Thirteen Years Later (11 page)

‘He’s not here yet,’ observed Dmitry.

‘Who?’ His father turned his head, bringing those crazed eyes on to Dmitry’s own.

‘Whoever wrote the message.’

‘Oh, Maks you mean? Maks is still here. He
was
there.’ Aleksei pointed to the centre of the room. ‘There was a chair.’ He walked in a small circle around the room, as if searching in its dark corners. ‘Can you see a chair?’ There was nothing. Dmitry did not comment on the obvious.

‘Then he was there,’ Aleksei continued, now pointing to a corner of the hut, across from the open doorway. ‘Of course, he didn’t need a chair then. He was dead. And now he’s—’ Aleksei stopped abruptly. His back was turned to Dmitry, and his body scarcely moved, even to breathe.

‘And now he’s buried outside,’ said Dmitry.

Aleksei turned and nodded. His eyes were no longer insane, but frightened, like a child’s.

‘We marked it with a cross,’ he said, ‘but that’s gone – just like the chair.’

‘We’ll make another one,’ said Dmitry.

Aleksei walked over and placed his hand on the side of his
son’s face. ‘You’re a good lad, Mitka,’ he said. Dmitry could feel his father’s thumb and two fingers stroking his hair, and felt the stubs of the two others against his cheek. He could not remember a time before Aleksei had lost them. He must have been about three, perhaps older. There had been an occasion around that time when his mother had been distraught, and he associated that with her hearing the news, but that was the rationalization of an adult. He remembered – it could not have been very much later – being surprised that other boys’ fathers had five fingers on their left hand, and remembered Aleksei trying to explain it to him. He remembered Aleksei allowing him to touch the gnarled stubs. It had fascinated him. His father had said that it didn’t hurt at all, but as he grew older, Dmitry began to wonder if that was not just one of the things fathers say. No man wants to let his son know that he can cause him pain.

The contact lasted only a moment, and then Aleksei walked away.

‘We’ve got plenty of time before whoever it is is due here,’ said Dmitry. He instantly regretted the implication – that the making of a new monument for Maks’ grave would be simply a way to pass the time. But before he could make amends, his father spoke.

‘I don’t think he’s coming.’

Dmitry turned. The room had darkened slightly, and Dmitry now saw that it was because his father had closed the door. Aleksei was looking at the wall revealed behind it, and Dmitry followed his gaze.

9 – 8 – 13 – M – Π

Dmitry stared at the message. As far as he could tell, it was in the same hand as the one daubed on the walls of their home in Petersburg. This, however, was much smaller, intended simply to inform, not to impress. Again, the same red pastel had been used.

‘That’s the same place Maks put his message,’ said Aleksei.

‘The eighth of September, one o’clock in the afternoon,’ said Dmitry. Aleksei nodded. ‘But that’s before he even wrote the message at home.’

‘That’s why I don’t think he’s coming,’ explained Aleksei. ‘He put the message here first, then gave us the second message so that we’d come here. Not to meet him, but to see this.’

‘But what’s the point of that? Just to tell us he was here? It’s like something some schoolkid scratches in the bark of a tree.’ Dmitry thought for just a fraction of a second; when he spoke again, his voice had an air of hushed realization. ‘Or maybe it wasn’t just to tell us he was here, but to tell us he wasn’t alone. That’s not just signed “M”, but “M” and “Π”. So the question is, who was, who is, “Π”?’

‘He
was
alone,’ said Aleksei, walking away from the door back towards the centre of the hut. He was completely himself again now, a puzzle of the present having dismissed the ghosts of the past. ‘Π is not a person; “Π” is for “
peesmo
”.’

‘A letter?’ said Dmitry.

‘Precisely. Give me a leg-up.’

Dmitry did not follow exactly what was meant, but his father mimed the action, and Dmitry copied, bracing the fingers of his two hands together to form a stirrup. Aleksei stepped into it, his head now almost touching the low wooden ceiling. Dmitry was quite able to take the weight, but resented his father nonetheless, not for this, but for his arrogant dismissal of Dmitry’s line of reasoning moments before. He was not to know that Π meant ‘
peesmo
’, but his father was happier to show himself as right rather than complimenting Dmitry on having a good idea. It had always been so.

‘Here we are,’ said Aleksei, jumping to the ground and clutching a small envelope he had plucked from between one of the rafters and the sloping planks of the roof.

‘How did you know it would be just there?’

‘Because that is where Maks placed
his
letter. So the more important question is . . .’

‘Is, how did whoever it is know where Maks put it?’

‘Exactly,’ said Aleksei. ‘Only Maks and I knew that.’

‘And Uncle Dmitry.’

‘True. But he’s dead too. So, logically, only I could have placed this envelope there.’ He grinned, and tore open the thin paper. Inside was a single stiff piece of card. Dmitry could not see what was written on it, but it took his father only moments to read. His eyes flicked up and met Dmitry’s.

‘Another appointment,’ he said.

‘The same code as before?’

‘No, somewhat different. Hardly a code at all.’ He handed the slip of card over for Dmitry to read.

The Imperial Bolshoi Theatre of Moscow
presents
Cendrillon
by
Fernando Sor
26 September 1825. Row 5. Seat 15.

‘You said you wanted to go,’ observed Dmitry.

‘I don’t think I’ll have my full attention on the ballet.’

‘Do you want me to come with you?’

Aleksei thought for a moment before replying. ‘Probably best not. I don’t think he means me any harm – here would have been a much better place for that. And there’ll be plenty of people about.’

‘He may still come here,’ said Dmitry. ‘It’s not two yet.’

‘We’ll see.’

Aleksei went outside. Dmitry followed. They spent the next few minutes searching for wood and making a cross, embedding it in the ground at the head of where Aleksei had marked out the grave and piling stones around its base. Aleksei said that it was a much better effort than the first one. Even so, Dmitry suspected it would vanish just as quickly. He said nothing.

‘I think we can be sure no one’s coming,’ Aleksei finally stated, looking at his watch. ‘It’s past four.’

‘We should head back.’

‘You go. I want to stay here for a while.’ Aleksei glanced down at the grave as he spoke.

‘Do you think it’s safe?’

Aleksei shrugged. Dmitry recalled how it was fear for his safety that had made Aleksei leave Maks alone here before. He clearly wasn’t going to let history repeat itself. Anyway, Dmitry doubted there was any danger – otherwise why arrange to meet at the theatre? And if there
was
trouble, his father was quite capable of dealing with it.

He shook his father’s hand, then walked over to his horse and untied it. He mounted and began to ride slowly north. He looked over his shoulder to see his father standing, watching him go.

He had scarcely turned his head back in the direction he was travelling when he heard his father’s shout: ‘Dmitry!’ He turned back again. His father still stood there, and after a moment he raised his arm in a broad wave. Dmitry returned the gesture, but he suspected the call had not been meant for him.

After a minute or so he turned and looked again, by now probably out of earshot. He could just make out his father, sitting cross-legged in front of the hut, staring down at the patch of ground he had marked out.

‘B
UT THAT’S THE POINT, ALEKSEI. I THOUGHT YOU UNDERSTOOD
. They’re not—’

The back of Pyetr’s hand dashed against Maks’ jaw, knocking his head sideways and silencing the word ‘human’ that had been on his lips, replacing it with a brief yelp as Maks’ breath rushed across his vocal cords.

‘Aleksei’s gone, Maksim.’ It was Iuda who spoke. ‘Left you all alone with us. And even if he were here, do you think he would care about that?’ Maks looked up at him. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth. ‘Did Dmitry?’

‘Aleksei isn’t like Dmitry.’

‘They’re neither of them like
you
. They both love their country.’

‘Love is a relative concept. They love their fellow man more.’

‘Do they?’ Iuda raised an eyebrow as he spoke the question.

‘Aleksei does.’ Around the hut, the other five Oprichniki had stripped to the waist. Varfolomei was coiling a length of rope. ‘When he finds out what you are, he’ll destroy you. He’ll hunt you down across the face of the earth.’

Iuda gave a brief nod to Pyetr, who hit Maks again, on the other side of his face. Pyetr looked at his hand. There was blood on it – his own blood. He licked it clean, and the wound healed in seconds. Looking at Maks, the cause of the injury was obvious.
His glasses were broken. They hung off one ear, one lens intact, the other shattered.

Iuda leaned forward and gently took them off Maks’ face. ‘I think we’d better put these somewhere safe, hadn’t we?’ Maks’ head jerked up. He looked around, his eyes unseeing. He was virtually blind without his spectacles, as Aleksei well knew. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Iuda, as though speaking to a child, ‘you can have them back afterwards.’ He popped them into his inside pocket and patted the breast of his coat reassuringly.

Varfolomei walked over and tied the rope around Maks’ wrists, binding them together. Then he flung the other end into the air. From his vantage point, Aleksei could not see the roof of the hut, but there was evidently something there to hook the rope over. Varfolomei and Andrei pulled in unison, and their combined weight hoisted Maks out of the wooden chair on which he had been sitting. Pyetr kicked it with the inside of his foot, and it hurtled towards Aleksei. He flinched, pulling back from the side of the hut, but immediately realized that the chair had not been aimed at him. He knelt back down and pressed his eye once more against the thin gap between the panels, observing what went on inside.

Pyetr knelt down behind Maks and rolled up the leg of his breeches until it was above the knee. Then he opened his mouth, pulling back his lips to reveal his fangs. His mouth seemed too large to fit into his skull, as though it should protrude like a dog’s snout. His jaws snapped shut and his teeth sank into Maks’ calf. Maks’ head whipped back, and his mouth opened in an agonized scream, though Aleksei heard no sound. Andrei stepped forward, and pulled up Maks’ shirt. His teeth, even larger and more gruesome than Pyetr’s, sank into the side of Maks’ abdomen. Blood gushed out, staining Maks’ skin and flowing into Andrei’s mouth. Soon it was full and the blood overflowed, dribbling over his chin and on to his own clothes.

Iuda walked over towards where Aleksei watched. He knew
Iuda could not see him; he was simply coming to retrieve the chair. But as he bent down to pick it up and his face came level with the tiny slit through which Aleksei watched, he narrowed his eyes and gave what looked to all the world like a wink. An expression of cheerful cunning fleeted across his face, but then he disappeared from view. The next Aleksei saw of him was his back as he strolled away towards Maks, dragging the chair behind him.

Maks’ feet swung only inches from the ground on to which now dripped the blood from the wounds to his leg and stomach. Effectively, this made him taller than Iuda, and that was why Iuda needed the chair. He placed it on the ground and stepped on to it. Now his head was, as it would normally be, above the height of Maks’. He bent forward and placed his lips on Maks’ throat. Aleksei noticed, concealed in Iuda’s hand, the double-bladed knife that was his preferred weapon. He was wise to hide it, lest the other Oprichniki should see and realize that Iuda was not one of them – that he was not a vampire. Even as the thought crossed Aleksei’s mind, he wondered how it had come to him. How did he know that Iuda was not a
voordalak
? How, indeed, did he know that the others were? He would not discover that for weeks.

Iuda lifted his head from Maks’ neck and placed his lips beside his ear. He whispered something and Maks’ response was to grin ecstatically and nod his head with vigorous approval. Iuda smiled and stepped down from the chair. He walked behind Maks. With a swift stroke of his knife, he cut Maks’ shirt in two. With a couple more strokes under Maks’ arms, which cared little whether they cut linen or flesh, he had removed the garment from Maks’ body, except for the sleeves, which still clung to his up-reaching arms.

Iuda stepped back and eyed his victim’s body. He glanced back in Aleksei’s direction, and Aleksei could have sworn that he winked again. Then Iuda issued an instruction to the others, which Aleksei did not understand, and the vampires gathered around Maks, pressing against him, their exposed flesh rubbing against his as their teeth penetrated his body. Aleksei looked up at
Maks’ face, but the expression on it was one of laughter, not pain. He looked back at the creatures that swarmed around him. There seemed to be more of them now. They were hard to distinguish, even if their faces could be seen, but the hair on two of them was distinctive. One had long, dark brown hair, almost to its waist. This one had gone further than its comrades, and had stripped completely naked; the tips of its long tresses danced over the top of its buttocks. The figure next to it was much smaller, with hair distinctive not for its length but for its colour – a rich, deep red.