The People's Will (15 page)

Zmyeevich took one last look at the statue of Pyotr. Truly, they had been friends, as far as Zmyeevich could have one – as far as Pyotr could. It was back then that he had first taken on the Russian form of his name. Pyotr had told him that if he were to become a great boyar, then his name would have to be Russian. Zmyeevich was a simple translation of the original. They had debated whether ‘Son of the Dragon’ fitted better, but had gone with Zmyeevich – ‘Son of the Serpent’. And besides, there already was a Zmyeevich in Russian folklore – Tugarin Zmyeevich – though there was no connection between them. Zmyeevich used the Russian form in Russia, but everywhere else he preferred the original Romanian.

He strode across the square to where Dmitry and Iuda waited, circling round to look the prisoner in the face.

‘So now we are here,’ he said. ‘Will you show us the way?’

Iuda nodded sullenly, and they began to ascend the steps to the cathedral doors.

It had made no sense to Dmitry, but he wasn’t surprised that Zmyeevich had quickly recognized the floor plans to be those of Saint Isaac’s, and noticed the scribbled modification in the north-eastern corner. It was hard to conceive that Iuda might have been able to influence the construction of the building to such a degree, but at the time he’d had a powerful position in the Third Section. He could have made any excuse about its purpose: a hiding place for spies; a secret dungeon. The church elders did not see the world so very differently from the tsar – not back then – and would have happily acceded. Even today they showed respect. When the three men entered, the only occupant was a priest, going about whatever his duties may have been. He frowned at the intrusion, but then saw Dmitry’s uniform. Dmitry jerked his head and the priest scampered away, leaving them in peace.

Iuda led them towards the Nevsky Chapel, to the left of the Beautiful Gate at the centre of the main iconostasis. Beside the side chapel entrance, in the north-eastern corner of the nave, was a tall mosaic of a saint, framed by columns of green malachite. It was unmistakably Saint Paul, with his long sword and open Bible, to which he pointed. Iuda turned his head to look at his captors, his grin showing a little pride in his creation – perhaps justified.

‘I’ll need my hands,’ he said, raising his bound wrists and with an expression of humble entreaty upon his face.

‘Tell Dmitry what to do,’ Zmyeevich replied.

‘Very well, but … there are traps.’

Iuda could easily have been bluffing, but it wasn’t worth the risk. Zmyeevich paused for a moment in consideration, then nodded. Dmitry handed him the end of the wire rope to hold while he unlocked the manacles that kept Iuda’s wrists behind his back. The rope still shackled him at the neck. He flexed his fingers, putting on a show. When they had first known each other, and for years afterwards, Dmitry would have been taken in by it all, but not any more.

Iuda reached up and pressed his thumbs against the mosaic tiles, somewhere close to the saint’s big toes. The lock released without a sound. Iuda stepped back and the entire icon swung outwards, revealing a dark, narrow brick passageway, far smaller than the icon that had hidden it, its floor at the level of their chests.

‘Let him go first,’ said Zmyeevich.

Iuda required no second bidding. He pulled himself up the high step into the passageway and disappeared into the darkness. Dmitry felt the rope tighten in his hand and yanked it back, telling Iuda not to go too far ahead, as though he were a disobedient mongrel. The corridor was tight for Dmitry, but he was used to such things. Any fear of enclosed spaces that he had felt in life had vanished the moment he had awoken in his own coffin, deep under the soil. He felt Zmyeevich at his back.

The corridor ran only a few feet before arriving at a descending spiral staircase. They went down, Iuda still leading the way, until the steps ended in another corridor, long and straight. Dmitry felt that they must be below the level of the crypt, but he had lost his sense of direction on the twisting stair; he could not say whether this new passageway led out under Senate Square, or back beneath the cathedral, or in any other direction. All he could do was follow.

At last the tunnel opened out into a chamber. It was a large space, about half as tall again as he was. The arched ceiling was supported by eight brick columns. The place smelt of damp; Dmitry guessed that they must be close to the level of the river.

‘Welcome to my humble abode,’ said Iuda.

Dmitry tugged at his leash again, and he fell silent. Zmyeevich traversed the room, lighting the various lamps and torches that hung from the walls with the candle he had brought from the cathedral. The columns cast a criss-cross of shadows over the brickwork of the floor.

‘You had all this built?’ asked Zmyeevich, with genuine wonder in his voice.

‘No, no,’ admitted Iuda. ‘This has been here since Yekaterina’s time, perhaps longer, but lost for decades. I merely ensured that there was an entrance to it.’

That would make sense. The whole construction had a much rougher, more functional feel to it than had the cathedral.

‘And an exit?’ Zmyeevich asked.

Iuda glanced in the direction from which they had come. The door back to the passageway had been open when they arrived. Zmyeevich strode over and slammed it shut. The key was in place. He turned it and slipped it into his pocket. Dmitry began to look around, still keeping a tight hold on the rope, but moving some way from Iuda. In the middle of the chamber, where a ninth column might have been expected, stood a pool of water, almost like an ornamental fountain, except for the lack of the fountain itself. Its raised stone sides came to waist height, and water filled it almost to the brim. Dmitry had not realized how cold it was in the room, but the water was frozen over. Even here underground, embraced by the warm earth, it was impossible to entirely escape the chill of a Russian winter. But the ice didn’t look particularly thick. Dmitry rapped it firmly with the back of his fist, and a crack spread across the diameter.

‘I suspect this place was once a chapel,’ explained Iuda. He nodded towards the pool. ‘A font?’

‘Where are we?’ asked Zmyeevich.

‘Somewhere beneath Senate Square,’ answered Iuda. ‘I could show you precisely on a map.’ He pointed, upwards and ahead of them. ‘The statue of Pyotr is just there.’

From the walls, on both sides, hung a number of cupboards. They were closed, but had no visible locks.

‘What’s in these?’ asked Zmyeevich.

Iuda raised an open palm in the direction that Zmyeevich was looking. ‘Be my guest.’

Zmyeevich gave a short laugh, but wasn’t fooled. ‘I think not. You may have the honour.’

Iuda shrugged and walked forward, reaching up to one of the cupboards, but not the one which Zmyeevich had indicated. Dmitry tightened the rope to stop him.

‘This one, I think,’ said Zmyeevich, indicating his original choice.

Iuda went over to it and raised his hands, placing them on the two handles. He glanced from side to side, taking in the positions
of his two captors. Then with a sudden motion he flung open the double doors of the cupboard, at the same time stepping back, away from it.

Dmitry tensed, but Zmyeevich remained calm. Iuda was teasing them. They stepped forward and examined the open cupboard. Inside they found shelf upon shelf of bottles, flasks and vials. Some contained powders, others potions, many of which had evaporated almost to nothing. Dmitry cast an eye over them, but the names scribbled on faded labels meant nothing to him. Zmyeevich lingered a moment longer, but he was no more a man of science than Dmitry.

He pointed to the next cupboard and Iuda opened that. Much of its contents was similar, but in addition there were a number of notebooks and papers. Zmyeevich picked one up and flicked through it.

‘English,’ he said with a sneer, before adding in that language, ‘but that shouldn’t prove to be a problem.’ Even to Dmitry’s ear his accent had a strange intonation. He put the papers back down. ‘We’ll examine them in detail later.’

He opened the next cupboard himself, satisfied that there were no booby traps. It contained much the same.

‘Do you have the samples of my blood that you took?’ asked Zmyeevich.

‘I’m not sure,’ said Iuda. ‘If I did, they’d be in there.’ He pointed to a cupboard and then strode quickly over to it, but Dmitry was faster. He opened the doors before Iuda could reach it. Inside were further vials, each containing a small amount of red liquid that Dmitry knew instinctively to be blood, and guessed to be vampire blood. They were all neatly labelled in Latin text and ordered alphabetically. Dmitry looked to the bottom right, where Zmyeevich would have been.

‘Nothing,’ he announced. ‘Perhaps he’s used it all up.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Iuda.

‘And what of Ascalon?’ asked Zmyeevich. ‘Do you have that here?’

‘Why would I have it?’

‘Perhaps you found it here. We’re beneath the very place where Pyotr took it from me.’

‘And you think he might have built this, to hide it?’ said Iuda. He thought about it for a moment, but then shrugged, seeming unconvinced. ‘It’s possible, I suppose.’

‘When did you first come across this place?’ Dmitry asked.

‘When they were building the cathedral,’ Iuda explained. Behind him, Zmyeevich began opening other cupboards, examining their contents. ‘They found the tunnel when they were digging the foundations; you have to go deep to build anything stable with the mud round here. It was years later that I got to investigate. I told them it was unimportant, but I made sure the stairs were built.’

From the corner of his eye, Dmitry could see that Zmyeevich had opened the last cupboard on that wall. He stood gazing into it.

‘To be honest, I’ve not made much use of it,’ Iuda continued chattily – uncharacteristically, ‘but when I’m in the city …’

Zmyeevich hadn’t moved. His hand still rested on the door handle. The door itself was half open, hiding whatever Zmyeevich had uncovered from Dmitry’s view. It all looked quite innocent, but somehow Dmitry knew that Zmyeevich was in terrible pain. He dashed over.

The cupboard was empty. It had no bottles, no papers, not even shelves. Like the others, it was only around four inches deep, but its back wall, rather than being the dull brick of the rest of the cellar, was a mirror – and not a particularly refined one at that. It was cloudy, and seemed to be made of many small sections rather than a single sheet of glass.

But the oddest thing about it was that Dmitry could see Zmyeevich’s reflection. A moment later he realized that he could see his own.

Or at least he could see a figure at the place where his reflection should be. He had never seen himself – not since the moment he had become a vampire, but he had assumed he remained unchanged from what he was in life. Now he knew different. What others saw in him, what he could see in himself when he looked down at his own hands, it was all an illusion. What he saw in that mirror was not sharp and distinct – and that was a blessing – but he knew without doubt it was a truer representation of himself
than he had ever laid eyes on before. He peered closer, trying to see through the hazy glass. Various shapes and textures caught his eye, but they did not form a clear image. He did not want them to. He wanted to tear his eyes away before they could fully take in what he saw, but he was unable. He could not step away, nor raise his hands to cover his face, nor close his eyelids, nor even move his eyeballs to look in a different direction. With each passing moment that he gazed into the mirror, the clearer what he saw became, and the greater was his desire to see it.

And through all this came a memory – a memory that he had witnessed such a thing before, and yet a memory that was not his own. It was something he had never understood in the past, but which was now quite clear to him. He knew that the sight of this reflection had led to death. It had done so before and it would do so now.

And then he was no longer staring immobile at the thing reflected in the mirror. He was lying on the ground, on his back. Above him he could see the arched ceiling and, looming closer, Zmyeevich. The ancient vampire’s hands gripped his shoulders, unable to let go after holding him so tightly to drag him away from the mirror, his eyes squeezed shut. His tongue protruded from his lips and his teeth bit down on to it. His precious blood seeped from the corners of his lips. His fingers dug still harder into Dmitry’s flesh.

Dmitry dashed Zmyeevich’s hands aside. He scrambled across the floor, on his back, keeping his eyes averted so that there was no chance of seeing the mirror. When he was far enough away he stood, and edged back along the wall until he was able to slam first one door then the other back over the obscene looking glass. Then he knelt down beside Zmyeevich. His eyes were open now, but he appeared shaken, old, as though he hadn’t fed for weeks.

Dmitry helped him to his feet. He looked over to the mirror, and sighed deeply when he saw that the doors were shut. He turned back to Dmitry, holding on to him for support, his eyes full of fear.

‘What was that?’ asked Dmitry, his voice shaking.

‘I saw …’ Zmyeevich spoke softly, but then paused to think. He seemed to become instantly stronger, and stood upright, stepping
away from Dmitry. ‘I saw what I have always known,’ he concluded.

Dmitry wondered if he himself had always known of what he had seen, but pushed the thought from his mind. He had caught only a glimpse of his own image; he did not want to learn more. Zmyeevich was now almost completely himself again. His head twisted from side to side as he scanned the room.

‘Iuda!’ he hissed.

Dmitry looked around too. He looked at the door by which they had entered, but it remained closed. He strode over and tried it but it was still locked. It had been only a matter of seconds that they had stared into the awful glass, but in that time Iuda had vanished.

THE ICY WATER
embraced him, infiltrating every crevice of his body. For a vampire such as Dmitry, it was not a discomfort but it was still a piercing sensation. The cold could not kill him, but it could slow him and weaken him. If it became cold enough for his body’s fluids to freeze, then he would become dormant, but at some point before that ice crystals would begin to form in his blood, and his limbs – and his mind – would stiffen.