn't have the strength.

'How did he tell Tyeplov then?'

'Zmyeevich created Tyeplov created him as a vampire. Their minds are together.'

Yudin felt relief. It was merely the mental bond between vampire parent and vampire child. That Zmyeevich was involved still caused him a deep, unyielding terror, but the fact that the great vampire was not physically present gave him some hope.

'And Zmyeevich conveyed to him where I was, and where Raisa was, and where Dmitry was?'

'He did.'

Yudin could think of little more to ask, so he tried a question that had failed previously. 'How many of you are there?'

'Three. There were four, but one died in Sevastopol.' Mihailov's voice was singsong almost as if he were happy.

'What happened to him?'

'The three-fingered man.'

'His son, you mean?'

'Yeah.' It was casual, half-asleep.

That it was Aleksei himself had momentarily raised a fear in Yudin not as great as his fear of Zmyeevich, but approaching it. But Aleksei was an old man now, even if he ever managed to leave Siberia. It was pleasing yes, genuinely pleasing to know that the son took after the father. It would make Yudin's revenge upon the father all the greater.

'Who's the other one?' he asked. He was running out of questions, but any information could be useful.

'Ignatyev. It's just him, me and Tyeplov now. Wieczorek was the one that died.'

Both names stirred vague recognition in Yudin. He would find the details in his notebooks.

'You all sleep here?' he asked. 'Yes.'

'Where?'

'In the crypt.'

Yudin checked the ropes that bound Mihailov's hands, and the statue of Christ that supported him. There was no prospect of escape. He looked around and saw the stairs leading down to the crypt, to the left of the iconostasis. He also noticed that the drunk had managed to haul himself halfway across the floor. Yudin strode over and gripped his ankle, dragging him away from freedom. The man screamed as his weight was transferred through his mangled shin, but a swift kick to the stomach silenced him.

Yudin took a candle from the many that adorned the walls. He had watched Mihailov go through the building and light them all as though he were the church's dyachok before climbing through the window and pouncing on him. One would do to see in the crypt.

It wasn't very deep, but it was sufficient. There were three coffins there, which tied with what Mihailov had said. It could have been a clever lie, revealing what Yudin could easily discover by other means, but Mihailov was at present not in the best condition to be clever. Still Yudin had to consider the possibility that more of this group lived elsewhere in the city. Even if there were only three, they would have another nest somewhere, just in case.

But the crypt was not only a dark vault where the undead rested. The voordalaki had also used it as a place to store their dead. There were about twenty bodies in all, each drained of its blood, in various stages of decay. It was a repellent idea like a human sleeping beside a latrine. Yudin paused. How often he made comparisons between that which was vampire and that which was human. He had been thirty years a vampire. How much longer until it stopped? He chuckled to himself and dismissed the question from his mind.

The fact that there were twenty bodies was of little help in telling him how long the voordalaki had been here. If necessary, three vampires could have eked out that supply of food for over a year. If they were greedy, it might be less than a week. He remembered the vampires he had come to Moscow with in 1812. They had usually each consumed one soul every night, sometimes two. But times had been different then. The war had meant there was little chance of them being discovered. That was why they had been so eager to come.

The degree of decay of the oldest body, however, could give some clue as to when it had been brought here. It was cold down there, and that acted to preserve what remained of the flesh, but Yudin's guess was that this one had died two or three months before. Again it fitted with what Mihailov had said. He returned up the stairs to the nave.

Little had changed. The drunk had given up any hope of escape, and lay where Yudin had left him. Mihailov still hung from the arm of the Saviour. It was in the sound that Yudin first noticed a difference. The pitter-patter of drizzling blood had transformed into a slower drip, drip, drip. Yudin looked at the catheter protruding from Mihailov's thigh and confirmed what he had heard. The voordalak's body was now scarcely capable of manufacturing any more of the vital fluid. That didn't matter for now, but it would spoil a little of the fun later. There was time to deal with it though.

Yudin went to the door and stepped outside. The moon was still bright, but low in the sky now. It was still several hours until dawn, although the city would be awake well before then. Would the other voordalaki return sooner? He hoped not. They would not want to waste the darkness of the solstice any more than he had. He skirted round the church and into the graveyard. High in the side of the building he could see the broken window by which he had gained entry.

The cemetery was old Yudin could see no signs of new burials. Some of the graves were simple, some ornate mausolea. It was these latter that were of interest to him. He soon found the perfect refuge, comfortably distant from the church, which he could easily break into and therein hide from daylight. He went back into the church.

As he had noted earlier, the huge, richly decorated circle of a horos was suspended from the vaults of the church roof like a great crown bedecked with icons. The rope that supported it stretched across the ceiling and down the wall, where it was tied off on a cleat, almost directly below the window he had come in by. He unhitched it and took it over to the blood-filled font that still stood beneath Mihailov's hanging body. He threaded the rope under the handle and tied it off.

The horos was heavier than the font, even with its cargo of blood. If he let go, the font would shoot into the air and spill. He didn't want that. He carried it back over to the wall and began to climb, using his feet and one hand to grip the brickwork, and his other hand to hold the font, letting the weight of the horos gradually raise it up.

Inch by inch, they approached the open window.

Tamara opened her eyes. It was still dark, but in Petersburg in winter that did not mean it was early. Konstantin lay beside her Kostya, as he had, at some point during the evening, insisted she call him. In turn he had called her Tamarushka. She was normally called Toma by those close to her, but it was nice to have something to distinguish their relationship both in allowing her to forget her family and in having something that only she and Kostya shared.

He was breathing deeply, but not snoring. She turned to look at him, but it was too dark to see anything more than the lump of his body in the bed. She reached out and touched his cheek. He didn't react. She ran her finger down to his moustache and stroked it. He emitted a single snort and turned on to his side. Tamara giggled to herself silently. Suddenly, she felt very guilty. He was six years her junior, but in terms of his understanding of s.e.x, many years behind that. He'd had lovers before his marriage, he'd told her, but she was the first since and with all of those, and his wife, the women had been too much in awe of him to venture far beyond the limits of his imagination. She had corrupted him.

She liked the feeling of guilt so different from what she had felt after almost every other s.e.xual encounter of her life, except those with Vitya. With Vitya it had always been sublime as if ordained. She smiled that was a rose-tinted memory. Sometimes it had been a duty, either on her part or, less often, on his. But even then, it had been right and good. With the men since, she had felt guilty, but it was a different guilt from now. Before it had come from deep within her, a knowledge that, by her own standards, what she did was wrong it was shame. Now it was a guilt that asked merely: what if someone knew? A breach of morality that she could suffer, even if others could not. It was a child's guilt, born out of external fear and before conscience had developed. She had not been bad, she had been naughty. She looked over at Kostya again. They had both been naughty.

She turned on to her back and gazed up towards the ceiling, but still she could see nothing. She knew she would have to leave before dawn Kostya had told her he had appointments. Normally she wouldn't regret so speedy a parting of the ways. They'd meet again, she had no doubt, but it would end eventually. Of course, she'd heard that grand dukes and even tsars often openly kept mistresses and set them up in lavish homes. But that was decades ago. Nikolai had frowned upon it and it had fallen out of favour. There were still mistresses, but their existence was kept secret. And none would ever be as lowly as Tamara.

Not for the first time, she wondered where she was going. Most women widowed at her age would have remarried and it was by no means too late for that. But there had been no proposals, not least because she had never put herself in a situation where a man might think such an offer would be welcome. What had driven her, ever since 1848, was the search for her parents, but she had never clearly considered what she would do when that search came to an end. If she found them, would she suddenly become part of a happy, welcoming family? It was a dream, though not an impossible one, but achieving it would not be an ending. To be an adult child within a family was a beginning; a point of departure. It would be then she would have to decide on how the remainder of her life would play out. The search for her parents was merely a deferral.