Vigil (29 page)

Chapter Sixty-Six

1888

Russia

On a bright summer morning I sat in the shade of my cabin. I had heard a heart beating from a great distance. I prepared myself for a visitor.

              The sunlight did not trouble me so much anymore. I still felt pain in my head, like a stabbing knife deep into my forebrain, but the pain had become bearable after so many years. Out of preference, I prefer the night. The night is soothing on my eyes, but I do not shun the light anymore.

             
I watched the base of the hill until he came into sight. His heart was beating faster, but he was young and strong and the climb was not taxing him greatly. He walked with his back ramrod straight. He had the beginnings of a youthful beard, hairs poking through his pale skin inconsistently.

             
His eyes were his most arresting feature. They were eyes that had seen too much, even at his obviously young age. He was driven. It was the look of a new born vampire, a look of deep and dark hunger burning within.

             
I could not help but be drawn to him. He had the most powerful mind I have ever encountered. I think I loved him from that first sight, not a sexual love, for I had no sexual leanings at all, but I loved him as I loved a dark, still night, with fascination and coolness.

             
And he was refreshing. He was the one who came to me seeking knowledge and already I was hoping to learn from him. The other pilgrims that sought me out had nothing to offer but the burden of their sad lives. I could see sadness in this man’s eyes, but also, something else. Unshakeable confidence and knowledge of his place in the world. He smelled different, too. It was the smell of power.

             
In a way, we learned from each other.

             
‘Makary.’ He didn’t ask. He didn’t bother to ask himself in. He just walked to my side and touched me on the shoulder. Some people back then in Russia thought it good luck to touch someone who was touched by God. His gesture was perfunctory, though. He was just going through the motions.

             
Makary was the name I had taken for myself. People expect you to have a name, and being nameless would have only increased the allure for the pilgrims. If I had told that first man to visit me I had no name I would never have had any peace. There was enough mystery about me as it was.

             
‘I hear rumours of your wisdom,’ he said.

             
‘Some I know,’ I said, honestly, ‘more I don’t.’

             
He sat opposite me so that he could look in my eyes. He stared at me with unsettling directness.

             
‘I think you know much, hermit,’ he said.

             
‘Maybe I do,’ I said, with a smile. ‘But you might be disappointed.’

             
‘I may be,’ he said.

             
‘What is your name, pilgrim?’

             
‘My name is Rasputin,’ he said. My Russian was rusty and out of date. It wasn’t a name I had heard before. But then I did not imagine that I had heard all the names of men in my time.

             
‘Then you are welcome to sit awhile. It is a beautiful day and one worth sharing, I think.’

             
He nodded, and shifted so that he could gaze at the vista laid out before him. I watched him from the corner of my eye. I could tell he was thinking. I wondered what it was. The view did not seem to interest him overly.

             
I waited for the questions that I knew would come. Sometimes it amused me to send people on their way with half-truths and misleading wisdom. Sometimes I spoke in riddles and tried to befuddle my visitors. Immediately I knew that Rasputin would not fall for such tricks. He would not leave until he had what he wanted. I was burning to know what that was.

             
‘I have heard many rumours of your wisdom,’ he said.

             
I kept quiet and waited for him to get to his point.

             
‘I am a traveller, of sorts. I am a seeker.’

             
It did not seem as though he was expecting any input from me. I watched him, and waited.

             
‘I have heard many rumours in my time. I have read books…books which contain secrets. I have spoken with many men about the secret places and things in the world. I have found perhaps the greatest secret in the world.’

             
‘And what would that be?’ I asked. I was fascinated. He was the first man that had come to my door and presumed to tell me something. He was the first man who was not overwhelmed by meaningless questions.

             
‘I think there are those in the world who hold the secret. I do not think it is written in books, but is spoken of in the quiet nights and whispered in smoky corners. I think it is a rumour of a people. The hidden. You hold that secret.’

             
My heart began to quicken. I thought about killing him then, but I was crippled by curiosity.

             
‘You think I have a secret?’

             
‘I do not think. I know,’ he said, with a confident smile.

             
‘If you can figure out what it is, I’ll tell you,’ I said. It was the same offer I made to everyone who visited. I think it was true, too. Who could guess that I was centuries old, a vampire?

             
The problem was that he knew already. He knew much that was not written. People say he had visions. That he spoke to god, knew the future. He predicted his own death, but then that was out of necessity, because he knew I was coming for him, then.

             
But out in the woods, high up on a hill, I had toyed with men for my amusement and in the end I was the one who lost.

             
He smiled, and there was something unsettling about that smile. He took a flask from the pocket of his jacket and drank something that had a metallic hint to it. It irritated my nostrils, but I thought nothing of it.

             
He capped the flask and returned it to his pocket. I should have seen that he was suddenly on edge. But it was a slight change, and anyone could easily have missed the change.

             
He watched me with those startlingly direct eyes. They seemed to bore into me. I was transfixed, I think. I don’t know if it was hypnotism, but he held me long enough to withdraw a small flute from his pocket.

             
Then, staring at me, holding me still with his gaze, he began to play.

             
I am undone by music. The simple, the complicated. He played a simple tune and I was like a cobra tamed in a pot. The music soothed me and stole me and I did not see what his free hand was doing as he reached into his pocket and drew a knife.

             
Dimly, through the haze, I was aware that he held a blade against my bare hand. I felt the sting of the blade slicing through my flesh but I was frozen, held against my will by the simplest of tunes played on a single instrument. It did not take much to undo me.

             
If people through the ages realised how easy it would be to subdue me, I believe I would have been dead a thousand times over.

             
With the blade that held my own blood he sliced his own hand.

             
And then the music stopped for he was suddenly thrashing on the ground.

             
Believe me when I say that my anger was towering, implacable and huge. In my rage I was suddenly as powerful as a leviathan.

             
I think my anger was not at Rasputin, as he writhed insensible and in agony on the dirt. I was angry at my own hubris. Nobody had ever guessed what I was unless I had first given them a clue. Each time I had been undone it was through my own hubris. It was that which angered me. My own stupidity.

             
But I could not let him best me. I took his head in my hands and held him still. I would tear his head loose before the hunger could take him.

             
What I was seeing was just the pain of rebirth. When the thrashing finished would come the hunger, the mindless need to feed that untamed would take years to abate.

             
All the time we had spoken he had known what he was going to do. How he had found out what I was, I never did know.

             
What I found out was that he, too, was like me. A traveller. A seeker.

             
I increased the pressure and watched as his head bulged under my power. Then he was screaming at me to stop.

             
I think the shock of it more than anything else made me sit back and release him. He was not a demon. He was coherent.

             
‘Thank you for not killing me,’ he said with that knowing smile. Suddenly I found it smug and irritating, and not fascinating at all.

             
‘You tricked me,’ I said simply. My anger had fled in the face of all the questions I had.

             
‘Come now,’ he said. ‘You have been tricking people for how long?’

             
‘The music…’

             
‘A trick I learned from a gypsy man. Of course, it was a gamble. I gambled with my life. You could have just killed me. But I did not think you would.’

             
‘How did you know? My God, how did you find out? Why are you speaking? My blood…it drives people insane…’

             
‘Markary, there is much about yourself you do not know. I think people know more about your kind than you do of yourself. You sit high in this perch and dispense knowledge to people, but in many ways you are a child.’

             
‘You dare to mock me, after stealing my blood!’

             
‘Be calm. It is not my intention to anger you. But you have been blind. People have been talking about your kind for centuries. But you have hidden yourself away and have not listened. The stories told about your kind say that you are held in thrall by music, and that your blood can be tamed by silver. I drank a mixture of silver in my flask when I met you. It would have killed me, but when I saw you I knew you were a vampire. Your scars, you see. The flesh is never whole when it has healed, and the wounds you show would have been fatal for a man. It was easy,’ he said, ‘when I knew what to look for.’

             
‘You risked your life on rumour and tales told by gypsy people, a people who only knew me for a short time?’

             
‘I did. Now, father, tell me of your life.’

             
I shook my head. ‘I am no father to you. You stole this. You think it a gift, but it is a curse. You have tainted blood within you now. You can never infect another. The infection is dangerous. You are more dangerous than you know. When the hunger comes you will be a murderer. When you touch another with your spittle or your blood they will become like you. You have cursed yourself to a life apart.’

             
‘No, father,’ he said, ‘You have cursed yourself to a life apart. I will not live as you. I will not waste this
gift
on solitude.’

             
‘It is no gift,
son
,’ I told him. ‘You will find that out soon enough.’

             
‘Enough. There is nothing more you can give me. I had outgrown you before I took your blood. You will see. You will hear your son’s deeds even here.’

             
He rose and stretched. I marvelled for a second at how controlled he was, even though he had just been turned.

             
‘Then hear me well, for I hope I do not see you again. If you turn another, just one, the infection will spread, and the world will die under the weight of our kind. If I hear you have turned another I will hunt them down and kill them, then I will hunt you down. This is my gift to you. Not my blood, but your life. You live under my forbearance.’

             
‘What makes you think you could best me? I am young. I am stronger.’

             
‘And full of pride. Pride undid me. It may be your undoing, too.’

             
I stood and drew myself to full height, but I was not as tall as him. He smiled. Something he still knew that I did not. I wondered at what it was.

             
Faster than a thought he had drawn another blade from his belt and he ducked low and slashed through the backs of my legs, one, then the other, before I could even move.