The People's Will

Chapter XX



NUMBER 134 STOOD about halfway along the fontanka’s seven-verst arc through the city, on the southern bank. The river split from the Neva to the south just a little way downstream from where its far mightier sister, the Great Nevka, split to the north. It rejoined the main river just at the point where the Great Neva discharged into the Gulf of Finland.

Mihail looked up at the nondescript building. His mother might have described it to him, but he had forgotten. There were many like it in the city. This was one of the better appointed ones, but as with them all, a dvornik sat in his little room, close to the door.

‘I’m looking for a woman named Danilova,’ Mihail explained. ‘Svetlana Nikitichna. She used to live here, I believe.’

The man grunted. ‘Still does, if you can call it living.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘She’s a bit … you know … in the head.’ He pointed to his own head in case Mihail still failed to understand.

‘Does she accept callers?’

‘No one ever tries. I take up her food but she’s not a good tipper.’ His hand came out as he said the final word.

Mihail slipped him five kopeks. ‘It’s number four, isn’t it?’

The coin vanished. ‘That’s right. First floor.’

Mihail went up. The door was much the same as the others on the staircase, but as he approached it he could sense an unpleasant smell. It was nothing too stomach-churning, but not what he would have expected in a block like this one.

He knocked.

There was no answer, so he knocked again. This time there came an indistinct shout from within – a woman’s voice – but still no one came to the door. He tried the handle; it wasn’t locked.

The smell was stronger inside: unwashed clothes, an unwashed body, rotting discarded food, perhaps even rotting flesh – a rat that had died and not been cleared away. He looked around. Nothing had been cleared away in here for a long time. Dust and cobwebs hung everywhere. Beneath them Mihail could see the remnants of a once well-decorated set of rooms; but that had been a long time ago.

He was in a small hallway. Stairs ascended to another floor, and three doors led off.

‘Madame Danilova?’ he called.

‘Ici!’ She spoke in French. Was that because of the way he had addressed her, or a throwback to a time when ladies of her stature spoke only that language? Mihail was reminded of the old man he had met in Senate Square, and who he had turned out to be. He was not expecting to encounter a vampire here, but in his bag he still carried the arbalyet.

The voice had come from the door straight in front of him. He went through. The room beyond was in much the same state as the hall. Even his feet falling on the carpet threw up a cloud of dust that caught his nostrils and gave him the urge to sneeze. At least in here, it was bright. Tall windows stood along one wall, unshuttered, looking out on to the street and the river, though no sunlight fell directly into the room. It faced north, slightly to the west. Perhaps it would receive a smattering of the sun’s rays, on summer afternoons.

At the far end of the room, close to the window, sat the apartment’s occupant. She was thin – almost childlike in build, though it was hard to judge her height. Her hair was long, straight and lank. He remembered Tamara had told him it was blonde, and perhaps she had kept that colour. More likely it had turned to white, and the grease that mingled with it had returned it to its former hue. It was difficult to discern any individual strand. Instead the hair was matted into a single block, glistening slightly. Mihail was reminded of rancid butter. Her skin was thin, but not excessively wrinkled. There was no colour to it, but for the blue of her veins.

‘Come closer,’ she said, still speaking French.

Mihail walked across the room and stood a few feet away from her. She looked him up and down. He had worn his uniform, hoping that it would impress.

‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘Tell me.’

‘Tell you what?’

‘You have news; from Sevastopol. Why else would you come? It can’t be good. He’s dead, isn’t he?’

‘Dead?’

‘My husband!’

Mihail had been warned by the dvornik. Svetlana was not well in her mind. She was living in the past. Momentarily he pictured a different life for himself. This was just an elderly eccentric aunt who as a child he had been forced to visit and now did so out of sympathy, but rarely stayed long. Such visits would be commonplace for many families, but a closed door for Mihail. He allowed himself only a moment’s regret.

‘That’s right,’ he replied. ‘He died bravely.’

‘I knew it. I knew it when she came to see me.’

‘When who came?’

‘That woman, with her questions.’ Svetlana leaned forward in her chair. There was even less to her frame now that it could be seen clear of the upholstery. ‘You look like her. Are you related?’

‘My name is Mihail Konstantinovich Lukin,’ he told her. ‘I’m a lieutenant.’

‘In Dmitry’s regiment.’

‘No.’

‘Then why have they sent you?’

Mihail could provide no answer.

‘What’s the date?’ she asked.

‘19 February.’

‘What year? What year?’

‘1881.’ He could not lie to her.

She sat back, a look of surprise on her face. ‘He’s been dead a long time, then,’ she said simply.

Mihail nodded, hoping she was returning to reality. ‘Twenty-five years.’

She looked up at him, her eyes suddenly seeming to plead with him. ‘I coped,’ she said, ‘for a while. I was even courted. I could have done well for myself. But he wouldn’t leave me alone.’

‘Who wouldn’t?’

‘Mitka. He walked past in the street.’ She pointed out of the window. ‘He never even bothered to look up, but it was him. I told them, and they said they understood. They didn’t believe me, so I made sure they’d listen. Then they didn’t come back.’

‘When was this?’

She waved a dismissive hand. ‘Oh, years …’ She paused. ‘Then he stopped walking past, and there was just me. I preferred it when he was there.’ She raised her head towards the ceiling. Her irises disappeared under her eyelids and Mihail could see only the blank whiteness of her eyeballs staring at him. Then her head dropped and she looked at him more normally. ‘You think I’m mad, don’t you?’

‘I think …’ Mihail had no answer. If she was mad she had been driven mad. Her husband was undead – it was quite conceivable that she had seen him, but what was she supposed to make of it?

‘I wish I were,’ she moaned. ‘When I was mad, I believed it when I saw him. Now I’m sane, I know he’s not real, even when I do see him.’

It was an unfathomable contradiction, but she was bound by no law that insisted she should make sense.

‘You still see him?’ asked Mihail eagerly.

‘Don’t tease me. I know he’s not real.’

She pushed down hard on the arms of her chair and rose unsteadily to her feet. Mihail noticed a faint peeling sound as the fabric of the dress separated from that of the chair, as if she had not moved for a very long time. She walked, taking the smallest of steps, over to a high table, or perhaps a dresser, in the corner of the room; it was impossible to clearly discern its shape. A sheet had been thrown over it, now thick with the ubiquitous stratum of dust, and it was covered with rags and junk. The journey took half a minute, during which neither of them said a word. She was purposeful in her motion and Mihail did not want to distract her.

When she reached the table she lifted the sheet and reached beneath it, her fingers stretched. A sound emerged and Mihail realized he had been mistaken. It was neither a table nor a dresser, but a piano – unrecognizable among the furniture and rubbish that had been piled around it and on it. The tune she played was mournful, made even more deathly by the instrument’s untuned strings. It was Chopin’s Marche Funèbre, though Svetlana was playing only the melody. Even so, she managed to invest the short, repeated phrase with far more melancholy than Mihail had ever heard in it before.

‘He loved Chopin above anyone,’ she said. ‘Even me, I think. I wonder if he still plays.’

‘Where do you see him?’ asked Mihail.

Svetlana raised her hand from the piano and the tune stopped. She turned and made the same slow, steady progress as before; this time towards the window. Mihail walked over to join her, arriving long before she did. The foetid smell was stronger when she stood beside him.

‘He walks along the embankment, just here,’ she said, pointing to the street below. ‘You’d think he’d look up, just for old times’ sake, but he never does.’

‘Where does he go?’

‘He crosses by the Egyptian Bridge, but then I lose sight of him.’

‘This is in the evenings?’

‘Of course,’ she said, with a casual certainty that made Mihail suspicious. To him the fact it was evening made perfect sense, but there was no reason it should for her. Did she guess?

‘And does he come back?’ Mihail asked.

‘I wait up until I see him safely return. He usually does, but not always.’

‘When did you last see him?’

‘He stopped for a while, but then he started again.’

‘Recently?’

She began to nod, but then her head came to a standstill. She turned to him and gave a puzzled frown. ‘Pardon?’

‘When did you last see him?’ asked Mihail.

‘Who?’

‘Dmitry Alekseevich – your husband.’

‘My husband’s dead,’ she said and turned away. She resumed her slow shuffle back towards her chair. When she reached it she turned and sat down, emitting a small, contented sigh. Then she looked up, as if catching sight of Mihail for the first time.

‘You have news?’ she asked. ‘From Sevastopol?’

Mihail left without another word.

Blood – that was what he craved. Not milk. Blood. And she gave it to him. He could not understand why, nor did he care. He needed blood and Susanna provided it. She had wept when she saw him and he had tasted the salt of her tears on his dry lips. He’d still been unable to recall the word, even to mouth it let alone utter it, but she had understood. She had removed her coat and undone her blouse so that the smooth white expanse of her breasts was revealed. He remembered a time when that had interested him, a stolen moment when Susanna had first persuaded him to touch her, but now it meant nothing. She revealed her bosom only as a consequence of revealing her throat. That was what concerned him now and she knew it.

She leaned over him, pressing her hands against her chest so that her breasts did not brush against his delicate exposed lungs. She raised her chin, stretching the skin of her neck close to his lips, but much as he craved to lift his head and taste her, he could not; he did not have muscles or bones to do it, even if he’d had the energy.

She understood and pressed closer, so that his lips gently kissed her flesh. He could feel the pulse of the blood in her veins, just the thickness of human skin away from him. He parted his jaws and bit, but the glorious, warm satisfaction of flowing blood did not cascade into his mouth. He tried again, but still there was nothing. His teeth did not even have the strength to pierce the delicate skin of this fragile, willing girl.

She straightened up. He tried to keep his lips pressed against her, but was still unable to move.

‘You poor thing,’ she said, still with tears in her eyes. She unbuttoned her left cuff and rolled up the sleeve. It was wrong; he despised drinking from there, though he knew it would still nourish him. But he could not complain; Susanna was in complete control. From her bag she took a small knife – an ordinary thing with a single blade. She cut across the inside of her forearm, close to the crook of the elbow. She let out a little grunt.

The blood flowed fast, spilling on to the stones and running, wasted, into the sewer. She moved quickly, holding her arm above his face so that the blood began to splatter over it. Even that was nourishing. Every cell of his body craved it, and in the absence of better means, would assimilate it directly. But it would be most effective in his mouth. She moved her arm until the blood flowed between his open lips, trickling off the tip of her elbow. Now he could taste it. Memories came flooding to him, each recalling the pleasure of consuming human blood. He did not swallow, but allowed the warm liquid to fill his mouth, surrounding and caressing his tongue, until it overflowed and ran down his cheek.

Then he opened his pharynx and the liquid flowed down his throat. It was not really swallowing – he was not yet capable of that. It was simply the removal of a hindrance, allowing gravity to do its work. The blood did not have far to go, spilling out on to the ground beneath him from his incomplete oesophagus. Even there though he felt himself drawing nutrition from it, as the intricate folds of his half-formed lungs proved capable of absorbing more than just oxygen from their surroundings, sucking up the spreading blood like a mop cleaning dirty, spilled water.

Susanna pushed her arm down towards him and his lips sealed around the wound. He played at it with his tongue, hoping to inveigle more blood out of it. She yelped – which he enjoyed – but then pulled her arm away.

‘Gently,’ she murmured, then returned her arm to his mouth. He did not disobey her.

After a few minutes, she pulled it away again. Still he tried to move his head and still he could not. He watched as she bandaged her wound with a strip of cloth from her underskirt.

‘No more,’ she said. ‘Not today.’

‘Please,’ he mouthed. It was not an easy word for him at the best of times.

She shook her head. ‘Where would you be if you took it all?’ she asked.

She stood and departed. He lay still. Even the little blood she had given, which he had so feebly absorbed, had done him good. He closed his eyes, trying to sense the shrivelled extremities of his own body. It was working, he could feel it. Morsel by morsel, cell by cell, his body was renewing itself.

It was on the fourth night of watching that Mihail finally saw Dmitry taking the path that his wife had described. He’d hidden himself on the northern side of the Fontanka, where Nikolskiy Lane joined Great Podyacheskaya Street. As he arrived, just before dusk, he noticed he could look along Podyacheskaya Street and see in the distance the dome of Saint Isaac’s, perfectly aligned as though the road had been built to point at it. He had been wise to abandon his post at the cathedral and take up this new position. Tonight, a little before midnight, he gained his reward.

Dmitry came from the south, emerging from Izmailovsky Prospekt and turning left along the embankment. As he passed beneath the windows of his former home Mihail thought he perceived a flicker of movement at them, but Dmitry did not look up, just as Svetlana had been so keen to point out. As she had described, he crossed the river via the Egyptian Bridge and carried on north. It would be too risky to follow his path directly, so Mihail too headed north, along a parallel street. Soon he found himself at the corner of the square containing the Saint Nikolai Cathedral, its blue and white plaster and small golden domes making it a quite different style of building from Saint Isaac’s, but Mihail had no time to take it in. Looking along the stretch of canal that bordered the square, he saw that Dmitry had now turned east, and was heading towards him.

Before Mihail could make a move, Dmitry turned north again along the far side of the square. Mihail paralleled his movements and both of them reached the top of the square at about the same time. Dmitry pressed onwards, oblivious to Mihail’s presence. Mihail continued to shadow him a block away and soon found himself in a broad, open square. Ahead and to the left he could see the multi-tier green stucco of the Mariinskiy Theatre, sitting in the square like some squat wedding cake. Mihail flung himself back into the shadows. Dmitry was approaching along the theatre’s southern wall, evidently no longer able to continue his journey north. Mihail cursed himself for his lack of knowledge of the city’s layout, but his luck held; Dmitry did not see him.

Instead Dmitry kept close to the theatre, turning into the square as soon as it was possible and then finally stopping at a small wooden door, some way from the main entrance. Mihail heard him knock and then there was a pause. Dmitry knocked again. This time he got a response. A few moments later the door opened. There was a brief conversation which Mihail could not hear and Dmitry disappeared inside, the door closing behind him.

Mihail scampered over, but the door was already locked. He considered knocking, but it seemed unwise. Dmitry had been welcomed in, so whoever was in there was on his side. Even if Mihail could gain access, he would be walking into hostile territory. Better to wait. This was not Dmitry’s new lair; it was too early for him to be returning home and anyway, Svetlana had said she usually saw him make his way back along the route by which he had come. Mihail had little doubt as to what Dmitry had come there for – he wanted to feed – though why the theatre should be an appropriate place for it, he could only guess. Perhaps there were ballerinas in there who would sell their blood to vampires, just as there were those who sold their bodies to rich noblemen. His father Konstantin’s mistress had begun her career in that very theatre.

It was none of Mihail’s concern. If there were girls in the ballet who would take such a risk then they were fools and got what they deserved. Mihail was interested only in Dmitry – and through him Iuda. Dmitry would have to emerge at some point; with luck through that very same door, or at least one nearby.

Mihail crossed the square, to a point where he could see that entire side of the theatre, and settled down to wait.

Dmitry trotted eagerly down into the theatre’s cavernous depths. It had cost him five roubles to bribe the nightwatchman, but it was money well spent. And what did money mean to him anyway? He could always steal more from his next victim.

He held a single candle to light his way, included in the price of his admission. The old man had been surprised to see him on his first visit since returning to Petersburg, three weeks before. His journey to Turkmenistan in search of Iuda had meant he had not been in the city since the end of the previous year. While away there had still been opportunities to indulge himself, but they were stolen and infrequent, and he knew of few places in the whole Russian Empire where he would find a creation of such elegance and beauty as what lay here beneath the stage of the Mariinskiy Theatre.

Soon he came to the door with which he was so familiar. This was his fifth visit since returning to Petersburg. He was overindulging himself, but who was to stop him? Zmyeevich laughed at him but offered no objection. How could he? He had his own vices of which Dmitry was well aware.

He almost felt the urge to knock before entering, though he would receive no granting of admission. Perhaps crossing himself would be a more appropriate act of deference, but coming from a voordalak it would be a worthless sham. He knew he was just delaying the moment, aware that the anticipation was almost as thrilling as the act. Almost.

He opened the door. The room was lined with mirrors so that the dancers could watch themselves as they rehearsed. Dmitry could never, therefore, be a dancer. He crossed the floor, but no image was reflected in any glass. He might have expected to see the candle floating mysteriously in mid-air, supported by his invisible hand, but even that was gone. He was by now used to the phenomenon, but had no way of explaining it. No doubt Iuda had conducted some foul experiment to determine the mechanism, but Dmitry did not care. Who knew where such exploration might lead? Dmitry shuddered. He did know – he had seen it in that strange mirror beneath Senate Square. At least these reflected nothing.

Thoughts of Iuda filled his mind once again, but he felt no sense of relief at the death of the creature that had once been his mentor. Zmyeevich had assured him that Iuda was no more, but even as he spoke there had been doubt in his eyes. He had witnessed Iuda’s body burned to almost nothing, but had been distracted. Together they had searched Saint Isaac’s and found no trace of Iuda – but what did that tell them? Raisa, lurking somewhere at the back of Dmitry’s skull, remained unconvinced. But she had no mind of her own. Her suspicions were a reflection of Dmitry’s. She merely told him what he hid from himself. He pushed them all – Raisa, Zmyeevich and Iuda – from his mind. They were not the reason he was here.

At the far end of the room stood the object of his desire: a piano. It was probably not the finest in the theatre; that would be upstairs where it could be heard in the auditorium. This was merely for rehearsal, but all the same it was a wonderful instrument: a Bösendorfer – only around five years old, regularly tuned. He fixed the candle to the floor behind him with a drop of its own wax. He did not need to see in order to play, but it would help him in finding his way out. He would not risk placing it on the beautiful instrument itself and seeing the hot wax dribble down on to the smooth, polished wood.

He sat and lifted the lid.

Music no longer filled his mind as it had done when he was human – right up to the very moment of his death. He could still bring to mind a melody, but not in the same way as before – there was no orchestra filling his skull. A tune was just a tune, like a word on a page rather than a word spoken out loud. Worse still, every tune he could bring to mind was one that he already knew; one that had been created by someone else. When a man, the orchestra had played madly and creatively and he had known that the music could only have come from him. That part of his mind was gone, sucked from him in the same moment that Raisa Styepanovna had taken his blood and his life. Perhaps that part of him was his soul.

But at least he could still play – in some ways better than he had before. His fingers possessed greater dexterity and greater strength. He could truly perform Chopin’s Valse du Petit Chien in the minute prescribed by its mispronounced English title. He knew that it must sound awful but – and this was the worst of it – it did not sound awful to him. His abilities – to play loud or soft, fast or slow, staccato or legato – were all of the highest degree. But his taste – the judgement as to when each was appropriate – was lost. If he hit a wrong note, which he rarely did, then he could hear that, but if his performance lacked passion, then he was not to know. The best he could do was to imitate. He had once heard Anton Rubinstein, in Warsaw, play Liszt’s piano sonata in B minor and heard all in the audience proclaim it a performance of genius. Dmitry could reproduce it perfectly, in all its genius, except that he did not know what made it good. He could even vary the performance, but he had no idea whether each slight change he made was for better or for worse. It wouldn’t be long before someone invented a machine that could do as much. But it wasn’t such a curse. All but the most attuned human ear had as little skill in judging a great performance as he did. And he would never truly know how badly he played, since he could not judge. He was like a man who had been blind since birth; how could he know what he was missing? Except that Dmitry had not always been like this.

Today he chose to play something modern. He’d come across the piece in a music shop on his brief stay in Moscow, and had learned it there and then. It was by Brahms – his Rhapsody in B minor. This was the hardest test of all for him – to play what he had never heard played by human hands, but seen only on paper. That little semiquaver run in the first bar, echoed by the left hand in the fifth, was marked as a triplet, but mightn’t a great pianist choose to play it faster, as an acciaccatura, slipped in quickly before the following D natural? Dmitry could certainly play it fast; he had tried it both ways, but had no clue as to which was better.

He began, sticking strictly to what had been written and playing the notes as a triplet. The piece progressed and he began to enjoy himself, for reasons he could not fathom. It was a pretence – a pretence that he was what he had once been. He’d heard once of an Austrian prince who would stand in his box at the theatre and conduct the orchestra and at the end of the performance the audience would rise and applaud him. But all in the theatre – the prince included – knew he had done nothing. The real conductor stood in the pit, doing his job as usual. The musicians kept their eyes on him and took their time from his motions. The prince was following them, not the other way round. And yet he happily took the applause. Dmitry indulged himself in a similar delusion.

He turned and looked into one of the mirrors. He could see the candle now that it was not carried by a creature of confusing invisibility. The reflection of the piano was clear in the dim light. It stood, quite still. Naturally, there was no pianist sitting at the keyboard, but more than that, even the keys themselves did not move. It would have been pleasant to see – a visible reflection of Dmitry’s skills.

But that did not matter. It was only the music, the sound that mattered, and that filled the room. Dmitry closed his eyes and let it fill him too. If nothing else, it drove Zmyeevich from his mind.

Dmitry stayed for about two hours. He re-emerged from the same door by which he’d entered. Mihail had crept over to the theatre to take a further look around and by luck he was close to the main entrance when Dmitry appeared. He pressed himself into a doorway and listened to what was said.

‘That was very beautiful, sir,’ said one voice, not Dmitry’s.

‘Really?’ That was Dmitry. It was no casual response – more of a plea.

‘God, yes! You could get a job here, if you wanted, easily.’

‘Not here, I don’t think,’ replied Dmitry sadly. ‘Not in Russia.’

‘Follow in the steps of Rubinstein, then? Take America by storm. Make your fortune.’

Dmitry chuckled, but there was no pleasure in it. ‘Perhaps,’ he said.

He set off back the way he had come. Mihail knew his route well enough, at least as far as the Fontanka, and so was able to make his own way there, reaching the river bank before Dmitry emerged and managing even to cross ahead of him. The streets were virtually deserted now and the gaslight mingling with the half-moon cast strange shadows across the frozen water.

Once across, Mihail ducked troll-like back beneath the bridge, waiting for Dmitry to pass over. Looking up he could see one of the towering obelisks that gave the bridge its Egyptian flavour, and a sphinx sitting patiently on its plinth at the end of the balustrade. As Dmitry crossed, the bridge began – as tradition suggested – to sing. His footsteps caused the walkway to vibrate, which in turn ground the chains that suspended it against their brackets and a strange ululation filled the air, each stretch of the chain, with a slightly differing length and tension, contributing its own pitch to the cacophony.

The singing continued for a minute after Dmitry had left the bridge, but Mihail did not stay to listen. As soon as his quarry had disappeared down Izmailovsky Prospekt Mihail set off for the junction. There he could see that Dmitry had turned left and then right. He was now on the long, straight Zabalkansky Prospekt, stretching south to the outskirts of the city. There was no chance now for Mihail to lurk in the side streets, and so he had simply to follow at a distance, hiding in the shadows whenever he feared Dmitry was about to turn and look back towards him. But whatever was on Dmitry’s mind, it was not the possibility of pursuit and Mihail found his task remarkably easy. After ten minutes they crossed the Obvodny Canal, officially marking the edge of the city. Ten minutes later still Dmitry disappeared. He could only have turned off the road, to the left. Mihail made a note of the point, and soon reached it, looking at what lay to the side of the road.

Ahead of him stretched a vast, flat expanse, punctuated only by the jagged silhouettes of gravestones, tombs and sepulchres. This was the great Novodyevichye Cemetery, resting place of so many of the city’s wealthiest dead. A plot here could cost hundreds of roubles; many bought their own grave before they died, for fear that their relatives would find a better use for their inheritance.

The tall figure of Dmitry was still visible in the moonlight, making his way between the graves. Mihail stayed by the road. If this was merely another leg of Dmitry’s journey, then there was the risk of losing him, but Mihail doubted it. One of those graves – or more likely a larger tomb – would be where Dmitry settled for the night, either alone or with Zmyeevich. Mihail moved a little to one side until Dmitry’s path aligned with two unmistakable statues of angels or saints that marked points where the dead rotted below. Now he would be able to follow the path Dmitry had taken. It was after about a minute that Dmitry came to a halt and looked around him. Mihail ran – on tiptoe so he would not be heard and ducking down so he would not be seen – until Dmitry’s position aligned with another pair of reference points; this time a tall cross and a tree. Now he had two lines for his triangulation. They had taught him the technique at the technical school and he had used it often in the army, but never heard of its use in hunting a vampire.

Dmitry was gone. Mihail waited a few moments in case he had simply stepped behind some monument, but there was no more movement. Dmitry had gone to ground – gone into the ground. Mihail drew and loaded his crossbow, then checked again to make sure he could identify all four of his markers. He stepped forward into the graveyard, following the path laid out by the second pair, the cross and the tree. He kept an eye on the first two statues, initially far apart in his field of view, but converging with each step he took. He had not run far between his two triangulation points, fearing that Dmitry would be lost from sight, and so he knew that the process would not be hugely accurate. While there was still quite a gap between the two statues, he slowed his pace and began to look for more direct signs that he had reached the correct spot.

The evidence came to him in the form of the orange glow of a lamp, spilling from the doorway of one of the largest tombs in the whole cemetery. It was the size and shape of a shed, but built of stone rather than wood. Two urns sat atop pedestals on either side of a heavy bronze door that stood ajar. Above the doorway a typical Byzantine cross was carved into the stone, with its three crossbeams: at the top the plate on which would have been written the letters INRI; in the middle, the longest, where Christ’s arms would have been spread, suspended by His nailed hands; the bottom was the beam on which He could rest His feet, allowing Him, if He so desired, to prolong His torment. That lowest beam was tilted to an angle, one end pointing towards heaven for the righteous, the other directing the wicked to hell.

Mihail followed the path of the sinful, and peeped around the open door. The tomb was deceptive – bigger on the inside than it appeared. Rather than housing the burial chamber, the upper building was merely the cover to a flight of steps leading down into the earth. Mihail could not see to the bottom, but he heard the sound of murmuring voices. He dared not descend, as his feet would be seen long before he could see what was in there. Instead he lay down flat on his front, his head just level with the top of the flight, one hand still clutching the arbalyet, the other underneath him, ready to push him to his feet if he needed to flee. It was an uncomfortable pose and he could not see everything, but he could see enough.

Dmitry and Zmyeevich were both there, sitting as if on opposite benches in a railway carriage, though in fact the objects upon which their weight rested were their own closed coffins. Zmyeevich was stripped to his waist, revealing a sturdy frame of which any man of his apparent age might be proud, except for the fact that his flesh sagged a little. He was not fat, but it was as if the skin were weak – tired. Dmitry had removed his coat and jacket and sat in his shirtsleeves. Zmyeevich was speaking.

‘Do not deny yourself,’ he said.

Dmitry looked at him and then reluctantly began to unbutton his shirt, like a girl hesitantly succumbing to her seducer. Soon he was in the same state of undress as Zmyeevich. Zmyeevich reached over to his coat, beside him, and withdrew a tiny object that glinted silver in the lamplight. It was a knife – some kind of scalpel. Zmyeevich placed his left hand flat against his chest, covering his nipple, and used his right to draw the blade across his skin just below it, leaving a horizontal line of red blood which oozed out and began to slither unevenly down his chest and towards his stomach. Despite his being a vampire, the wound did not seal itself, though a look of intense concentration appeared on his face as he prevented the healing process from occurring.

He handed the scalpel to Dmitry, who gazed at it in fascination, twisting it in the air so that both steel and the droplets of blood that clung to it gleamed as they caught the light. He opened his mouth and moved the blade towards it, stroking first one side of it and then the other against his tongue, as though he were buttering bread. When he was done, the knife was clean of the blood that had once stained it.

But it did not stop there. Now Dmitry mimicked Zmyeevich’s action, down to the smallest detail. He held the flesh of his breast taut with one hand and cut across it with the other. Again his faced strained, not from pain but as he focused his mind on keeping the wound open. He did not mirror Zmyeevich, but imitated him exactly; both their wounds were to the left. A moment later Mihail discovered why.

Dmitry lay back so that his body was now in the appropriate orientation with regard to the coffin on which he rested, except that he was above it rather than within it. His arms dropped limply to his sides and hung loosely, his knuckles just brushing against the ground. Zmyeevich moved forward, kneeling beside Dmitry and looking over him like a concerned nurse. He shuffled round so that he was now hovering over Dmitry’s head.

Then he leaned forward and his lips found the gash in Dmitry’s chest. They sealed over it and Mihail saw Zmyeevich’s Adam’s apple move up and down as he began to swallow. Dmitry was breathing faster and more deeply. He raised his head towards Zmyeevich’s chest, but could not find what he wanted.

‘Left,’ he whispered.

Zmyeevich adjusted his position a little, still keeping his lips clasped to Dmitry’s flesh. Now Dmitry’s own lips could reach what they desired. He first licked at the blood that had smeared across his companion’s skin and when that was gone he pressed his mouth against the wound and began to drink, imitating Zmyeevich exactly. A little blood seeped out from beneath his lips, but he was too intent on his task to care.

Mihail studied the scene. A sense of revulsion and nausea filled him as he looked. He knew that now was his chance. Never again would he find the two so vulnerable. Zmyeevich’s back was turned to him, his mind focused on the obscene ritual they were performing. Mihail could plunge his wooden dagger into the creature’s heart and still be able to deal with Dmitry using the crossbow. But he felt unaccountably sickened. Why the thought of a vampire drinking the blood of another vampire should revolt him so, he had no idea. He must steel himself to his task.

But then his gaze fell upon Dmitry again and he knew he was too late.

Dmitry’s eyes were open, and stared directly at Mihail. There was no doubt that he saw him, but he made no acknowledgement of it. He simply continued consuming the blood of the monster that lay upon him, and enjoying it too. And the worst of it was – Mihail could see it in his face – that the whole thing was made more pleasurable by the very fact that they were being watched.

Mihail would not give them the satisfaction. He pushed himself up on to his feet and fled.