Thirteen Years Later (22 page)

Aleksei led Kyesha south, across Red Square, but past the Lobnoye Mesto and on to the grander building beyond – Saint Vasiliy’s Cathedral. The name instantly brought another Vasiliy to his mind – his wife’s lover, back in Petersburg. The very idea of jealousy seemed trivial when put in contrast with tonight’s concerns; with what would be happening within the cathedral in just a few hours’ time, perhaps less.

A bribe of a few roubles earlier in the day had ensured a promise that a side door would be left unlocked, and the promise had been kept. Even so, there was no guarantee that they would be left alone, although it was unlikely anyone would enter at this time of night, and if they did, the church was a maze of chapels in which it would be easy to hide. Aleksei knew full well that he did not need consecrated ground to carry out what he planned to do, but he knew also that some vampires had a slightly more reverent view of religious institutions than others. With luck, their location might unnerve Kyesha, if only a little.

They climbed the narrow stone steps and emerged into a candle-lit chapel. Aleksei had not gone into the cathedral by that entrance before, but soon found his bearings. They were in the chapel of Saint Nikolai, the southernmost of the ten chapels that formed the cathedral’s labyrinthine interior.

‘It’s best if we move further inside,’ said Aleksei, in a low voice. They stepped out into the gallery that surrounded the Chapel of the Intercession from which the cathedral took its official name. It stood at the centre of a square formed by the eight remaining
small chapels. The four larger of these, of which Saint Nikolai’s was one, sat at the corners of the square, and the four smaller along the sides. A later addition of another chapel, to house the remains of Saint Vasiliy himself, not only served to disrupt the symmetry, but also to give the cathedral its more familiar title. Aleksei followed the gallery anti-clockwise. The dark, brick-lined passageway created by the walls of the chapels was only wide enough for one man at a time. Beyond it, the gallery opened out again, the plain walls giving way to floral tiling, and Aleksei led Kyesha into the Trinity Chapel.

The candelabras hanging above them were only partially lit, casting flickering shadows over the mixture of brickwork, murals and icons. High above, Aleksei could see the inside of the dome, whose hemispherical shape gave no clue as to the complexity of the onion dome outside it. The chapel domes and the central tower grew out of the base of the cathedral like a clump of mushrooms growing from a single root; there was no connection of any kind between the towers at the higher level, but the chapels and corridors below provided a route between them – for those who knew it.

‘You seem more formal than usual tonight,’ said Kyesha, gesturing at Aleksei’s uniform.

‘We had an inspection today,’ lied Aleksei. ‘I haven’t had time to change.’ The truth was quite different. Aleksei needed a way to conceal his sabre, and what could be better than carrying it in plain view where it would be overlooked as simply part of the uniform? Seen where it was expected to be seen it was far more innocuous, but just as deadly.

‘You still owe me an answer,’ said Kyesha, sitting down with his back to the wall and gesturing that Aleksei should do the same. Aleksei unbuckled his sword – it was impossible to sit on the floor with it on – and leaned it against the wall before sitting. He had no need to be reminded of Kyesha’s last question.

‘I think Iuda is dead,’ he said.

‘Think – but not believe.’

‘He drowned. I held him under.’ Aleksei could feel the cold numbness that had penetrated his left hand and arm. ‘But I never found his body.’

‘You let go?’

‘I don’t know. The water was freezing. I couldn’t feel a thing.’ He reached inside his shirt. Against his chest he felt two small pieces of metal; one oval, the other square. The first was an icon of Christ that Marfa had sent him during the darkest days of the Patriotic War. He pulled the second chain off over his head and tossed it towards Kyesha, who caught it with the same dexterity he displayed during their games of knucklebones. ‘Open it,’ he said.

Kyesha slid his thumbnail down the small crack between the two halves of the locket and it sprang open. He peered inside. Aleksei could clearly picture what he was looking at: twelve blond strands, coiled into a circle, unfaded by time.

‘His hair?’ asked Kyesha.

Aleksei nodded. There had been more wrapped around Aleksei’s fingers as he pulled them out of the water to discover Iuda gone. He had slipped it into his pocket and only weeks later remembered it was there. Twelve seemed the appropriate number to keep.

‘How strange that
you
should keep such a memento of a past encounter,’ said Kyesha. Aleksei noted the stress on ‘you’, but before he could ask what it meant, Kyesha had continued. ‘Couldn’t you have looked for the body?’ he asked.

Aleksei gave a short laugh. ‘I wouldn’t have had much trouble finding a body,’ he said. ‘It’s just a question of whether it would have been the right one.’ Aleksei saw the river flowing out in front of him, chunks of ice and the corpses of men carried along by it with equal alacrity. Thousands of French had drowned or frozen that day. A few had managed to swim across. The chances were that Iuda could be counted with the former group.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Kyesha. ‘It appears we’ve been breaking the rules.’ He tossed the locket to Aleksei, who caught it and put it
back around his neck. Kyesha produced the knucklebones from his pocket once again, all six of them. ‘For five,’ he said. ‘Where was Iuda from?’

Aleksei pondered the question as Kyesha threw one bone into the air and began picking up the others. He had assumed that Iuda was from Wallachia. Why? Because Dmitry Fetyukovich had said they came from Wallachia. But Dmitry had not met them all before, certainly not Iuda. It seemed reasonable that the other eleven were Wallachians, but why assume the same for Iuda? It was as foolish as the assumption Aleksei had so blithely and speciously made that, because eleven were, then the twelfth must also be a
voordalak
– the sort of fallacy that Maks had more than once warned him against. Iuda could speak French perfectly and Russian better than many of the Russian nobility. He had also spoken Romanian to the others, which Aleksei did not understand at all, but which had apparently been good enough to fool them into believing he was their countryman. So, all things considered, the answer which Aleksei prepared to deliver to Kyesha was a simple and honest ‘I don’t know.’

The need never arose. Kyesha had picked up the five bones from the floor of the chapel and clutched them tightly in his fist, but he never reached out his hand to catch the sixth. It dropped to the brickwork floor, with the slightest of sounds.

‘Oops,’ said Kyesha. The comment was unnecessary. It was clear enough to Aleksei that the failure had been deliberate. Aleksei had not been in control of the bones for days, and hence had had no chance to ask a question. He’d been happy with it, knowing that he would learn more by hearing Kyesha’s questions than by listening to his potentially deceitful answers. Perhaps Kyesha had worked out the same thing. He pushed the bones towards Aleksei and Aleksei knew that now was his chance to ask the sole question that mattered. He picked up the bones and cast them down on the floor, then selected the largest to throw. He looked Kyesha in the eye.

‘I think this one’s a five, don’t you?’ said Kyesha.

Aleksei nodded. ‘For five. Yes-or-no question. Are you a
voordalak
?’

Aleksei threw the large bone high in the air. The others had not scattered too broadly, and the first four were easy to pick up, but the fifth had fallen between two of the red floor bricks, where the mortar had worn away slightly. It was the smallest, no bigger than the tip of Aleksei’s little finger. Aleksei scrabbled, trying to retrieve it from its hiding place, and eventually it yielded, but the bone in the air had almost reached the floor. He had no time to turn his hand to catch it. Instead, he brought his hand sharply upward, batting the bone back into the air again. It flew off at an angle, heading towards Kyesha. Aleksei leaned forward and pushed with his legs, launching himself across the room. He kept the bones in his hand pressed against his palm with his smallest two fingers and reached out with the remaining three, the handicap of his left hand momentarily mimicked in his right. The side of his hand hit the ground at the moment his two fingers and thumb plucked the bone out of the air. He closed his palm and then opened it again, showing the six knucklebones to Kyesha with a smile of victory that revealed he was taking the game too seriously.

The remembrance of the prize suddenly cooled his excitement. He looked again at Kyesha and waited for him to speak. Kyesha rose to his feet and seemed to grow in stature, more than ever seeming older than his youthful face suggested. Aleksei stood as well, partly to be less vulnerable, but also from the sense of awe which Kyesha had managed to instil into the moment. Kyesha held out his hand and Aleksei felt compelled to pour into it the knucklebones with which he had so recently claimed victory. Kyesha pocketed them. It was as if they both sensed they would be playing no more.

‘Yes, Aleksei Ivanovich, I am a
voordalak
.’

So there it was; from the creature’s own mouth, confirmation that, thirteen years on, thirteen paranoid years, Aleksei was finally facing what he feared most. He took a step back, feigning
repulsion and surprise, but he had known all day – all week – what he would have to do when this moment came. Now he had only to work out the final tactical details. It was good they had stood up; that would make it easier.

He put his hand to his face and let slip a horrified murmur of ‘Oh my God!’, then he turned, as if unable to look upon the creature with which he shared that tiny, ancient chapel. It occurred to him, momentarily, that he had been here before. Maks had confirmed with
his
own mouth that he was a French spy, and Aleksei had not believed such a thing could be excused in any way. A few minutes’ further conversation would have proved how wrong he was. Did Kyesha not deserve some chance to plead for his life, to explain that which Aleksei could not conceive? Perhaps he did, but practicality screamed against it. Aleksei’s best chance was surprise. Even as he turned away from Kyesha he let his mind fill with a hatred that he could not in honesty claim he felt for this particular creature but did for all the other vampires he had met, and for all the misery they had caused. This was for Vadim, for Dmitry and for Maks. Some might say they had already been avenged, but it would be the highest pleasure for Aleksei to settle the score one further time.

He reached out for his sword, knowing that his body blocked Kyesha’s view of it. Decapitation was – as Aleksei had discovered for himself – a method that could quickly send a
voordalak
down to meet its hellish creator. In one movement, Aleksei had grasped the sabre and begun to turn, unsheathing it as he raised it to strike. He pictured in his mind Kyesha’s precise position, considered his height, the length of his own arm and of his sword, and swung so that the razor-sharp tip would rip out the monster’s throat with the same proficiency the vampire itself had used upon every victim it had ever slain. If the stroke did not kill, it would incapacitate sufficiently for Aleksei to move in with the fatal blow.

Aleksei’s whole body turned, and the blade sliced through the air. The muscles of his arm tensed, ready to force the steel onwards as it came into contact with the
voordalak
’s flesh. But
no resistance came. Aleksei fell forward, off balance as his sword arm carried on, further than expected. The point of the sword clattered into the wall, hacking through the stem of one of the painted flowers that adorned the tile work and splitting the tile in two. The top half peeled away from the wall and fell to the floor, shattering into half a dozen pieces.

Kyesha was gone.

Aleksei whirled round in a circle, but there was nowhere in the tiny chapel for a man to hide. The doorway was closer to Aleksei than it had been to Kyesha, and it was difficult to believe he had slipped through it, but it was the only exit. Aleksei reached inside his greatcoat and brought out the wooden sword, holding it in his left hand while keeping his sabre in his right. He stepped back out into the gallery.

There were two immediate directions in which to turn; to the left would take him back the way they had entered the cathedral. If Kyesha’s intent was flight then that would be his most likely course. Instinct told Aleksei to turn the other way. It took him only three steps before he was at the archway that marked the entrance to the Chapel of the Three Patriarchs. He glanced inside, but saw nothing. On the far side of the chapel was another arch, but Aleksei chose to stick with the gallery. From what he could remember, that exit would eventually lead back to the main corridor anyway. He might be mistaken, but with luck, Kyesha would be less familiar with the layout than he was.

The passageway, squeezed between two chapels, narrowed once again. Despite the tightness of the space, Aleksei felt safer. There was no possibility of an attack from any direction but the front. Or, of course, behind. The gallery was a closed loop. Whichever direction Kyesha had gone in, if he moved fast enough he could soon run the entire circle and approach Aleksei from behind. Aleksei glanced over his shoulder, but saw nothing.

He moved forward. There were passageways to his right. One led back to the Chapel of the Three Patriarchs, the other simply out to a window. It was closed. The next archway revealed
another chapel. He looked inside, but it was empty. He moved on. A doorway on his left led to the central chapel, the Chapel of the Intercession. Aleksei could see nothing inside. There were three other exits: a small flight of steps that led down to the lower vaults, and two more archways, one directly opposite Aleksei and one to the right. Aleksei glimpsed a movement; something had made its way past the right-hand archway and was coming quickly through the gallery and towards him. He took a few rapid paces backwards, between two of the side chapels. Behind him steps led down to the main entrance. Given the direction he was moving in, Kyesha would have had the option of going there too, via another stairway, or sticking to the gallery. If he had been in the gallery, he would have reached Aleksei by now. Aleksei went down the stairs. There was no sign of anyone. He tried the door. As he had expected, it was locked. It was only the door by which they had come in that he had arranged to be left open.