by Jasper Kent
CHAPTER XXII
I MANAGED TO draw some amusement from the fact that Nadya appeared to greet her dog with as much affection as she had her lover. But I suppose in the dog’s case there was no doubt as to what actually lurked behind those dark, moronic eyes. The creature was waiting for us just where we had left it, indicating that this was not the route Susanna had taken. We all quickly climbed the steps back out to Saint Isaac’s Square. The place was quiet now. Those who were fleeing the city had already left; those who were staying had shut themselves up in their homes. Later on it would become livelier as Petrograd’s more resourceful citizens came out to see what they could loot from their neighbours’ abandoned shops and homes.
‘So what now?’ It was Nadya who asked the obvious question.
From the way both of them stared at me it seemed that I was expected to answer it. Now that we were free and the immediate threat of Susanna taking her revenge on me was lifted, my priorities had changed. Dmitry was a useful ally. Even though he had no reason to do anything to help me, he would protect Danilov, seemingly to the point of risking his own life. I had no need of Nadya’s company. I toyed with the idea of telling Dmitry just what she had done to his comrade down there beneath the cathedral, but such a revelation might do me better if left to a more appropriate moment. The very fact that Danilov knew it was a possibility gave me just a little more leverage to use against him. But still I had to answer her question.
‘I’m not sure,’ I said. It seemed like the sort of response Danilov might come up with.
‘You two have to get out of the city,’ said Dmitry. ‘Go to Moscow – or even further. There should still be trains running.’
‘You’re not coming with us?’ asked Nadya.
He shook his head. ‘I’m going to follow Susanna to Cheka headquarters.’
‘To where?’ I spoke before realizing that my ignorance might reveal who I was.
Dmitry looked at me sternly, then his face softened. ‘It happened since you were arrested, but it was already starting, even then. We don’t have the Ohrana any more. Gorohovaya Street 2 is the headquarters of a new organization now – though it’s not all that different. It’s called the Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya, but people just refer to it by the initials – Che Ka – the Cheka. They keep confiscated items in the evidence room, on the third floor. Susanna won’t know that, so I may have a chance to get there before her.’
‘How come you know so much about it?’ I asked.
‘Because that’s where I work,’ he snapped. ‘I’m what they call a Chekist. At least that’s what I’m pretending for now.’
If he knew the building as well as he claimed then there might be a chance – I hadn’t given up on Ascalon altogether.
‘I’m coming with you,’ I said resolutely. ‘I might be able to help.’
‘Misha, no. Leave it to Dmitry,’ pleaded Nadya.
‘For God’s sake, you stupid woman, I’m not “Misha”; I’m Iuda.’
It was a joy to watch as her face collapsed into tears – certainly worth any slight advantage that their knowing my current identity might give them. I felt a sudden pain in my jaw and I staggered to one side. Dmitry had cuffed me. It was painful, almost as though he’d dislocated it, even though it was only a casual blow on his part. I rubbed it and grinned at him.
‘Danilov feels it just as much as I do.’
‘I think we’re all in agreement, though,’ said Dmitry. ‘With you like this, it would be better all round if you stay with me and not with Nadya.’ He turned to her. ‘You go to the Nikolaievsky Station and get three tickets to Moscow. We’ll meet you there.’
‘Three?’ I asked. ‘You’re coming with us?’
‘I’m going to make sure you both get there.’
‘And how’s she going to pay for them?’
Nadya seemed about to say something, but Dmitry interrupted her. ‘That shouldn’t be a problem.’ He reached into his pocket and took out a roll of banknotes. He handed it to Nadya. ‘I doubt these are worth half what they were a few days ago, but it should be enough. Don’t be afraid to use them all if that’s how much it costs. Now let’s go.’
We walked together along Gogolya Street until we reached Gorohovaya.
‘This is where we part company,’ said Dmitry. ‘If we’re not there by midnight, go alone. We’ll find you in Moscow.’
She nodded. I took a step towards her as if to kiss her goodbye. She almost fell for it, but she overcame her instinctive response in time. She scowled at me. I chuckled. She stepped towards Dmitry. He seemed a little taken aback, but even so he leaned down to allow her to kiss him on the cheek. She scarcely managed to hide her revulsion at so intimate a contact with a vampire, but it was all clearly for my benefit. I wondered what Danilov would be making of it.
She strode off in the direction of Nevsky Prospekt, the dog at her heel. I stared after her, with no interest on my own part, but aware that this might be the last time Danilov ever saw her, and knowing that it would hurt him to dwell on the moment. Dmitry grabbed me by the sleeve. ‘Come on!’
We walked up the street until we were opposite the door by which we’d been taken out on our way to the Peter and Paul Fortress. It stood ajar. We crossed the road. Even before we were back on the pavement I could see the arm and hand of a man protruding from behind the door.
‘Shit!’ muttered Dmitry.
Inside it was clear that the doorkeeper was dead. His throat was bloody. It was a strange reflection of Dmitry’s loyalties that he should be disturbed by it. He bounded up the stairs two at a time. I tried to stay close, but Danilov’s body was pathetic. He had disappeared by the time I’d climbed the three flights, but I was shown the path by a streak of blood smeared across the wooden floor. As I walked past it I saw another body, killed in the same way, lying face down beside a desk. I turned his head to one side with the tip of my toe and was pleased to see a face I recognized: it was the Trotsky-impersonating thug who had sent us to the fortress in the first place. I was surprised that there weren’t more bodies – I didn’t imagine Susanna would be merciful – but I supposed that most of them had already evacuated to Moscow.
I heard a sound from further ahead and went to investigate. The whole floor was open, without walls dividing up the rooms, although bookshelves and filing cabinets formed alcoves for the individual desks. Further along, though, there was something different. A large metal cage stood in the middle of the room itself, quite tall enough for a man to stand up in. It reminded me of the cage that Aleksandr II had had set up at Fontanka 16 to allow him to talk to me in safety. Perhaps it was the same one – this place was where the Ohrana had moved to. Here, though, the purpose was different; this was to keep thieves out, not to keep vampires in.
The gate was open and Dmitry was inside, searching through boxes and cabinets. The whole place was stained with blood. I could see a human foot sticking out from behind one of the boxes, but as I moved I discovered that it was not attached to any body. I looked around and saw that it wasn’t just blood that was spattered in all directions: it was the remains of one body – perhaps more than one – ripped to shreds and thrown about the place. Perhaps I’d been wrong. Perhaps this cage had been used to keep someone in; used by Susanna so that her victim could not escape as she vented her wrath on him. I should have been delighted; proud at the part I’d played in fashioning such a creature of malevolence, but instead I could only feel disgust. I had been in Danilov’s body too long and it was beginning to have an effect on me.
‘All the months I’ve worked here, and I never thought to look,’ said Dmitry, half to himself.
‘Look where?’
‘In here. I should have known – should have felt it as I walked past.’
‘You’re sure she’s taken it?’
He pushed a cardboard box across the desk towards me. ‘This has your name on it – Mihail’s name.’
I looked down at it. Inside sat my double-bladed knife and the razor I’d used. There was
certainly no sign of Ascalon – nor of the money we’d had, but that was to be expected.
‘There’s a chance they put it somewhere else,’ I said. ‘Help me look.’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘She has it. If she didn’t she’d still be here, still searching. She wouldn’t give up.’
‘She’ll be back at Saint Isaac’s by now.’
‘I doubt it. I don’t think she’s going there.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘You used to be a vampire, didn’t you? Look at the blood – it’s drying. The cathedral’s only ten minutes from here. She’d have been back before we left, if that was where she was going.’
‘So where is she?’
Dmitry thought for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I don’t know. We should get to the station.’ He walked out of the cage and headed towards the stairs. He seemed to have overlooked the fact that his plans and mine might be anything other than convergent. But I didn’t have to think about it for long. It was still better for me to stick with him for now – and Moscow would be a safer place than Petrograd. I was about to follow, but I didn’t want to leave empty-handed. I reached into the box and picked up my double-bladed knife. Moments later I was following him down the stairs.
For all that Petrograd had fallen quiet, the Nikolaievsky Station was busier than I had ever seen it. The clock in the tower told me that it was almost a quarter to eleven. The statue of Aleksandr III – the hippopotamus – still stood in the square opposite. Today the hordes that seethed around it had no yearning for revolution on their minds. They sought freedom, to be sure, but freedom from the oppression of a foreign invader. We pushed our way into the station. Dmitry was a useful man to have around if you wanted to elbow your way through a throng like this one.
Inside it was even more tightly packed. There were trains in at half the platforms. We pushed our way through, trying to find a vantage point where we might be able to see Nadya, but it was impossible. With a whoosh of steam one of the trains began to roll out. Railway guards held back the crowd that surged forward in disappointment to see it go. I could only wonder that any form of organization remained, but the rail workers were an institution unto themselves. Their union – the Vikzhel – was one of the few that had been strong enough to stand up against the Bolsheviks during the coup. Now they seemed intent on staying at their posts to the last, and on getting as many out of Petrograd as they could.
‘We should split up and look for her,’ I suggested.
‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
I felt momentarily affronted to be mistrusted, but the words were addressed to Iuda, not me. I could have corrected his misapprehension, but it would have taken precious seconds for me to prove who I was, and I couldn’t really see how his knowing would change things.
‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘I’ve got a better idea.’
With that he grabbed me by the waist and hoisted me into the air before lowering me on to his shoulders. If I’d been a five-year-old boy it would not have looked unnatural, but even though I was not as tall as Dmitry I was still a full-grown man. Aside from the ridiculous nature of the image we must have presented, anyone thinking about what Dmitry had achieved would wonder at his immense strength. And yet not a soul remarked upon it. Dmitry slowly turned in a circle, like the engine for some great lighthouse of which I was the lantern. Even at that deliberate pace there were hundreds of passengers for me to examine each second. I felt sure it would be impossible for me to miss the face of the woman I loved, and yet I feared that I would.
We had turned through almost 360 degrees when I finally saw someone I did recognize, though it was not Nadya, nor was it anyone I had been hoping to encounter. It was the vampire Sandor. He, like me, was staring intently, his eyes fixed on something ahead of him. I followed his gaze and at last I saw her – Nadya. She was pushing through the crowd away from him. It might have been coincidence, but then she glanced behind her and I saw the fear in her eyes and I knew she was fully aware that she was being hunted.
I bent forward and spoke to Dmitry, shouting to be heard over the noise of the crowd. ‘She’s over there. Sandor’s there too. He’s after her. Susanna can’t be far away.’
I jumped down from his back, using his shoulders to soften my descent, then pushed him in the direction we needed to go. Again we made easy progress, as he comfortably thrust aside any who did not see his approach and choose to move away voluntarily. Although he didn’t have as good a view as I’d had, his height was still enough for him to see them, now he knew where they were.
We moved towards the side of the station, away from the tracks, and the crowd began to thin. I was able to walk alongside Dmitry. He pointed ahead of us to a tall brick archway in the western wall of the building.
‘They went through there.’
I broke into a run, but stopped as I reached the arch so that I could look through. Dmitry was seconds behind me. It opened on to a walled yard. There were packing cases stacked so high that even Dmitry would not be able to see over them. Some were broken open, with their contents spilling out. There was nothing of much value. Anything that might be sold or eaten had been taken. There was no sign of Nadya or Sandor, but the piled crates made the yard into something like a maze. The narrow alleyways between them would conceal anyone who was in here.
‘Nadya!’ I shouted.
The response came quickly, ‘Mi—’ but was cut short. Dmitry indicated that we should split up. Soon he had disappeared from view. I shouted Nadya’s name again and this time the response came in the form of a bark which I recognized to be Polkan’s. Then came a continuous low snarling. It gave me some sense of which direction to take, but the twists and turns between the crates meant I could not follow the sound directly.
Finally I saw them. Sandor had Nadya pressed up against a wall, his hand over her mouth so that she couldn’t shout out. Polkan had his teeth sunk deep into Sandor’s leg, trying pathetically to drag him away. I could see bloodstains around his muzzle, but it didn’t seem to bother Sandor. Clearly, though, he had something to fear, otherwise why did he need to keep Nadya quiet? But it wasn’t me that concerned him. He saw me moments after I saw him. He pulled a foul expression that was something like a grin and then stepped back. He kicked hard at Polkan, sending him sliding across the ground. The dog was on his feet again in seconds, emitting a throaty growl and keeping his eyes fixed on Sandor. But he didn’t approach.
Then behind Sandor appeared the man he was really afraid of – Dmitry. He’d found a different way through the labyrinth and now he and I were at opposite ends of the alley, blocking Sandor in – though I didn’t represent much of a barricade. I looked past Sandor towards Dmitry. Sandor immediately understood. He shot a glance over his shoulder to confirm what he suspected. It took him no time to realize he wasn’t going to escape that way. He launched himself in my direction. I braced myself. My only hope was that I could hold him off until Dmitry reached us.
I didn’t need to worry. Before he’d even moved two paces Sandor found himself sprawling on the floor. I saw a smirk on Nadya’s face and looked down to see the raised foot with which she had tripped him. He had no chance to recover. In seconds Dmitry was on him. He flipped him on to his back and then hauled him up by the lapels, lifting him up off the ground with his feet kicking, trying to find support. Sandor could have made more effort to resist than he did, but he clearly recognized he was beaten. He’d fought alongside Dmitry for long enough to know what a formidable opponent he was. Perhaps he hoped that if he gave in without resistance Dmitry might show him mercy. He might well have been right, given what I’d seen of Dmitry’s attitude to Ilya, but I wasn’t going to allow it. Nadya had had the right idea with her brother, and I was going to follow her example.
I still had the makeshift stake that I’d made in the cellar beneath Saint Isaac’s. I marched forward and lunged. It was an easy strike, the sort of thing that a cadet would learn in his first day at fencing school – if they’d s
till bothered to teach them how to fence. My only concern was that the wooden blade might go through Sandor and into Dmitry, but even if it did, it would be on the wrong side for his heart.
I felt a satisfying resistance as the blade penetrated Sandor’s body, and then a sudden relaxation of it as his heart was pierced. His life departed and the integrity of his body vanished. His boots slipped out of his trousers, followed by a tumbling cascade of dust. His coat gradually collapsed, as though air were being sucked out of it. Soon it had no more bulk than it would have done if hanging from a coatrack. His head fell to one side, tearing away from his neck as though it were made of tissue paper. It brushed against the shoulder of his coat and disintegrated. This one had been a voordalak far longer than Ilya.
Behind it Dmitry’s face was revealed. At first his expression was one of puzzlement, but as he saw me it changed to anger. He was still holding Sandor’s empty coat by its lapels, but he threw it aside. He grabbed the stake and twisted, wrenching it from my grip and jarring my wrist. He snapped it in two and let the pieces fall to the ground. He raised his hand to strike me, but contained himself.
‘There was no need for that,’ he said. ‘Not with Ilya; not with him. Don’t you think you owe me that much?’
There was a sense of disappointment in his voice that brought his words home to me. I still could not fathom what drove him, but he had gone against his nature to help me. I should have been able to suppress my hatred of vampires enough to reciprocate. But I couldn’t face admitting it to him.
‘Don’t blame Danilov,’ I said.
It was a remarkably easy way to deceive him – to pretend it was Iuda’s will that moved my hand as I thrust the stake into Sandor’s back. There was no question that I had intended to destroy the vampire, but as to lying about it – was that really the sort of thing I would have done before? Perhaps in that Iuda was influencing me. Or perhaps I was merely learning from him.
Dmitry scowled. I wondered if he would hit me again. But his hand fell to his side. He turned and went over to Nadya. She was leaning against the crates, gasping for breath.