The People's Will

by Jasper Kent

  ‘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 Cain had no wooden stake now, only his knife, the one he had originally made to mimic the wounds inflicted by a vampire.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.

  CHAPTER XIV

  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 d
one 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.

  The hotel lobby was busy when he entered. He had chosen the time carefully, between afternoon and evening, when those whose reason for being in Petersburg was to frequent the prestigious boutiques on Nevsky Prospekt were returning, and those whose plans were for dinner or a night at the theatre would be preparing to leave. The busier it was the less likely Mihail would be subjected to serious scrutiny.

  He waited until the concierge had finished giving an elderly lady and gentleman directions to the Mariinskiy Theatre, and then approached him. The man looked tired and irritable, but forced a smile as Mihail came near.

  ‘I wonder if you could present this to the hotel manager,’ said Mihail, handing him the envelope, and within it the note that he had recovered from Luka’s rooms. Underneath was a one-rouble bill, folded up. The concierge smiled as his fingers rubbed across it.

  ‘With pleasure, sir,’ he said, turning away. Mihail couldn’t see quite how he slipped the banknote into his pocket, but was sure that he had done. The concierge disappeared through a door at the back of the lobby. After two minutes he emerged with another man, who came to speak to Mihail, smiling unctuously.

  ‘It’s been some months since we’ve been privileged to receive a visit from a representative of Collegiate Councillor Chernetskiy,’ he said, handing the letter back to Mihail. ‘I trust that His High Nobleness is in good health?’

  No, he’s rotting in a dungeon in the Peter and Paul Fortress. It would not be a helpful response, however much the words would be a pleasure on Mihail’s lips. ‘He’s very well, and sends his regards. He trusts his instructions have continued to be carried out.’ It was pure bluff, but Mihail could hazard a guess as to the nature of the arrangement between Iuda and the hotel.

  ‘Absolutely.’ As he spoke, the manager guided Mihail towards the front desk. ‘His rooms have remained quite undisturbed.’ He leaned over and whispered in the ear of one of his staff, who turned to the rack of keys behind him.

  ‘Good. Good,’ muttered Mihail.

  The key was handed to the manager and the manager handed it to Mihail. ‘Would you like someone to show you the way?’

  ‘I’ll be fine, thank you.’ The number, 215, was clearly stamped on the tag attached to the key.

  Mihail followed the direction that the manager had involuntarily indicated, leaving the lobby via a short flight of steps on to a corridor from which a far grander staircase ascended. At the top stood the door to a dimly lit dining room, while the stairway turned and continued upwards on either side. However intent he was on his task, Mihail could not help but be awed by the opulence of the hotel – and the expense of it. He was the son of a grand duke, and yet he would never be able to afford rooms in a place like this. The stairs turned again. Mihail glanced at the room that led off the landing, at the front of the building overlooking the street. Its main feature was a grand piano, finished in colourful marquetry. This was still the level of public rooms. After the third flight of stairs, things became less grandiose, but only slightly. The corridor led off in both directions, but all the numbers began with the figure 1. Now the stairs were more mundane, what Mihail might expect in any large building, constructed of iron and twisting back on themselves to take up the minimum amount of space. He needed to ascend only one more flight. He noted the numbers as he passed: 209, 211, 213. At last he was there. He hesitated, then put his ear against the door. There was no reason to expect the room to be occupied. Iuda was a captive. If Dmitry knew of the room, he could not come here in daylight. Even so, Mihail was cautious. Dmitry could have come here at night, and be waiting inside. He knocked and listened again. There was no response. He could think of no more precautions he could take. The key turned smoothly and he pushed the door open.

  Iuda awoke. He had slept well. How a voordalak would manage without the tombs of the rich was a mystery. The common man was buried in the ground, but for the rich an ornate chamber was built and the casket was placed within a stone dias so that though it would decay, it would not be food for worms. Iuda lay alongside one such long-departed noble – safe from the sun, comfortable among the dead. He was almost surprised not to find other creatures like himself gathered around the sarcophagus to sleep, like faithful dogs around their master. But there were many graves about the world, and few voordalaki. There were two others in Petersburg though, of that Iuda was sure. Where might they be sleeping, he wondered.

  He crawled through the narrow gap that had given him entrance to the tomb and emerged into the cemetery. He raised his hand to his face, but could feel no stains of blood upon it. Even so, he picked up a handful of snow and washed himself. He had no mirror to look in, not that it would have helped. He’d stolen the clothes of the student he had killed – but for the shirt, which was drenched in blood. They weren’t ideal, but they were better than the ragged garments that he had worn for three years in gaol. They would be enough to get him into the hotel without raising too many eyebrows. There he had plenty of other outfits to choose from. And he would need them. Tomorrow was the appointed day for his meeting. It would not do to be ill-dressed for that.

  He headed south, back to the centre of town.

  There were three rooms in the suite: a bathroom, a bedroom and a study. The bathroom and bedroom were much as might have been expected in any great hotel, except that nothing had been cleaned or even touched for many months. The windows were shuttered. A thick layer of dust sat upon every surface. The wardrobes and drawers were filled with clothes of every style, from the finest evening dress, through a variety of military uniforms, to peasant outfits. Iuda was prepared for any eventuality – for any disguise he might need to adopt. He had not, it seemed, been prepared for moths. Half of the garments were unwearable, most had one or two holes. But it was not these for which Mihail had come.

  The study contained three locked cabinets. Mihail had no qualms about wrenching them open. Within he found what he’d been looking for – and much more. The first cupboard contained notebooks – more than fifty of them, all written in English. Some dated back to the 1810s, the latest was as recent as 1877. Mihail had brought a knapsack for the very purpose, but he could not take all of them. With luck he would have the chance to return for more later, but he could not be sure of it. He skimmed through them, trying to determine which were the most valuable, checking dates and headings and glancing over the body of the text for any words that might shout out at him. His English was good, but he did not read it like he could Russian; each word had to be deciphered and understood, rather than simply recognized as a familiar shape. It took him two to three minutes to scan the first volume. He moved on to the second.

  He froze. There it was, written in the Latin alphabet but still unmistakable, his grandfather’s name: Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov. Preceded by one and followed by two others that Mihail knew almost as well: Vadim Fyodorovich Savin, Dmitry Fetyukovich Petrenko and Maksim Sergeivich Lukin. The last bore the surname that Mihail had adopted and was still using. There was nothing much to the entry – just a note that they were the four officers who would be liaising with Iuda and the others when they were in Russia. It was dated 27 August 1812. It was the beginning of a story that Mihail knew well.

  He quickly worked his way through the notebooks. There may have been other references familiar to him, but if there were he missed them. Everything was in too much detail to be of any real use. These were the day
-by-day observations of a scientist; they described the minutiae of what Iuda had seen, but made little effort to explain it. It was only when it got to the more recent volumes, from the 1870s, that Iuda had begun to set down his conclusions about the nature of vampires, drawn from so many years’ experimentation. These Mihail slipped into his bag, along with those from 1855 to 1860 – the years that Tamara had been in contact with Iuda, and a few more after that. Mihail was keen to discover how much Iuda had really known about his mother and, vitally, whether he even guessed at Mihail’s existence.

  The second cupboard contained other papers – not Iuda’s own writings but mostly correspondence he had received. Rather than being categorized by date they were divided into folders named after cities: Constantinople, London, Moscow, Simferopol, Saint Petersburg and others – the cities Iuda had been in when he received the letters, Mihail guessed. Again, he had to compromise and took only Moscow and Saint Petersburg. At the bottom of that cabinet there was also money – both paper and coins, some Russian, some from across Europe. The coinage would be too heavy, but he took the banknotes. He wasn’t short of funds, but there was a pleasure in stealing from Iuda – a breach of the eighth commandment that served as an aperitif to the violation of the sixth that Mihail would soon commit against him.

  The final cabinet was the most securely locked, and on smashing his way into it Mihail understood why. It contained blood – dozens of small glass bottles and vials, each carefully labelled with a name. Some Mihail recognized: Raisa Styepanovna Tokoryeva, Marfa Mihailovna Danilova, Vadim Fyodorovich Savin. It seemed that Iuda collected blood as a child collects postage stamps. From every person – man or vampire – that he had encountered and had been afforded the opportunity, he had taken blood, even before he became a vampire. Of the names Mihail recognized all were dead, or at least so he presumed – hoped. There was one exception: Zmyeevich. His was the largest bottle of all, though it still fitted in the palm of Mihail’s hand. He made sure the seal was good, then slipped it into his bag.