“Hello, sweet boy. Can I see?” she asked, smiling at Sasha.
Nikita loved her for that tenderness. Among other things.
Then Pyotr was there with a glass of cold water.
Kolya, and Ivan, and Feliks stood over them, a human wall. And a shield.
“You alright, puppy?” Ivan asked, more than a little worry in his voice.
Sasha looked at all of them, their faces, and slowly awareness returned to his eyes. He was still shivering and pale, but he knew them. “Is he…?”
Nikita refused to look over his shoulder. “Let’s worry about you right now.” He couldn’t get them – their pack – out of the room fast enough.
~*~
When the fog in his head finally cleared, Sasha realized that he was afraid. Very much so. In the midst of the invocation, an unnatural calm had come over him.
Yes, a voice had said in the back of his mind. This is your place, this is your task. You were built to serve. Some part of him, deeply suppressed, had railed against the idea. But the fog had rolled in, obliterating thought and feeling, until he was nothing but a tool, awaiting his vampire master’s pleasure.
When Rasputin’s eyes opened, he’d felt a pull in his chest, something awful and relentless, and he’d fought it. It had taken every ounce of his strength to stagger back from the table and sink to the ground, but he’d known he had to do it. He’d known he couldn’t allow himself to fall into the awful urge to bend his head, and show his neck, and submit.
He was the alpha, and he didn’t submit.
Now, a little ways down the hall in an empty exam room, Katya’s fingers gentle and cool against his skin as she bandaged his hand, the foggy sense of resistance was giving way to outright fear.
He glanced at his surroundings. Shelves full of beakers, test tubes, and stoppered bottles of unidentifiable liquids. Boxes of bandages and gauze. He sat on a table, and Nikita stood beside him, one hand braced on his shoulder, holding Sasha up.
His mouth felt full of cotton when he spoke. “What happened?”
Katya tied off the bandage and secured it with a safety pin. Her expression was careful when she met his gaze. “Do you remember cutting your hand?”
He nodded, and then winced, because the movement sent pain arcing through his skull. “I know I woke him up. I just. It’s fuzzy.”
She traded a look with Nikita.
Nikita said, “Did he hurt you?” His tone was that of the protective big brother Sasha had never had, and he sagged sideways, leaning into him, whimpering before he could check the impulse.
Nikita’s arm went around his shoulders.
“No,” Sasha said. “I’m okay. It was just…strange.” He straightened, not wanting to appear weak, wanting to be the strong pack alpha, but Nikita’s hand lingered on his shoulder, and he was grateful for that. “He’s really awake?”
“Yes, and they’re all making a big fuss about him,” Katya said. She frowned to herself as she stowed the leftover bandages.
“Sasha,” Nikita said, looking at him critically, “what happened to you?”
“I don’t really know,” he said, because he wasn’t sure how to describe it in a way they would understand. “It was – he wanted something from me, I could tell.”
Nikita looked alarmed. “Wanted what?”
“For me to submit to him.”
Nikita’s brows jumped.
The door opened and Ivan stuck his head in, expression grim. “The old fucker wants to see Sasha. Hey, you alright, pup?”
Sasha took a deep breath. “Yeah. I’m coming.”
His legs didn’t want to hold him, but he made it down the hallway. The door to the lab was propped open, and assistants in white coats bustled in and out, talking to one another under their breath. The area buzzed with the busy excitement of a kicked anthill.
Dread began to build in Sasha’s stomach, dark and heavy as a stone, making him vaguely sick.
The exam table had been traded for a hospital bed, and there lay Rasputin, propped up on pillows, a bandage wound round his head, over the lingering gunshot wound. He was gray, but awake, listening to what Philippe was saying to him. His lips were the only spots of color, dark red – from the blood, Sasha realized, and shuddered.
The back of Sasha’s neck tingled. It hurt – like a bee sting. The urge to bow his head, to get down on his knees, was instant and unwelcome. He gritted his teeth and fought it.
His stomach rolled, and sweat popped out along his temples, and under his arms. He thought he might vomit.
No, he thought savagely. And then the discomfort eased. He took a deep breath. He could do this. He didn’t have to be anyone’s puppet.
He came to a halt a few feet from the end of the bed, and Rasputin turned to him. Whether they loved him or loathed him, everyone who’d ever written about Rasputin could agree on one thing: his eyes. The intensity of his gaze was legend, and, Sasha realized now, completely true. A perfect silver shade of gray, bright, almost glowing, otherworldly. He wondered if they’d always been like that, or if being turned was the cause for the penetrating stare that rested on him now.
The starets extended a thin and trembling hand. “My child.” His voice was a rough croak. “You have saved me. Come here so that I can kiss you and thank you.”
Sasha had never wanted to do anything less. But he was caught, he knew. He’d agreed up to this point; if he suddenly pulled back, and refused to cooperate, he would be seen as abandoning the plan.
And he couldn’t let Nikita down. His pack. Hell, his country.
Slowly, hating it, he walked to the side of the bed, Philippe smiling at him with teeth the whole way.
“Hello,” he said, stiff and formal.
Up close, Rasputin was horrible. Painfully skinny, starved-looking, his skin the color and thickness of cheap paper. He smiled up at Sasha, revealing long, yellow teeth, eyes unnaturally bright in his pallid face. “Hello, blessed child. The wolf who woke me. You’re a strong one.”
Sasha didn’t know what to say, so he kept silent.
Philippe’s hand landed on his shoulder, a light touch that turned to a pinch. “Young Sasha here is from Siberia, Grisha. From Tomsk.”
The hold man’s face lit up – as much as it could in the situation. “Siberia! Wonderful! Have you seen Pokrovoskoe? What of my family?”
Philippe smiled at him. “One moment, friend.” Then, pinching hard at the tendons in Sasha’s neck, marched him over to the door.
Sasha shrugged his touch away.
“Outside,” Philippe said, no longer smiling.
Nikita waited for them in the hall, arms folded, leaning against the wall.
Philippe made a frustrated sound, rounding on Sasha. “He doesn’t know what year it is yet. He thinks it’s only been a few weeks since his murder. Attempted murder.”
Nikita snorted. “That’ll be fun to explain.”
“Captain,” Philippe said, sighing, “if you please–”
“Oh, I’m going, don’t worry.” He straightened. “And so is Sasha. We’re going to get dinner.”
Sasha wanted to hug him.
“But,” Philippe protested.
“Later, Monsieur,” Nikita said, firmly.
Sasha went to his friend’s side and didn’t look back.
28
A THREAT
They all decamped to Katya’s room, her roommate once again absent; the whole pack, two- and four-legged, crammed into the narrow space. The sour-faced matron in charge of the kitchen hadn’t wanted to send them with food, but Ivan had managed to charm a loaf of bread and several cans of SPAM from her.
Nikita chose not to eat, knowing one of his people would chastise him about it later.
“Explain it to us, Sasha,” he urged.
Every face in the room was open, listening. Wanting their young wolf’s take on it.
Nikita felt a surge of warmth. Of belonging. It was a sensation he probably didn’t deserve to feel, given the things he’d done, but one
for which he was grateful. Sasha kept calling them a pack, and he felt it now, that sense of being a part of something purely good and loving.
It was staggering.
Sasha set his half-eaten slice of bread down in his lap with a sigh. His alpha female sniffed it, nose twitching with interest, but didn’t eat it out from under him.
“Philippe said it was like a triangle,” he said, and again sketched one in the air with his finger, like he’d done for Nikita outside the abandoned cabin in the forest. When he’d been hopeful and bright-eyed. “Vampire, mage, wolf. The mage and the wolf are the left and right hands of the vampire.”
“Every powerful fucker in the world has a left and right hand to do his dirty work,” Ivan said, tone consoling.
Sasha gave a bitter smile. “I knew that. In theory. But I didn’t expect it to feel like this.”
“Welcome to our world,” Kolya said with a sigh.
“Siberians aren’t used to bending the knee,” Feliks said. “You’ll get used to it.”
“No,” Sasha said. He pressed a hand to his chest. “It’s something inside. There’s this voice – I heard it as soon as his eyes opened. It wants me to submit to him, and–” His voice shivered. “I know it’s not just following orders. It’s like he wants in, and if I let him, I won’t be me anymore.”
One of the wolves whined quietly.
Everyone looked like they’d been slapped.
“Can he control you?” Katya asked, tapping the side of her head with a finger. “Like a psychic?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m keeping him out, but, it takes effort.” He hunched his shoulders, looking miserable. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me. I know that.” Another sad smile. “I can’t let you all down.”
Ivan snorted.
Nikita traded a look with Kolya.
Kolya said, “Sasha, if you want to run away, you can.”
Sasha jerked upright, gaze so startled it was almost frightened. He looked to Nikita. “But–”
“I won’t speak for everyone,” Nikita said, “but I know, personally, that I’m tired of following the orders of maniacs. Fetching you from Siberia was our order,” he said to Sasha. “And letting Philippe…do what he did to you, those were our orders. But nobody knows Rasputin even exists except for us. I say we use him if we can – if he’s useful – but I won’t let him make us worse monsters than we are. Fuck the triangle. Either he helps us beat the Nazis, and the Communists, or he can go back in the fucking ground.”
It was quiet a beat.
“Seconded,” Kolya said.
Ivan: “Third.”
Feliks and Pyotr said, “Fourth,” together, and then looked at each other, startled.
Katya nodded. “I agree.”
Sasha glanced around the room, expression disbelieving – and very touched.
“We do it as a pack,” Nikita said. “Or else we, I don’t know, fuck off to America.”
Ivan produced a flask from his pocket with a grin. “I’ll drink to that.”
~*~
It was sometime in the deep, black dark of the middle of the night when Nikita eased away from Katya and out from beneath the covers. She rolled over and pressed her face into the warm spot he’d left on the pillow, but didn’t wake.
The small room was crowded with sleeping Chekists and wolves, warm from the combined body heat, a small shelter in a very large, very frightening storm.
Nikita wanted to stay here with them all, and pretend to sleep, but he knew that he – like always – was the captain. The ultimate root of all their troubles. So it was right that he go and try to make it a little easier for all of them by himself.
Katya didn’t wake, but Sasha did, sitting up suddenly against the wall, bright eyes blinking, little blue moons in his face. He started to rise, but Nikita shook his head and made a stay motion.
Sasha studied him a long moment, then nodded.
The base was quiet, but no military installation ever truly slept. He heard the clomp of boots in another hallway. The sound of a door closing. And down below, in the labs, the lights blazed and white-coated assistants whisked back and forth, running tests and talking in hushed, excited voices.
Nikita spotted Philippe coming out of a room – the one where Rasputin was being kept – and he ducked into a lab to avoid being seen. Several of the assistants gave him strange looks, but didn’t comment. Someone had informed them that he was none of their business.
He gave it to the count of ten, then peeked back out and found the hall empty for the moment. He headed down to Rasputin’s door, and it was the dumbest he’d ever felt, sneaking around like a kid up after bedtime. But it was worth the indignity in order to avoid Philippe.
It had been a long time since Nikita had walked down a hallway without his coat, and his rolling, authoritative gait – the one he’d cultivated throughout his years as a Soviet attack dog. It was jarring to walk softly now, up on the balls of his feet, sneaking. But it got the job done.
The door to Rasputin’s room was ajar, and he whirled inside and eased it back without making a sound. Gave himself a moment to catch his breath, because his heart was pounding, he realized, so hard it was making his head throb.
Two small lamps illuminated the room, a soft glow for an uncomfortable patient. The starets lay propped on a mound of white pillows, dressed in a hospital gown, covers drawn up to his chest. His hair and beard seemed pools of shadow in the low light, his face drawn and framed with shadows.
Nikita smelled the meal someone had brought him, broth and bread. And the faint, but distinct copper tang of blood.
As he stood at the door, wondering if he should retreat, Rasputin’s eyes opened. It was just as shocking as the first time, when he’d tasted Sasha’s blood.
Eyes that could look right through your soul, Nikita’s mother had said. Everyone had said something like that. From church officials to princesses, everyone who’d ever met the holy man face-to-face talked of the intensity of his gaze.
Rasputin attempted something like a smile. “You’re the captain, yes?” he asked in his croaking voice. He hadn’t spoken in twenty-four years, Nikita realized.
He drew himself upright, forced his body into his official, captain’s posture. “Yes, I’m the captain.”
“Come closer.” Rasputin beckoned with one bony hand. “Let me look at you.”
His skin crawled, but he complied. He didn’t think the sensation was the result of psychic tampering, though, not like with Sasha. There was no little voice in the back of his head telling him to submit. This was just his usual revulsion when it came to this man.
And Rasputin could sense it. His smile widened as Nikita drew up beside the bed. Someone, Nikita noted, had combed the man’s beard and hair.
“You seem troubled, captain,” the starets said, and offered his hand, limp and repulsive.
Nikita stared at it, but couldn’t bring himself to touch it. “Do I?”
Rasputin sighed and brought his hand back to his lap. “A lot has changed since I went to sleep. Philippe says the opposition rose up and took the government. That they killed my dear Nicky and Alix.” He made a choking sound and shook his head, eyes wet. “It’s not even Russia anymore. There is no belief in God anymore.”
“It’s still Russia,” Nikita said. “We’ve just got to get it back from the Bolsheviks.”
Rasputin sighed again. Beneath his gown, his shoulders were sharp points. “Philippe also says you are ambitious.”
“Philippe says a lot of shit.”
Rasputin jerked upright, eyes even wider, startled.
“For instance, he’s been saying for months that you aren’t just a raving, khlyst lunatic, and that waking you up was our best bet for overthrowing the Communists. That between your power, and his, and Sasha’s, we could win this war and take back Russia.”
Rasputin opened his mouth, and Nikita spoke over him.
“I don’t really believe him, but I have to, or else face the fact that the
Communists are here to stay. And that’s not tolerable. People are starving. People are getting sent to the gulags every day. Stalin didn’t even have enough men to fight this war when it started because he’d killed or exiled anyone with any sense in the military.” Anger was bleeding into his voice, all the bright rage that he kept locked up tight. “Praying hasn’t gotten us anywhere, so you can spare me the holy man routine. God’s got nothing to do with what’s happening here – this is the devil’s work. So I’m not here for your prayers. I want your power. If you’ve got any.”
Rasputin studied him for a long, unblinking moment. “Philippe said you would be like this.”
“Yeah?”
“He said you’re an angry and bitter man.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
The starets tilted his head, an unnervingly birdlike movement. Nikita was aware suddenly of how quiet it was in the room: neither of them twitched; the only sounds were of their breathing.
“Prayer is the most powerful thing on earth,” Rasputin said. “You should trust in it more.” When Nikita didn’t respond, he nodded and said, “But yes, I will help you. It’s what our dear emperor would have wanted.”
“Good.” Nikita turned to leave.
“Captain.”
He glanced back over his shoulder.
Rasputin smiled, eyes glittering. “Won’t you stay a while and tell me more about my wolf?”
Nikita was back at the bedside in two long strides. “He is not your wolf,” he hissed. “If you touch him–”
“The way that you’re touching me?”
He glanced down. He had a fistful of the man’s gown, knuckles white with effort.
He let go and staggered back a step. He’d touched him. Rasputin, who he loathed, and he’d touched him.
The starets – the vampire – chuckled, a low, dirt-choked sound that brought up gooseflesh on Nikita’s arms. “Maybe you are bitter and angry so that no one will see how afraid you are, captain.”
Nikita wanted to wash his hands. To run out of the room.
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