Twelve (38 page)

Now I had two captive Oprichniki in my collection, but I needed only one. I turned back to Iakov Zevedayinich. He was still struggling to free himself from the door. It would take a few minutes, but he would have worked himself free. I kicked at the door's bolt with the sole of my booted foot. It gave a little, but not completely. Iakov Zevedayinich stretched out towards me with flailing arms, but could not reach me. At a second blow, the metal bolt splintered away from the wood and the door swung open into the early daylight outside, taking the vampire with it like a jacket hung on a peg – like Vadim Fyodorovich hung on a wall.

Only then did Iakov Zevedayinich realize the implication. His scream was not of pain, but of fear, and it was soon cut short by the sound of an explosion as the sunlight hit his body. It was not the tight, sharp explosion of a gun or a cannon, but a slower, broader whoosh, as when gunpowder ignites in a bowl. The door opened as far as it would go and then bounced closed again. My sword still remained protruding from the back of the door at the height of a man's chest. Of Iakov Zevedayinich there was no sign, save a few scorched rags drooping from my sword and a slight singeing of the wood, roughly forming the shape of a man.

I turned back to Pyetr. He was still struggling to try to free himself. I pulled the pitchfork out of him and held it to his face. He crawled backwards away from me with a crab-like motion, heading towards the door as if it could bring him some escape. I thrust the fork back into him – this time through his shoulder, laying in with all my weight so as to pierce the tough bone and sinew – and he was immobile once more. He stared at me with a face that revealed no fear; only hatred and contempt.

'More Russian hospitality?' he sneered. 'You invite people into your country and then kill them off one by one.'

'We may have invited people,' I replied, 'but that's not what we got.'

I glanced around the barn and saw the two pools of blood, reminding me of what I had witnessed just hours before. Part of me wanted to forget it, but a stronger part had to know more.

'I watched you,' I said, my voice scarcely above a whisper, 'watched what you did to that man. I saw the body of that woman. Animals eat, but that was . . .
What
was that?
Why
was that?'

Pyetr smiled. 'You really want to know?'

'No,' I lied instinctively. 'But tell me anyway.'

Within the constraints of the metal shafts that pierced his shoulder, Pyetr adjusted his posture, as if settling in to tell a long story.

'We each start off just by drinking,' he began, 'and that in itself is a pleasure, when one is young at least, and inexperienced. But as we grow older, merely drinking becomes dull, so we eat. Then eating becomes what drinking was, so we play. Then playing becomes as dull as eating, so we torture. Then to satisfy, torture becomes worse torture. The older the vampire, the further he has to go.'

They were, it seemed then, like me. I needed ever more intensity of experience to raise my anger; they needed it for their pleasure.

'Your beloved Zmyeevich is pretty old,' I said. 'He must do . . .' I dared not even imagine what he must do.

'The master is too old. He told me once, he has gone beyond physical pain. There is more pleasure to be had from people's minds. But humans realize that far quicker than we do. It's beyond me. The physical will do for now.'

'I'm surprised you have the imagination to find new . . . ideas.'

'It can be troublesome.' He smiled again. 'But Iuda must have been a vampire for a very long time – not as long as the master, for Iuda's interests are still physical, but he has such ideas.' He nodded an acknowledgement of the word he had taken from me. 'For instance,' he went on, smiling more broadly, 'had the man not died, we were going to—'

I jogged the handle of the pitchfork. In a human, that slight motion would have sent agonies through his wounded shoulder. For him it meant little, but at least it shut him up. I didn't want to help him indulge in a vicarious pleasure through his retelling, much as – to my shame – I was eager to hear. I moved on to more significant matters.

'Where have Iuda and Foma gone?' I asked.

'Gone to screw your mother,' he replied charmingly. I kicked him hard in the armpit, just next to where the pitchfork transfixed him.

'Tell me,' I growled, but again he seemed to feel no pain. I had no urgent need for the information. I felt sure that I would be able to track them down and that, even if I didn't, Iuda would not be able to resist the temptation of coming after me once again. I took a step back and picked up my wooden dagger, readying myself to kill the defenceless monster. Outside, the distant sound of a cockerel belatedly heralded the dawn. I turned back to Pyetr and saw that his expression had changed from a look of resigned malevolence to one of utmost fear. It was as though the sound of the cockerel had terrified him. Perhaps it had. It was a signal of the danger that he would have known every morning since he first made the repellent choice to become a vampire.

But it was not the sound – or at least not only the sound – that caused him this new unease. His breathing was short and shallow and he flicked his nervous gaze between me and his right hand, which he had snatched up from the ground in pain. On the ground where his hand had lain, a small patch of sunlight had been allowed in through the door by the damage I had done when I kicked off the bolt. A wisp of smoke arose from the centre of the patch, where a fragment of fingernail was shrivelling to nothing.

I looked at Pyetr's hand. The cuts to his palm where he had grabbed the blade of my sword had already vanished. The nail of his middle finger was missing where the sunlight had hit it. Even as I watched, it began to grow back. Pyetr was now gripped by a fearfulness that I had not seen in any of the Oprichniki before. He tugged his whole body against the pitchfork, trying to get free, and he looked up at me with a meek, frightened anxiety.

I placed my foot on his forearm and pushed it back down towards the ground, forcing his hand back into the patch of sunlight. His scream was high-pitched and continuous. The mild sunlight burnt the flesh of his hand in a way that would require the heat of a fire on human flesh. The skin of his fingers quickly blackened and split open, peeling back and curling like the skin of a rotten apple. Through the splits in the skin oozed red blood and yellow pus, some of which dribbled to the ground, while the rest boiled away into the atmosphere. The stench was nauseating – a mixture of the most pungent mildew and burning human hair. Soon his four fingers and the top half of his hand were stripped of all flesh and all that remained were bones which themselves began to smoulder. The tip of his middle finger caught fire and then fell off on to the ground below. The edge of the beam of light left a neat divide across his hand. All that was in darkness was untouched. The surviving skin ended in a thin black fringe across his palm, where the flesh had begun to burn and then receded into the safety of darkness. From the back of his hand, like a torn glove, hung a large flap of charred skin which had similarly slipped out of the sunlight as it fell away from the bone.

I lifted my foot and he snatched his hand back towards him. His screams stopped, but his breathing was irregular. He breathed out with hard, grating pants, but his in-breaths were short and snatched. He was coping with both pain and fear.

'Where have Iuda and Foma gone?' I asked again, shouting this time. He made no reply. It was hard to tell whether he had even heard my question. I was about to press his arm back into the light when, just as I had glimpsed with his nail, I saw the whole of his hand beginning to regrow. The bone that had fallen from his middle finger had already been replaced and lumps of healthy new flesh were forming before my eyes around each of his fingers. A new layer of skin was smoothly advancing from the undamaged half of his hand. Within five minutes the whole thing would be back to normal. This explained why there were no lacerations on his hands from my sword, and even further, explained why Maks could claim to have severed Andrei's arm when I had subsequently seen Andrei with the full complement of limbs. These creatures were (in this and in other ways) like spiders. The loss of an arm or a leg could be a temporary inconvenience, but they could be sure it would grow back. I shuddered as a thought crossed my mind that made me hope that they
were
merely like spiders. For a vampire to grow back an arm was one thing, but I prayed that the arm, once detached, could not grow back a new body, as is the case with an earthworm or a sorcerer's broomstick. If that were the case then there could still be another Andrei out there to deal with.

To my more immediate ends, however, this was an interesting turn of events. The aim of the torturer is to inflict the greatest pain on his victim whilst doing the least damage – the Turks had taken fingers, not arms or legs. The motivation is not out of any sympathy for the victim, but simply lies in the understanding that, once a body has been damaged too much, it is no longer able to feel pain – or indeed much of anything. But the vampire was a torturer's dream. Continuous pain could be inflicted because the body would be continually refreshed. I could take Pyetr up to the very point of death and then let him revive, only to do the same thing again the next day and the next. It was tempting, but I was not that much a follower of de Sade. I could not be sure it would work, anyway. When I had been tortured, although the physical pain had been excruciating, half of the terror had been in the knowledge that I
would
be maimed, that I would forever be missing those two fingers. Had I known that, whatever the degree of pain, I would still leave with my hand as intact and whole as it had ever been, the physical pain might perhaps have been bearable.

Pyetr did not seem to view it so philosophically. The pain to him was very real. And yet still he had not answered my question. I stamped my foot down on his arm again. The sun had moved a little and so this time the whole of his hand was exposed to the light. He screamed again as the centre of his palm split and peeled open to reveal the roasting flesh beneath. I held it down there until his entire hand was almost gone, and even then, I only let go to alleviate the sickening smell.

'So are you going to tell?' I asked.

He nodded, trying to catch his breath. 'Yes,' he panted. 'Yes.'

'Well?'

'They've gone after the French. They're trying to get back home to the Carpathians, but they'll stick with the French as far as they can – for food.'

'Both of them?' I asked.

Pyetr nodded. I placed my boot on his arm again, but did not push down.

'So why did I see Iuda heading towards Moscow?'

'I don't know,' he replied, trying to shrug his shoulders. I pressed his arm down once more, just briefly letting his raw, bleeding wrist touch the light before releasing him.

'All right,' screeched Pyetr. Then he smiled the self-satisfied smile of a man who in death foresees the ultimate retribution that will befall his killer. 'He's gone to see your whore. Dominique – that was her name. He's going to make her into one of us. He thinks she is just the sort who could be persuaded. And if not – well, you can look outside if you want to see how much we get out of a single human body. Either way, you won't get to fuck her again.' He forced out a laugh that reflected no amusement in him, but which he hoped would contribute to my pain.

I marched purposefully to the door. As I approached it, something glinted at me from the floor. Seeing what it was, I wondered how it might have got there. Then I realized. This was precisely the place where Foma had spat something after biting off the farmer's finger the previous night. I could now see what the thing was that had caused so much mirth amongst the Oprichniki. It was the man's wedding ring.

I continued to the door and flung it open. Behind me I heard the broad, whooshing explosion that had accompanied the destruction of Iakov Zevedayinich. I turned to see no sign of Pyetr, but only the pitchfork tottering to the ground now that its support had vanished. A rectangle of light shone through the door casting a shape akin to a coffin around where Pyetr had been lying, the lingering smoke his only memorial.

I wrenched my sword out of the door and set off on my way.

M
Y HORSE WAS STILL IN KURILOVO. THAT WAS ALMOST TWO
versts away. I ran for all I was worth down the snowy road, slipping and stumbling as I went. I paused at the crossroads, exhausted, gasping for breath. The rope still lay coiled around the broken post where I had tied Filipp, but otherwise there was no hint of the previous night's adventures. I carried on, so out of breath that I ran probably slower than I could have walked. When I came to it, the coach still lay overturned in the ditch. The dead horse remained in the road, but the other one was gone, cut free from the wreckage either by some Good Samaritan or by some horse thief.

I carried on to the village. In the street I passed the red-haired man I had spoken to the previous evening. He recognized me and called after me.

'Hey! Was it you who stole Napoleon? Did you see what happened to that coach?'

I didn't pause to answer. I carried on back to the tavern, paid the ostler and, without waiting for change, mounted my horse. It had been almost fifteen minutes since I had left the barn. I spurred the horse into a gallop and allowed myself my first real opportunity to think.

My one hope lay in the fact that Iuda could not travel by day. He had left about three hours before dawn. That could never be sufficient time to reach Moscow. I had eight hours of daylight – slightly less now – to overtake him and get to Domnikiia before he could reawaken into the darkness and reach her. The journey ahead of me was around eighty versts over treacherous icy roads. It was achievable but it would be tight. I would not manage it at all if I killed my horse. I reined him back a little and we continued at a less breakneck speed.

If I did not get to Moscow in time, then my outlook was bleak – that of Domnikiia hopeless. The prospect of her suffering as she died, in the way that I had seen that farmer and his wife die, in the way that I now knew Maks and Vadim and so many others must have died, filled me with a nauseating rage. Were that to happen, then there would never be any peace for me until Iuda was destroyed. I would hunt him across Russia, across Austria, across the whole of the Ottoman empire if need be. I would climb every damned mountain in the Carpathians if I had to, but I would find him and he would die. I would not make him suffer physically
too
much – that would be to descend to his level – but he would know that it was I who took his life and why it was I who had done it.

I filled my journey with fantasies of discovering him in the dungeon of some mysterious Wallachian mountain castle, perhaps ten or twenty years from now; of pulling back the heavy stone lid of his coffin and raising my lantern to see the still-youthful face of the monster I had been stalking for so many years; of seeing his eyes open wide and peer into my world-weary face; of seeing the look of recognition in those eyes as he saw in me the face of the man he once confronted years before; of the memory returning to him of what he had done to Domnikiia at the very instant my stake plunged into his heart and terminated his putrid existence for ever; of seeing his earthly body collapse to dust under the weight of the corruption that it had borne over his long, repellent life.

There was more than self-indulgence in my desire to fill my mind with these thoughts – it was to keep other thoughts out. There was another possibility that Pyetr had mentioned – another side to the coin. Iuda was going to try to persuade Domnikiia to join him. It was a laughable concept, but it struck a cold terror in my heart. Domnikiia was a woman and a vain woman at that. She had already spoken of the delight she thought it would be to live for ever. How easy might it be for Iuda to persuade her that her sugar-coated vision of the life of a vampire was close to the truth? What lies would he conjure up to influence her – lies not only about him but about me as well?

But it could not happen. Although she might be romantic and fanciful, Domnikiia was a clever and a good woman. She would never choose such a path, no matter what worm-tongued falsehoods she was spun. And yet if she did, what would I then have to do? My vengeance upon Iuda would remain much the same, but what of my vengeance on Domnikiia? Vengeance it would be, for she would be beyond all hope of salvation. The moment she shared Iuda's blood, her soul would be condemned to hell. Whether it went there immediately or with the ultimate destruction of her mortal body, I knew not. I knew now many ways that a vampire might be killed. Which, I wondered, would I have to use on my dear, sweet Domnikiia?

I spurred my mount to a fast gallop, expelling from my mind all such thoughts and instead concentrating on riding across the slippery ground. The movement caused a sharp pain in my arm where the pitchfork had hit me. I had forgotten about it until then, and now I dared not look to see how serious it was, for fear that it would delay my journey. My arm was still strong enough for me to hold the reins – that was all I needed for the moment. We galloped on for several minutes through the chill winter air, my heart racing with the excitement of the ride. I cast my mind back to the more trouble-free days of my youth when I rode freely across the hills and fields around Petersburg, days when the name Bonaparte was rarely heard outside Corsica – never outside France. Could I really blame all of my present misfortunes on that one man? He had not transformed the Oprichniki into vampires, nor had he asked them to come to Moscow. The former was down to Satan and the latter to Dmitry, and with the willing agreement of the rest of us. And yet it had to be remembered that the Oprichniki, for all their ability to kill, were at heart scavengers, not predators. To flourish they had to exist in a matrix of death and fear. To be sure, at times of peace they might eke out an existence in Wallachia, killing just enough peasants to survive without drawing too much attention to themselves, but in war, where death was commonplace, they could indulge their most carnal of inclinations. War created an atmosphere in which all other evils could thrive, appearing trivial by comparison to the daily toll of death and carnage. A war is a fine place to hide any crime – another tree in the forest – and who could be so trite as to focus on perhaps a hundred deaths caused by the Oprichniki compared with the hundreds of thousands killed on both sides in the war? Bonaparte was not just responsible for those hundreds of thousands, but also for belittling every other death and every other tragedy that occurred in Russia, if not the whole of Europe throughout his era. When so many die as heroes, who remembers those who die frightened and alone?

I changed horses at Troitskoye. They did not have one shod and I had to wait almost half an hour before I could set out again. It was tempting to continue on my old horse, but he was tired and could barely manage a trot. Once I got going again, the delay was soon made up. Even so, the sun was already setting as I rode into the outskirts of Moscow. I continued across the city and tied up my horse just a little way from Degtyarny Lane, so as to approach on foot.

I banged impatiently on the door. It was Pyetr Pyetrovich who opened it. He ran his eyes up and down my bedraggled body, curling his lip with a degree of disdain that hardly befitted a man of his profession.

'Mademoiselle Dominique is not available tonight,' he told me before I had even uttered a word.

'Who is she with?' I asked.

'By "not available", I mean she is not here. You should try again tomorrow.'

'Where is she?'

'I have no idea. I should have thought
you
would be the man to know where she goes of an evening.' I could have forced my way past him and rushed into Domnikiia's room, but there was no reason to doubt that he was telling the truth. Whenever previously Domnikiia had been busy with a client, he had notified me outright, taking pleasure in the fact that I had to share.

'Is Margarita around?' I asked, hoping she might have some better idea of where Domnikiia had gone. Pyetr Pyetrovich's attitude changed slightly. I was no longer a possible threat to his livelihood – the single-minded suitor who might take away his star attraction – I was once more merely a customer like any other, prepared to accept in Margarita an alternative when my first choice was unavailable.

'Ah, I see sir has an eye for the brunette. But I'm afraid that Margarita too is unavailable. Raisa is free, but please, captain, do go and change your clothes first. And perhaps a wash as well? If not for the sake of Raisa, then at least for the other customers.'

I smiled a quiet, contemplative smile which I hoped gave the impression that I was about to break his nose, then turned and walked away. I had no idea of where I might start to look for Domnikiia. There was a slight chance that she had gone to find me at the inn, but she had no reason to expect me back in Moscow so soon, and even if she went there, she would not wait once she had discovered my absence. My best hope was to wait and watch the brothel. That was the one place that I could be sure Domnikiia would return, and also the place where Iuda would eventually show up. Given that Iuda could not travel by day and assuming that, when he did travel, his progress was at best at the same rate as mine, then I could expect him in about five hours, some time towards ten o'clock.

I glanced around the square for somewhere to wait, watch and hide. Several of the houses opposite the brothel appeared to have not yet been reoccupied. It was no effort at all to break into one – that had already been done weeks before by the pillaging French – and I went upstairs to get a better view over the square. As I climbed the staircase of the dark, abandoned house, I could not help but cast my mind back those few days to the house where I had found so many dishonoured corpses – Russian, French and others, Vadim among them – part eaten and then discarded like old chicken bones. But here there was no stench, no sound of rats. This was just an empty, looted house; one of the fortunate ones that had survived the fires.

In an upstairs front room, I was even lucky enough to find a little furniture. I sat on an old dining chair and watched the square below, in expectation of a long vigil.

I was taken by surprise. Scarcely had I sat down when across the square I saw a lamp come to light in Domnikiia's room. I took out my spyglass and focused it on the uncurtained window. Domnikiia and her client came into view. Evidently Pyetr Pyetrovich had lied to me. She was naked and had wrapped herself around the man. As he walked across the room towards the window, her arms held him tightly round the neck and her legs clasped him about the waist so that he could move freely as he held her whole weight. Her head swivelled from side to side, obscuring his face from view as she kissed his lips. Her shimmering, dark hair hung down over her neck and then disappeared over her shoulder, between their two bodies, leaving her elegant white back in plain view.

Less than twenty-four hours before, I had been the clandestine observer of another scene from which others might perhaps have turned away. Then I had stayed to watch out of the memories of how I myself had suffered, despite the nausea that rose within me. Now my motivations were far more mixed. Certainly I had to keep watch over Domnikiia to ensure her safety, but many men would have chosen to turn away on seeing the woman they loved in the arms of another. Although I had long been reconciled to the fact of Domnikiia's profession and though I truly believed that these men meant nothing to her, surely I should still have looked away and attempted to quell the jealous monster rising within me.

Instead, I felt only excitement, not just at seeing two other human beings engaged in so intimate and private an activity, but specifically to see the woman that I loved behave so utterly unlike how I had been brought up to believe a woman should – so much like a base animal. It pleased me also to see the man so deceived, to see him so overpowered by his own primitive instincts and to know that while for a moment he had all that he could care to have, in the long run he had nothing. It was I that had Domnikiia's heart, Domnikiia's love and Domnikiia's soul. Though they might queue for her all the way around Saint Vasily's and back, I would still mean more to her by a gentle touch of my hand than they with all their sweaty exertion ever could.

The man was already naked to the waist, save for a bandage on his arm. As he walked across the room with Domnikiia wrapped around him, he slipped his hands under her buttocks to support her. Together they came all the way over to the window, and the flesh of her back was pressed smooth and flat against the glass panes as he leaned against her. They pulled away from the window slightly and stood for a few moments, their mouths inseparable, his fingers meandering up and down her spine. Then he stepped back and Domnikiia dropped to her feet, looking upwards towards his face, which I could now see for the first time.

It was Iuda. He stared down towards Domnikiia with a look of dreadful tenderness and bent his head lower as though to kiss her, but I knew instantly what was his real intent. I leapt to my feet, but there was nothing I could do. If I shouted, I would not be heard, and even if I was, it would not stop him. It would take over a minute for me to go back down the stairs, cross the square and get to them. Had I brought a gun, I could have shot at him, but even that would have had no effect on a vampire.

I could only stand and watch as he parted his lips and prepared to plant them delicately on Domnikiia's throat. He brushed her long hair back over her shoulder and pulled it to one side with his hand, so as to make the flesh of her neck clear for his bite and also – or so it seemed to me in my numbed terror – to make it easier for me to see. His lips descended and Domnikiia's head arched back slightly as he made contact with her. Over her shoulder I could see only his devilish, grey eyes staring out into the night towards me. He did not drink for long, but soon raised his head and took a step back from her. She sat back unsteadily on the windowsill, her hands reaching out sideways for support. Her head was raised to look into his face, but I was unable to see whether the expression on hers was of terror, submission or ecstasy.

Iuda drew his knife from his pocket. My sudden, laughable fear that he might harm her was immediately quashed by the knowledge of the harm he had already done. He put the twin points of the knife to his own chest and, briefly closing his eyes, drew them across, etching two neat, red lines below his right nipple. Drizzles of blood seeped out of the wounds and ran down his firm stomach. Domnikiia rose to her feet and approached him, bending her knees slightly to lower her mouth to the level of the lesions. She placed one hand on his left breast and the other on his shoulder, pulling herself towards him as she pressed her mouth against his chest and, only moments after he had drunk hers, drank his blood.