The People's Will (29 page)

The vampire looked at him, surprised to be addressed by name. An expression of recognition slowly crept across his face.

‘Cain? Richard Cain?’

It was an uncomfortable reunion. They could hardly be regarded as friends. How were a prisoner and his captor supposed
to behave when reunited, even if one had finally set the other free? And Cain couldn’t help but notice the blood on the vampire’s lips.

‘I should thank you,’ he said, ‘for keeping your side of the bargain.’

Honoré looked at him quizzically, his head tilted to one side. ‘Your father, you mean?’

Cain nodded.

‘We were hungry,’ said the vampire simply.

‘You still are, it would seem,’ replied Cain, forcing the implication of the plural from his mind.

‘No. This is more for the pleasure of it.’

‘You’re not alone?’ Even though his heart pounded with fear, Cain was still curious. Were these creatures hunting as a team?

‘These are the Carpathians,’ Honoré explained. ‘Here my kind is never alone.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Like foxes in England, or wolves in Russia. You may not see us, but we are there.’

‘You run as a pack?’

‘No, no. We simply gather when we smell food. Many of these creatures I have never met before, nor will ever see again. To be honest, I’m thankful – they’ve been living too long as wild animals.’

‘Not fitting company for a
vicomte
?’

‘You understand me.’ Honoré’s bloodied teeth showed as he smiled.

‘So why are you here?’

‘One has one’s baser side. The Russians don’t understand the mountains like the locals do. No Wallachian would ever make camp in a place like this. It would reek to them of the undead.’

There was a scream from outside and then a face appeared at the flap of the tent. White fangs glinted in the lamplight, already stained with blood. Angry red eyes flicked from side to side in search of prey. Honoré turned and snarled at his fellow creature, which paused for a moment in contemplation, then turned away. Cain took a few steps back.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

‘For what?’ asked Honoré.

‘For saving me from your … comrade.’

Honoré emitted a little snort and grinned to himself. ‘Yes, I suppose I was saving you,’ he said. ‘But not in quite the sense you mean. I was saving you’ – he paced swiftly across the tent – ‘for myself.’

Cain backed away, putting the tent pole between himself and the vampire. The tent only opened at one end, and he would have to get past Honoré for that. To cut open the canvas at the side or to crawl under it would take too long.

Honoré lunged, reminding Cain of when he had tried to escape from the crypt beneath Saint George’s. This time there would be no schoolfriend to come to his aid. Cain took a further step back, tugging at the tent pole as he went. The ground was soft and muddy and it came away surprisingly easily, and with a double effect, the first being that Cain now had a weapon in his hand, the second that the cloth of the tent collapsed on both of them.

Cain flattened himself to the ground and crawled backwards, soon finding where the hem of the canvas was stretched tight and level with the ground. It took only the removal of one peg to allow him exit, dragging the pole after him. Honoré did not fare so well. The canvas surrounded him, clinging to him. He scratched against it with his fingers but could find neither a grip nor a gap. The material rose and fell like some stormy sea. Cain held the stake in his hands, ready to thrust, hoping that its legendary effect on a vampire would prove true but unable to make out the creature’s shape clearly enough to strike.

Then the movement calmed. Cain could see where two hands had taken a grip of the cloth and were now holding it close to Honoré’s mouth. He heard a rending sound as the vampire’s teeth cut through the rough canvas and a single eye appeared, angry and searching. Fingertips poked through the tiny hole and pulled it wider, until the whole of Honoré’s face could be seen, his teeth gnashing, his eyes wandering until they fixed upon Cain with a ravenous glare.

But now Cain could make out the position of the body. He charged forward, the tent pole held in front of him like a battering ram. The point, which had been sharp enough to pierce the ground, cut through the tent cloth and penetrated Honoré’s
body within. It was like some conjuror’s illusion; beneath the cloth Honoré’s body seemed to disappear. His face, still visible at the rent in the canvas, contorted in a moment of agony, and then relaxed in death. But death was not the end of it. His features collapsed into an expression of tranquillity and then continued to dissolve. Cain caught the image of his flesh melting and cascading off his skull, just before the entire structure of his body crumpled. What remained of the head disappeared back down into the tent, which itself dropped gently, expelling the air trapped within until it was flat on the ground, emitting a little puff of dust from the chimney-like hole at the top. At the time Cain had no idea of what happened to the body of a dead vampire, and neither did he care to look. For some time he even considered the possibility that Honoré had been – like Don Giovanni – dragged down to hell.

Unthinking, Cain cast the stake aside and turned to fly. The camp was in a clearing, and the woods were only steps away. Soon he was in them, but he kept running until the campfire was out of sight. Only the moon, casting dappled shadows through the forest leaves, provided any light. He held his breath and realized he was not alone. The sound of heavy, laboured panting, almost sobbing, came from nearby. He walked in its direction and saw a figure slumped against a tree, his face in his hands. By his uniform it was clear he was one of the Russians; a mere
ryadovoy
. Cain recognized him from the camp, though they hadn’t spoken. He stood over him.

‘Are there any more?’

The soldier looked up, terror showing in his tearstained eyes. ‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘No.’

‘What?’ hissed Cain.

‘You’re not … one of them?’

Cain shook his head. ‘I came to the camp today. I’m Russian.’

‘I remember.’ The
ryadovoy
still looked wary. ‘How did you get away?’

‘I was lucky. I—’

‘Sh!’ the boy interrupted him. Cain was silent. They both listened. The boy’s ears were good; they were not alone. As far as Cain could make out, there were three of them approaching from different directions, but there’d be others behind. There
was no chance of survival. Cain had no wooden stake now, only his knife, the one he had originally made to mimic the wounds inflicted by a vampire. And after that thought, the idea came to him in an instant. Honoré had said that the creatures did not know one another. The
ryadovoy
had mistaken Cain for one of them. Why not? It was a straw to clutch at.

Cain’s knife was already in his hand. He leaned forward, grabbing the soldier by his lapels and lifting him up a little. There was no time for hesitation. He ran the serrated top edges of the blades across the man’s neck, knowing that they would cause the messiest, bloodiest wound. The soldier didn’t even have time to look surprised. His eyes simply rolled back and his body became limp. Cain returned the knife to his pocket and leaned forward further, forcing his mouth and nose into the gaping bloody mess of the
ryadovoy
’s throat, revolted by the very concept and trying not to taste any blood, worse still swallow it, but knowing that if he was to live then everything must appear authentic.

Soon he sensed he was not alone. Two of the creatures stood close by and the third quickly arrived. Cain raised his head from the tangle of red, glistening flesh and snarled, mimicking the way he had seen Honoré snarl, and hoping that it would convince.

It was a sacrilegious term to apply, but to Cain’s mind it could be thought of as nothing other than a miracle; it worked! The creature towards whom Cain had directed his anger straightened and stepped back, then turned away in search of alternative prey. The other two did likewise. Cain had felt the urge to vomit, but had known he must keep up the pretence, burying his face in the soldier’s flesh and pretending to relish the bitter, metallic taste of his blood.

Now, in an alleyway behind the Twelve Colleges in Petersburg he found himself in a similar stance, hunched over the dying body of a student, much the same age as the
ryadovoy
he had killed in Wallachia decades earlier. But there were differences. This boy was dying, not dead – that would spoil the taste of the blood. And there lay the bigger distinction: blood which had once been repellent to him, blood which he had let dribble from his lips rather than have a drop of it run down his throat and into his stomach, was now a delight. It was a necessity – and for years after
Iuda had first become a
voordalak
he had pretended to himself that it was only a necessity – but it was more than that too. It was blissful. He tried to recall the sense of revulsion he had felt with that
ryadovoy
, but it was lost to him. He could remember the event, but not the sensation. However much he attempted to bring to mind how he had once felt, the only experience that came to him was the joy of a vampire tasting human blood, and an irritation that the fool of a boy he had then been did not bother properly to drink.

He let the student drop to the ground. He was dead, and Iuda was replete. Now he needed to find somewhere to sleep. It was too late to go to the hotel; it would arouse suspicion. Besides, for the moment he wanted to be nothing other than a vampire – he wanted to sleep with the dead. The Smolenskoye Cemetery was not far; he would spend the day there.

In Wallachia, when he had finally decided his pretence with the soldier’s corpse had gone on long enough, he had returned to the camp to find the other vampires there, sitting around the embers of the fire, chatting just as the soldiers had done earlier in the evening. Some chewed on hunks of raw flesh, not bothering to cook them. Hours before Cain would not have been able to control his urge to vomit, but he had already stomached much worse.

He was not the only newcomer. Two or three of the creatures introduced themselves and Cain made up a story for his own arrival, which seemed to satisfy the gathering. Among them was a Wallachian, a priest in life, by the name of Sordin Iordanescu. Over the next few years Cain came to know him well, though later under a pseudonym: Pyetr to Cain’s Iuda. During his three years in the Carpathians Cain continued his study of vampires, though not the full-scale experimentation he would later pursue.

But even in the Carpathians the affairs of great men could not be ignored. By 1812 Bonaparte was preparing for his march across Europe and into Russia. It was Iordanescu who told Cain that the vampires of Wallachia were being summoned by the greatest vampire of them all, that they would join forces with Russia and send the French scurrying back to their homeland. Cain was tempted, but feared he would be discovered. In the end
his curiosity got the better of him. He’d already heard of this great vampire from Honoré, and of his feud with the Romanovs. It was the creature he would come to know as Zmyeevich. But that was not the name that either Honoré or Iordanescu had used – the Russian form of his name was to come later. The name they called him by was Romanian.

The name was Dracula.

IT WAS FRIGHTENINGLY
simple. All that mihail needed to do was go to the Hôtel d’Europe, present the letter and he would be allowed access to Iuda’s rooms. But that was what made it frightening. Would Iuda really be so remiss as to allow an intruder such easy access to his inner sanctum? And yet Iuda had been absent – a prisoner in distant Turkmenistan for more years than Mihail could guess. In that time things would have begun to slip out of his control. And even now he was still a prisoner, in the Peter and Paul Fortress. What could he do to endanger Mihail? But Mihail would be circumspect.

The hotel occupied the entire west side of Mihailovskaya Street, stretching from Nevsky Prospekt all the way back to Italyanskaya Street. Mihail chose to wear his dress uniform. It would not make him stand out from the crowd – not in Petersburg – and it might lend him some air of authority if the letter wasn’t enough. It was late afternoon by the time he arrived. He’d spent the day in the Imperial Public Library, just a little further down the Prospekt, on the corner of Sadovaya Street. He’d spent most of the past few days there, while waiting for the Ohrana to finish their search of Luka’s flat, but hadn’t managed to find much that he didn’t already know.

The old man he’d met in Senate Square had told him that Ascalon was the sword, or possibly the lance, that Saint George had used to slay the dragon. The documents he found in the library confirmed it, but added little. Ascalon was indeed the name of the weapon, though as to its being a sword or a lance, the tales varied. The earliest reference to the name seemed to be as late as
the sixteenth century, though legends of the weapon itself were far older. The name did derive from the city of Ashkelon in Asia Minor. There was also a connection with the Karaite Jews, just as Dmitry had mentioned. The city of Ashkelon had been home to a large Karaite community. There was a famous letter from the Karaite elders of the city, written after the fall of Jerusalem in the First Crusade. It described how they had found money to pay the ransom on captured members of their community, and also for holy relics.

That was all he could discover. It was fertile ground for speculation. Had George’s lance been one of those holy relics? Had it first acquired the name, long after its use against the dragon, by virtue of the time it spent in the city – even if it had taken centuries for that link finally to be written down? Had the Karaite Jews of Ashkelon delivered the lance to the Karaite Jews of Chufut Kalye? Iuda had built an entire laboratory in the caves there, but had his purpose also been to take Ascalon from the Karaites? Had he succeeded? And of what interest was it to Dmitry?

There were no answers, and the tenuous links that formed in Mihail’s mind were quite without substantiation. He left the library earlier than he had done on previous days, before dusk – he had no desire to encounter any of the
voordalaki
he knew to be in the city. Even in the evenings it was light in the area, thanks to the bright arc lights – Yablochkov Candles – that illuminated Aleksandrinsky Square, beside the library. It was a harsh, unnatural luminance that might at first be mistaken for sunlight, but not for long. Neither was it like the illumination of a candle or a lamp, or any of the various other electric lights that had been invented in recent decades. Mihail had studied them all, and knew their strengths and weaknesses. They would be switched on again in a few hours, but Mihail’s work would be done by then.