‘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.

  Volume VII

  How long would it be before Cain was harvesting that for the covering of his latest book?

  The voordalak flung its head back and uttered a terrible howl into the air. Dr Wylie was remaining true to his word. Within seconds, it fell silent again. Its head dropped back down and it didn’t even see that it was no longer alone.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ muttered Aleksei through the bars.

  The vampire looked up. It peered at him as though it saw the shapes that formed his body, but could not associate them with any concept it recognized.

  ‘Sorry?’ it asked. In appearance, it was in its late twenties; a chubby round face was topped with a blob of dirty, curly blond hair.

  ‘Your pain. It’s my fault.’

  ‘It’s his fault,’ spat the voordalak, and flicked his eyes further down the corridor along which Aleksei had been heading.

  ‘Cain?’ asked Aleksei. The voordalak nodded. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ Aleksei almost laughed as he heard the question on his own lips.

  ‘Could you give me some water?’ It pointed behind Aleksei. He turned to see a full pail and a ladle.

  ‘You drink water?’ considered Aleksei; again, it sounded too much like the sort of question Cain might ask. The creature replied, shaking its head.

  ‘No, but it eases the pain. Here’ – he indicated the left side of his back – ‘this is where the skin came from; one piece, at least.’ Aleksei looked where he was shown, but, as was to be expected, there was no scar.

  Aleksei turned to fetch the bucket. Even as he did so, another scream shook the cave. He put both his swords into his right hand and then carried the water over with his left, placing the pail on the ground beside the bars, within easy reach from inside. Then he dipped the ladle in and passed it, handle first, to the voordalak, knowing he should be wary, but allowing his humanity to overcome his caution.

  The vampire reached out and then stopped, staring down at the ladle, or something near to it. It briefly glanced into Aleksei’s eyes and then back to what had captured its attention. ‘The three-fingered man,’ it murmured quietly, almost to itself, staring at Aleksei’s left hand.

  ‘You expected me?’

  The voordalak gritted its teeth in agony, but did not scream out loud. It grabbed the ladle and threw the water over its back, breathing heavily. The water did not hiss or evaporate; there was no heat in the creature’s body, only the sensation of it. The true heat was up above them, out in the sun. But the water appeared to alleviate the pain.

  ‘No one expects you, least of all Cain,’ it said. ‘He pretends you are a myth, but he talks of you.’

  ‘What does he say?’

  ‘Enough for us to know,’ said the voordalak.

  ‘To know what?’

  ‘That he fears you.’

  Aleksandr could not clearly recall the reason he had come here. He had been standing atop the cliffs at Chufut Kalye, gazing down at the valley. He had sensed a presence standing beside him and known it was the figure he had seen in his dream, standing on the prow of the boat, ordering him to come to this place. He had dared not look up into the man’s eyes, but it had been unnecessary. The figure had taken him by the hand and led him forward. He felt the cold metal of the gold dragon ring against the flesh of his fingers, even though he knew it had no more substance than the man himself. It had seemed such a simple idea, to take a step forward, to fall and fall and fall down, tumbling over the rocky ground, his spirit coming to rest long before his lifeless body did the same. But that was not where the figure had led him. Instead, they had climbed down a narrow crevice to a ledge on the cliff below.

  There Cain had been waiting, aged since their last encounter, in 1812, but unmistakable. The dark figure with the dragon ring had vanished, along with his influence over the tsar, but now there was a far more concrete reason to follow Cain deep into the caves; he carried a pistol. Eventually they had found themselves here, wherever here might be. Along the route Aleksandr had seen no one. His main concern had been to remember the way out – in the hope he’d get the chance to leave.

  It was, to be blunt, a cave – but a well-appointed cave. There was a carpet, chairs, tables and a desk; even a clavichord, sitting in the corner, its lid open. All around were items of scientific equipment – smoked glass and polished brass – whose purpose the tsar could not fathom. Curtains and tapestries hung from the walls around, giving a slightly greater sense of it being a room, but they did not cover all the rocky surfaces and so the reminders of Cain’s troglodyte existence were never far away.

  ‘You’re wise to have come,’ said Cain, speaking in French. He had already put down his gun. He wafted his hand towards a chair, indicating that Aleksandr should sit. The chair was wooden, with no cushion. Its high back was intricately carved. It looked medieval. The tsar sat down.

  Suddenly, the air was pierced by a howling scream, which came from a doorway to Aleksandr’s right. It was not the route they had come by. Cain gave a tight, apologetic smile. He walked over and closed the door, then drew a heavy red-velvet curtain across it. He returned to face the tsar.

  ‘I don’t think I really had a choice,’ said Aleksandr in response to his earlier comment.

  ‘The choice was offered, but your great-great-grandfather made the decision for you – for all of his heirs.’

  ‘I’m not sure a man can be bound by the promises of his ancestors.’

  ‘You admit Pyotr made a promise then?’

  ‘I’m told that’s what your master believes.’

  Cain flashed Aleksandr the briefest look of anger, which mellowed into a smile. ‘I think the word “employer” more aptly describes our relationship.’

  ‘Just like an Englishman to go into service,’ said the tsar, in English. He wondered for a moment whether it might be dangerous to taunt Cain, but discovered in himself no sense of fear. Whatever plan Cain was to execute had been set in place over generations – human generations – and was unlikely to be affected by anything Aleksandr might say now.

  ‘I’d forgotten how excellent your English was,’ said Cain, continuing in the same tongue. He changed the subject. ‘Would you care for a drink?’ He went over to a dresser, atop which were several decanters. It should have been incongruous against the rough stone wall, but somehow the furniture and the decor, after an initial surprise, seemed quite appropriate for their surroundings.

  ‘No, thank you,’ said the tsar. As he spoke, he thought he heard the scream again, muffled through the heavy oak door – but he might have imagined it.

  Cain turned back to him with a look of disappointment. ‘Oh, come now, Aleksandr Pavlovich. Do you think I’m going to poison you? Look!’ He pointed to a cabinet on the other side of the cave. ‘I have swords and guns. If I wanted to harm you, I wouldn’t need to be so subtle as to use poison. Claret?’ Aleksandr remained silent. Cain lifted the top from a decanter and poured two glasses. ‘You see?’ he said, raising one of them to his lips. He took a swig and sucked the wine through his teeth to aerate it. ‘It does me no harm.’ He walked over to the tsar and placed the wine on the broad arm of his chair.

  ‘Why doesn’t your employer come and see me himself?’ asked Aleksandr.

  Cain nodded towards a grandfather clock that stood behind his desk. It was still mid-afternoon. ‘It’s not a good time of day for him. But he has made himself known to you; otherwise, why would you be here?’

  Aleksandr thought of the dark figure of his dreams and visions, and again of today, when he had been tempted from the cliff top.

  ‘That was the same man that Pyotr met?’ Aleksandr asked, though he had no doubt of the truth of it.

  ‘One hundred and thirteen years ago.’

  ‘It’s a long time to hold a grudge.’ Aleksandr sipped from his glass without thinking, but realized he had little to fear from it. Cain’s argument made sense. Besides, it was an exceptionally good wine.

  ‘He has little else to amuse him,’ said Cain, slipping a strand of his blond hair behind his ear. ‘But it’s more than that. If he simply sought revenge then, as you suggest, it would hardly be fair to take it out on Pyotr’s descendants. And he would have had ample opportunity to do so before now.’

  ‘So what does he want?’

  ‘He wants what is owed to him. What your great-great-grandfather promised him.’

  ‘That’s still not my concern,’ said Aleksandr. He took another sip of claret.

  ‘It is when you have in your possession that which is not rightfully yours. That which was promised to my employer and which you have presumed to inherit.’

  ‘And what would that be? I’ve inherited a lot of things, from many people.’ Again, Aleksandr heard the muffled scream outside.

  ‘What Pyotr Alekseevich Romanov promised seemed worth less then than it does now. Yet still he chose the path of betrayal. You must make amends.’

  ‘Tell me then, what is it he wants?’ Aleksandr drank again. Now the wine had begun to taste sour – metallic. He feared he already knew the nature of the claim against him.

  Cain explained in a single word.

  ‘Russia.’

  Aleksei had left the voordalak whose skin had provided the binding for Cain’s notebook and carried on through the tunnels. There were no more cells or chains, though Aleksei knew he had taken but one path out of the many that penetrated the hillside. There could be a dozen others, each with its own set of miserable, filthy victims. Even from the little he had read of Cain’s book, Aleksei understood that the number of experiments being carried out would need more subjects than these few wretches.

  Behind him, he no longer heard the sound of screams. With the same regularity, they had been replaced by short, self-controlled gasps, which still conveyed quite persuasively the pain the creature must have been experiencing. The water was evidently bringing some relief – or perhaps the hope Aleksei had seen in its eyes at the arrival of the three-fingered man had made it braver.

  The tunnel ended abruptly in a large wooden door. Here, the passageway, though still largely a natural phenomenon, had been dug out so that the door fitted snugly. It would have suited any nobleman’s house in Moscow or Petersburg. On the stone of the cave wall above it, more writing had been chalked. The handwriting was similar to that of the word ‘Prometheus’ earlier. It was most likely Cain’s – any slight differences from the book could be explained by the difficulties of writing on rock.

  Again, the alphabet was Latin, not Cyrillic, but the language this time was Italian.

  Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’intrate.

  It was an archaic form of the language, somewhat different from that spoken today. In fact, Aleksei could date it very specifically, to the first quarter of the fourteenth century, for the same reason that he did not have to struggle with the translation. It was Dante – Inferno; the words written above the gate of Hell.

  Abandon every hope, you who enter.

  Given the Hell that Aleksei had just walked through, he wondered what greater horrors could possibly lie ahead. He put his ear to the door. He could just hear the sounds of speech, but could discern no distinct words.

  He turned the handle and pushed against the door. It moved smoothly and silently – well engineered considering its unconventional housing. Behind it, there was darkness. The voices were clearer now. They were speaking English, but even so Aleksei could recognize one of them as being that of the tsar.

  He pushed the door further and realized that the lack of light was down to the curtain that covered the doorway. Looking to its edge, he saw a glimmer of illumination seeping through – artificial, to his best guess, rather than sunlight. He made sure he didn’t push the door so far open as to disturb the cloth, and slipped through the narrow gap, closing it behind him. He listened for a while to their conversation, but only occasional words – names, mostly – made sense to him. ‘Romanov’ was repeated several times, and he heard ‘Paul’, which he knew to be the English equivalent of ‘Pavel’.

  There were only two voices to be heard – that of Aleksandr and one other, which Aleksei could only presume belonged to Cain. If those were the only people in the room beyond, then Aleksei felt safe. It would be two against one, and surprise would be on his side. He peeked around the edge of the curtain.

  Aleksandr was sitting in a wooden chair with his back to Aleksei. Only the top of his head was visible, slightly tilted as he listened, and his hand, which rested on the arm of the chair and clutched a glass of red wine. Even so, it was unmistakably the tsar. There was no sign of Cain, but Aleksei could still hear his voice. He took a sidestep to get a better view of the room. It looked as though a duke had lost his mansion and been forced to live in a cave. The furnishing was opulent. A chandelier hung from the roof of the cavern, suspended by a long rope. Its owner had made himself comfortable.

  Cain stood with his back to the tsar, his hands placed firmly on his desk and his head bent low, hanging from his shoulders. He spoke a few words in English, then raised his head. His blond hair covered his neck, and dangled over the collar of his jacket. He reached forward and picked something up. Aleksei saw it was a knife. Cain spoke again, this time in French.

  ‘And now, Aleksandr Pavlovich, I think we have waited long enough.’

  He began to turn, holding the knife as if preparing to stab, though he still had several paces to cover to reach the tsar. The knife itself was terrifyingly familiar.

  Aleksei ran from behind the curtain and shouted, ‘Your Majesty!’ Even as he did so, he recognized a tone in Cain’s voice of which there had been only a suspicion when he had been speaking in English.

  Cain turned and caught sight of Aleksei. Despite the look of surprise on his face and the years that had passed, the tall physique, untidy blond hair and distant grey eyes made him unmistakable.

  It was a face Aleksei had last seen as he thrust it beneath the icy surface of the river Berezina, the face of a man who should not have survived, who should have died a cold, choking death by Aleksei’s own hand, thirteen years before. It was a man more degenerate and corrupt than any voordalak.

  It was Iuda.

  CHAPTER XIX

  ‘LYOSHA!’

  His voice was full of warmth and the happiness of reunion as he drooled over each syllable of the name, but Aleksei had seen and noted that brief flicker of surprise in Iuda’s eyes before he had time to regain his composure. The three-fingered man had arrived, and Iuda was afraid.

  ‘An unexpected pleasure,’ he continued. ‘What am I saying? An unexpected delight.’

  ‘Even less expected for me, I think,’ said Aleksei.

  ‘True, true. But don’t blame yourself. I was quite convinced you had me. It was pure luck that I managed to . . . wriggle free.’ He stroked his head, as if feeling for the gap where those few strands of hair had been ripped out to remain coiled around Aleksei’s fingers. He turned and placed the knife back on the desk. Its parallel double blades had, years before, allowed Iuda to inflict injuries that mimicked the bite of a voordalak, at a time when Iuda had been trying to pass himself off as such a creature. But Aleksei realized it could not be the knife Iuda had been using then – that had vanished for ever beneath the surface of the Berezina, as its owner should have. It would have been easy enough for him to have made another.

 

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