Twelve (40 page)

I placed the candle on the table next to the bed and sat gently beside her. The candlelight illuminated an apple nearby on the table, with two, perhaps three bites taken from it. The flesh had already begun to brown in the time since Domnikiia had eaten. It was surely the last meal she had eaten – the last palatable flesh that she would ever eat. I tried to look at her, but could not. I turned away from her and cradled my head in my hands, silently sobbing. Once again, I attempted to summon up my hatred. It was not a hatred for her, even though it was she who had willingly become this monster. It was a hatred for vampires and specifically a hatred for Iuda. The creature which now lay on the bed behind me was not Domnikiia; it was a creation of Iuda's – a body that he had consumed and then corrupted by making it a continuation of himself. It was as if Moscow had been under the French occupation. The streets and the buildings were beautiful and familiar, but they were nothing without the people who had built them and who lived in them. If destroying the French meant destroying the physical city of Moscow along with them, then amen to it. If destroying the monstrous spirit that lay on the bed beside me meant destroying the beautiful, familiar body that it had stolen, then amen to that too. The body was only a memento of the soul that had once occupied it. Governor Rostopchin (if in fact it had been Rostopchin) had proved himself a true patriot in instigating those fires which, though they destroyed so much of the city, made it uninhabitable for the marauding French. He had understood that the essence of the city was not in its structure but in its people. No true Russian would disagree with him.

But now I had to display the single-minded righteousness of Rostopchin. I had to destroy the physical for the sake of a greater good. The greater good was not Domnikiia's soul – that was lost for ever. It was her memory. If I could limit her existence in this altered state to a mere few hours, then at least the creature she had become could do nothing to debase the years of goodness of her life.

I pulled back the bedclothes to reveal her body, clothed in a simple nightgown. The silver crucifix which, despite all superstition, would have done nothing to protect her still hung around her neck. She murmured softly and raised her hand to her face to brush aside a straying hair, but she did not awake. Her hand fell back across her chest and lay as if cradling her heart. I gently nudged it and it fell lazily to the side of her body, leaving no obstacle that would distract my aim. I took out my wooden dagger and held it in both hands. I remembered our conversation when I had first been making it – in fact, making its predecessor. I remembered the look of fear in her eyes when I had waved it at her and shouted at her. Had she decided even then that she would choose this path and become a vampire? Or was that a decision that had come to her more recently?

I kneeled over her, resting the tip of the dagger on her chest, just above her heart. It merely required that I should drop my weight on to my hands and through them to the dagger and I would have ended the accursed existence of another of these creatures. How long, I wondered, would it take for Domnikiia's bodily remains to decay? For her there would be no collapse into dust as there had been for the others. Her death had occurred but twelve hours ago. That was scarcely any headstart at all. Once I thrust the blade into her and extinguished her life, her body would remain almost as perfect as ever, decaying only over a period of days and weeks just as though she had been a mortal woman. I closed my eyes and whispered a prayer for strength in what I was about to do. It would take only the briefest of action from me to shift my weight and plunge the wooden blade into her. I waited for the moment when strength and hatred would fill me and I would carry out what I had to do. And I waited.

I was no Rostopchin. I was no more capable of destroying something so beautiful as Domnikiia as I would have been of burning down Moscow if I had been handed a flaming torch and pointed towards the quarters of Bonaparte himself. I was a pathetic cousin of Othello. For me the victory of my love over my wisdom meant that I could not kill when all sense dictated that I should. It was beyond me, as if some power greater than I could not stand to see Domnikiia depart the face of the earth at this time; that all the love that had been poured into her creation could not be so easily cast aside.

And yet if I could not kill her, then what was I to do? Should I leave now and never see her again, hearing only occasionally of the strange death of some innocent that I would suspect had been caused by her? The regret would crush me. Every terrible death would be my fault for my inaction today. By choosing now not to destroy the creature that had come to inhabit Domnikiia's body, I would take on the responsibility for each death that she went on to bring about. Were I to die tomorrow in battle, or even today by my own hand (the thought had occurred to me), then the deaths of all those future souls would still be reckoned against mine at my judgement. To not plunge my dagger into Domnikiia was to damn my own eternal soul, and yet I could not do it. So I was damned. The very certainty of it opened up a new vista of possibilities. A new liberty was endowed upon me that allowed me to take any action, regardless of its moral consequences. Like a man sentenced to hang for a petty theft, I was now free to commit any crime I chose – freer, in fact, because the thief would still have to fear what came after his death.

It was conceptually thrilling, but as I contemplated it, I could not think of many immoral acts that I desired to perform – certainly none that I hadn't already committed even before my newfound ethical liberation. I would never have considered myself an especially good person, but it seemed that somehow in my life I had lost – or had never acquired – the urge to be bad. My behaviour was not imposed upon me through a fear of ultimate retribution, but was somehow an innate part of my character, created perhaps by the accumulation of a lifetime of those fears. But did having no desire to be bad make me good? Surely goodness must come from the resistance of dark urges, not from their mere absence? It is only the weak who beg the Lord not to lead them into temptation. The strong need temptation to test their strength. I had been presented with but one temptation – to let the vile creature that Domnikiia had become live – and I had yielded to it without a fight. I knew that it was not too late, that I still only had to raise my hand and let it fall again to bring about my own salvation, and yet I knew too that I could not and nor would I ever be able to.

There was only one conceivable advantage that could be taken from my decision to damn myself. If I was to walk the remainder of my days on the earth in the knowledge that, when I departed it, my subsequent path would be precipitously downwards, then at least I did not have to walk alone. I could be with Domnikiia. I would let her take me and create me as a vampire in the same way that she had so recently become one, and then at least our journey to hell would be made hand in hand. I knew that I was clinging on to one last gleaming thread of self-flattery – that she would want me beside her. If she did not, then I would die at her hand with no subsequent rebirth as a vampire. It would be apt punishment for my vanity.

I set down my wooden dagger at the side of the bed and took one last look at Domnikiia's beauty, then I licked my fingers and put out the light of the candle beside us. I took off my boots and my coat and my scabbard, discarding them on the floor, and lay on the bed beside her. Beneath my coat I saw the bloody mess of my wounded arm, but it did not matter. When I awoke – if I awoke – it would be to become a creature of the same ilk as Domnikiia and we would have an eternity of togetherness before us. A wound such as that would mean nothing to me. I had not shut my eyes for two nights and, as the rush of sleepiness came over me, I began to wonder whether I was in any state to make such a profound decision about my life. What did this mean for how I felt about my wife and my son? Even if my soul was bound for hell, did they not deserve my company and my support at least while I was alive? They were questions which I was too weary to answer.

It struck me that one of the interesting aspects of what I was about to undertake was that I would have the opportunity of looking back on my own death. I had observed death from the outside on many occasions – although there were other times when I wished I had been there to observe it – but it would be a rare privilege to be able, as a vampire, to recall what it was like actually to die. And yet, I thought, all souls, whether they end up in heaven or in hell, must have that same opportunity. If I didn't appreciate that, then I had to question whether I believed in heaven and hell at all, in which case, how could I be so certain of my own damnation?

But the speculation was unnecessary. Soon, I would have knowledge. I fell asleep.

W
HEN I AWOKE, I WAS INSTANTLY UNEASY. MY SURROUNDINGS
were vaguely familiar, but I was aware of some pressing issue that had to be resolved. Memory quickly returned. My first, perhaps unremarkable observation was that I was alive. I reached out to my right, but Domnikiia was no longer beside me. She must have awoken. She would have seen me. Surely I would have to have been awake to have drunk her blood and become a vampire. Had I woken to do that and then gone back to sleep, forgetting what had taken place? I considered myself, trying to determine whether physically or mentally I felt any different. I could find nothing.

I glanced to the window and looked outside. As far as I could judge, it was late morning. The snow shimmered in the light of the sun. The reflected light shone into my face and cast a shadow of my hand on to the empty pillow beside me. I was no vampire. As I had thought, I needed to be conscious to become one of those creatures, so that I might imbibe the blood of the one who created me. Domnikiia had not yet transformed me into a creature like herself, but she soon would. I heard a footstep outside and the doorknob began to turn. My earlier conviction that I would become a vampire had completely left me. I found it impossible to retrace the line of reason that had led me to it. Now, the prospect of letting Domnikiia sink her teeth into my neck and of my drinking her blood in return was both sickening and frightful. I would gladly kill her in order to save myself from such a fate.

I reached over the side of the bed to where I had dropped my dagger the previous night. I felt a twinge of pain, but at the same time I noted that the wound to my arm had been bandaged while I slept. The dagger was not there. I glanced around the room and saw it. It was on a chair, sitting on top of my neatly folded coat. My boots were beside it and my sword hung from its back. I would have no time to reach it before the door opened. Then my panic abated. It was daylight. Whoever was entering the room, it could not be a vampire. If it
was
Domnikiia then she would be quickly destroyed without any need for my intervention. Even so, I could not help but cower against the bedstead, clutching the blankets up to my chin.

It was her. She was carrying a tray on which I saw some bread and some cold meats and a pot which, from the smell, I immediately knew to contain coffee. She walked across the room, past the window, and put the tray down on the dressing table.

'Good morning,' she beamed. I said nothing. She came over to the bed and sat beside me. Even though it was now clear to me that she was no vampire, still I shrank from her. There was no sign that she noticed. She put her arms around me and laid her head on my shoulder, kissing my neck and squeezing me tightly.

'That was a nice surprise,' she said.

'What?' I managed to whimper.

'Waking up with you, of course!' She sat up and slipped her legs underneath the blankets. 'I did know you were back in town, though. Pyetr Pyetrovich said you'd called. Even so, I didn't expect you'd go to quite such lengths to see me. I don't know how you're going to get back out without anybody noticing. You could have bathed first, too.' She rose and went over to the dressing table.

'I'm sorry,' I mumbled, simply as an instinctive response. My heart was pounding and I felt a heady relief. It was like the resurgence of reality after a nightmare – a nightmare that has contained a horror so dreadful that there is no solution to it but to turn back time and discover that the horror never existed. What I had seen at Domnikiia's window the previous night had been no nightmare, but it was just such a horror. And yet, somehow, its inevitable consequence had not taken place. Domnikiia was human. In all my contemplation through the night I had found no sensible course of action to take, and yet now the solution came in a simple, inexplicable fact. She was not a vampire.

'Oh, I'm sorry, Lyosha,' she said with genuine distress. 'I was joking. You know I'll always love you however much you stink.' It felt cruel not to smile and acknowledge her humour, especially on seeing the disappointment in her face, but I was too deep in thought to react in any way. She came back over and handed me a cup of coffee. 'How's your arm?'

'Where were you last night?' I asked.

'I was visiting a client, if you must know. I don't do all my work here.'

'What time did you get back?' My voice was hushed and passionless as I tried to disguise my shock and fear.

'What is this, Lyosha?' she said, rising to her feet in anger. 'You know what I do. Do you want details all of a sudden?'

'Tell me!' I moaned with a pleading intensity, leaning across the bed towards her. She knelt down beside the bed and put her hands to my face.

'What is it, Lyosha?' she asked, staring into my eyes to discover what had brought this on in me. 'Why are you like this?'

'I saw you with Iuda last night,' I told her simply.

'What?' Her incredulity appeared genuine.

'Through that window,' I explained, pointing. 'I was watching.'

'You were spying on me?' She was more disappointed than angry.

'It's too late for that,' I said, taking her by the wrists and rising to my feet. 'I saw the two of you together and I saw what you did.'

'Lyosha, I saw no man in this room last night.' She was icy calm, perceiving that her life might depend on what she told me.

'Ha!' I snorted. 'You should be a lawyer. You saw no man, but you saw Iuda.'

'I didn't return here until almost midnight, and then I went straight to bed. Tell me what it was that you saw.'

'I saw what happened. I saw you and him, together. I saw him when he carried you over to the window. I saw when he bit you.

I saw when you . . .'

Domnikiia put her hand to the collar of her nightdress and ripped it away to expose her neck. 'If he bit me, then where are the marks?' She arched her head first to one side and then the other, stretching her neck so that I could clearly see that there was no sign of any contact with a vampire.

Dumbstruck, I put my hand to her throat and stretched the skin, peering closely to verify what was already quite evident. I sat back down on the bed, bewildered, and she sat beside me. I lay my head in her lap and stared vacantly at the ceiling.

'I think perhaps you dreamed it, Lyosha,' she said soothingly, reminding me, for the first time, quite specifically of my mother. I shook my head miserably.

'No. It was no dream. I saw it. I saw something.'

'And you thought I had become a vampire?' There was a mocking tone in the question.

'Yes,' I said, and a tear came to my eye. I took her hand in mine and pressed it to my lips. She thought for a moment before the obvious question came to her.

'So what were you doing here this morning?'

'I came to kill you.'

She took it well. 'I see.'

'But I couldn't,' I explained.

She thought for a moment longer. 'So . . .' She didn't complete her question. Instead I felt her hands on my chest, pulling my shirt open, searching for something. 'You're not wearing it,' she said. 'The icon – you've taken it off.'

'I gave it to Dmitry.'

'But it would have protected you. If I had been . . . If I had been a vampire, I could have killed you – or worse. Are you mad? You gave away your only protection.'

'It doesn't work as protection,' I explained. 'They're not superstitious.'

'
I'm
superstitious,' Domnikiia shouted. 'It would have kept
me
off you.' She thought for a moment more. 'Is that what you wanted?' she asked, incredulous. 'You're an idiot, Aleksei Ivanovich; a sentimental idiot.' She paused before adding quietly, 'But thank you.'

'As if anything could keep you off me,' I muttered. She smiled and then bent forwards to kiss me.

'We still don't know what you saw,' she said, returning to the point. 'Perhaps they can do that – change their faces to look like someone else.'

'I never saw her face,' I confessed. I had realized already that my reasons for supposing it had been Domnikiia at all were scarcely substantial.

'Well, it looks like I had a lucky escape. I wouldn't like to have been killed by an idiot while I slept. So what did you see?'

'Just her back – her hair. It was so like yours.' I had already realized the implication.

'Oh my God!' whispered Domnikiia. 'Margarita! She sometimes uses this room when I'm not here. It's bigger than hers. The connecting door's never locked.' She sprang to her feet and went over to the door.

'Wait!' I called. 'Given what I saw, she'll be a vampire too by now.'

'So what am I supposed to do, just leave her?'

'Let me go first.'

'What if she is a vampire?'

'It's daytime,' I explained. 'She won't be able to do much.'

I picked up my dagger from the chair and then went over to the door. I felt Domnikiia, behind me, pressed close to my body. For all that I feared for her safety, it was reassuring to have her there. As I turned the door handle, I felt a debilitating weariness within me. I had no more stomach to be chasing around Moscow killing vampires, or even killing Frenchmen. I just wanted them all to go away and leave me to enjoy my life. But I knew I had to go on. I opened the door.

Inside, it was dark. The curtains were closed and in the little light that there was, I could make out a figure on the bed.

'Stay there,' I whispered to Domnikiia, and I began to edge my way towards the window, keeping my back always to the wall. When I got there, I wasted no time in pulling the curtain to one side and flooding the bedroom with light.

Iuda had not changed his attitude towards offspring. He remained, as he had once told me in that room of rotting corpses, free from the responsibility of long-term consequences. The purpose of the previous night's theatricals had not been to convert Margarita into another vampire who could accompany Iuda across the centuries. It had been purely a charade for my benefit, so that I would believe that Domnikiia had become a vampire and would then, as I so nearly had, kill her. For me to know that she died at my hand would make a vengeance upon me far sweeter than anything that Iuda could have done to her.

But once the performance had been acted out, Iuda had no further need for the bit players. On the bed, Margarita lay naked on her back. Her legs were together and straight and her arms lay limply stretched out on either side of her, in a grim mimicry of our crucified Lord. Her long, dark hair radiated from her head across the pillows like a halo, surrounding a face from which her dead eyes gazed blankly at the ceiling.

To her right side, sheets and pillows were drenched in vivid, red blood, which was also smeared over her stomach, breasts and cheeks. The right side of her throat was ripped open in a style that only a
voordalak
could achieve.

Domnikiia screamed.

Domnikiia did not stay at the brothel after that. None of them did. The authorities began an investigation. A brief look at my papers was enough to persuade them not to pester either myself or Domnikiia, although I doubt whether it did much to convince them of my innocence. I could have told them to terminate the investigation with all possible haste, but I chose not to. I wanted the nature of Iuda and the other Oprichniki to be known by everyone, but it was something that the police would have to find out for themselves. A simple account of the truth from me would not be believed.

As it was, they showed little interest in the history of one more body amongst the thousands. They were more concerned with identifying those in Moscow who had collaborated with the invaders. If they had chosen to speak with Domnikiia, they might well have perceived a discrepancy between her description of Margarita's body and what they found. An additional wound would have appeared.

After I had guided Domnikiia out of her colleague's room and into her own, but before summoning the police, I had returned to see Margarita once more. Her body was lifeless. Her dead eyes gave no reaction to changes in the light. Her flesh did not burn when it came into contact with the sun. For all anyone could tell, Iuda had caused her death, not begun her transformation. But I recalled another body that I had once seen in a not dissimilar state – the body of a young Russian soldier named Pavel, carried on a wooden cart through the streets of Moscow. He too had seemed dead. He too had been able to lie unaffected under the gaze of the sun. But his body had not decayed, the reason being that he had exchanged blood with a vampire and so had, within days or weeks, become one.

I could not let that happen. It took a single, swift, undebated thrust from my hand to rupture her dead heart with the wooden shaft of my dagger. How much easier it was for me to do that to Margarita than it ever could have been with Domnikiia.

Domnikiia stayed with me at the inn. It was not the best of times in our relationship. Domnikiia may have kept her soul, but her spirit had been dealt a heavy blow by the death of Margarita. Her vitality had faded to almost nothing. She didn't smile; she didn't joke; she didn't even hate. All those reactions were, I was sure, quite natural under the circumstances, and those qualities would return with time, but for now she was not even a shadow of the Domnikiia I had known and had loved. Worse, though, than losing those things I admired in her, I now found her dependency upon me stifling. Again this was no more than a temporary reaction to her shock, but it was a reminder to me that, whatever might happen to us, while we were together she would be my responsibility. I already had responsibilities – Marfa and Dmitry. It was not that I could not cope with another; it was simply that I didn't want to. Domnikiia was supposed to be my irresponsibility – the person with whom I need have no concern for the future or for the world outside. Now, more than ever, that was what I needed. The carnage that I had witnessed in those autumn months of 1812 had left me as an old man. I had lost the three people closest to me; Maks and Vadim by their very lives, Dmitry by the insuperable mistrust that had grown up between us. Dmitry's cowardly retreat from what faced him had turned out to be a wise response, one which now, only a few days later, I followed. The terror that had consumed me in Moscow after the fire had returned. Then safety had seemed to lie in flight, now it lay in immobility. Yet I would have liked Domnikiia – the
real
Domnikiia – to have been there to distract me from the reality of my inaction; either to fill my days with trivial frivolity or to stand up to me in a way that would either force me to justify my torpor or would shatter it.