Polar (Book 1): Polar Night

by Julie Flanders

  The reminder that his guest was totally under his control brought a small smile to his lips. There was no reason his winter couldn’t still go on as planned. The cop was nothing more than an irritating fly who needed to be swatted away.

  He needed to forget about the cop for tonight. And about his guest. And, about everything here in December, 2012. He wanted another December. The most important one of his very long life.

  He took another sip of vodka, and closed his eyes. In his mind, the present had already drifted away. In his mind, he was back in a decidedly different December.

  It was 1916, and Aleksei felt nothing but cold and pain. He had no idea where he was, or how long he had been there. The last thing he remembered was being stationed at the front outside Petrograd. The sound of cannon fire was overwhelming and then suddenly everything had gone quiet. And dark.

  He was lying on a cot now and staring at a flimsy grey ceiling that seemed to be flapping in the wind. Was it a tent? He had no idea. But whatever it was, it didn’t provide any warmth for the freezing room. He tried to sit up and find a blanket, but he was unable to move a muscle. The pain was simply too much.

  As if by magic, she appeared next to his cot, holding a threadbare blanket in her arms. She unrolled the blanket and spread it over his shaking body.

  “This was the best one I could find for you,” she said. “I know you’re terribly cold.”

  He opened his mouth to say thank you, but no sound came from his lips. Instead, a searing pain filled his throat.

  “You don’t have to speak,” the woman said. She sat down on the cot next to him and produced a canteen from her apron. “Here, take a bit of water.”

  She held the canteen to his lips, and he winced as the water touched his parched throat. It was painful to swallow, but the water brought relief. He tried to take more, but she pulled the canteen away from him.

  “I can’t give you too much right now,” she said. “This is all we have. I need to conserve it.”

  Aleksei blinked and stared up at the woman, who remained on the side of his cot. She had long yellow hair pulled back from her face, and wore a dirty white apron over her blue dress. She clasped a tattered fur cape around her shoulders in an attempt to stay warm. In spite of her thin, drawn face and the circles under her blue eyes, Aleksei was sure she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She was an angel.

  “I’m Natasha,” she said. “I’m your nurse. Do you know where you are?”

  Aleksei shook his head no.

  “You’re in the field hospital in Petrograd. You were wounded at the front but we’re caring for you now.” She patted his hand. “You’ll be alright. Try to relax now. Pасслабьтесь”

  Aleksei lifted his head from his pillow and glanced around the room. There were more cots than he could count, jammed together and filled with fellow soldiers. Some moaned in agony, others were so still and silent Aleksei wondered if they were still alive.

  “You’ll be alright,” Natasha said again as she pulled the blanket around his shoulders. “If I can find another blanket, I’ll bring it to you.”

  Aleksei tried again to respond, but was interrupted by a scream and a commotion from across the room. A man yelled in pain, and knocked over a table filled with medical instruments. Natasha jumped up from her cot.

  “I have to help that poor thing,” she said. She patted Aleksei’s hand again. “I’ll be back to check on you.”

  He watched her walk from his cot and wanted to yell for her not to go, to come back, to stay with him. Outside of the pain and the cold and the hunger, he felt something far worse. He felt fear. He knew Natasha’s insistence that he would be alright was just her attempt to comfort him. He knew it wasn’t true. He was going to die and he knew it. And he was afraid.

  He didn’t want to die alone.

  Chapter 22

  Danny headed for Rex's Tavern, an age-old bar which was conveniently located right down the street from the police station, as soon as he and Terry landed back in Fairbanks. Still edgy from his trip to what he now believed really was a haunted asylum, he wasn't ready to be alone in his dreary apartment.

  He parked his car and headed inside Rex's, immediately grateful for the warmth of the place, and the welcome noise of country & western music coming from the old jukebox in the corner of the room. Everything about Rex's was cheap and tacky, from the sticky wood-paneled bar to the tables and chairs made of logs to the fake moose head wearing a straw hat on the wall behind the bar. The only thing of quality in the whole place was the alcohol that Rex poured with an expert hand.

  Danny walked to the bar and perched on his favorite stool, looking around as he waited for Rex to finish with another customer. He was surprised to see most of the tables full. Apparently lots of people in Fairbanks weren't in the Christmas spirit. Or perhaps they had just had enough of the family togetherness by this time on Christmas night.

  “What can I get you, Detective?” Rex asked as he placed a small square napkin on the bar in front of Danny.

  “Scotch,” Danny said. “And you might as well plan on keeping them coming.”

  “Rough holiday?” Rex asked.

  “A strange one. I've been working so I wouldn't call it a holiday anyway.”

  Rex nodded. “I can relate.”

  “I didn't expect you to have such a crowd here,” Danny said.

  “I always do on Christmas. Holidays make lots of people want to drink.”

  Danny chuckled. “True enough.”

  He watched as Rex headed to the other end of the bar to pour another beer for a woman Danny was fairly sure he recognized. He had probably seen her in here before. Everything about her demeanor suggested she was a regular. Briefly, Danny wondered if he had ever slept with her. He was ashamed to admit it, but it was hard to say one way or the other.

  He realized that except for Tessa, Rex was the only person Danny had formed any kind of relationship with since he'd come to Fairbanks. He chided himself for being so pathetic. His only friend was a bartender who looked as old and haggard as the bar he owned. But Danny couldn't deny it was just the way he wanted it. No entanglements, no responsibilities. And above all, no attachments.

  As Rex returned to fill up his scotch, Danny retraced the steps of his day in his mind, unable to stop thinking of the tall, ice-cold Russian he was certain was hiding something in his Arctic wasteland. It suddenly occurred to Danny that Rex's last name was Chistiakov, a Russian name if ever he'd heard one. If he remembered correctly, Rex had come to Fairbanks from the deeply Russian city of Sitka.

  “Rex,” he said. “Didn't you tell me you came here from Sitka?”

  “I did,” Rex answered. “What of it?”

  “That's Russian, right?”

  “Used to be. It was the capital when Alaska was a Russian colony.”

  “Your folks Russian?”

  Rex put down the glass he was wiping clean. “Yeah. They came to Sitka from Russia. Why the questions?”

  “I'm just curious. I met a Russian tonight and it got me thinking.” Danny took a sip of his scotch. “You don't know the guy who runs Snow Creek up in Coldfoot by any chance, do you? Name of Nechayev?”

  “You think I know every Russian in the state??”

  “No, no. I just wondered. I know you know most of what goes on around here.”

  Rex nodded. “I've heard of that place up there, but I don't know who runs it. Supposedly it's haunted.”

  “Yeah. After being there I think it's safe to say it is.”

  “Is that where you were today?”

  “It is.”

  “You've gotta be nuts. Who the hell goes up there this time of the year?”

  “Not many people, I can tell you that.”

  Rex chuckled. “So, you saw some ghosts up there, huh?”

  “More like heard them.”

  “Are you shitting me?”

  “I'm not. It was the creepiest damn place I've ever been in my life.”

  Rex coul
dn't hide his laughter. “Well I don't doubt it on a night like this. Christ Danny, what the hell sent you up there?”

  “Just working on a case.”

  “Hmm,” Rex said. “So the stories about that place are true then?”

  “I don't know all the stories, but I'd guess they probably are.”

  “Well I shouldn't doubt it. You get up in the Arctic, there's no telling what's up there.”

  Danny's ears perked up. “You've heard stories of weird things up there?”

  “Nothing specific, really. My folks just loved all those tall tales and legends, that's all.”

  “Legends about what?”

  “Oh just supernatural shit. They heard it growing up from my grandparents and they loved sharing the stories with me.”

  “You ever hear anything about vampires?” Danny asked.

  “What on earth makes you ask that?”

  “Just curious.”

  “Well now that you mention it, yeah. Those legends were big in Russia and Eastern Europe in my grandparents' time. The undead and all that. People coming up out of their graves and slinking around in the night.” Rex paused as if searching his memory for long-forgotten tales. “I remember my mother telling me stories about vampires who were the sons of witches.”

  He glanced at Danny, who was smirking over his glass of scotch. “You’ll notice, I said witches, not bitches.”

  “Probably one and the same.”

  Rex chuckled. “I guess so. Anyway the Russians believed that to kill the vampires, you had to nail their bodies to the insides of coffins or else burn them so there was nothing left but dust.” He poured another glass of scotch for Danny and shook his head. “I’ll tell you what, my mother scared the hell out of me with those tales.”

  “I guess so. Not exactly Cinderella.”

  “No. Fairy tales were a lot different back in those days.”

  “You think they were true? The legends, I mean, not the fairy tales.”

  “Danny, how much scotch have you had? Did you get a head start before you came here?”

  “Why?”

  “What the hell are you thinking, asking about these old folk tales?”

  “I told you, I'm curious.”

  “Well, I never thought about them being true. But at the same time, I figure something must have been going on in those times to make people come up with the stories in the first place. I've lived long enough now that I don't think anything would shock me.”

  Rex nodded towards the door of the bar and the windows. “You see the Northern Lights out there tonight?”

  “No, I didn’t notice,” Danny said, puzzled by the change of subject. “Why?”

  “Just look at them. All those lights dancing all over our night sky. Nobody really knows what they are. I know they give some explanation about the sun particles and all that but that doesn’t really explain it. Not the magic of actually seeing it, anyway.”

  “So?”

  “So it’s just an example to me that sometimes there are things you can’t explain and that don’t go by the rules we think we know. Who knows what caused people to come up with all those old legends, but I wouldn’t automatically discount anything in this crazy ass world of ours. Those tales were probably all bullshit, but at the same time, who the hell knows?”

  Danny nodded. “True enough. After being up there in the Arctic tonight I’m not sure I can discount anything.”

  “I'd suggest you go home and sleep off whatever you've got going on in that head of yours. It’s obvious this trip up there did a number on you.”

  “I think you're right. I need to sleep it off.” Danny noticed the woman at the other end of the bar trying to get Rex's attention. “And, I think my friend down there wants a refill,” he said. “It's on me.”

  Danny opened his wallet and left money on the bar for Rex before downing the last of his scotch and leaving the tavern.

  Chapter 23

  He walked outside and was immediately confronted with the spectacular Aurora Borealis, more commonly known as the Northern Lights. He wondered how he had managed to not even notice the lights before heading into the Tavern. Had he really become so numb that he wasn’t even moved by a spectacle such as this?

  Rex was right, of course. The lights were spectacular. A curtain of red, yellow, and green lights blanketed the sky. No fireworks display could ever hope to compete with this phenomenon that was as natural as the air and the sea.

  Danny had read some articles about the Northern Lights when he had first moved to Alaska, in a series that had been featured in the Fairbanks Daily News Miner. He had chuckled when reading about the old Eskimo belief that the Lights were spirits playing ball in the sky, or the dead carrying torches to guide the newly deceased into the afterlife. The Point Barrow Eskimos had considered the lights evil, and carried knives at all times for protection and to keep the lights at bay. Still other tribes considered the lights an omen of war or pestilence.

  When Danny looked at the lights now and watched the dancing ribbons of red and green, he didn’t chuckle. It was easy to see how the lights had inspired both awe and fear. And who was he to scoff at anything at this point? After what he had heard up in Snow Creek, and considering the fact that he was actually entertaining the idea that Aleksei Nechayev was something other than human, he no longer felt he was qualified to judge anyone.

  He got into his car and drove away from the tavern, the lights display illuminating his rear-view mirror and casting a glow over the interior of his car. He had told Rex he was going to sleep, but he had no intention of doing so. No amount of scotch would put him to sleep now. There was too much he needed to learn.

  Chapter 24

  Danny plugged his car back into the socket outside his apartment and walked inside, immediately grateful for the heat of his living room. He struggled out of his boots, parka, and mittens, and tossed them all on the floor next to his coat closet. He knew he should hang the parka and mittens up as they were wet with snow, but he couldn’t be bothered. He was anxious to get to work.

  Danny had never cared much about sleep when he got wrapped up in a case. He winced when he thought of Caroline fussing over his sleeping habits back when they were first together. She had given up soon enough, and eventually had no problem at all with going to bed on her own while Danny typed away on his laptop. He pushed the memory aside now, thinking that he’d stop working on this or any case within two seconds if he had the opportunity to curl up next to Caroline in bed just one more time.

  He ran a hand through his mop of brown hair and grabbed his Macbook from his kitchen table. This was one of the few items Danny had not skimped on when setting up house here in Fairbanks. He loved computers, and he refused to buy crap. He had left his old Macbook behind in Chicago, unable to bear the traces of Caroline that he knew he would find all over it. A new hard drive had been as necessary as a new address and a new city.

  Danny plopped down onto his sofa and stretched his legs out, settling the computer on his lap. He booted it up and quickly went to the site everyone went to for any information they needed, regardless of how obscure or bizarre it might be. He knew he could find what he wanted on Google.

  He typed in vampires, and was immediately deluged with sites about the Twilight franchise, television shows Buffy the Vampire Slayer and True Blood, and Anne Rice’s famous vampire novels. None of this was even close to what he needed, but he should have known a search on vampires would turn up fictional creations. After all, wasn’t that what they were? Fictional creations?

  Danny got off the couch and headed for his kitchen, where he grabbed a six-pack of beer out of the refrigerator. It was going to be a long night, and he needed refreshments. He plopped back down on the couch and turned his attention back to his Macbook. He stared at the screen, thinking of his earlier conversation with Rex about folktales and legends in Russia and Europe. Okay, he thought. Might as well start there.

  Danny’s fingers clicked over his keyboard, and he was soon
reading stories of Russian vampires called Upierczi. Apparently, the Upierczi became vampires by murder or suicide and the only way to permanently kill their undead selves was to drown them in salt water. In addition, legend had it that a Russian man traveling at night came upon a vampire heading back to his grave after he had killed two village boys. The man asked the vampire how he could resurrect the boys, and the vampire gave the man a section of his burial shroud and instructed him to burn the shroud in a pot of coals. The boys’ bodies were to be left in the room with the pot, and they would be revived by breathing in the smoke of the burning shroud. Sure enough, the man insisted the boys had in fact been revived. Danny couldn’t help but notice no one but the man who told the story had ever seen the vampire in the first place, and no one else had ever seen the boys’ supposedly dead bodies.

  He rolled his eyes and leaned back on his sofa, taking a long swig of beer as he stared at his ceiling. This still wasn’t what he needed. These were nothing but ghost stories told by children around camp fires. Whatever Aleksei Nechayev was, Danny knew without a doubt that he was real.

  Danny sat up again and typed more terms into the Google search bar. He paged through various websites, finishing one beer and starting on another, before he finally landed on something that caught his interest.

  It was the story of Le vicomte de Montargy, a nobleman in eighteenth-century France who had managed to survive the chaos of the French Revolution. Montargy started murdering his employees following the revolution, in order to avenge the deaths of his noble brethren at the guillotines. The murder spree led to his assassination and, not long after his death, numerous young children died unexpectedly. All were found with bite wounds. For more than 70 years after his death, Montargy was suspected in the ongoing deaths of children in the area. The people in the area insisted Montargy was “undead,” or a vampire.

  Danny felt the hair on the back of his neck tingle as he read about the vicomte and his bloody killing spree. The information in English was limited but, thanks to Caroline and her French roots, Danny’s knowledge of the French language was adequate. Caroline’s parents had moved to the US from France before she was born, and Caroline had learned to speak French and English interchangeably when she was growing up. She hadn’t passed this skill on to him, but he knew enough of the language to get by. He could read it even if he had never managed to speak it correctly. He typed in a few French search terms, and found a goldmine of information on the infamous Montargy.