Thirteen Years Later (41 page)

He’d been going for about ten minutes – using the half-minute regularity of the screams as a clock – when he first noticed the smell; the
voordalak
smell. It wasn’t quite the same as the scent of Kyesha, and far stronger – there were many vampires ahead. He had never noticed when he had first dealt with the Oprichniki, but it must have been there. The smell of death that had permeated Moscow at the time would have done much to disguise it. Soon, he
noticed that the caves were becoming lighter – not with sunlight, but from lamps and candles. He blew out his own candle and slipped it back into his bag. Now he had both hands free. In each he carried a sword; one of steel, the other of wood; one for Cain, the other for his victims. He had a pistol too, hidden inside his jacket, but the solid feel of a sword in each hand gave him a far greater sense of protection.

Ahead of him, around a corner, he could see the edge of the bright, glimmering circle that indicated there was a lamp hung from the wall. Another scream came, but it was still too distant to be coming from that next chamber.

Aleksei turned the corner. The tunnel widened; a portion to the side was fenced off with an iron grille. There was a heavy lock on the door. It was like a prison cell. An unnecessary simile – it
was
a prison cell. Aleksei took a step towards it and looked inside. It was empty. There had been little work done to the natural shape of the cave in order to adapt it to its new purpose. The stone walls were still rough and jagged. At the far end, where the space tapered to nothing, sat a wooden bowl. It held nothing, but its bloodstained sides gave a clue as to its usual contents. He took a step closer to see if there was anything more of note in there, his face almost brushing against the bars. Another scream came from further ahead, as Wylie once again inflicted his necessary torture.

There was a rush of movement from inside the cell. Aleksei did not see where the creature had come from, but its face was instantly close to his and its fangs were bared. A hand reached through the bars and pressed against the back of Aleksei’s skull, dragging him inwards. Aleksei struggled to pull away, and in no time he was free. The creature was weak – starved. It retreated into the cell and crouched in the middle, looking sullen. It was a sad vestige of a human being but still – in the way that every
voordalak
did – it appeared human. A man who had been starved in the same way would have gone into the same decline. The clothes on the creature’s body were dirty rags. Its limbs were as
thin as sticks and its lips and gums had receded, revealing the only physical feature that did distinguish it from a human – its fangs. A healthy
voordalak
would have been able to hide these behind a charismatic smile and pass itself off amongst mortal men, but this creature had not enough flesh on its lips to bring them together and cover its mouth.

It – Aleksei knew he should think of it as a he, as he would still have considered any other vampire, but the word just did not fit – eyed Aleksei for a few moments and then slunk back towards the cave wall, lying against it with its arms pressed into the crevices. It did not completely vanish, but Aleksei had the benefit of having seen it move there. That must have been how it had hidden when Aleksei first arrived, camouflaged against the stone walls that somehow in the dark matched its sallow complexion. Aleksei had seen that same skill of disguise years before.

He moved on. The tunnel bent round to the right. Again he heard the metronomic scream. The passageway opened out into another small cave. This time there were no bars; the creature was manacled against the wall, suspended by its arms but with its feet also pinioned so it couldn’t kick out. The iron of its shackles was twice as thick as would be used to restrain a man; clearly Cain – like Aleksei – was aware of the
voordalak
’s superhuman strength. This specimen appeared well fed. It raised its head from where it had lolled against its chest and fixed its eyes on Aleksei. Behind them shone the intelligence that Aleksei knew could reside in any vampire, and also the malevolence. It looked as though it might speak, but said nothing.

On the wall beside the
voordalak
, at the level of its chest, was a small patch of light, brighter than the candle-lit surroundings. Aleksei traced its source and saw, high on the other side of the cave, a tiny hole through which sunlight was shining. Though they were deep beneath Chufut Kalye, Aleksei realized that he had walked far enough to now be close to the inside of the cliff face itself. Cain would need a source of sunlight to conduct some of the experiments he described, and these caves – situated where
they were – would provide the perfect balance of light and darkness. Like a desirable garden, the cliff faced south, and would get the maximum of each day’s sunlight.

He looked back at the chained vampire. On the stone wall a number of lines had been chalked. They started on one side of the naked torso, passed behind it and emerged the other side. At the end of each one there was writing. Aleksei peered closer, careful to keep out of range of any slight movement the
voordalak
might be able to achieve. It was a list of dates. Each of the chalked lines that crossed the vampire’s body was labelled with one. The dab of sunlight Aleksei had noticed lay exactly on the line with that day’s date – 30 October.

It suddenly became clear to Aleksei what was going on. This was a sundial, one that told the date as well as the time. As autumn progressed into winter, the sun would fall lower and lower on the horizon, and the beam would move up the wall. But within each day, the spot of light would move from west to east, following the chalked line for that day, and cutting across the
voordalak
’s body. There were no scars, but that did nothing to remit the pain that would have been inflicted as each day the sun took – what? – five hours to cross that part of the sky, slowly burning the vampire’s chest or stomach as it went. It would heal, only for the torture to resume, as sure as day follows night, the following morning.

It reminded Aleksei of a trick he himself had once played to escape a vampire – and a man posing as a vampire. It had involved a beam of light shining through the shuttered window of a house in Moscow, traversing the room as the day progressed and threatening to trap them in a corner. In that instance, they had fled, but for this creature, flight was impossible. Even so, Aleksei shuddered as he perceived how closely his own thinking had run to that of Cain.

He glanced again at the vampire’s face. Still it looked at him but did not speak. Above its head something else had been chalked. Aleksei took a step closer, still wary, but desperate to see what
was written. The text was in the Latin alphabet, but the name was the same in almost any language. It was a sick joke:

Prometheus

The saddest thing was that Aleksei understood it: Prometheus the Titan, punished by Zeus by being chained to a rock where every day a vulture would fly down and peck out his liver, only for it to regrow each night, ready for the bird to return and feed the next day. Once again, it appeared that his mind and Cain’s were cut from similar cloth.

Ahead of him the screaming continued. Aleksei wished he could somehow get Wylie to stop, to communicate to him that he no longer needed that siren guidance. But Wylie could not know, and would not risk leaving Aleksei alone in the silent darkness of the caves before he was certain he had found his way through. Aleksei would have dearly loved it if, like Jason, he had Orpheus to drown out the sound with his lyre, or like Odysseus’s crew, he had beeswax to cram in his ears.

The next cave was again divided into cells – two of them this time. In the first a
voordalak
sat alone. It too wore rags, and appeared emaciated. Only bars, not stone, separated it from the next cell, and so it could communicate with its neighbour, if it so desired. It did not do so. It did not even look up as Aleksei passed. The other cell had two occupants – a male and a female
voordalak
. Aleksei had never encountered a female vampire before, but had no reason to suppose that such a creature did not exist. These two were completely naked, and huddled together with unexpected affection at the back of the cave. The female’s hair was long and unkempt and covered most of her shame.

Aleksei noticed on the floor of both these cells remnants of fruit and vegetables – a rotten potato here, an olive pit there. It seemed Cain was trying to discover whether vampires could survive on a diet less rich in human blood. A noble goal, but would not the creatures have tried it years ago if it had been possible?

He walked on. The tunnel narrowed and then widened again. He was reminded of the dark passageways between the chapels in Saint Vasiliy’s. Ahead of him he saw an armchair, made of red leather. It seemed quite incongruous. Beside it was a table, and on the table, a book. As Aleksei moved closer he noticed the image of the chair wobble a little, and realized that he was in fact looking at a reflection. The actual chair was still out of his sight, behind a bulge in the rock face. A huge mirror – it must have cost thousands of roubles – was fixed along the far side of the cave. Aleksei could only guess at how it could have been brought down through the tunnels in one piece.

‘Can you see me?’ said a voice.

Aleksei whirled round, feeling that the sound had come from behind him, but there was no one there. He looked in every direction but still there was no one. The source could only be in the section of the cave Aleksei could not see; and yet the mirror revealed all of that to him. His grandmother’s stories immediately came back to him. Of all of them, this was the most absurd; even to a man like Aleksei, who had believed in the solid reality of the
voordalak
for thirteen years, yet could not conceive how the idea that their image was not reflected in a glass was true.

But as he peered round into the cave, he saw that the chair was not empty. In it sat a woman – a very beautiful woman. Her hair was blonde and she looked like she was in her mid-twenties, though what her real age was Aleksei could not guess. She wore an exquisite gown of velvet and silk, golden, with lace at the neck and cuffs. He eyes were of a scintillating blue, but they betrayed no movement. At first, Aleksei suspected she was blind.

‘Can you see me?’ she said again, not moving her gaze from straight out in front of her.

‘I can’t see you in the mirror, but I can see you in the flesh,’ he told her.

She stood and turned, and as her eyes fell on him Aleksei realized she was not blind, she had simply been too intently
focussed on what she saw in the mirror in front of her to look away.

‘What do I look like?’ she asked. Aleksei took a deep breath and was about to describe her when she asked a slightly different question. ‘Am I beautiful?’

‘Yes,’ said Aleksei, without the need to prevaricate.

‘Still?’ she said. Aleksei couldn’t provide an answer. ‘They call me Raisa Styepanovna,’ she said. ‘And you?’

‘Aleksei Ivanovich.’

She walked towards him, holding out her hand. ‘You are a strikingly handsome man, Aleksei Ivanovich,’ she said.

The introduction was so natural that Aleksei almost bent down to kiss her hand before he remembered that she was a vampire. He need not have worried. While she was still two steps away from him her head jerked suddenly backwards and she came to an abrupt halt. Her hands went up to her neck and Aleksei saw for the first time the iron band around it that constrained her. It was narrow and could almost be taken for a choker. It even added to her allure. From it, a heavy metal chain, now taut, stretched out behind her to where it was attached to an iron ring fixed to the cave floor.

Aleksei looked to the mirror again. Still there was no sign of Raisa Styepanovna in its image, nor of her beautiful dress, nor even of the chain stretching out behind her. Aleksei saw his own reflection, and those of the chair, a table and a book, but between them, where this beautiful lady stood, all that could be seen was the bare rock wall behind her. Of all the strange phenomena that surrounded the
voordalak
, this seemed the one that most needed the intervention of a discerning god, to intercept those rays of light that carried images of the
voordalak
, her clothes, or anything related to her, but to allow through the more mundane objects that anyone would expect to see.

Another scream came from along the tunnel. Raisa pressed her lips together tightly, and her eye held back a tear. ‘Will it never stop?’ she said. ‘He does it only to torment me.’

‘I’m not sure he can be blamed for his agony,’ said Aleksei.

‘But the man who causes it can.’ Aleksei presumed she was referring to Cain, and chose not to disabuse her. ‘Hasn’t he done enough to me?’

‘Compared to some that I’ve seen,’ said Aleksei, ‘you appear to be living in relative comfort.’

‘Hah!’ she snapped. ‘He told me I would be beautiful for ever – that’s why I allowed myself to succumb to one of these dreadful creatures.’

‘Your beauty has endured.’

‘Yes, but at what cost?’

She stood staring into the mirror, her gaze met only by empty space. ‘How do I know that I am beautiful?’ she asked, her voice on the edge of hysteria.

He left her to her sorrow and carried on down the tunnel. The scream came again, and this time Aleksei knew it was close, just around the next corner. He gripped the handles of his two swords firmly and stepped through the rock archway. Beyond, he found much that he had seen before. Another natural cell, separated from the tunnel by heavy iron bars. The
voordalak
inside had been given a chair to sit on. This one did not look underfed. It was wearing very little, just torn undergarments, with nothing to cover its top half. And the top half of its body was the strangest thing so far. It was covered in tattoos; some simple lettering, others ornate decorations. Aleksei tried to read some of the text and saw that it was nauseatingly mundane. Along the left side of its belly, parallel with its bottom rib, was a phrase in English simple enough for even Aleksei to understand.