by Jasper Kent
‘Where did you see Ilya getting in?’
Dmitry turned towards the cathedral. ‘I’ll show you,’ he said. ‘This way.’
He set off, but I didn’t move. There was little point in me hiding from him, not just yet. In future it might prove useful, but that would be made even more convincing if I was honest with him now. He noticed that I wasn’t behind him and turned back, looking at me impatiently.
‘It’s been a long time, Dmitry Alekseevich,’ I said.
He understood in an instant who I was. ‘When did you change?’ he asked.
‘A few seconds ago.’
‘When you stumbled over your words?’
I nodded. Perhaps it would have been better for him not to know that. He might recognize it again on a future occasion.
‘I can only admire your planning.’
I smiled. I was tempted to indulge his misconception, but Danilov would instantly know I was lying and would tell Dmitry soon enough. ‘People never seem to understand,’ I explained. ‘One doesn’t make plans – not over a timescale of half a century anyway. One makes moves. How could I have known that swapping my blood for Zmyeevich’s would end in this? Or guessed that when I drank Danilov’s blood in the last throes of my existence it would be he that was chosen to act as the channel for Zmyeevich’s resurrection? And do you imagine that if I’d planned things then it was my intended outcome to end up as lodger in the body of a feeble old man?
‘My approach has always been to do merely what is interesting; what might lead to outcomes that I can turn to my advantage. And you’ll agree that for people to mistake my blood for Zmyeevich’s is interesting. To create in Danilov a living man who owes a debt of blood to both myself and Zmyeevich is interesting. You may think I’m lucky that those two happenstances have fused and then blossomed, but that’s because you don’t see all the times when what I’ve done has come to nothing. My father had a single view of how he would make a success of himself. He failed. I learned from him to be diverse in my ideas. Some of them fall on good ground and bring forth fruit.’
His lips curled with suspicion, but it hardly mattered whether he believed me.
‘I’d still like to see where Ilya went,’ I said.
‘I was taking Mihail, not you.’
‘You were taking us both, and you still shall be. The only difference is which one of us will be doing the talking – and on that I think you should count yourself lucky.’
‘Come on then.’
We walked over in the direction of the cathedral. There was much that I wanted to learn from Dmitry, but Danilov had put him on his guard. I began with something inconsequential. ‘An interesting idea of yours that I might be simply a figment of Danilov’s imagination.’
‘Now that I’ve spoken to you, I doubt his imagination would be able to achieve something quite so loathsomely convincing.’
‘You mean he’s not clever enough?’
Dmitry didn’t reply. Moments later we were at the foot of the steps leading up to the north portal. We went up them and inside. I felt a strange reluctance to enter which I fought to repel. It could only be described as fear. It was inside this church that I had done battle with Zmyeevich, and lost. I thought I had him on my territory, but I had underestimated him. Alone among vampires he had the strength to survive the sun’s rays falling on his skin. I did not. He had dragged me into the sunlight that shone through the cathedral’s windows. All but the most miserable remains of my body had been destroyed, but it had been enough for me to survive and to regrow. I had been a vampire then – that was what made me vulnerable to the burning sunlight, but also what gave me the power to heal. Being human again brought both advantages and disadvantages.
‘I followed him in through the south entrance,’ Dmitry explained. ‘I guessed he’d go over there.’ He pointed to his left, to a mosaic icon of Saint Paul. ‘That’s the way you showed us down. But instead he went this way.’ Dmitry led me to the right and to a doorway from which a spiral staircase ascended to one of the towers. ‘I presumed he’d have to come back down again, so I waited, but he never did.’
‘But you said they were sleeping under the cathedral. That way leads upwards.’
‘A vampire is hardly going to spend the day up there. Even if they could find a dark place, it just wouldn’t feel comfortable – you know that as well as I do. Anyway, we’ll soon find out.’ He began climbing the stairs.
‘Don’t be a fool, Dmitry,’ I hissed.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s night. They’ll be awake, if they’re here. Or if not they’ll come back and we’ll be trapped.’
‘I can handle them.’
‘You may be able to, but I can’t. Look at me. I’m an old man.’
‘What do you propose?’
‘I’ll come back tomorrow, when it’s light.’
‘I won’t be able to help you then.’
‘I understand that, but the daylight will be a far better ally for me.’
‘I’ll come at dusk then. I’ll meet you in Senate Square.’
‘Thank you.’ I offered him my hand. It seemed natural when I did it, but it took him by surprise. Even so, he accepted it. We walked back outside and went our separate ways.
I had reasons beyond the matter of the protection of daylight to wait until morning. It was essential that I spoke to Anastasia without Dmitry being present. If he were there I feared he might point out certain discrepancies between my version of events and the truth. There was always the possibility that Danilov, if he got the opportunity to speak, would tell her the same as Dmitry, but I hoped by then he would realize that for the time being our interests coincided.
But that was for tomorrow. Now I genuinely needed sleep. It was not simply a requisite for the mind, but for the body as well. I hoped that would mean that Danilov was in the same condition. I could go to his home – I’d already discerned from him precisely where it was – but I decided against it. It would take some skill to bluff so well as to convince the woman who shared his bed. I would need to study him further. And besides, it was a long walk and there were plenty of places nearer where I could stay. The Hôtel d’Europe was one, but they would have discovered by now that the keys were missing and might recognize my face.
I went back across Senate Square and then along the English Quay to the Nikolaievsky Bridge. There was a picket on duty, but they didn’t stop me or ask for papers. Soon after I passed them I heard a shout of ‘Burzhooi!’ which I took to be directed at me, but whose meaning I could make no sense of. I knew that I was a little too grandly dressed for this socialist utopia. Once on Vasilievskiy Island I turned back east towards the university. Student lodgings would be rather humble for me, but I knew where the larger houses were that some of the professors lived in – or had in my day.
I looked up at the tempting high windows of many of them. That would be the safest way to slip inside, but climbing the smooth vertical face of a building was a vampiric skill, not a human one. In a way I was pleased. I’d always been happier using my wits.
I chose a house in a quiet street with no lights in the windows and pounded on the front door with both fists as if trying to knock it down. My aim was to conjure an image of frantic desperation. I paused for a few seconds and then began again. At my next pause I heard footsteps approaching, but I recommenced knocking to maintain the deception. A light came on and a moment later the door was opened by a man in a dressing gown.
‘Thank God!’ I panted. ‘Thank God you came. Please – may I come in?’
I didn’t wait for a response, but pushed through the open door. My playacting had been enough to ensure he offered no objection.
‘What the devil’s happened?’ he asked, genuinely concerned.
I was bending forwards with my hands on my knees, pretending to catch my breath. I raised my left hand towards his, signalling that he should give me a chance to recover. A moment later I sprang. I put my hand to his mouth, covering it, and pushed him
back against the wall. In the same movement I had the razor out of my pocket and open. I dragged it across his throat and blood spurted out under the pressure of his beating heart. While I no longer had the stomach actually to drink, I was pleased to discover that I could still enjoy the more cerebral pleasures that the moment offered: I could enjoy his sense of utter surprise, his fear, his pain. Ultimately I could enjoy his death. I took delight at the sight of the blood staining the wallpaper on the other side of the hallway, I could even imagine it rolling over my tongue and trickling down my throat, although the reality of it would have made me vomit. There are many things which a man will relish in his imagination but whose reality would disgust him. I had the benefit of knowing that I had once been capable of drinking blood, and would one day be able to do so again.
I let go of his head and his corpse slid to the floor. I closed the front door rapidly and turned the key that was still in the lock. I looked at the man’s face, trying not to be distracted by the crimson stains on his nightclothes. By my estimation he looked more like an academic than a domestic servant. If that were the case, and he had answered his own door, then it would indicate he had no servants. By his age I guessed there would be no children at home either. I couldn’t be certain, but with luck there would be only his wife – his widow – to deal with, if that.
There was a flight of stairs leading up from the hall and I could see further light at the top of it. It was only then that I realized that the whole place was lit electrically. Technology really had moved on, though none of what I’d seen was in the field that really interested me, that of biology. It would be fascinating to catch up. At the time of my death Charles Darwin’s remarkable book On the Origin of Species had only just been published and had not yet received the acclaim I felt it deserved. How much further might men have taken those ideas by now? And how many had applied those ideas to the vampire? With luck I would be the first.
I went upstairs. There was one door open on the landing from which I could hear the irritating rasp of somebody snoring. I looked inside. It was a woman, asleep on the left side of a double bed, whose right side had the sheets thrown back. Undoubtedly it was the man’s wife, her sleep undisturbed by my activities downstairs. I shook her until she was just awake enough to know what was happening to her, then dispatched her in much the same way I had her husband.
It didn’t take me long to check the rest of the house; there was no one else. In the kitchen I found plenty of food. I couldn’t be bothered to cook, but there was some ham and a whole plate of blini that were quite enough for me. I didn’t have much desire to sleep in a bed stained with the blood of the old woman, but I found another room across the landing. The single bed there was made up, which worried me that someone else might live here, but the sheets smelled as though they had been on there for a long time. Perhaps this was the bedroom of an adult son, who never came home to visit his parents in their dotage. He had missed his chance.
I slipped into the bed and was asleep in seconds.
I held my index and middle fingers together and checked that they would just fit between the flats of the two blades. The spacing was perfect. I finished binding the twine around the handles and tied it off. Then I held the thing up to the light, admiring my work.
It was revoltingly familiar: two parallel blades, an inch apart, sprouting from what seemed like a single handle, the lower edges of the blades razor sharp, the upper edges with jagged teeth. It was Iuda’s unmistakable knife, the one he had used, when human, to mimic the wounds caused by a vampire’s teeth. Over the years there had been many versions of it – and I had just constructed the latest.
I hurled it across the room and against the wall, hoping that it would smash, but it was too well made. It bounced off the plasterwork and fell to the floor intact. I looked around me. The kitchen drawers had been pulled out and tipped on to the floor. There was all kinds of junk in there; I noticed an electric torch, much like the one I had at home, though it wasn’t that which Iuda had been after. Each one of the knives he’d found was piled upon the table, of every type that could be imagined. Iuda had been searching meticulously for what he wanted. Even so, the two knives he had used were not quite identical; one of them was a little broader and longer than the other although he – I – had compensated for the length by offsetting the alignment of the handles.
Evidently I had awoken after he had, though by how long I did not know. He’d had time to do this, but what else? More concerning was the fact that even when I had awoken, I had continued for minutes to carry out the manual task that he had set my body. I only hoped that if the undertaking had been something less mundane than this I would have realized and stopped sooner.
I stood up and went through the door. It opened on to the hall. One thing Iuda had not done that morning was clean up. The man’s body still lay there, across the passageway, his head propped up against the skirting board. The dry blood caked his chest and stained the walls and carpet. I’d been able to do nothing to prevent it. The previous evening, when I’d shouted at Dmitry to stop him talking to Iuda, I believed I had managed to take control of my body through the overriding force of my will. But here, much as I had tried to do the same, I had been unable to take command of a single limb – a single finger. The longer Iuda remained with me, the more I would lose power over myself. Or perhaps it wasn’t that. Perhaps, deep down, the life of a stranger just wasn’t important enough to me.
I went upstairs and looked in at the bedroom. The woman’s body was just as I had left it. My gut tightened and I turned to one side to vomit. It felt good, despite the discomfort. It was a bodily reaction, not a mental one, and it told me my body was still mine and not his, if it responded to death in so human a way. I looked at the mess I had produced. I could still see flecks of undigested ham. I was glad to have expelled them – they were what Iuda had eaten, not I.
This could not go on. These crimes were mine. The law would see it like that, of course; there would be no discussion as to whose mind was in control of the hand that had wielded the razor. But at any moral level I was just as responsible. I should have found a way to stop this. I’d even enjoyed some of it. I’d admired the way Iuda had sneaked into the room at the Hôtel d’Europe and burgled it. I’d done much the same myself, once. I’d taken pleasure in the lunch we had eaten with our stolen money. Was this so very different?
I felt the sudden urge to make amends. I saw the face of the dead woman staring at me, her head hanging limply to one side. I saw the mess that I’d made when I threw up. I had an inescapable duty to perform, but it seemed only fair that first I should tidy up. I could not change the past and make it so that the people who loved this old couple would not come here and find them dead, but the least I could do was to ensure that their home did not seem quite so despoiled.
But it was too great a risk. Iuda might return to me at any minute and the opportunity would be missed. It was more important that this should not happen again than that I should attempt to make pathetic compensation for what I had already done.
I went to the stairs, going up not down. I knew the layout of the house perfectly – Iuda had checked every nook and cranny the night before. Soon I was up in the garret. It was cold and a little damp; used only for storage. The walls sloped inwards slightly, undecided as to whether they were really part of the roof. There was a window looking out on to the street. I pulled it up. Outside was a ledge wide enough for me to stand on. I climbed through, wondering if I should sit first and contemplate this, consider whether there was any alternative. But I knew time was my enemy.
I stood and looked down. It was four storeys to the pavement below. It would undoubtedly kill me, or cripple me, and even that would be enough.
I knew I had only seconds. I tried to think briefly of everything I loved, thought of them together. I formed an image in my mind. Polkan at the side of the chair, my mother seated in it, young and healthy, not as I had last known her, and Nadya standing beside, her hand on Mama’
s shoulder. I wished I had longer to enjoy it, but I did not.
I stepped forward.
CHAPTER XVI
MY LEG DID not move. I took a step back. This time my body complied with my thought. I had understood Danilov’s intent from the moment he began climbing the stairs, but only when we had been on the very brink of death had my attempts to resist him borne fruit. And so it seemed that while Danilov’s will could not prevent us from killing others, mine could prevent us from killing ourselves. I suspected that it would always be so. It was not that my will was stronger than his – not yet – merely that at some level beyond the depths that either of us could perceive there lay an instinct for survival that when it came to it chose to obey me and not him – chose life over death.
I climbed back in through the window and closed it, then went down to the kitchen again. I reclaimed my knife from where Danilov had hurled it. I also picked up the electric torch he had noticed. I would need light where I was going. I examined it to see how it was operated, but could make no sense of it. It was something I would have to learn from Danilov. I slipped it in my pocket along with the knife.
There was still some food left and so I finished it off. I was hungry again after losing the contents of my stomach, but beyond that it made a point to Danilov: whatever he could do with our body, I could reverse. The same, though, was true contrariwise. Anything I could do, he could later counteract. Our lives might become singularly unproductive. We would have to work together, but that could only be achieved if we had a common goal. The only outcome that would be acceptable for both of us would be for me to acquire my own body. Not my original body, but one of which I could have the exclusive use. I knew Danilov was aware of my thoughts and hoped that he could accept the possibility of this compromise, if only for the time being. But he would know, as I did, that neither of us was to be trusted. We might settle for the amicable solution of our mutual survival, but we would each be indifferent to the destruction of the other.