The People's Will

Chapter XXVI



IT WAS A stir in the crowd that zmyeevich noticed even before he heard the trotting of the horses’ hooves, muffled in the compressed snow. He stood and walked along the canal, just far enough to look down Inzhenernaya Street. The cortège had set off from the Mihailovskiy Palace and was approaching at a gentle pace, first the Cossacks, then Aleksandr’s carriage. The sleighs behind were obscured from view. Zmyeevich tried to picture it not as the majestic parade of an emperor returning to his palace, but as the sombre procession that took his lifeless body to its grave. It would not be long before such a vision became reality.

Zmyeevich imagined the horses transformed from the bay and chestnut of those ridden by the Cossacks to a sleek coal black, with black feathers sprouting from their harnesses. He pictured the tsar’s coach elongated, so that His Majesty’s motionless body could recline in its bier. The crowds, lining the route in mourning dress, looked on and wept instead of raising their arms to cheer in celebration. The destination was not the tsar’s warm, comfortable home, but that place where ultimately every leader of Russia was destined to rot: the Peter and Paul Cathedral, just across the Neva. The tsar’s namesake, Aleksandr I, was not buried there. He had cheated death – or at least postponed it. The possibility was there for the current Aleksandr too, if he would only accept Zmyeevich.

It was all as clear in Zmyeevich’s mind as if the procession truly had been a funeral cortège, but it was no idle daydream on his part. Aleksandr could see his mind. If Zmyeevich looked upon the prophetic vision of the tsar’s funeral, so Aleksandr himself would see it, and understand his fate, and how he might be saved. The black, plumed horses reached the corner and swung away from Zmyeevich to continue alongside the canal, then the imperial hearse slowed and turned. As it did so, Aleksandr’s recumbent corpse began to rise, sitting up, his head twisting to look into Zmyeevich’s eyes.

The vision evaporated, but Aleksandr’s eyes remained fixed on Zmyeevich’s as the coach in which he sat turned the corner. He knew. He had seen what Zmyeevich wanted him to see. How he would react to it only time would tell, and the tsar had little enough of that.

Across the canal, the woman with the large forehead leaned against the railing, her face eager. On this side, two of the men with paper packages exchanged glances. The third, a thickset young man with a flat nose, stepped out into the road, behind the Cossacks and in front of the tsar’s coach. He raised his arm, as if about to hurl a snowball.

The wooden bolt smashed into the brick wall, shattering on impact, its iron core clattering to the ground. Iuda pulled back the lever on the arbalyet to reset the bow then released the trigger with no bolt loaded. The twang of the vibrating string filled the air.

‘An interesting weapon,’ he commented. ‘Is it actually effective? On a vampire, I mean.’

‘I was hoping to find out,’ said Mihail.

‘So I gathered. But I have to ask, why? You’re not working with Zmyeevich, but you seem to be entirely intent on my undoing.’

‘I have my reasons.’

‘But you refuse to explain them to me.’

Mihail said nothing.

‘Dusya,’ said Iuda, ‘do you have any idea?’

She had moved to stand beside him, the revolver still in her hand. ‘He’s not mentioned you at all,’ she replied, ‘except when he asked me to watch the hotel. He knew Luka.’

‘Ah, yes,’ said Iuda. ‘But then you’d have overheard us talking about him in Geok Tepe. And you wouldn’t have had time since then to perfect a weapon like this.’ He waved the crossbow from side to side.

Still Mihail remained silent, thinking. His plan still had a chance, but it did not account for the presence of Dusya, let alone for the fact that she was working alongside Iuda. All Mihail’s work had been with the goal of trapping and killing a vampire. A human would be quite unaffected – otherwise how was Mihail himself supposed to survive? But with Dusya free to act for him, Iuda would easily escape. That assumed that she was human. Mihail had seen her in daylight, but not for a while; the change could have been recent. Did the scarf she had taken to wearing, that she wore even now, hide the marks of Iuda’s teeth?

‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter,’ Iuda continued. ‘Once he’s dead, he’ll talk.’

‘What?’ Dusya almost giggled.

‘Didn’t you wonder why I called him “Romanov”? He is an illegitimate branch of that illustrious tree, and therefore the blood that runs in his veins is blood that was drunk by the great vampire Zmyeevich. Only days ago he in turn drank Zmyeevich’s blood. He has exchanged blood with a vampire – to become one he now needs only to die.’

Dusya’s eyes widened as he spoke, her hand went to her throat, caressing it through her scarf. ‘So one only has to exchange blood,’ she said. Evidently she was as yet no vampire.

‘And die,’ added Mihail.

‘But it would not be death,’ she insisted. ‘It would be a new life.’

‘No kind of life,’ said Mihail. ‘Worse than being simply a voordalak – I’d be a voordalak who shared his mind with Zmyeevich.’

‘You share minds?’ she said. ‘How blissful.’

Iuda seemed as uninterested in her romanticism as Mihail was.

‘It won’t be blissful for either of them,’ he said. ‘Lukin will be my prisoner – my slave. Through him I will be able to inflict pain upon Zmyeevich wherever in the world he may be. You remember that chair to which I was bound in Geok Tepe? I have something like that in mind for you – with a few improvements.’

‘Wouldn’t you be afraid that Zmyeevich would find us?’ asked Mihail. ‘He’d know where I was. I’d be rescued – and you would die.’

Iuda smiled. ‘I’ll sort something out, don’t you worry. The important thing is for you to die. Dusya, go get me one of those.’ He pointed to the pile of wooden bolts that Mihail had laid out in anticipation of his arrival. She went and fetched one.

‘You’re just going to kill him?’ she asked. ‘We still don’t know why he came after you.’

‘As I say, that really isn’t an issue.’ Iuda pulled back the string of the arbalyet once again as he spoke, slipping the bolt into place. ‘There’ll be plenty of time to talk to him after he’s dead.’ He raised the crossbow, aiming it at Mihail.

‘In that case,’ said Dusya, ‘allow me.’

She placed the revolver on the floor beside her and held out both hands towards Iuda. He thought for a moment and then smiled, handing her the weapon.

‘What do I do?’ she asked.

He stood behind her, his arms around her, his hands over hers. ‘Just like a gun,’ he explained. ‘Aim at the heart, and then squeeze the trigger.’

She cocked her head to one side, examining Mihail dispassionately. Then she grinned and her finger began to squeeze.

Mihail moved fast. He dived to the side, grabbing one of the acid cells that Kibalchich had stored in the room and hurling it towards them. The crossbow launched its bolt across the room, but at a space Mihail no longer occupied. The lid came off the battery in mid-flight and the liquid inside spilled through the air. Most of it fell on their hands, and a little on the side of Dusya’s face. There was a hiss of burning flesh and smoke began to rise into the air. Dusya squealed and dropped the crossbow. Even Iuda reacted, pulling his hands away and wiping them on his jacket.

Mihail had changed direction the instant he threw the jar, hurling himself across the room in its wake. He caught the crossbow as it fell from Dusya’s hands, before it even reached the ground. In the same movement he kicked at the revolver beside her, sending it skidding across the flagstones and through the door, out into the passageway. As it hit the wall it fired, the sound of the blast echoing through all the chambers and tunnels around them.

Mihail backed quickly away, rearming the crossbow as he did so, but at the same time keeping his eyes on the two of them. Both had managed to wipe away the splashes of acid. On Iuda’s hands there was no sign of it – he had already healed – but his jacket had holes in it from which smoke still rose. Dusya bore further proof that she was not a vampire. Her clothes too showed the marks of where she had wiped her hands against them, but her hands themselves were scarred – the right merely raw and red, but the left blistered. The wound to her face was only a minor disfigurement; a single line of red where a drop of the acid had trickled, like a tear cutting through face powder. As Mihail watched, a genuine tear fell from her eyelid and ran down her cheek along a similar path. She winced as its salt water touched her wound. Mihail searched his heart to see if it held any sympathy for her, but he found none. Her alliance with Iuda was unexpected, but he had been too long planning his revenge to be distracted by it. He had been raised from boyhood to know that any friend of Iuda’s was an enemy of his. That it was Dusya did not complicate the matter.

Iuda regained his presence of mind more quickly than Dusya and was already striding across the room towards Mihail. Mihail groped behind him until his fingers found the pile of bolts. He grasped one and a moment later the crossbow was loaded and aimed.

‘Get back!’ he shouted.

Iuda obeyed. Soon he was against the wall, standing alongside the weeping Dusya.

‘I think we’ve been here before,’ said Iuda.

‘Except that Dusya is in no position to save you this time,’ Mihail added. He raised the arbalyet and aimed. It was not what he had planned, but it would have to do. ‘There’s one thing I must tell you before I die, Iuda. And that is my name.’

Iuda laughed, though his voice revealed his fear. ‘And what’s that? Rumpelstilzchen?’

Mihail smiled. He could only admire Iuda’s projection of calm. ‘No,’ he said. ‘My name is …’

‘Who gives a shit what your name is?’ Dusya sprang suddenly to life, awakened from her shock at the acid burns. She took a few steps across the room and stood boldly in front of Iuda, her hands by her sides, clenched into tight fists, her chest stuck out defiantly, her blouse clinging tight against her breasts. ‘If you want to kill him, you’ll have to kill me first.’

Mihail thought about it, but not for very long. He pulled the trigger.

The bomb hit the ground between the legs of the horse pulling the tsar’s coach and exploded in an instant. The noise filled the Saint Petersburg air, causing snow to cascade in miniature avalanches from the roofs of the buildings that looked on to the canal. It was met by a spray of earth, snow and fragments of horseflesh blown upwards by the blast. These heavier remnants of the explosion soon settled back down to the ground, but a bluish smoke remained hanging in the air.

After the initial shock the crowd began to close in around the tsar’s broken carriage, Zmyeevich among them. Other than the shattered rear axle the coach didn’t appear too badly damaged. That was no surprise; it was built to be bomb-proof – a gift from Napoleon III. Some of the material at the sides was torn and the glass of the windows was smashed – like the windows of every adjacent building – but from Zmyeevich’s position it was impossible to see inside.

Those unlucky enough to have been around the carriage at the moment of the explosion had not escaped.

One of the Cossacks lay unmoving in the snow beside his horse. The creature raised its head and tried to get to its feet, little understanding that two of its legs were now no more than shredded skin and horsehair. The sound of its agonized screams filled the embankment. Nearby was a young lad – a butcher’s boy, judging by his clothes and the joint of meat that lay beside him, half out of its wrapping paper, its blood mingling with that of the boy himself. His body twitched, and then lay still. Others stood dazed – soldiers, gendarmes and civilians – many with cuts to their faces and hands.

Within seconds order began to be restored. The colonel who had been riding in the sleigh behind Aleksandr’s coach barked orders and his men obeyed, pushing the crowd away to keep the blasted area clear. Beyond, Zmyeevich could see that the man who had thrown the bomb was unharmed, but had been apprehended. Two soldiers had him pinned back against the canal railings.

The colonel marched over to the coach and opened the door to look inside. The tsar’s bloodstained hand dropped down and hung loosely in the cold air.

That single shot revealed what an ineffective weapon a crossbow could be against a vampire, while still being entirely efficacious against a human. The boy had a good aim, but even so the bolt had missed Dusya’s heart, piercing her torso instead just a little lower, around her solar plexus. At such close range and with no ribs to hinder it, the bolt buried itself deep in her body. Iuda had felt its tip thump against his own midriff, but it had lost the momentum to do any damage. For Dusya the wound would be fatal, though neither quick nor painless. Iuda could not deny that he was surprised at what had happened, and took a moment to admire Lukin’s ruthlessness.

Dusya let out an unnatural, grating moan and her knees buckled. Iuda caught her under the arms and she twisted deliberately to face him. He stepped forward on to one knee so that he could support her. She looked up into his eyes.

‘I saved you, Vasya,’ she said. ‘I saved you once, did you doubt that I would again?’

He said nothing. His eyes looked at her, but barely registered the image of her face. Instead he was gazing back a century into his past, into the face of Susanna. He pictured her the last time he had seen her, or believed he had seen her – he had never been sure. Her face had been pale then, just as Dusya’s was now, and the reasons for both were not so very dissimilar.

He felt Dusya’s hand reaching up to touch his cheek, smearing the blood from her wound across it.

‘And I’ve never doubted you either,’ she continued. ‘And now you can save me.’

Iuda withdrew from his reminiscences and tried to make sense of what she meant. He frowned. What did she expect him to do?

She smiled and continued to stroke his face. ‘My blood is in you, Vasya. You drank it to make you strong. Now give me just a little of yours, and then let me die, so that I will live.’

Iuda almost laughed. Perhaps she would have made a good companion as a voordalak, but he’d never taken a moment to consider it. Now was not the time to make such decisions. She had done enough to help him, but even if he chose to transform her into a vampire, it took weeks for the dead to become undead. The problems that Iuda faced were immediate.

He looked up. Lukin seemed stunned by what he had done to Dusya, but as soon as he locked eyes with Iuda he sprang into action, pulling back on the lever of the arbalyet to rearm it.

‘Please, Vasya,’ Dusya whimpered, blood now in her mouth and on her lips. ‘Out of your love for me.’

Iuda launched himself across the room. He did not even bother to throw Dusya’s limp body aside; she merely slumped to the ground as he stood, emitting an agonized gasp. Before Iuda was halfway Lukin had another bolt in his hand. He placed it into the groove at the same moment that Iuda’s foot connected with the forestock, knocking it out of Lukin’s hand and across the cellar. Both men dived for it, but Iuda was faster. He grabbed it, the string in one hand and the limb in the other, pulling hard until with the sharp precision of a gunshot the string snapped. He hurled the useless weapon to the floor.

Dusya emitted a noise that was impossible to categorize. Iuda and Lukin both turned to look at her. She was lying on her front, pushing her head and shoulders up with one hand pressed against the floor while the other reached out towards Iuda. She had managed to drag herself several feet – a fat trail of blood marking her path as though she were some great slug.

‘Richard!’ she gasped. Iuda felt suddenly weak – disoriented. Then he realized she had merely said, ‘Vasya!’ His mind had been toying with him. Again he recalled the final time he had seen – or believed he had seen – Susanna’s face.

It had been on the very night when Iuda’s father had died, when he had gone down beneath Saint George’s to release his vampire captive in exchange for the death of Thomas Cain. Just as he had bid his farewell to Honoré, somewhere in the darkness beyond, he had seen her – Susanna – not the whole of her, just her pallid face peering out of the gloom as though she were lurking in the darkness there with Honoré, waiting like him for a chance of freedom. It was thirteen months since Richard had left her down there; thirteen months since her death. At the time Richard had put it down to his guilty conscience. Only later did he understand that that could not be; he had no conscience. Looking back he couldn’t even be sure who it was had actually killed his father.

Dusya grunted and slumped forward, her arm no longer able to take her weight. Her forehead hit the stone with a thud and she lay still, her head to one side and her eyes open. Her last breath left her noisily and as her body slackened it collapsed on to the wooden bolt that had penetrated her stomach, forcing the bloody tip out a little further through her back.

Lukin walked over to her and checked her pulse, but it was obvious she was dead. He reached down and closed her eyelids with his fingertips. It was a sentimental act from the man who had killed her, but it didn’t occupy him for long. He went over to his broken crossbow and examined it briefly, then threw it disconsolately into a corner of the room.

‘Looks like you’re going to have to kill me the old-fashioned way,’ he said.

‘Any mechanism will do,’ said Iuda. ‘I’m not sure I want to sully my lips with Romanov blood. I may simply strangle you, or rip your head off. Or use this.’ He reached into his pocket and caressed his double-bladed knife, his weapon of choice for so many years.

‘One question,’ said Lukin.

Iuda shrugged.

‘How did you get down here? You came through that gateway, I know – but where does it lead?’

Iuda smiled. He was happy to explain – at least to explain some of it. He would have to be careful. Once Lukin was dead, Zmyeevich would know his mind. Iuda would need to be circumspect as to exactly what was housed in that mind.

‘We’re standing in a very auspicious location, you and I,’ he said. ‘I take it you know the story of what took place between Zmyeevich and Pyotr I – your great-great-great-great-grandfather, I suppose.’

‘Of course.’

‘Well, there’s a few details of the story that Pyotr didn’t pass down to his descendants – or if he did they pretty soon got lost along the way. And Zmyeevich doesn’t like to talk of it either.’

‘The fate of Ascalon,’ said Lukin.

Iuda nodded, impressed. ‘A fragment of the lance with which George slayed his dragon. Zmyeevich used to wear it on a cord around his neck. He thought it gave him his power. How much of it’s true I don’t know. There may have been mountebanks all over Wallachia selling these things like popes selling splinters of the true cross. What matters is that Zmyeevich believes it.’

‘And Pyotr stole it.’

‘Exactly. Grabbed it from around Zmyeevich’s neck just before he ordered Colonel Brodsky to kill him. Just before Zmyeevich escaped.’

‘So what did he do with it?’

Iuda shrugged. ‘What could he do with it? There was a story that if it was destroyed then Zmyeevich too would be destroyed; another that if the thing were not properly disposed of it could lead to Zmyeevich gaining the most enormous powers. All Pyotr knew was that Zmyeevich wanted it. The best thing to do was to hide it safely. But he didn’t want to do it himself – the knowledge would be too dangerous.’

‘So what did he do?’ asked Lukin.

‘At the time there were dozens of groups and sects trying to make a home in Petersburg, eager to ingratiate themselves with the tsar. Any might have helped him to conceal the thing, but in the end he chose the Armenians. Why them? Who knows? Perhaps they’re the group which least venerates Saint George. I mean, you wouldn’t entrust it to the English, would you?’ He laughed, partly at the general absurdity of the concept, partly in the knowledge of where Ascalon now lay. ‘The Armenians wanted to build a church. Pyotr tried to help, but he didn’t want to appear to favour them. They made several attempts; in 1714, 1725, 1740. They finally got their church built in 1780. It’s above us, almost – Saint Yekaterina’s – on Nevsky Prospekt between—’

‘I know. I’ve seen it.’

‘I’m sure you have. Anyway, they were free to dig deep cellars and tunnel under the city and bury Ascalon in a nice safe shrine.’

‘Near here?’ asked Lukin.

‘You’re in it.’

Iuda walked over to the arched alcove in the wall opposite the door. It was empty now, but hadn’t always been. Someone – Lukin or one of his comrades – had hung an electric light bulb just above it; a pathetic thing – so feeble that Iuda could gaze straight at it. He pointed to the carved letters.



‘There it is, you see: “Ascalon”, though I think it’s more like “Ascaghon” here, a bit like that horrible sound the Dutch make – Armenian isn’t my strongest language.’

Lukin gazed at the lettering, a look of awe spreading across his face. He reached out his hand as if to touch the relic where it had once stood. ‘And here it remained, for all those years.’

Iuda turned away to show his disgust. ‘Don’t be like that. You know it’s horseshit as well as I do. And “all those years” wasn’t so very long. I bribed the dyachok, or whatever they call them here, back in ’67 to let me down into the labyrinth below the church. It only took me three months to find it.’

‘And where is it now?’

‘Oh, somewhere safe, don’t you worry.’ Iuda turned back to face Lukin, who had moved away from the alcove and from Dusya’s body towards the pile of junk in the corner. Iuda fingered the knife in his pocket.

‘And Dmitry? – or should I say Shklovskiy? – or Otrepyev?’

‘I don’t know how he and Zmyeevich got on to this place; probably followed the same trail I did. They couldn’t work out how to get in through the church, so Dmitry steered the Executive Committee into digging around here. Of course by the time they broke through, Ascalon was long gone.’

‘They must have been disappointed.’

‘Enough to chase all the way to Turkmenistan to find me. Which is where you came in.’ He took the knife from his pocket. ‘And here is where you’re going to leave.’ He saw the fear on Lukin’s face. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll have plenty more long conversations like this once you’ve arisen. I’m sure you’ll become quite sick of me.’

He took a pace forward, the knife out in front of him, deciding how to use it. A cut to the throat was what it had been designed for, but that would be too swift. Iuda felt no need for revenge over Dusya, but he knew his Bible: ‘life shall go for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot’. Iuda’s blade would enter Lukin just where the bolt had entered Dusya. After that he’d see how the mood took him, but his eye would not pity.

Lukin backed away until the wall prevented him from going any further. His hands pressed against it, as if clawing for some means of escape.

‘Oh, before you go, though,’ said Iuda, remembering their earlier conversation, ‘you were going to tell me something; something about your real name.’

Lukin suddenly seemed to grow. He was no longer against the wall, merely beside it, though his right hand remained outstretched, touching the brickwork. Close to it Iuda noticed a small switch, presumably part of the dim electric lighting system they had down here, or even something to do with the bomb. Lukin’s eyes flared and he breathed deeply before speaking.

‘My name is Mihail Konstantinovich Danilov, son of Tamara Alekseevna Danilova, daughter of Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov. And you are about to die.’

He flicked the switch.

Aleksandr stepped down from his carriage on to the snowy embankment. He looked dazed and there was blood on his hands and arms, but he was very much alive. A few members of the crowd cheered at the sight of him, but it was a muted celebration – the carnage all around did not merit more.

‘Please, Your Majesty, get back on board.’ The coachman, unharmed in the explosion, was shouting down from his perch, his voice scarcely audible over the desperate whinnying of the dying Cossack horse.

‘It’s too badly damaged,’ the colonel shouted back. ‘It’s not safe.’

‘It’s not safe to stay here. There may be more.’

‘I don’t need you to tell me that.’ The colonel turned to his emperor. ‘Sir, we should take my sleigh.’

Aleksandr looked bewildered – concussed even. He paused for a moment before speaking, but then gradually began to gain resolve. ‘Yes, yes, of course. But I want to see the fellow who did this first. I take it you’ve got him?’

The colonel exchanged a glance with one of his officers, but both clearly knew that the tsar’s instructions could not be questioned. ‘This way, sir,’ he said.

He walked briskly, keen to be away as soon as possible. His head flicked from one side to the other, on the lookout for further trouble. Ordinarily the tsar’s long legs would have allowed him easily to keep pace, but today he walked more slowly, like an old man, weakened in much the same way that Zmyeevich was by the sunlight.

A shot rang out. Some ducked, others turned their heads in the direction of the sound. Quietness followed and was a blessing for most. One of the gendarmes had fired his pistol into the head of the crippled horse, silencing it once and for all and in the process splattering its blood and brains over his uniform. The tsar merely stood, taking a moment to realize that the bullet had not been intended for him, and then continued walking towards his assailant.

The bomber was still pinioned against the railings by two of the tsar’s escort. Aleksandr stood to face him. He raised his hand, his forefinger extended, as if to wag it as he berated his attacker, but instead he kept it still, shaking minutely, a jagged red cut showing at the base of his thumb. He asked just one question.

‘What’s your name?’ His voice was rich with disgust.

‘Glazov,’ the man replied calmly. ‘Makar Yegorovich.’

It was almost certainly a lie. Aleksandr could find no more words to utter. He turned away.

‘The sled now, please, sir,’ insisted the colonel.

Aleksandr looked across the scene of devastation and to the crowd beyond, straight into Zmyeevich’s eyes. He seemed to form a sudden resolve.

‘I want to see where it happened,’ he said. He marched back along the embankment towards the funnel-shaped crater left by the bomb, but his eyes remained on Zmyeevich. He had confronted the bomb thrower and shown his defiance to him, now it seemed he wanted to demonstrate that same defiance to a far greater enemy. Zmyeevich smiled, coaxing him forward, knowing that there were two more assassins still out there, and at the same time trying to hide that knowledge from Aleksandr.

The tsar stopped at the side of the pit, the white of snow beneath his feet suddenly giving way to the brown, frozen soil of its steep sides. It was a wonder the canal hadn’t broken through.

‘Poor devils,’ he muttered, looking down at the mutilated bodies of the Cossack and the butcher’s boy. Then he looked back up at Zmyeevich. His eyes glared for a moment and he turned away.

‘Let’s go,’ he said to the colonel.

The relief on the soldier’s face was palpable. ‘This way, Your Majesty,’ he said, using his hand to indicate the path towards his sleigh. They set out back along the road, the heads of onlookers turning to follow them. But one of the crowd did not watch. His back was to the tsar as he leaned against the canal railing, gazing thoughtfully into the icy water, a newspaper parcel clutched to his chest.

The tsar passed him at a distance of scarcely three paces. At the moment Aleksandr was at his closest the young man swiftly turned, raised the package above his head and flung it down at the tsar’s feet.

The current began to flow. The thin strand of fuse wire stretched between the two carbon blocks began to heat up. In less than a second its temperature was higher than the melting point of the zinc from which it was made. It became liquid and fell away, but the path that it had provided for the current remained, arcing through air itself between the carbon electrodes, producing a brilliant white light that in moments was at its full intensity. And it was more than simply white; it stretched into parts of the spectrum that were imperceptible to the human eye. Much like the light of the sun.

Mihail knew that all of this was happening without having to watch it. He had experimented many times and understood the physics perfectly. Today his only desire was to witness its effects.

It was not the same devastation that would have been meted out to Iuda if he’d truly been exposed to the sun’s rays, but Mihail had known that. This was the second time he would be blessed with the opportunity to witness the effects of this great modern invention on a vampire. This time, though, it would be a far more enjoyable show. This time it was Iuda.

The voordalak stopped in his tracks. He narrowed his eyes and raised his arm to shade them. Even a human would have done much the same; Mihail’s own eyelids were squeezed to thin slits. It was a bright light in a small room, and they were only feet away from its source. But then further effects became evident. A short violent spasm rippled through Iuda’s body. His knife fell from his hand and clattered on the floor.

‘What … what is that?’ he asked. He did not sound afraid, but that was because he didn’t understand. His mood was simply one of annoyance, as if he were hearing some high-pitched squeal that was inaudible to anyone else. For a moment the most unexpected sensation fluttered through Mihail’s heart: a feeling of pity. He almost laughed, but the expression that briefly crossed Iuda’s face was one that least became him – a look of puzzlement. Mihail pushed the emotion from his mind – with a little help from his dead mother. This was how it was supposed to be.

‘That,’ he explained, ‘is the gift of one of Russia’s greatest inventors, Pavel Nikolayevich Yablochkov. You’ll have heard of him.’

Iuda made a movement that could have been a nod of agreement, or equally an involuntary twitch.

‘It’s called a Yablochkov Candle. It’s a type of arc light. You may have seen them about town, outside the Aleksandrinsky Theatre and on Liteiny Bridge.’

‘I have,’ said Iuda, his voice low and level. Wisps of smoke or steam were beginning to rise from his face and hands, as though he had stepped from a hot bath into a cold room. His eyes were glazed and his arms hung limply at his side.

Suddenly he made a dash for the door, but Mihail had expected it and was quicker. He pulled the iron gate shut, locking it with a padlock he had brought for the purpose. Iuda grabbed the bars and rattled them, but to no avail. Even a healthy vampire would have found it hard to break through, and Iuda was already weak. Now there was nothing that he could do to save himself, though he still tried.

He approached the lamp itself. The wires protruding from it were flimsy and would be easy to rip out, if only Iuda could get close. He moved like a man walking against the wind, but with each step he took the light got brighter. It was an inescapable law of physics; halving the distance quadrupled the brilliance – and the pain. Mihail could see flakes of skin beginning to fall from Iuda’s cheeks. Soon he gave up and obeyed the logic of his circumstances, backing away to the far corner of the room where the light was dimmest – but not too dim. He slumped against the wall, close to Dusya’s body. It would be a slow death. It was better that way – it gave Mihail a chance to gloat.

‘We captured one – a voordalak, I mean – Mama and I. You remember Mama, don’t you? Tamara? Tamara Alekseevna?’

‘Of course,’ croaked Iuda.

‘She remembered you. You were the one thing on her mind, every day of her life. She remembered what you did to her father, and her mother. And she remembered what you did to their friends. You remember the names?’

‘Who cares?’

‘I care! We care!’ Mihail allowed his anger to flow through him and enjoyed the sensation. ‘Do you remember Maks, or Vadim, or Dmitry Fetyukovich, or Margarita, or Irina? And let’s not forget what you did to Dmitry Alekseevich.’

‘I … I didn’t.’ Iuda was pathetic now. He spoke almost as if he believed in his own innocence.

‘Not you yourself, no, but you caused it. You caused all their deaths. So Mama and I planned, planned for a long time. Eventually we captured one – locked him in a barn. We took a leaf out of your book – did things scientifically. Found out what hurt him, wrote it down. Found out what healed him, wrote it down.’

‘How did you feed him?’ asked Iuda.

Mihail stopped short. The question seemed like an irrelevance, a non sequitur, but even in death Iuda still possessed the cunning to inflict pain. Mihail simply did not know the answer. He hadn’t asked. Tamara had dealt with that; she had not told him how and he, quite deliberately, had not asked. He would not let it distract him now.

‘We could only kill him once though, that was the sad thing,’ he continued. ‘But we had to verify that this would work. And it did. We used a Gramme generator then. Mama wound the handle so that I could watch and take notes. I’m using batteries today – much more reliable.’

There had been nothing unreliable about Tamara as she frantically wound the handle to generate the current needed, a look of joy and hatred on her face. She was – she had confessed to him later – imagining that it was Iuda chained there in the barn. Mihail had even had to make her slow down – it was important to learn the minimum level of light needed for the process still to work.

‘Of course,’ Mihail continued, ‘it’s still weak compared with the sun. Not strong enough to penetrate cotton or linen.’

He walked across the room and picked up Iuda’s knife where it had fallen, then he continued over to Iuda. He grabbed him by the lapels and heaved him upright, leaning him against the wall, then took a step back. He slashed the double-bladed knife harshly down the middle of Iuda’s torso. His intent was to cut cloth, but he was happy for the blades to slice through flesh as well. He opened up Iuda’s tattered jacket and shirt, exposing his chest and belly to the lamplight. Perhaps it was a mercy, hastening Iuda’s end, but Mihail enjoyed taking advantage of his helplessness.

‘Pryestupleniye ee Nakazaniye,’ he said, referring to the late, great Dostoyevsky’s finest work. ‘You have committed the crime and now you face the punishment.’

‘Who sentenced me?’ asked Iuda. He was barely recognizable now. His skin had drawn tight across his chest and splits had begun to appear like tears in fabric. From them oozed blood and pus which quickly began to smoulder in the light. The smell was repellent, but Mihail could only feel joy at it.

‘We did,’ he replied. He and his mother had tried Iuda in absentia when Mihail was just eight years old. The verdict had never been in doubt. It had been a long wait to carry out the sentence.

‘Then this isn’t punishment,’ said Iuda. He lurched forward as he spoke, but took a step and regained his balance. ‘This is vengeance.’

‘What’s the difference?’ asked Mihail. It was the same question he had discussed with Zhelyabov and the others, but for the life of him he could not see one, nor care if one existed.

Iuda produced something akin to a smile, in the process causing his top lip to split in the middle and rip open right up to his nose. Beneath it his teeth were revealed, still white, sharp and strong.

‘I too can be avenged,’ he said.

With that he flung himself forward at a speed of which Mihail had guessed him no longer capable. His momentum knocked Mihail backwards on to the floor, but Iuda remained with him, his hands grasping the back of Mihail’s head, his fingers entwined in his hair. In the moment of death he had found a hideous new strength. For an instant Mihail saw a flash of his white teeth, brilliant in the arc light, and then his face descended on to Mihail’s throat.

Mihail felt the sharp points press against his flesh, followed by searing pain as suddenly his skin yielded and Iuda’s teeth sank into him. The sound of blood being sucked out of him filled his ears.

The blue smoke began once more to clear. This second bomb, though of the same size, had caused immeasurably greater devastation. The white snow was littered with debris – fragments of paper, splinters of wood, shards of cloth and shoe leather. A dozen or more bystanders lay wounded or dead. The bomber himself was on the ground, unmoving, as was the colonel whose duty it had been to protect the life of his tsar.

In that duty he had failed.

On the shattered paving stones in a pool of mostly his own blood lay Aleksandr. His hat had been knocked from his head. His clothes were in tatters. Below the knee both of his legs were shattered; there was nothing to see of them but shreds of his trousers. From somewhere within the mess, blood still pumped out on to the snow. He was not dead, but would not live.

Through the silence a single word penetrated. ‘Yes!’

Zmyeevich turned to look. It was Glazov, the first bomber – the failed assassin. One of the soldiers beside him, still holding him against the railing, belted him across the face. He said no more.

Zmyeevich approached the dying tsar. He was conscious. His head turned from side to side, trying to take in what was going on around him. Then his eyes fixed upon Zmyeevich one final time. Zmyeevich concentrated, making this final offer in his mind, knowing that Aleksandr would hear.

‘My blood. Take my blood and you shall live for ever.’

He raised one arm and pulled up his sleeve, then drew a knife and motioned as if to cut himself. He would have to shelter the blood from the sun, but it could be achieved. Aleksandr watched transfixed. All eyes were on him and his were on Zmyeevich. Then he coughed. He gave the slightest shake of his head and then turned away, breaking eye contact with Zmyeevich. The offer had been rejected. Aleksandr had chosen death. Unlike his namesake, he had not found so elegant a way to break the curse on his blood.

Zmyeevich stepped back into the crowd. The colonel was on his feet now, apparently uninjured. He began to organize the carrying of Aleksandr up on to the sleigh. With each jerk and jolt more blood spurted from his ravaged limbs, but no one seemed to have any understanding of medicine. The sole intent was to get him away from there.

At last they had him in the sled. Onlookers and soldiers helped to prop him up against cushions. Zmyeevich almost laughed; of all people, one of those who helped was the third bomb carrier – the newspaper package still tucked under his arm. Once he had done his duty by his emperor he turned and walked calmly away along the canal, unmolested by any of the tsar’s men.

In the opposite direction, the sleigh pulled away, heading as fast as its horses could pull to the Winter Palace. Beside it ran Aleksandr’s retinue. Those Cossacks who still had mounts rode ahead.

Behind it the sleigh left a bloody trail in the snow.

The agony did not come from Iuda’s teeth, but from his mind. Mihail had expected it. As Iuda drew blood from him their minds were briefly as one – and one concept predominated in Iuda’s mind; burning, torturing pain. It was a wonder that he could contain it; Mihail certainly could not. His screams filled the small bright cellar moments after Iuda bit into him, even though he knew it was not his own pain and could do him no physical harm.

What could harm him was Iuda’s bite, draining blood from him and in doing so providing Iuda with sufficient sustenance to fight off the effects of the Yablochkov Candle for just a little longer, even though it would only prolong his torment. Iuda had spoken of vengeance, but this seemed self-defeating, causing him further pain to no beneficial end. And through the tortured thrashings of his mind Mihail could sense no emotion of revenge, only the cold, hard logic he would have expected from Iuda, though logic that followed a path that Mihail could not fathom; all paths ended only in Iuda’s death. And even in the midst of all that there was more: a message; words forming in Iuda’s mind that he was desperate for Mihail to hear.

It did not last long. From the moment that Iuda had launched his attack, Mihail had been pushing him away. The vampire’s sudden strength had been a dying pulse; within seconds Mihail was able to overcome him, throwing his now insubstantial body across the cellar and closer to the candle that would do it so much harm. Mihail got to his feet.

Iuda lay still, but not yet quite dead. His eyes gazed up at Mihail and his mouth formed a lipless smile, Mihail’s smeared blood forming an edge to the decaying flesh. Then with a jolt of energy he moved both head and eyes to gaze directly into the glow of the arc light. His eyeballs erupted into a blue flame which raged only a few seconds before guttering to nothing, leaving black gaping holes that looked in on his absent soul. Then only the holes themselves remained as the skin and fat and bone that surrounded them crumbled away and fell to the ground.

Mihail raced for his knapsack and brought from it his wooden dagger, along with a mallet with which to drive it into Iuda’s heart, but by the time he returned to the body there was no heart to pierce. Iuda’s head and trunk were dust. In the arms of his jacket and the legs of his trousers there was still some bulk. Mihail took Iuda’s knife again and cut them open, exposing the flesh beneath to the light. It was paranoia, but it was a wise paranoia. He went over to the Yablochkov Candle and picked it up from where he had fastened it to the wall, using a cloth to protect him from the heat. The wires were long enough to reach Iuda’s remains. He held it up in the air, scanning it up and down across the man-shaped patch of dust on the floor as if to assist in looking at it closely, but in fact to make sure that all was destroyed. Occasionally some little lump of formerly protected flesh would catch the light and suddenly wither, or even produce a puff of flame, but soon there were no more of them. Mihail held the candle for another minute, then knew his work was done.

He returned the light to the wall and stood up, breathing deeply. His grandfather Aleksei had tried it before him. He had tried to drown him in the freezing Berezina, but somehow Iuda had survived. He had shot him on the ice of the Neva, and that time had killed him, but Iuda had cheated death and become undead. Tamara had never even come close. She had imprisoned Iuda, with Dmitry’s help, but no more than that.

Now he, Mihail Konstantinovich Danilov, had avenged them all, and many more besides. He had done what none of them could and he felt proud of it. Richard Llywelyn Cain, born some time towards the end of the eighteenth century, a man who had thrown in his lot with voordalaki and then chosen to become one himself, who had conducted experiments on his own kind, who had plagued Russia for almost seventy years, was dead.

Iuda was no more.