The People's Will

Chapter VI



DMITRY TOOK LITTLE part in the torture. He would not have objected, but neither would he have drawn particular enjoyment from it. If the victim had been human, it would have been a different matter, but Iuda was a vampire, and Dmitry could experience little pleasure in his pain.

Zmyeevich, on the other hand, relished the concept. And so Dmitry was happy to sit and watch – and learn; learn both the techniques of a master and whatever information Iuda might reveal.

It would be familiar territory for Iuda. The wire rope that still dug tightly into the flesh of his neck – now the only thing restraining him – was fastened at its other end to an eyelet in the ceiling of an underground cell that lay deep beneath an office that had once been the Moscow centre of the Third Section. It was the lair in which Iuda – under the name of Vasiliy Innokyentievich Yudin – had based himself for almost a decade and it was in these dungeons that he had tortured so many who had information which might protect the life of Tsar Nikolai I, along with those he tortured for reasons more personal to him.

In the subsequent years Dmitry too had made his mark in the Third Section, and so now, although the organization no longer existed, it had been easy enough to requisition these rooms beneath the Kremlin and make them a base for himself and Zmyeevich while they stayed in Moscow; and for their prisoner. Iuda had chosen the place for himself as the ideal haunt for a vampire. They would trust his judgement.

Light would have been the most effective tool in the armoury of a vampire torturer, and yet down here it was the one thing of which they were deprived. They might have taken him up and held him close to the door above, opening out on to the Kremlin, but even if they hadn’t been seen, Iuda’s cries would have been heard. Down here it was much safer. It did not matter; Zmyeevich knew other ways to inflict suffering upon a fellow vampire – ways that Dmitry would never have dreamed of.

To cut him, to make him bleed, to sever a finger or an entire limb; these were all things that would inflict pain upon the victim, but a voordalak could withstand most pain – certainly one of the age and the experience of Iuda. He could easily reassure himself that he would heal – that however great the agony there would be no lasting effect, not even a scar. The worst that could happen was that the vampire would die – and that could never be to the benefit of the torturer.

Zmyeevich had tried these basics, cutting and severing. In total Iuda now had thirteen fingers and three thumbs, the excess scattered on the floor, his hands replenished by regrowth. Zmyeevich – with a little help from Dmitry – had drained Iuda of blood until he was almost dry. Normally that would bring on a light-headedness in a vampire, a mood of compliance in which the creature might reveal its darkest secrets. Iuda was made of stronger stuff. They had needed to feed him in order to be able to begin again. It had been easy to get hold of a victim – a young boy who had been impressed by Dmitry’s uniform and thrilled at the offer of a visit to the Kremlin Armoury. It was better that it was a child – less blood. They didn’t want Iuda to become too strong.

But it had all taken time. Now it was almost a day since they had arrived in Moscow, Dmitry travelling, like Iuda, in a crate. For him there was always the liberty, at least during the night, to open up the lid and step outside, but he rarely indulged himself. For most of the journey, Dmitry had been as much a prisoner as Iuda. But now things had changed.

After Iuda had fed, Zmyeevich switched to a different set of techniques in his attempts to extract the information he wanted. He made small cuts in Iuda’s body using a sharp steel knife. They would have healed rapidly and hurt little, but Zmyeevich had quickly inserted small shards of wood – he’d brought along a whole sack of them for the purpose.

‘A wooden stake through the heart kills a vampire because the flesh cannot heal rapidly enough,’ he explained. ‘Wood in any wound will have a similar, if less terminal effect. Hawthorn is best, though it is not essential.’

Soon Iuda’s belly, back and thighs were a latticework of short, deep cuts, from every one of which protruded a twig or a stick. Iuda screamed as each one was inserted, and screamed again whenever Zmyeevich took hold of one and chose to twist it, pressing it into the wound.

‘And then there’s always this,’ he said after a little while.

He cut Iuda once again, just as he had before, and this time slipped a clove of garlic, skinned and cut in half, into the wound. He repeated the process half a dozen times, and each time Iuda screamed as the white flesh of the vegetable penetrated his own.

‘This is where the myths about our fear of garlic come from,’ Zmyeevich explained. ‘The smell, the taste, the sensation on the skin – these are nothing. But buried in the flesh, it becomes something quite different.’

Dmitry nodded. He’d known even as a human of the belief that vampires feared garlic, but had never experienced it himself. Now, perhaps, he would be a little more wary. Zmyeevich continued the process until there was scarcely an inch of Iuda’s body that had not been implanted with either wood or garlic. Iuda screamed and shuddered with each new penetration, but did not grow weak. By the end of it, Dmitry saw Iuda more as a leg of mutton, prepared in a Petersburg hotel by some expert French chef who knew how to get the flavour of garlic to infuse every last fibre of the meat.

‘Come and look,’ suggested Zmyeevich when he was finished.

Dmitry approached, and peered closely at Iuda’s wounds, first examining one where a thick splinter of oak held open a flap of skin and fat just below Iuda’s bottom rib. Around it the flesh attempted to grow and reform, just as might the flesh of any wounded voordalak, but whenever it touched the wood, it was repelled, and so the laceration was in a constant state of flux, always trying to heal – never succeeding.

Next he looked at where Zmyeevich had placed a sliver of garlic. Here things were far worse. The flesh made no attempt to regrow. It lay dead and black, leaving a gaping hole in Iuda’s side. Yellow pus oozed from somewhere in the dark crevice that Dmitry couldn’t see. Even to a human the smell would have been repellent. To a vampire – smelling rotting vampire flesh – it was unendurable. Dmitry stepped away and breathed deeply.

‘Just an address.’ Zmyeevich was talking to Iuda now. ‘You must have had another home here in Moscow. Simply tell us where it is.’

It was only the second time Zmyeevich had bothered to ask, the first being right at the beginning, before he’d even laid a finger on Iuda. But Iuda would not have forgotten. It was a subtle approach; none of the great questions, along the lines of ‘How much of my blood have you hoarded?’ or ‘Where is Ascalon?’ It was just a simple question that could do little harm. And once Iuda was broken and told them the answer, everything else would follow.

But Iuda did not answer.

Zmyeevich turned away and let his eyes wander across the panoply of equipment that he had brought with him. His eyes fell upon an item and he walked over to it – a simple wooden bowl. He placed it on the floor and knelt down in front of it, rolling up his sleeve as he did so. He reached to the pile of knives – of every shape, size and purpose – and selected from them a lancet. He held the blade against the flesh of his forearm, touching it at one place and then another as though attempting to select the perfect spot. Then, without hesitation, he cut. Blood flowed quickly, running across his skin and dripping from his bare elbow into the bowl below.

While he had shown not a glimmer of fear or pain as he made the cut, now Zmyeevich’s face became contorted with strain and concentration. Dmitry understood the reason. If nature were left to run its course then the tiny cut to Zmyeevich’s arm would already have healed, with scarcely a few drops of blood shed. Only by the force of his will could he keep the wound open and deliver from it sufficient blood for his purpose – whatever that might be.

Soon he had enough, and he relaxed, breathing deeply, sweat glistening on his forehead. The flow of blood waned and died, and the gash began to close. Within seconds there was only smooth skin.

‘Hold his head,’ instructed Zmyeevich, standing and bringing the bowl over to Iuda. Dmitry did as he was told, though unsure of Zmyeevich’s intent.

‘Open his mouth,’ Zmyeevich barked.

Dmitry complied, forcing his fingers between Iuda’s lips and then his teeth, still failing to comprehend what was to come. Zmyeevich held the bowl of his own blood close to Iuda’s mouth and began to tip it forward. Iuda had not seen Zmyeevich bleed himself – his eyes had been closed and his head hung as he tried to cope with the pain of his myriad wounds. At the hint of blood on his lips he opened his mouth a little wider and drank greedily. Dmitry took the opportunity to push his fingers in deeper, so that Iuda would not be able to change his mind.

After a moment, the flavour of it hit Iuda. Dmitry could well imagine it – the blood of one voordalak tasted foul to another, at least at first. Even for those who wanted to imbibe, it had to be forced down, like medicine. With practice the instinct could be overcome, but Iuda was far from that point. He tried to spit, but had no strength, and the blood flowed out over his bottom lip and chin.

‘Tastes like piss,’ he muttered, forcing out more blood as he spoke.

‘No.’ Zmyeevich’s voice was almost soothing, like a mother trying to persuade her infant to eat. ‘You must drink it all down. You must savour the blood of your master.’

At these last words Iuda raised his head and looked into Zmyeevich’s face. Suddenly he seemed to understand whose blood it was. At the same moment Zmyeevich raised the bowl again, and began to tip the thick, warm liquor into Iuda’s mouth. Dmitry held his head firmly, but as the fluid dripped on to his tongue a second time Iuda began to writhe, thrashing his head from side to side and kicking out with his legs, his actions a desperate attempt to force the drink from his mouth and to break free of Dmitry’s grip.

Zmyeevich smiled triumphantly, but Dmitry was bewildered. Vampire’s blood might taste foul to the uninitiated, but it was nothing worse than that. Why should the thought of drinking it produce such terror in anyone, particularly in one usually so calm, as Iuda was? And that it was the blood of a voordalak of the eminence of Zmyeevich should make the consumption more an honour than a humiliation.

At last Iuda ripped his head free of Dmitry’s grasp. He jerked it forward and brought the bridge of his nose into contact with the bowl, knocking it to the ground and spilling its contents across the grey flagstones. Dmitry felt a pang of regret at the loss of so precious a fluid.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Zmyeevich, addressing Iuda rather than Dmitry. ‘There’s plenty more.’

He righted the bowl and picked up the lancet once again, preparing to yield another portion of his own vital fluid.

‘No,’ muttered Iuda. ‘Not that. I’ll tell you.’

Still Dmitry could not comprehend why the taste of Zmyeevich’s blood should be regarded by Iuda with such horror, to the point that it had broken him where all Zmyeevich’s twigs and garlic cloves – still protruding from his lacerated body – had failed.

‘You’ll tell me what?’ asked Zmyeevich.

‘Zamoskvorechye,’ he whispered. ‘Klimentovskiy Lane – number 14.’

His knees buckled and he slumped forward, hanging with the wire rope around his neck as his only support, finding even that more comfortable than standing.

Zmyeevich looked at Dmitry and said one word.

‘Go!’

Dmitry was on his way.

Number 14 stood opposite the Church of Saint Clement, after which the road was named. The building was rendered in red stucco, like the church itself. It was not a long walk from the cellars beneath the Kremlin: out through the Nikolai Gate, across Red Square, down the hill past Saint Vasiliy’s to the Moskva Bridge. It was all very familiar, the same pathways that Dmitry had taken in his youth, when he’d first come to Moscow to train as a cavalry officer. Much had changed, but most remained the same. Once over the bridge it was only a short walk, crossing the Vodootvodny Canal, and he was standing outside the building.

It seemed empty, but not abandoned. It must have been three years, probably a little longer, since Iuda had had the chance to visit. They had not asked about keys; there would have been little point – Iuda certainly did not have them in his possession. Presumably somebody kept them for him, perhaps kept an eye on the building too. They could be watching now. It could all be a trap – but Iuda’s fear had been genuine. Dmitry tried the door and was not surprised to find it locked. He glanced up and down the lane, but saw no one. It was well past midnight now. He threw his shoulder against the wooden panel and the lock broke away easily from the doorframe.

Dmitry stepped cautiously inside. He remembered the swinging blade that could so readily have decapitated Iuda in Geok Tepe. It was by no means beyond Iuda to have rigged up something similar – probably something far better – to deal with the unwary intruder. Dmitry fetched a paraffin lamp from his bag and lit it.

His inspection of the ground floor and first floor was cursory. Every window was curtained and shuttered, and the rooms themselves were empty of all but a few scraps of furniture. The layers of dust were suggestive of far longer than three years’ disuse, but Dmitry knew Iuda would not have spent much of his time here; the instinct for any vampire was to be underground.

The steps down to the cellar lay directly beneath the main staircase. Dmitry opened the door at the top and descended, still circumspect in case of any snare that Iuda had left. What might it be? Would Iuda have merely been defending his lair against human trespassers? Or would he have been afraid of his own kind coming in here and discovering his darkest secrets? It would be like him to cover all eventualities – but there could be no doubt as to which of the two species harboured his truest enemies.

Dmitry reached the bottom of the stairs safely. He was faced with another door. He reached for the handle and opened it. Beyond, the cellar was vast, taking up half the ground plan of the entire building. At its centre was a stone plinth, and on that lay a simple wooden coffin. Its place of honour in the middle of the room reminded Dmitry of the solitary chair that had held Iuda fast in Geok Tepe.

Dmitry approached. The coffin lid was in place. Still there seemed nothing to protect the slumbering figure of Iuda on those occasions when he lay here. But today he was not here. It made sense that he would not have set a snare to catch himself on his own return. Dmitry drew his sword and held it out, slipping its blade into the crack beneath the coffin lid, then twisting and pushing it to one side. If there were any trap installed, he hoped he was standing far enough away.

The lid fell to the floor with a low clatter, but there were no other consequences of Dmitry’s action. He glanced around; nothing in the cellar had changed. He approached the plinth and looked inside. The coffin, as he had expected, was empty, its silk lining still showing the slight imprint of where a body had once lain. This was not what they had been expecting at all. Zmyeevich had been sure that there would be documents, journals – with luck even some of Iuda’s experimental samples. They hadn’t expected Ascalon itself, but at least some clue. But Dmitry had examined the entire house, and this coffin was the only thing that suggested Iuda had ever been here.

Dmitry raised his sword and used the sharp tip to make a long, straight incision in the coffin’s lining, down the whole of its length. He ripped away the smooth material and hurled the bundle into the corner of the cellar. But beneath, there was nothing – just the hard wooden sides and bottom of the casket, and …

Something caught Dmitry’s eye, just where the side and bottom panels joined, about halfway down: a small metal ring attached to a wire, which disappeared into a gap in the wood, no bigger than a wormhole. On the other side was a similar arrangement, except that a longer stretch of wire was visible. The mechanism for some secret door? Dmitry doubted it. More likely it was the switch to activate whatever traps Iuda had to protect him while he slept; one wire to switch them on, when he lay down, the other to disable them before he rose. Dmitry would leave things be, for now.

He returned upstairs and considered. Why would Iuda have bothered telling them, if there was nothing here to be found? For a momentary respite from his suffering? To allow him the chance to overpower Zmyeevich and escape? It was possible, but it would not get him very far – Zmyeevich could deal with him perfectly well. Merely for the amusement of wasting their time? That seemed feasible, but Dmitry was still doubtful.

In his mind he retraced his steps around the house – upstairs, downstairs and in the cellar. And then he saw it: a gap in the layout of the rooms, on the ground floor, between the stairwell, the kitchen and the large room that looked out on to the street. He walked around it, trailing his fingers across the wall, feeling for any secret latch. The space was definitely there, large enough for a sizeable room, and with no windows – no outside walls – ideal for a vampire.

And that meant the entrance would not be through any of the main rooms of the house. Iuda would want to be able to rise from his coffin in the cellar and go straight to whatever was hidden in there, without passing by any windows and the inconvenience of daylight. Dmitry returned to the cellar steps. He did not go down, but closed the door at the top and examined the wall that had been hidden when it was open.

The switch was easy enough to find. With a click Dmitry felt the panel in the wall loosen. He pushed and it swung back. He stepped through.

It was a study. The walls were lined with shelves and in the centre stood a desk and chair, facing the door. A great mirror with a gilt frame hung quite unnecessarily on one wall, to the side of the desk. Dmitry stood and gazed into it, but saw no reflection of himself, just as Iuda would not have seen himself when he stood there. The small room behind was visible in every detail, but of Dmitry – of any vampire – there could never be any sign. Why would Iuda have put it there? It could be that it dated back to a time when Iuda was human, but it seemed improbable. More likely it was there only to serve Iuda as a reminder of what he was – a memento mori, but of what had passed, not what was to come.

It was a reminder for Dmitry too, but as ever when he looked unseeing into a mirror it was not his own death that came to his mind, but that of Raisa Styepanovna, the creature who had taken him from humanity – his vampire mother. He did not know quite how she had died – and thus could not decide how she was to be avenged – but whenever he saw a mirror he felt a sense of horror and revulsion that he knew came from her in the hours leading up to her death. She had gone mad, but the last lucid thought he had shared with her was her anticipation that soon she would once again be able to see her face.

He turned back to the room and began to search. The shelves were empty. He inspected them all and saw faint markings in the dust that suggested they had once been filled with papers, but either Iuda had taken them away himself, or someone else had got here before Dmitry. He turned his attention to the desk. There were a few items on its top – a dried-up inkwell, a paperweight, a candle – nothing of any interest. There were nine drawers, four on either side and one in the middle.

Dmitry pulled at the central one. It wasn’t locked, but stuck after he had opened it only an inch. He tugged, and it gave with a click. At the same moment, Dmitry heard a scraping sound behind him, and realized what a fool he had been.

He flung himself to one side, half rolling, half sliding across the desktop before landing heavily on the dusty carpeted floor. He stared back at where he had been standing. In the shelves behind the desk, right behind his back, a panel had dropped open, revealing behind it some contraption whose nature he could easily guess at. There was a grinding, squealing sound and something began to move in the darkness. Then the movement stopped with a clunk and a long, thin cylinder rolled sideways and fell to the ground. All was still.

Dmitry got to his feet. He bent forward and picked up the cylinder. It was essentially an arrow, though slightly thicker, made of wood except for the feather fletches at the rear end. The front had been sharpened to a point. The mechanism from which it had fallen was a crossbow, aiming the wooden bolt at the heart of whoever had so incautiously stood and opened that drawer. But such a complicated mechanism needed care and maintenance, and this had received none for many years. Some of the metalwork was rusted, and Dmitry could see the marks where rats’ teeth had gnawed into the wood. A few pieces of string hung loose where once they would have been taut, presumably thanks to the same cause.

Dmitry laughed, both at his luck and his stupidity. He could easily have been the victim of Iuda’s little trap, and it was down not to him but to fate that he had survived. Why was that a matter for laughter? He closed his mouth and the room was silent again, but still in his head he could hear someone laughing – laughing at him. There was no voice to it, no timbre or pitch that he could recognize, but the sentiment behind it was clear. It had the same mocking tone he had heard from Raisa, even as she took his mortal life. But it could not be her – she had shared a part of his mind, but no longer. Who then could it be?

He pushed the thoughts away and examined further the trap that had failed to catch him. When Iuda had last been here, he would have ensured that everything was in order. The metalwork would have been well oiled; the rats would have been poisoned. But when Iuda last departed, he would not have been expecting such a long period of absence. What was he thinking now, Dmitry wondered, as he sat beneath the Kremlin with Zmyeevich, awaiting Dmitry’s arrival? Had he realized how decayed his machine had become? Dmitry would be pleased to see the look on his face when he returned.

In the meantime, he had work to do. The open drawer was brimming with documents. Dmitry began leafing through them.

Iuda followed Dmitry’s progress in his mind. It was pure guesswork; there was no mental connection between them as there would have been if one of them had inducted the other into the voordalak race. Iuda simply employed the power of reason. He knew how Dmitry behaved; he knew what Dmitry would find. There would be details over which he was mistaken, of course, but for the most part everything would go according to Iuda’s plan.

Once Dmitry departed, Zmyeevich had begun to remove the twigs and splinters of wood and cloves of garlic that perforated Iuda’s body, and he had begun to heal. Even so, it was a slower process than normal. In some wounds, depending on the type of wood, sap had oozed into his flesh and inhibited regrowth. The same was true with the juice from the garlic. Iuda had to acknowledge some admiration for Zmyeevich. In all of his experiments on the functioning of a voordalak’s body he had never thought of trying anything like this. Zmyeevich, with his great age and experience, knew much that Iuda was yet to discover.

They did not speak. Zmyeevich walked out of the cell and Iuda heard him heading up the stairs. Iuda was glad of the solitude and of the chance to consolidate his plan for escape. It began with Dmitry’s trip to Zamoskvorechye. Iuda had acquired the property not so very long after becoming a vampire; he’d had plenty of time to prepare.

Dmitry would go down to the cellar first, Iuda imagined. He’d be wary of traps – he knew Iuda well enough for that. Would he touch either of those two cables hidden on each side of the coffin? One side might not make him taller, but the other would most certainly make him shorter. Iuda had come up with the idea long before his gaolers at Geok Tepe.

Would Dmitry perceive the missing space in the middle of the house? Would he find his way in there? If not, he would return empty-handed and Iuda would have to let slip another clue. It wouldn’t come too easily, not without a little more persuasion, but Iuda could cope with the pain of the wooden shards and the garlic. He could even cope with a little more of Zmyeevich’s blood; that was a slow, cumulative poison.

But Dmitry was no fool – not in that way. He’d find that secret room, Iuda would give odds on it. Would he avoid the crossbow? Would it even work after all this time? It would be a shame if that got him, or the guillotine in the cellar. Iuda remembered explaining once to Dmitry’s father how disappointing it could be in a game of chess when an opponent fell into one of the inconsequential traps that were set not to catch him, but to guide him towards the true finale. The dénouement would not take place in Moscow at all, but in Petersburg. But first they had to get there.

He heard footsteps approaching and the sound of voices speaking softly. Zmyeevich entered, followed by Dmitry. Iuda tried to let his face show a little disappointment, as if he’d not been expecting Dmitry to return, but instead thought he’d be reduced to a cloud of dust by the wooden bolt that pierced his heart. It was by such little things that Iuda had managed so often to deceive, ever since he was a boy.

Dmitry was carrying a bundle of papers. That was good. He laid them out on the wooden table, next to the tools of Zmyeevich’s trade, and began to pore over them. Dmitry explained what he made of them. Iuda could not see exactly what they were looking at, but he could listen.

‘These all relate back to his time in the Third Section. They’re mostly just authorizations for interrogation.’

He was right, that’s all they were.

‘Any names you recognize?’ asked Zmyeevich.

Dmitry shook his head, but with none of the dismissiveness the papers deserved. There was nothing important in any of them, they were just dross, padding so that the real item of substance would not be too obvious.

‘These are letters from his bank, but they’re ancient.’

‘And all sent to the house in Zamoskvorechye, so even the bank would be able to tell us nothing new.’

Shame. Keep trying.

‘What about this?’ asked Zmyeevich. ‘It looks like a rental agreement. Is there an address?’

Dmitry spoke after a pause, with a slight laugh. ‘It’s just Papa’s old apartment on Konyushennaya Street. We’ve already looked there.’

Was that a hint of nostalgia in Dmitry’s voice? It was where he had grown up.

‘This one I can’t make out at all though,’ said Dmitry.

Aha!

‘It looks like a builder’s plan …’ Indeed it was.

‘But I can’t tell what for.’

Iuda sighed inwardly. He hoped he wouldn’t have to help them further. He began to think of how he could let the information slip without making it too obvious, hoping it wouldn’t come to that. They should both have been familiar with what they were looking at.

‘It looks big,’ Dmitry concluded, unhelpfully.

Zmyeevich considered, his fingers stroking his moustache. He began to nod, slowly at first, but speeding up. He turned to look at Iuda, smiling broadly, then back to Dmitry.

‘Oh, I know where this is,’ he announced.

‘Where?’ asked Dmitry.

‘Get him back in the crate,’ said Zmyeevich, nodding in Iuda’s direction. ‘We’ll have to take the railway.’

‘But where are we going?’

‘We’re going,’ said Zmyeevich, ‘to Saint Petersburg.’