The Third Section Part 17

Dmitry forced his face to remain relaxed, hoping it revealed nothing. He felt the urge to glance over at Raisa, just to avoid Tamara's eyes, but he knew it would hint that he was lying.

He could remember it all so clearly. He'd been there. The dead man's name was Obukhov. Dmitry could even recall his rank a captain. There'd been a group of them, led by Aleksei and Dmitry liked to think himself. He'd only been a lieutenant then. They'd set out to trap a voordalak, though only he and Aleksei had known it to be such. That had been unfair on the men. Obukhov had died for it. Aleksei had sent most of them away, including Dmitry, and dealt with the police himself. None of it was for Tamara to know.

'Two murders, thirteen years apart. Hardly related,' he said.

'There were five murders in 1825.'

'Yes, I remember that much.' Dmitry had thought and spoken quickly. At the time the deaths had caused something of a stir even among those who sought a more natural explanation. If he denied remembering the events at all, Tamara might easily catch him out.

'You were in Moscow?'

To Dmitry's relief, the waiter arrived with the blini. Tamara had chosen to have hers with red caviar, while Dmitry and Raisa each had cherries and cream. As soon as they were alone, Tamara repeated her question. 'You were in Moscow?'

He nodded, without breaking eye contact. She wasn't as pretty as Raisa, but no one would deny that she was attractive. Her face was quite square, perhaps a little masculine, and her eyes were of a dark brown that seemed unusual in contrast with the colour of her hair. She was not pet.i.te, like Raisa, but well proportioned. She looked as though she was probably quite strong. There was something familiar about her face, particularly the nose and the jawline.

'But your father didn't speak of it to you?'

'Why should he? Papa reported lots of crimes. It was part of his job.'

'Are you still in touch with him?'

Dmitry felt a bitter taste in his mouth. It wasn't her fault it was a perfectly natural question but he didn't need to be reminded of his father's recent silence. It was time to turn the tables on her.

'He was a friend of your parents, you know,' he said.

If she had been walking she would have tripped. Her confidence vanished into the air.

'My parents? Your father?'

Dmitry tried to press his advantage. 'That's right. Well, it was Vadim Fyodorovich that he knew really that would be your grandfather.'

This seemed like more comfortable ground for her. 'He was,' she said, with infectious enthusiasm. 'They fought together in the war. I've heard all about him but I'd never have guessed. Aleksei was Aleksei Ivanovich your father?'

Dmitry nodded. 'That's right. I was too young to really remember Vadim, but Papa told me so much, just like your mama must have.'

'She always speaks of Grandpapa in the war, and his comrades: Vadim, Dmitry, Maks and Aleksei. But Aleksei was never more than a name.'

'He was the only one of the four to survive. Maks was Maksim Sergeivich Lukin and Dmitry was Dmitry Fetyukovich Petrenko. I was named after him when he saved Papa's life at Austerlitz.' A thousand stories bombarded Dmitry's mind, and he wondered which he should tell her first. Then he paused as suddenly a realization hit him. He looked at Tamara's smiling face, but said no more. He turned instead to Raisa. 'We must be boring you horribly.'

She smiled broadly. 'Not at all,' she said. 'Your father must have been quite a man in his day. I can see you're proud to take after him.'

'He was,' said Dmitry, then he turned and looked into Tamara's dark eyes. 'He was.'

'I'm sure he was,' she said. 'I was just hoping he might have said something about these murders.'

'Not a thing,' he lied. Now more than ever, he would not expose Tamara to the knowledge that Aleksei had shared with him. The voordalak could be consigned to the memories of the past. Even Tyeplov and the Crimea seemed distant now. 'Why are you so keen to find out?' he added.

'Murder is murder,' said Tamara, 'however long ago it happened.' She glanced over at Raisa as she spoke and then unaccountably laughed. Dmitry turned back to Raisa and saw why. A large blob of whipped cream adorned the tip of her nose. Dmitry tried not to laugh but smiled broadly as Raisa looked from one to the other, unaware of the cause of their amus.e.m.e.nt. Tamara rubbed her nose to mimic how Raisa should remove the unwanted item, but still she didn't catch on. Eventually, Dmitry picked up his napkin and leaned over towards her to wipe the cream away. He was almost touching her face when she took the napkin from him. He felt her fingers briefly come into contact with his.

'Dmitry Alekseevich,' she said jokingly, smiling into his eyes, 'you presume too much.' She began to clean the cream away for herself, but her voice and her eyes had suggested to Dmitry that there might be far more he could presume, given the chance.

They left soon after. Dmitry paid for the meal and outside hailed a sled and saw them on their way. Moments later he too was snuggled under the furs in the back of a sleigh and was heading for his hotel. He smiled to himself, feeling happier than he had for many years. Raisa's flirtation was pleasant, if meaningless, but it was nothing to do with how he felt. That was down to something quite different.

Tamara had no idea. Neither had he until that evening. It should have been obvious, but his father was a clever liar. And when both he and Domnikiia had gone to Siberia and left Tamara in Moscow, they had put everyone off the scent, including Tamara herself, the poor little girl. He laughed. Not a girl any more. It was her face that had given it away. He was surprised no one else had noticed, but who knew Aleksei's face better than he did? He even remembered Domnikiia's, just as he had last seen it, on a cold winter's evening much like this, outside the Lavrovs' house, as little Tamara waited inside.

Tamara's nose was Domnikiia's; her jaw Aleksei's. It was strong for a woman, but it suited her. The Lavrovs must know, of course, and they would probably see it in her, even while they raised her as their own. But Tamara had never been their natural child. Her mother had been the woman who had posed merely as her nanny Domnikiia Semyonovna. Once that fact was established, then, even without other evidence, her father became obvious: Domnikiia's lover, Aleksei Ivanovich. They had taken their secret with them into exile, and not even told their daughter. Nor had Aleksei told his son, and Dmitry could well understand why. At the time, Dmitry, with a priggishness that can only be found in the young, had been outraged at his father's betrayal of his wife, Dmitry's mother, Marfa. To reveal that there was a child would have been foolhardy. But now Marfa was dead and Aleksei was as good as, and until today Dmitry had believed that with regard to family he was alone in the world.

But now that had changed. Dmitry smiled even more broadly and wrapped himself tighter in the furs, relis.h.i.+ng the concept. He even said it out loud, though not so as the driver would be able to hear him. The words sounded wondrous on his lips.

'She's my sister.'

CHAPTER XIV.

IT WAS THE most wonderful night of the year, at least to Yudin's mind; the winter solstice the longest night. The night he felt most free. If vampires were not such solitary creatures, then today they would throw a party; they would join their brethren on city streets across the world across the northern hemisphere and feast on the living, secure in the knowledge that dawn was as far distant as it could ever be. The humans celebrated their festivals, be they pagan or Christian, a few days later, when they first noticed that the days were getting longer and the sun was beginning to rise from its nadir. In Russia, where the misunderstanding of priests was favoured over the calculation of scientists, Christmas followed the solstice by an even greater gap, but no amount of prayer could change the path of the Earth around the Sun and so the shortest day fell, as Yudin could easily predict, just when it should.

It was a little after four in the afternoon now, and the sky was dark. It would not be light again until past eight the following morning. And Dmitry was in Petersburg, so Yudin had no immediate concern about appearing too young to his friend. Tonight he deserved to indulge himself. Tonight was Yudin's Christmas.

He had only just left the Kremlin. He wore a coat and hat, not for warmth simply to fit in. In his hand he grasped a small black-leather case, in which he carried a selection of instruments that might bring greater enjoyment to the evening. Red Square was full of people, some up to their knees in the snow, but still happy to be in Moscow in the heart of winter. The lamps had been lit so that all could see where they were going as they travelled home from work, or out to visit the shops, or to take tea with friends. Yudin looked to the south and saw Saint Vasiliy's, and before it the Lobnoye Mesto. That was where one of those deaths had occurred in 1825. Yudin could not guess what had happened back then, but he had no doubt that a voordalak had been involved, and so too had Aleksei.

It would be tempting to re-create that night's events, but also foolish. It would quieten down here later, but so close to where he worked there was always the chance that someone glimpsing his face would begin a trail of discovery that would eventually unveil the truth about him. He had been cautious for almost thirty years, and was not going to be stupid now.

He turned left and pa.s.sed under the Resurrection Gate, glancing up, but not pausing, to note the mosaic of George slaying the dragon that had been cemented above the archway. Everywhere, there were reminders for Zmyeevich, should he choose to return.

He made for the station a good place for anyone in search of the innocent and naive. It was where Raisa had found a new girl to replace Irina Karlovna at the brothel, fresh off the train from Petersburg and looking to start a new life. It served also as a reminder of England; not the station itself Yudin had left the country of his birth long before Stephenson had come up with his first locomotive. It was the Russian word for it vokzal not too dissimilar from 'Vauxhall' in south London, an easy ride from his family home in Surrey. Some said there was a connection between the two words. The story relied, as so often, on the a.s.sumed stupidity of Tsar Nikolai. He had been in London in the 1840s and seen Vauxhall railway station and ignorant buffoon that he was renowned to be a.s.sumed that the word meant 'railway station'. And none of his entourage was brave enough to contradict him. In truth, Nikolai was a long way from being a buffoon, but there were always those, even within Yudin's own department, who liked to portray him as such.

They should read their Pushkin. 'At fetes and in vokzals, I've been flitting like a gentle Zephyrus.' He wrote that in 1813 and meant by it a sort of public park. And there was one such park at Tsarskoye Selo, which was the destination of Russia's first ever railway, back in the 1830s. Hence the name. But Yudin remembered the beautiful public gardens in Vauxhall that he'd visited as a boy, so maybe there was a connection. He smiled to himself. He remembered them as being beautiful he did not remember them and judge them as beautiful; he was no longer capable of that.

It was then that he saw them the ideal victims: a man and a woman walking through the snow, and between them, clasping each of their hands, a child, certainly no more than ten years old. The child was so well wrapped up that he couldn't guess its s.e.x, but that did not matter it would not be the focus of events. It was the emotions that would be roused in its parents on seeing it suffer as Yudin slowly fed upon it that would most thrill him; would make their blood all the richer when he got to them, the woman first, and then the man. He smiled to himself that was fanciful. Their blood would not be transformed in any way by their terror, but Yudin's appreciation of it would be.

From their dress and the district they were travelling through, Yudin guessed they were not poor. That could mean they had servants easy enough to deal with. He followed at a safe distance and within a few minutes the family arrived at their house. They went inside. Yudin saw no sign of anyone receiving them at the door, but that was not enough to be certain. Even if there were no staff, there could be other family members in there. But there was a long night ahead and Yudin could afford to wait and watch. He glanced up and down the street, but there was no suitable place to hide. His mind stepped back to 1812 when, though he had not then been a vampire, he had stalked men through these same city streets. Back then, with Moscow deserted, it had been easy to simply hide in a doorway and wait, but today anyone pa.s.sing would think it suspicious. The best thing to do was to patrol.

He walked down the street, turning right at the end, circling his prey, looking for any other entrance through which he might get at them or by which they might escape. There was nothing; the block was a single edifice of houses, built side by side and back to back. He would enter through the front door, and they would be trapped. He imagined them, sitting happily now beside a warming fire, and then later cowering, pleading. What would they offer him to spare their child? What would he take? How long would he let them believe that he had shown compa.s.sion before they witnessed its little body being desecrated and destroyed? He had the whole long night.

Within minutes he was at the front of the house again, eager now to get in there, to begin turning his imaginings into reality. But he was not so overwhelmed by his desires to forget to take one final circ.u.mspect glance up and down the street. It was then that he realized he was not the only hunter abroad in Moscow that night. On the corner at the end of the block stood a figure. It was too far to make out the face, but he was tall and his stature was recognizable enough for Yudin to remember seeing him before, at the other end of this same street and earlier in the evening as well. He couldn't be sure, but he could soon find out.

He turned and went back the way he had come till he reached the next junction. Now he was at the opposite corner of the block from where he had last seen the figure. He crossed so as to get a better view of both streets, along one of which he expected to see that same man approaching. He did not have to wait. The figure came into view and then instantly stepped back, catching sight of Yudin.

Now Yudin began to walk swiftly, but not too swiftly he did not want to lose the man completely. As prey he needed somewhere crowded, just as when he had been predator he had sought isolation. He turned south-west and headed back towards Lubyanka Square. As he walked, he listened, but the snow dampened the sound of any footsteps. Even so, he felt confident his pursuer would not have given up.

Despite the snow and the darkness, there was a cheerful mood to the crowds of people who crossed the square from all directions. A number of stalls selling food and drinks were doing a reasonable trade. Yudin made a sharp sidestep behind one of them and waited. It was not long before a tall figure walked past that could only be the man who had been following him. It would be easy to lose him now and resume his planned activities for the evening, but Yudin was not so short-sighted. If this man or whatever manner of creature it might be had found him tonight, he could find him again. And even tonight, he might not be alone. Yudin needed to discover more.

Moments later, the figure walked past the gap between the two stalls, his long legs moving him swiftly forward and his head scanning from side to side in search of Yudin. There was no chance to see his face. Yudin stepped back out into the square and watched his pursuer walk on a little further and then stop opposite a stand selling pelmeni. Yudin ducked away again and ran along behind the little wooden stalls, counting them off as he pa.s.sed. The one belonging to the pelmeni vendor had no back to it, but was hung with various vegetables and preserved meats, there to act as decoration as much as ingredients. Yudin stood a little way back, hoping that the darkness would hide him.

The man remained, still looking south across the square, still trying to discover where Yudin might have gone, little knowing how close he was. Finally he turned and stared towards the stall, gazing almost directly at Yudin. Whether he saw anything, Yudin couldn't tell, and for the moment didn't much care. More important was what Yudin himself had seen: a face from the past, and with it a dozen memories, memories of an ingenious torture, of a voordalak chained to a wall, of the sun rising and falling as the Earth spun. But what came back to him most clearly of all was a name. It had been a joke at the time, but now there was little for Yudin to laugh at.

The name was Prometheus.

Even after arriving in Petersburg, Dmitry had hesitated to go home. He'd had a slow, lonely lunch at a restaurant near the station, and then hired a sled to take him to Senate Square. He stood now where he had stood then, thirty years ago or it would be in five days' time. He smiled. Tsar Nikolai had not made it; he had not even managed thirty years of power. Dmitry had survived him, as had Yudin. Even Aleksei had lived longer, if the fate that Nikolai had condemned him to could be called a life. A man on the train had said he reckoned that the new tsar would pardon all those who had plotted against his father those who were left. Tsar Aleksandr II had been lucky enough to know his father to be there at his deathbed. Would he grant Dmitry the same privilege with Aleksei? There was always hope.

And that would mean that Tamara would also have a chance to meet her father. There was nothing to suggest she knew the truth. Should he tell her? It surprised him that he felt no resentment towards her. Thirty years ago he would have. Thirty years ago he had hit Tamara's mother across the face out of frustration when he saw that he could never tear his father away from her. It was laughable childish. He understood Aleksei better now, as with each year the son became more like the father. How could Dmitry pa.s.s judgement on a man's infidelities? And even if some vestige of hatred remained for the way that Aleksei had betrayed his mother, he could not see how that should be pa.s.sed on to the daughter. None of it was her fault. And however much he tried to rouse his feelings of antipathy, he couldn't escape the warm sensation of brotherly affection that he had felt since the moment he had realized who she was.

But the question remained: should he tell her? Would she be pleased to learn the truth; that her apparent parents were no such thing, that they had lied to her throughout her life, that she was the b.a.s.t.a.r.d offspring of a wh.o.r.e and an exiled traitor? But would that not be compensated by gaining a new-found brother, by the lost time they could make up together? He shook his head. That would be a boon for him, but not her. She did not yearn for a brother, just as he had not yearned for a sister until he knew that he had one. On this issue at least, he would not be so self-indulgent. He would stick with his father's wishes, as best he could perceive them. Aleksei had clearly gone to great efforts to hide himself from Tamara Dmitry would not act against him. Perhaps, if the rumours of the amnesty were true, Aleksei would return home with a changed mind. Time would tell, but until then, Tamara would not hear the truth not from Dmitry's lips.

He looked out across Senate Square, then turned to face the Admiralty. He s.h.i.+fted a few paces to the left and leaned on his cane. Now he was at the exact spot where he had been standing back then. He could clearly see the Bronze Horseman, and just a little way in front and to the left had been Yudin and his father. There was one major difference there was no bridge there any more. The Isaakievsky Bridge was in the process of being reconstructed upstream, away from Senate Square. It had been a floating bridge of pontoons somewhat grander than the one in Sevastopol, but on the same principle. Now there was a new bridge, originally the Annunciation Bridge, but quickly renamed in honour of the dead Tsar Nikolai the first real, solid bridge ever to be built over the Neva. It stood opposite the Church of the Annunciation, a little way downstream, so the pontoon bridge had been moved to keep a distance between them.

Today, as in 1825, there was little need for bridges. The surface of the river was frozen solid, though it still flowed swiftly beneath. It was across the ice that Aleksei and Yudin had fled, there that Yudin had been shot, there that Aleksei had comforted him and there that Aleksei had been arrested. Dmitry could see their figures as he had seen them for the last time, minutes before that Aleksei desperately signalling that he should get away, Yudin calmer, but with the same intent.

Dmitry turned now as he had turned then and left the square. His destination was as it had been then, but his route was less circuitous. There were no troops out today searching for straggling revolutionaries. He walked past the Admiralty and turned down Nevsky Prospekt and soon he was outside his home not the home that he shared with Svetlana on the other side of town, but the home in which he had grown up with Marfa and Aleksei where Marfa had died. Underneath was a bookshop. That hadn't been there when he was young. He remembered Marfa writing to him about it when the old man had moved in. She had never seen so many books in one place. It was soon after that that she had stopped writing, and instead Yudin had sent a letter to explain that she had died.

Dmitry looked up at the windows of the apartment, remembering which room was which. The one in the centre of the first floor was the salon. That's where his harpsichord had been, and after it his piano a gift from Aleksei. It had arrived only a day or so before the revolt, and so his father had never heard him play it. Now it was across town, in the home that Dmitry shared with Svetlana. He knew he should go there.

But he didn't go immediately. Instead he stood in the snow and looked up at his former home, and let the music fill his head.

Tyeplov. That was his real name, as best as Yudin could remember. It would be in his notes. Prometheus the t.i.tan. It had seemed fitting when Yudin had scrawled the word on the cave wall at Chufut Kalye, all those years ago.

But whatever he was called, Prometheus should not have been in Moscow. He should not have been anywhere on the surface of the Earth, but deep beneath it. Yudin and Raisa had left them all entombed beneath Chufut Kalye. Prometheus himself had been shackled to a wall, but had evidently escaped his chains. And then, somehow, he had dug his way to freedom. And now he had come for Yudin.

Of that there was little doubt. Prometheus had been following him, and there could be no question as to his motivation revenge. For such antisocial creatures, vengeance was an unusual pa.s.sion in vampires. Yudin had more than once turned the trait against them, or at least used it to his own advantage. Aleksei's friend Maks had killed three voordalaki back in 1812. With a little direction from Yudin, the retribution that the others had meted out to him had been quite wonderful to behold. But Yudin had no desire to become the victim of a similar vendetta and what he had done to those voordalaki he held captive beneath Chufut Kalye was far worse than anything achieved by Maks.

He left Lubyanka Square and walked north-east, away from the centre of the city and the Kremlin. He knew full well he would not be going there, or to his house in Zamoskvorechye, while Prometheus was following him and for the moment it seemed that the easiest way to be certain of where Prometheus was, was to have him always just a few paces behind. Yudin had no direct reason to suppose that his pursuer was there, but he had been so indiscreet about his movements that only a fool would have lost track of him. From the little he could remember, Prometheus was no fool.

He turned on to Rozhdestvensky Boulevard, heading west, deciding that it was best to take a path tangential to the one that would lead him home while he pondered what to do. As he turned, he glanced over his shoulder, but did not see the tall figure of Prometheus. He had no doubt that he was out there, somewhere. And perhaps not just he alone. A dozen or more had been buried there at Chufut Kalye. How many had escaped? Had they all come to Moscow and was Prometheus merely the one that Yudin had recognized? Anybody he pa.s.sed in the street might be one of them. Or perhaps they were keeping back, encircling him, preparing to close in.

And there was another consideration. It was not just Yudin against whom the vampires of Chufut Kalye would seek vengeance there was also Raisa. She had been one of them, ostensibly. Yudin had experimented on her. Most of his discoveries about reflection were based on observations of her. And yet he had always avoided being cruel to her, at least so cruel that she would notice. He had never been quite sure why but, as with his friends.h.i.+p with Dmitry, it was down to a feeling that one day it would prove useful.

With Raisa, even when that day had come, he had not been sure of her till the last. It was Aleksei who had ruined everything released all of Yudin's prisoners and turned them against their master. Even without Raisa's help Yudin would probably have escaped, but it would have been much tougher. She had helped him to entomb the others. Still he had not delivered to her the reward he had promised the mirror she so craved. But it meant that the other vampires would hate her as much as they did Yudin perhaps more. Would they accept her as a sacrificial offering to appease their wrath, and so allow him to live? If it came to it, he would certainly make the offer.

Yudin turned right down a narrow alleyway and immediately broke into a run, making sure that his feet came down with an audible stomp, stomp, stomp, despite the attempts of the snow to m.u.f.fle them. After a few seconds he swiftly turned and came to a halt. In the mouth of the alley, caught in the moonlight, stood his pursuer.

It was not Prometheus. The fact that he was following Yudin became clear as he first froze for a moment, then fled back out into the street. So now it seemed there were at least two of them two who had escaped the caves. And while Prometheus had seemed a very able huntsman in the city streets, this new arrival was an outright amateur.

Yudin ran back up the alleyway after him.

The sleigh moved slowly along Nevsky Prospekt. There was traffic ahead, but Tamara was in no hurry. It was Konstantin who had invited her here to Petersburg and he who had sent the sled if she was late, he could hardly blame her. The Kazansky Bridge was chaotic, as some sleighs turned down to ride alongside the ca.n.a.l and others turned out on to the Prospekt. There was even a wheeled carriage ahead, but it was hopelessly stuck in the snow. Tamara's driver flicked his whip at his horse and steered them around the obstruction. They pa.s.sed Great Konyushennaya Street and Tamara glanced over towards Aleksei Ivanovich's former apartments, but she knew that there was nothing more for her to learn there. She had received a reply to her brief note to the new tenant, who signed herself simply as Mademoiselle Nevant. It was clear she had something to hide, but it was nothing that would help in Tamara's quest.

The bridge over the Moika was less congested. The sleigh would have glided over easily had it not been for Tamara's sudden scream of 'Stop!'

The driver pulled up almost immediately, and Tamara leaned out of the carriage. She pulled her scarf tighter round her face, so that she would not be recognized. On the left-hand side of the street was a row of shops. Most sold food and drink, but some sold other goods such as furnis.h.i.+ngs. One of them sold toys.

The window of the store was decorated for Christmas in the Germanic style that was becoming ever more popular in Russia. At it stood a little boy, his hand clasped in his mother's. He was nine years old Tamara knew that precisely. She could not see the boy's face, but she could see the mother's clearly as she attempted to press on through the snow. And in recognizing the mother, she knew the child.

Soon, the boy was pulled away from the window and mother and child continued along the street. Tamara told the driver to carry on, slowly, and they kept pace with the pair, allowing Tamara to keep her eyes on the boy for a little longer, before he and his mother turned left towards Saint Isaac's, disappearing from view as Tamara's coach travelled on. At the end of Nevsky Prospekt they turned right, pa.s.sing in front of the Winter Palace. In Palace Square, dwarfed by the column commemorating Aleksandr's victory over Bonaparte, stood a decorated spruce tree. Again it was an import from the Germanic traditions of celebrating Christmas. The imperial family, with so much German blood in it, had erected such a tree at home for many years. This was only the fourth year that one had been placed here for public display, much to the disgust of the metropolitan.

They drove across the square and out into Millionaire's Street. It led straight to the Marble Palace, and to the same door she had used on her last visit. She knocked sharply and the door was opened by the footman she had seen before. Her suspicions of his dark past in the form of a lizard were now forgotten. Now, it all seemed very real almost familiar. He led her along the corridor to the flight of wooden steps, then up them and out on to the stone staircase. At the top of it, he took her across the marble landing and then paused at the high doors to knock. From within he heard a response that Tamara didn't catch and he opened the door. Tamara stepped inside.

Konstantin came over to her, his arms outstretched. He took her hands and kissed them both through her gloves. Then, still holding them, he leaned back slightly and looked into her face. Straight away he frowned. She could well understand why. Despite the effort she had made with her make-up, she knew that it must now look awful. She could feel the tracks that her tears had cut through the powder on her cheeks and could taste their salt at the corner of her lips.

'My dear Tamara,' asked Konstantin, 'what has happened to make you cry so?'

She could not think of any lie with which to appease him, and she doubted whether she wanted to. More than anything, she had the overarching desire to explain to somebody how she felt and tell them what had happened. And so she told him.

'I've just seen my son.'

Once back on the main street Yudin's pursuer soon caught up with him again. He was more stealthy now, or thought he was, but it was very easy for Yudin to ensure that this new voordalak was never too far behind him. Yudin let him follow as far as the Vysokopetrovsky Monastery before deciding to turn the tables.

He ducked inside the monastery. It was a sprawling collection of buildings, and a place wherein a man could be lost from view simply by turning two corners. That was easily achieved. Now Yudin stepped back into the shadows. He saw the voordalak walk past quickly, looking from side to side, trying to pick up a trace of Yudin. Once he had gone, all was quiet and the monastery seemed deserted, but from within the pale blue walls of St Sergius's Church came the sound of chanting. It became momentarily louder and a patch of yellow light told Yudin that a door had been opened.

The light vanished and the sound dimmed and from the side of the church emerged a priest. He was perfect for Yudin's needs. Yudin waited a moment until he had almost disappeared from view and then scuttled silently after him, hiding again as he got close. He made an easy quarry his head too full of thoughts of his Saviour for him to have any awareness of what was going on around him on Earth. Soon he wouldn't need to worry about either. His final destination appeared to be the monastery cathedral, an unusual brick rotunda whose tower seemed to dwarf its body.

Yudin caught up with the priest just inside the doorway. His teeth sank quickly into the aged neck and he felt a gush of warmth as blood spilled over his lips. The priest died without uttering a sound. Yudin held him for a few moments and drank, but there was little pleasure in it. Once the prey was dead, the blood began to stale quickly and without experiencing the suffering of his victim, what real enjoyment could Yudin draw from any of it? This was nothing like the hours of self-indulgence that Yudin had been planning for the evening a night of hedonism of the sort that he rarely allowed himself but it would have to do. Besides, there were many hours until dawn and perhaps still the prospect of spoiling himself.

He dragged the priest's body into the cathedral and moments later emerged wearing his vestments. He still clutched the little leather bag that he had brought with him from the Kremlin. It didn't look quite as ecclesiastical as the rest of him, but he knew he might be needing it. The bottom of his overcoat peeped out from under his ryasa, but he did not want to leave it with the body, and later on he might need to abandon this disguise. The next step was to become reacquainted with his erstwhile pursuer. He positioned himself on the corner of Petrovsky Boulevard and Petrovka Street, where he could keep an eye on two of the three sides of the monastery, knowing that eventually the voordalak would emerge.

He didn't have to wait for long. The figure was easily recognizable as it came back out on to Petrovsky Boulevard. Knowing he would look conspicuous if he remained still, Yudin began walking straight towards him. He was tempted to pa.s.s right by him, but it would be a foolish risk. The voordalak's face might have made little impression on Yudin, but the reverse was unlikely to be true. Before Yudin reached him, he planned to cross over the road and watch from one of the side streets to the north.

In the end, it was unnecessary. The vampire looked briefly in either direction, without even registering the approaching figure of a priest. He hung around for a few moments more and then headed off east, evidently concluding that Yudin had escaped him. Perhaps tonight his attention was more easily held by ideas of hunger than of vengeance. Yudin let him get a little way ahead and then followed, always one bend in the road behind, always just out of sight.

The voordalak kept to the road for a little way, then turned left, cutting through one side street after another as he wended his way broadly northwards. They were well outside the centre of the city when the vampire, entirely as though this was the route he had planned, turned into a lane heading east. Yudin quickly ran up to the corner and looked round, but the street was empty. On the left-hand side there was a tavern. It seemed the likely destination, but Yudin couldn't be sure and wasn't going to wait.

The sight of a priest in a tavern wouldn't be too unusual, and so Yudin chose not to change his disguise. He wrapped his scarf around the bottom half of his face, for fear of being recognized close to. At the tavern door, he paused. It could be a trap. He could have been led here deliberately. But to a tavern? He could hear the hubbub of many voices within. It was too crowded for them to act against him unless all of them in there were voordalaki, expectant of his arrival. Just how many of them could have escaped Chufut Kalye?

He went inside. It was as busy as any hostelry in the city at that time of night and at that time of year. A quick glance around identified the figure who had been following him, standing beside a table at the far end of the bar. He seemed to be introducing himself to the three men sitting there, and holding out a bottle of vodka, which he could only just have purchased, in the hope of gaining admittance to the group. His overtures were accepted and he sat down, filling the others' gla.s.ses.

Yudin went to the bar and ordered wine, and then sat in the furthest corner from the four of them, watching. He sipped his drink without enthusiasm, keeping his eyes on the table across the room, trying to fathom what the plan was. Those other three were humans, Yudin was sure of that; not comrades that the voordalak had arranged to meet, but potential victims that he had happened upon by chance. As far as Yudin could tell, they were drunks, like most Russians. The voordalak went back to the bar and ordered another bottle, drinking as freely as the others, and by the end of it they were all 'mates'. Yudin could not have managed the deception, not even when he had been human. In his life he'd had few friends and no 'mates'.

Then the voordalak sprang his trap. Yudin could not hear a word of what was said, but he could guess every meaning. The vampire stood and signalled towards the door. He knew a great place where they could go. Maybe he was offering women; maybe more, cheaper vodka. Whatever the bait, one of the men bit. That it was only one would make it easier. The man stood and, arms round each other's shoulders, he and the voordalak headed for the door, each using the other for support. A vampire couldn't get drunk, however much he consumed, and it was clearly all for show. But it would make them easier to follow.

Yudin let the door swing closed behind them and then got to his feet. As he exited, he saw the two figures, carrying on along the road in which the tavern stood. They were singing the voordalak better than the man. He followed them, remaining stealthy, not letting the appearance of inebriation fool him into thinking that the vampire was not still on guard.

The road they followed ran alongside the railway track, at the very beginning of the long route to the capital, high on an embankment so that the gradient would never be too steep. On that side of the street there were no houses, those that had once stood there wiped away and the occupants made homeless in the name of progress. Yudin smiled at the thought. At last they came to a church. It was a small, unimpressive place, in a sorry state of repair. Away from the road, the cemetery was quite extensive, but the line of the railway had cut it neatly in half. The vampire signalled to his new friend that this was where they had been headed, but the man appeared reluctant. The vampire went over and unlocked the main door in the side of the squat red-brick nave, then staggered back out to the street. He said a few more words to the man and then started singing again. The aria immediately became a duet, and the two figures, arms once again around shoulders, tottered inside. The door closed behind them and Yudin raced up and put his ear to it.

The building screamed of being a vampires' nest. It would have a crypt in which they could sleep during the day, comfortably, as undead among the dead. It was a little way from any other buildings, but not too far so that they wouldn't be able to go out and find fresh meat. And the whole place smelled of voordalaki or smelled of their victims. The one scent was never far from the other.

From inside the sound of two voices in perfect discord reduced to one the man, Yudin guessed. Then there was a thud and a shriek and another, louder thud, and all was silence. Next would come the feeding. That was good; it would make the voordalak unwary. Even so, Yudin would not enter by the door. He began to circle the church, looking for an alternative way in.

They hadn't sat at the dinner table. As soon as Konstantin had seen Tamara's tears he had taken her over to a divan. He brought her a gla.s.s of wine and then sat beside her. Occasionally, he would go to the table and bring her something from the banquet that had been laid out for them, or bring something for himself, but then he seemed reluctant to eat in front of her. He appeared entirely discomforted by the whole situation, but never once annoyed by it.