by Jasper Kent
‘You led us here?’ said Zmyeevich.
‘Don’t pretend, Ţepeş. It should be obvious enough from the fact that I escaped you within minutes of our arriving here. Do you think that I didn’t know my house in Moscow had information that would bring you here? Do you think I failed to understand what you’d see in that mirror down there?’
‘But still you came back.’
‘Of course I did, because there’s more to this – much more.’
As he spoke, Iuda began to walk, almost dance across the floor, weaving between the sun’s rays as they cast a pattern that Mihail could only guess he knew by heart. Zmyeevich remained motionless. He was not trapped by the light, but there was no obvious safe path to reach Iuda. All he could do was wait.
‘All you seem to have is a means of temporary protection from me,’ said Zmyeevich, ‘but it will soon fade. You cannot leave here until darkness falls.’
‘I assure you I can.’ Iuda continued his motion as he spoke, sometimes leaning so that his body was parallel with the sun’s sloping rays, allowing him to closely avoid them. At one moment a wisp of smoke rose from his ear as it brushed against the light, but it did not perturb him. ‘I know of more dark tunnels leading out of here than the one you just crawled from.’
‘So,’ said Zmyeevich, ‘you are safe from me. And equally I am safe from you. In that case, what was the point of you coming here?’
‘To talk.’
‘Talk then.’
Iuda paused, and then began. ‘I don’t want to be your enemy, Ţepeş. You know that.’
‘You want to be my equal. I cannot allow that.’
‘Oh, come on! How could I ever be the equal of the great Count Dracula?’
‘You couldn’t,’ said Zmyeevich simply, ‘but you still desire it. I should have guessed it the moment we met. But then you were merely human.’
‘Well if I can’t equal you, you have nothing to fear from me. Surely you’ll allow me the fantasy of my forlorn hope?’
‘You’re nothing, Cain,’ said Zmyeevich. ‘If I allow you to live, it is because I have better things to do with my time.’
‘Such as ruling Russia?’
Zmyeevich was silent.
‘We worked together on that once,’ said Iuda. ‘We could again.’
‘You can assist me?’
‘No, but I have the power to hinder you, and I can choose not to use it.’
‘What power?’
‘I have your blood, Ţepeş.’
‘With it you can cause me pain, nothing more.’
‘If a Romanov were willingly to drink your blood, and share your mind, then he would free his entire generation from your influence. If that Romanov were of little consequence, then he would free the tsar.’
‘He would have to do it willingly,’ said Zmyeevich, ‘and even then, there will be future generations.’
‘If he were to die, with your blood in him, he would become a voordalak – your vampire offspring. You would control him. And yet your chances to influence any other Romanov would cease. Your fox would have been shot, as we say in England.’
Zmyeevich considered for a moment. ‘You don’t speak as someone who does not want to be my enemy.’
‘I’m being honest with you, Ţepeş. That is what friends do – or had you forgotten?’
‘It’s still a better reason to see you die than to let you live.’
‘Currently that’s not an option for you, though, is it?’ Iuda waved a hand lightly in the air, reminding Zmyeevich of the sunlight. He did a little pirouette and moved to a different patch of shade. Mihail noticed him looking at the floor, with its intricate mosaic of checks and spirals, as he moved. Was there some map embedded in them that allowed him to know with such confidence where he would be safe?
Zmyeevich remained silent.
‘I can of course offer you Ascalon,’ said Iuda, ‘if that would sweeten the deal.’
‘Ascalon?’
‘Oh yes, I know all about that, Ţepeş.’
‘Pyotr tore it from where it hung around my neck, even as his blood was on my lips.’
‘What do you care?’ asked Iuda.
‘It made me what I am. I unearthed it – four centuries ago. The dragon’s blood still stained it. I tasted it. I became … me.’
‘And if it is destroyed you believe you will return to what you were before?’
Zmyeevich stiffened, disconcerted by the depth of Iuda’s understanding. He nodded slowly in agreement.
‘Superstition!’ exclaimed Iuda. ‘Claptrap!’
‘You say I don’t know my own history?’
‘You have a medieval mind, Ţepeş. How could a primitive like you be expected to understand the processes which control his own body? But then who am I to question a man’s beliefs, when I can exploit them instead. I can offer you Ascalon. Or I can destroy it, and we’ll discover which of us is correct about its power. I do hope I’m proved wrong.’
‘You do not have Ascalon,’ said Zmyeevich. ‘Pyotr entrusted it to the Armenians. They buried it – and soon we shall unearth it.’
Iuda smiled tightly – confidently. ‘Then it seems there is nothing I can offer you,’ he said.
Zmyeevich stood upright, moving away from the pillar. He took a few cautious steps, eyeing the beams of sunlight. Mihail took the opportunity to scurry forward a little, finding a new hiding place close to the entrance to the chapel, where he was bathed in the sun’s protective rays.
‘You’re wrong,’ said Zmyeevich. ‘You do have something I want – and that I will take from you. You have your life.’
Iuda chuckled, but there was no hint that Zmyeevich had spoken with anything but the utmost conviction. The arch voordalak took a deep breath and seemed to tense himself, like someone about to dive into water that they knew to be cold. Then he took a pace forward.
The sunlight enveloped him.
Mihail gasped and Iuda’s face fell into an expression of genuine bewilderment. Both waited to see the vampire’s body reduce in seconds to powdered ash, but the transformation that did take place was far less spectacular – and infinitely more surprising.
Zmyeevich aged before their eyes. He became wizened. His skin grew thin and wrinkled, sucked in at his cheeks. He began to stoop forward, his spine curving. The hair of his head, and even his moustache, grew white. For Mihail, the metamorphosis transformed Zmyeevich into a familiar figure – the old man to whom he had spoken as they stood at the foot of the Bronze Horseman, the man who had first told him about Ascalon. Mihail had stood there in broad daylight, conducting a conversation with Zmyeevich himself. And – because it was broad daylight – he had never for a moment suspected.
Iuda simply gawped; his confidence evaporated, his arrogant goading silenced.
It was Zmyeevich who spoke first – the sound still resonant and grinding, unaffected by the sunlight. Clearly when he had been speaking to Mihail he had been disguising his voice to be in keeping with his physical appearance.
‘Who are you to presume to understand my body?’ he asked. ‘Do you think that after four hundred years I’m unaware of my own capabilities?’
‘But …’ Iuda’s terror robbed him of the power of speech. ‘Every vampire … I experimented … They all … None of them could face the sun … They burned.’
‘They were young,’ said Zmyeevich. ‘I have had time; time to learn how to face the pain; time to expose myself, and recover, and expose myself again.’
‘But your blood. When I threw that into the sun you screamed in agony.’
‘The skin protects the blood,’ explained Zmyeevich. ‘But even then I was not as able to endure the light as I am now. I was not as confident of my strength. The sun weakens me, as you can see, but it does not kill.’ As he spoke he straightened up, stretching his shoulders, as if becoming inured to the light. ‘I wonder if you can boast of the same.’
With that he paced across the cathedral floor, heading directly towards Iuda, slower than if he had
been at the zenith of his strength, but fast enough to reach his goal. Iuda turned and fled and although he was quicker, he was forced to follow a far more circuitous path as he dodged the splashes of light that had so recently been his allies. Zmyeevich was soon upon him and flung himself forward on to the marble floor, grabbing Iuda’s ankle in his hand. Iuda fell and turned as he went down. His left hand was flung outwards into a pool of sunlight and erupted with smoke and steam.
Iuda screamed and snatched his hand away, but now Zmyeevich was crawling towards him. Zmyeevich was still weakened by his exposure to the light, while Iuda remained strong but was compelled to stay in the shade. He kicked at Zmyeevich’s face with his free foot, and kicked again. Zmyeevich was forced to let go. Iuda rolled on to his stomach and in moments was back on his feet, running, his injured hand cradled against his chest. He made for an archway in the south-east corner of the nave, still dodging from side to side to avoid the light. Soon he disappeared and Mihail heard his feet pounding against stone steps. Zmyeevich was only seconds behind him.
Mihail stepped out into the nave, feeling strangely elated by this turn of events. All his life he had wanted the pleasure of killing Iuda himself, but to see his foe so thoroughly outwitted and humiliated was almost as gratifying. The sounds of the two vampires’ footsteps faded, but Mihail had no intention of pursuing them. Instead he stared up at the dome above him, hoping that he might catch some glimpse of their continuing battle.
He was not disappointed. Iuda appeared first and Zmyeevich moments later. Somehow they had found their way to opposite sides of the circular gallery that ran around the inside of the tower at the foot of its windows, just above the heads of the golden statues. They locked eyes for a moment, each wondering which direction the other would take, but it was Zmyeevich who moved first, setting off clockwise. Iuda did the same, but as he ran past each of the windows the light caught him and another cloud of smoke rose above him.
After three windows he could take no more pain. He stood with his back pressed against the outer wall of the gallery, where at least he was in shade. Zmyeevich quickly followed the path of the semicircle which separated them and soon he was face to face with Iuda. He reached out, ready to drag his enemy into the light.
Iuda leapt. Mihail’s eyes followed him as he descended through the gallery, past the twelve gilded angels and down towards the floor of the nave, his eyes wide, his arms flailing, his legs kicking against the air as though he thought to swim up, away from the ground.
The sound of his impact with the floor came from a mixture of sources, the breath being knocked from his body, the cracking of his bones, the squelch of his less rigid body parts splayed against the marble. It did not kill him, but his body lay as an unrecognizable jumble in the middle of the church, with arms and legs sticking out at all angles, like a broken puppet. He was lucky to have landed in shade. Only his leg caught the sunlight, and where the cloth of his trousers had been pulled up the flesh of his ankle began to burn. He pulled his leg away, but the booted foot remained where it was, its contents smouldering to nothing, leaving the boot empty.
Above, Zmyeevich began his more controlled descent. He had swung himself over the railing of the gallery and was clambering down one of the four great pillars that supported the tower. It was an eerie sight. Unlike any human climber, he descended head first, his body pressed close to the stonework. His fingers grasped any corner or crevice they could find, moving downwards with enormous speed. Mihail was reminded of a lizard traversing a wall. In seconds he was at floor level. He took no notice of Mihail, but strode over to Iuda’s crumpled body, grabbing him by the collar and dragging him across the marble. The look on Zmyeevich’s face was one of impatient anger – he wanted to be rid of Iuda and rid of him quickly.
Mihail had not noticed until now, but in the iconostasis in front of the altar the Beautiful Gate had been opened. It was unusual in any church. Iuda must have done it himself to allow more light in, when he thought it would protect him. What was revealed behind, above the altar, was a spectacular stained-glass window, depicting the Saviour, dressed in an orange robe. In his left hand he carried a tall cross and he formed his right into the symbol of the troyeperstiy, the two smallest fingers folded into the palm, the thumb touching the tips of the middle and index fingers, in preparation for making the sign of the cross. It had never occurred to Mihail before, but it suddenly reminded him of his grandfather, Aleksei, and his two missing fingers.
The sun, low in the eastern sky, shone brightly through this image of Christ, casting its light, altered in colour by the glass, through the Beautiful Gate and on to the church floor. Even there, a little of the coloration could be discerned, though the main impression was of simple brightness. Zmyeevich flung Iuda into its glow, and pressed his foot down on his enemy’s chest, so that he could not crawl away. Whether by luck or design Zmyeevich had arranged things so that Iuda’s body was not entirely subject to the sun’s glare. His head and left arm and shoulder remained in the shade. It would mean he experienced every last ounce of the pain that the burning of his body might inflict upon him.
Mihail wondered with bitter irony whether Iuda would take the opportunity to draw knowledge from this final great experiment in which he was the specimen. Did the fact that the sun’s rays were coloured by the glass reduce his torment? Did the fact that it was the image of Our Lord that was projected upon him increase it? Mihail had nothing to compare it against, but Iuda seemed to take a little longer to die than Mihail might have expected from what he had heard, and his screams seemed to echo a little more loudly than Mihail had hoped. The only disappointment was that Iuda’s death was at the hands of Zmyeevich. It would be some recompense if he could be looking into Mihail’s eyes as he died. There would be some small chance of recognition.
Mihail took a few steps to the side, removing Zmyeevich as a block to his view of Iuda – what was left of him. He had stopped screaming, not because he experienced no more pain, but because he had no more lungs with which to breathe, no more diaphragm with which to force the air across his vocal cords. He was not even a torso – just a head, an arm and enough of a chest to join the two together. And soon there would not even be that much of him left. Above all, Mihail wanted Iuda to see him now.
At the same moment Iuda somehow found the strength to raise his head, but he stared not into Mihail’s face but at the image of the Saviour in the window, through which shone the light that was destroying every cell of his body. Mihail realized Iuda did not need to see him, he merely needed to see that image of Christ and to be reminded – as Mihail had been reminded – of the significance of the troyeperstiy. Mihail breathed deeply. The sound of his voice filled the cathedral.
‘Remember the three-fingered man!’
Whether Iuda heard the words or was even capable of doing so, Mihail could not tell. Zmyeevich most certainly did. He turned. He took one last look at Iuda and saw he was finished, and so focused his attention on his newest prey – Mihail.
‘Who are you?’ he asked.
Mihail looked at him. In appearance this was the same old man he had spoken to beneath the statue of Pyotr. How much more his knowledge of Ascalon meant now. But the malevolence in Zmyeevich’s eyes was not that of an old man – or perhaps it was that of a man older than old. Four centuries, he had mentioned. How much hatred could accumulate in that space of time?
Mihail could think of no response to the question.
‘It matters not,’ said Zmyeevich. He bared his fangs once again and descended upon Mihail, who had no defence. His crossbow had already proved ineffectual; his wooden sword was in his coat and would take too long to draw. All he had was his sabre, which he drew as a matter of instinct rather than calculation. And then he remembered Zmyeevich’s own words: ‘The skin protects the blood.’
It was a slim chance. Mihail raised his sword and slashed at Zmyeevich’s face. It caught him under his high, noble cheekbone. In a man it would have left a scar that would have made the ladi
es swoon, but it would not have slowed the attack. In a vampire it would normally have been a wound of little consequence. But as the blood oozed from the neat horizontal cut, the sunlight caught it and it began to smoke and smoulder and then burn.
Zmyeevich screamed, as loudly as Iuda had been screaming just moments before. He raised his hands to his face to block out the sunlight and then staggered backwards, falling upon his voordalak instincts and searching for shade. For Mihail it might have been an opportunity to move in for the kill, but terror took him. He raced to the great bronze cathedral doors and struggled to push one open. Eventually he was out in the cool air of Senate Square, gasping for breath, feeling protected in the morning sunlight, but knowing he was not.
He ran – across Senate Square, past the Bronze Horseman and on to the Neva. Only when his feet slipped from beneath him and sent him sprawling out of control across the frozen water did he stop and look around and see that he was alone. Zmyeevich had not followed. Mihail was safe.
More importantly, Iuda was dead.
CHAPTER XIX
AGONY. PAIN. ABSENCE. Misery – new experiences, or long-forgotten ones. More than merely a physical sensation, a tenderness of the spirit – of the soul. But a good thing.
Agony brought strength. Pain brought malice. Absence brought growth. Misery brought the desire for revenge.
Strength first though. Movement. Fingertips curling, finding the tiniest crevice, like climbing, but along, not up. Once the fingers grip the arm can pull – so little to pull. But the fingers must not lose their prize. Suffocating – unable to breathe the air all around. Creeping, inch by inch. Not far. A dark gap – enticing. Close now. Closer still. Drowsy, but no rest, not yet. Metal, iron bars for the fingers to grip and pull against; yielding, engulfed by darkness, falling. Weightless like before, but falling into darkness. Then the ground below, far below, hard, still. New pain consumed by the old, but dark.
Dark now. Sleep. Grow.