The People's Will (48 page)

‘And how do you know all this?’

Mihail said nothing.

‘Ah, yes,’ Zmyeevich continued. ‘Because you’ve read Cain’s books. Where are they?’

‘Somewhere safe.’

‘I would dearly like to see them.’

‘What? There are things that even the great Dracula doesn’t know?’

Zmyeevich winced at the sound of his Romanian name. Mihail had learned it from Iuda’s notebooks.

‘You’re right, of course,’ said Zmyeevich. ‘I have no need for Cain’s knowledge. But he has other trophies that rightfully belong to me.’

‘Your blood, you mean? Or Ascalon?’

‘You don’t have either.’

‘I have his books – why shouldn’t I have his other possessions?’

‘He’s bluffing,’ said Dmitry from behind.

‘I’ll trade you them for my life.’

Zmyeevich chuckled. ‘I’m afraid my reputation means you would not trust me to keep my side of such a bargain. It’s a curse I have learned to live with.’

‘You’re prepared to lose Ascalon?’ asked Mihail.

‘If you had even
touched
Ascalon, I would know,’ spat Zmyeevich. He looked over Mihail’s shoulder at Dmitry. ‘I take it you know where he’s staying?’ he asked.

‘Zhelyabov will know – and will tell me.’

‘Then we shall search there, once we have dealt with him.’

Mihail felt Dmitry’s grip on him tighten again as Zmyeevich spoke, leaving him incapable of almost anything but speech.

‘Dealt with me?’

‘Your grandfather, Aleksei Ivanovich, thwarted me in my attempts to persuade Tsar Aleksandr I to join me. His grandson will have no opportunity to do the same for Aleksandr III.’

‘The third? Aren’t you missing a generation?’

‘The reign of this generation of Romanovs will soon be coming to an end. Dmitry’s friends will see to that.’

‘And then nothing will stop you,’ said Mihail.

‘Nothing, indeed. If need be, I’ll be free to dig up the whole of Petersburg in search of Ascalon.’

‘There’s nothing you or anyone can do,’ added Dmitry.

‘I do wish Aleksei Ivanovich were alive to see this,’ Zmyeevich continued. ‘His beloved son, my closest acolyte, assisting me as I drain the life from his only surviving grandson, holding him still, pinning him so that he is exposed and defenceless, allowing me to take my pleasure, to pierce his skin and drink, oh so slowly, until the last drop of blood is drained from his body.’

Zmyeevich opened his jaws wide, revealing his great fangs, and descended towards Mihail’s throat, his eyes still fixed on those of his victim. Mihail knew it was time to act. He used his tongue to slip the hazelnut from his cheek where it had nestled since his arrival and held it for a moment between his incisors, so that Zmyeevich could see it plainly. Then he let it fall back between his molars and bit down hard, feeling the liquid inside spill into his mouth, its foul, metallic taste washing across his tongue.

He made sure a little of it escaped his lips, just so there could be no doubt as to what was going on, and then swallowed the rest, spitting out the crushed shell. Then he let his mind open, inviting in anyone who cared to come. He stared back at Zmyeevich victoriously. Zmyeevich’s own expression was one of confusion. He could see the blood on Mihail’s lips but would not yet understand its import, or even guess whose blood it was. He would search around for an explanation, using all his senses, and then …

And then Mihail felt it: Zmyeevich’s own impression of puzzlement. The vampire’s mind had searched for understanding and had, inescapably, locked on Mihail’s. Mihail knew that he had a far greater feeling of Zmyeevich’s intellect than the vampire would have of his, but it was enough. Within moments, Zmyeevich understood.

He stepped back. Dmitry’s grip on Mihail relaxed as Zmyeevich’s will receded, and then strengthened again under Dmitry’s own volition.

‘No,’ said Zmyeevich thoughtfully. ‘Let him go.’

Dmitry took a moment to consider it, but obeyed. Mihail stepped away from him and sat on the side of one of the coffins. Zmyeevich eyed him, with a curl of disgust on his lip. Dmitry simply looked bewildered. Mihail himself felt nausea at the blood he had swallowed, and at the flashes of Zmyeevich’s repellent mind that flickered through his own. He tried to push them away. They were no use to him now.

‘Dmitry told me you were a Danilov,’ Zmyeevich said. ‘But he failed to mention that you are also a Romanov.’

‘A Romanov?’ Dmitry’s voice revealed that he had no idea of the fact, let alone its implications.

Zmyeevich waved a dismissive hand at him. ‘How long has it been, I wonder, since Cain took that blood from me? Fifty, sixty years? Was it still fresh?’

‘It tasted as foul as I’d expected,’ said Mihail, making sure that Zmyeevich would perceive the laughter in his voice. ‘And it was as effective as if it had come straight from your veins.’

‘
How
are you a Romanov?’ Zmyeevich asked.

‘My father is Grand Duke Konstantin Nikolayevich.’

Zmyeevich thought for a moment. ‘So you are of Aleksandr Aleksandrovich’s generation.’

Mihail nodded. ‘The tsarevich is my first cousin. It’s becoming quite a family tradition. My grandfather plucked Aleksandr I from your grasp, and I shall do the same with Aleksandr III. All of my generation are safe.’

Zmyeevich roared. His arm swung across the room and his hand caught Mihail on the jaw, knocking him to the ground. He was quickly upright, squatting, rubbing his cheek. He glanced around the tomb, noting where his knapsack lay, and more importantly his crossbow.

‘All are safe except for you,’ sneered Dmitry.

‘And how would killing me help you?’

Dmitry laughed. ‘It wouldn’t, but it would still be just. It would serve as a lesson to others. And it would be a pleasure.’

Mihail suspected he was speaking to impress Zmyeevich, but it would not work. Zmyeevich was a long way ahead of him.

‘So are you going to kill me, Ţepeş? It would be so very easy. I’m your prisoner. Perhaps you’ll even allow Dmitry the honour.’

‘Gladly,’ said Dmitry.

‘No,’ said Zmyeevich curtly. ‘That would be the worst outcome of all. If he dies, with my blood in him, then he will become a vampire – one of my many offspring and sway to my will. It would be a fitting punishment, but not worth the price.’

‘What price?’ asked Dmitry.

‘Tell him, Ţepeş,’ said Mihail.

‘That fate can befall only one Romanov,’ Zmyeevich explained. ‘Pyotr owed me his soul, and only a single soul can redeem that debt. If it were the soul of this pathetic creature, this bastard Romanov – a man of no power or value – then I should lose my chance of ever ruling Russia. It would be a self-indulgence that would do me no benefit. What shall it profit me, to gain one soul and lose a whole nation?’

Mihail stood up, reaching out for his knapsack as he did so. His crossbow lay on the floor at Zmyeevich’s feet. Did he dare take it, or would the
voordalak
’s wrath subsume his good sense, and would he claim pyrrhic vengeance? And yet Mihail did not want to leave without it. He allowed himself a momentary glimpse into
the creature’s mind, and knew he would be safe, at least if he did not try to press his meagre advantage. He bent down and picked up the weapon.

‘You’re just letting him go?’ asked Dmitry in astonishment.

‘What can we do?’ asked Zmyeevich.

Mihail smiled broadly. He felt like a hero. Better than that, he felt like his grandfather. What Aleksei had done to save Aleksandr I, Mihail had recreated in this new generation. He mounted the steps out of the tomb, his knapsack dangling from one hand, his
arbalyet
clasped in the other. About halfway up, when he was just at the border between light and shadow, he turned and looked back down on Zmyeevich and Dmitry, who stood in glum silence. His heart thumped in his chest. He was astounded to still be alive, but he knew he had pushed his luck far enough. He would deal with them another day.

‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said. Then he walked up and out into the sunlight.

AT LAST IUDA
was whole again – both in body and in mind. He’d done experiments, years before in Chufut Kalye, to establish just how much of a vampire’s body could be consumed by sunlight before it would be unable to restore itself. He knew that his own wounds had taken him close to the point from which recovery was impossible. But he’d never thought to question the specimens upon which he had experimented as to their state of mind. It had been remiss of him, but it afforded him the pleasure of surprise as he experienced his own delirium and his eventual happy return to lucidity.

But he couldn’t shake off one simple conclusion: his survival was in only a small part down to his own wits. He had been lucky. True, much of the luck had been of his own making. He’d helped in the design of Saint Isaac’s and he’d known the location of every exit – concealed or otherwise – from its interior. But it was luck that he’d had time to drag himself, with his one remaining hand, across the floor to that tiny hatch that led down to the sewer; lucky that Zmyeevich had not noticed and stopped him; lucky that his body had been so shrivelled that it could fit through such a slight gap between the stones. Lucky that she had come looking for him – and had found him.

Why had he mistaken her for Susanna? There was some superficial similarity, of course, but then the same could be said of Raisa. He paused in his train of thought. Was his relationship with either woman just coincidence? He doubted it. Had he, throughout his entire life, been trying to make amends?

After that first kiss, outside the deadhouse beside the little church
in Esher, Iuda – then just Richard Cain – had been suspicious of Susanna, or at least suspicious of himself in his feelings towards her. It had not been a cause of great concern and his capture of Honoré had given him something far more enthralling to occupy his time and his mind. He paid Susanna little attention.

It was his first, quite accidental lesson in how to handle women. The less of his attention she received, the more she was desirous of it. She would creep into his room at night and talk to him, distracting him from his books. To start with she kept the conversation very girlish, talking of fashion and dancing and of books quite unlike the kind that Richard was interested in. Then, realizing she was getting nowhere, she changed her tune. She clearly remembered the conversation they’d once had about sex. That had been over a year before, but now she returned to the subject often.

It irritated Richard both because it distracted him and because it interested him. Worse, Susanna could tell it interested him, however much he attempted to hide it. Why else would he blush so when they talked?

But still he liked to kiss her – and the kiss at the end of an evening together was always more enthralling than the one at the beginning. In his dreams, and sometimes when awake, he imagined her body, free of the layers of clothing that even one so humble as a housekeeper’s daughter was expected to wear in order to preserve her dignity. He had never seen a woman naked. He tried to extrapolate from the anatomy of animals, but his own body was so far removed from those of the animals he’d dissected that he imagined any guesses he took with regard to a woman’s form would be laughable.

Instead, he would ask Susanna questions. He did it subtly, so he thought, but in the end it was precisely what she expected of him – for which he hated her. The most pressing point of his inquisitiveness was on the most obvious difference between the sexes and, from what little he could gather, between woman and other female animals – the breast.

She giggled when he first raised the issue, but then tried to describe what she had hidden beneath her cotton bodice. Words were not her forte, but it was then that Richard discovered a
hitherto unknown talent in her: she could draw. The following night she returned to him with a piece of paper. At first she would not show it to him, asking what he would give her to see it, but in the end he snatched it from her. It was a charcoal sketch; a reproduction of a single female breast. He became very silent and, he could tell, blushed profusely. She left him alone, but he gazed at the picture for hours before going to bed.

The next night she visited him again, but neither spoke of her drawing. He had learned now not to appear too keen. Eventually, she broached the subject.

‘Didn’t you like it?’ she asked.

‘What?’

‘My picture.’

‘It was very informative.’

‘How do you rate me as an artist then?’

‘How can I tell?’ he asked.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, you could have drawn me the Acropolis or the Colosseum – I’ve never seen either. How would I know if it was any good?’

He looked back down at the paper, waiting for her to react.

‘You’re such a silly,’ she said. By the time he looked up, she had already begun to undo the dozens of hooks that held her clothing in place. Soon she was naked to the waist. ‘You could have just asked,’ she said in a whisper.

Richard held up the drawing, as if to compare, but his eyes were fixed on the reality, not the image.

‘Well?’ she asked.

‘Very accurate,’ he said, his mouth dry.

‘I did it in front of the mirror.’ He continued to stare.

‘They’re much better than a drawing,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Because you can touch them.’

‘I suppose so,’ he replied.

She tutted. ‘I said you can touch them.’

Richard blushed deeper still – partly at the prospect, partly at his own obtuseness – but he did as he was told.

It was around three weeks later that they finally had sex, for
the first and only time. They had both known since that moment that it would inevitably happen. Richard wanted to perform the act within the church itself, at the foot of the altar, but it was a step too far even for Susanna. Instead they chose the privacy of the Chamber Pew, the secluded extension housing four enclosed benches, reserved for the Duke of Newcastle, his brother and their respective servants. Both were long dead now, but their families maintained the privilege of using it. That afternoon, though, Richard and Susanna put it to another purpose. They would be seen by no one, unless Thomas chose to climb to the highest pulpit to practise his sermon.