‘So you set me up? Aleksei too?’

  ‘I have to admit I had formed only the vaguest of plans,’ said Iuda. There was no need for deceit. ‘You really did all the thinking for me; though if I’d been organizing things, I’d have been a little better prepared for Lyosha when he arrived at Chufut Kalye – or I’d have made sure he arrived a few weeks later. One thing at a time is best, I always find.’

  ‘And now you’re starting all over again.’

  Iuda looked around him at the barren hilltop. ‘Here?’ he said. ‘No, I think my cave-dwelling days are over. I was just waiting here for you.’

  ‘Just like you were waiting for Aleksei?’

  Iuda decided it was time to show a little weakness. ‘You learn quickly,’ he said, with a self-effacing smile.

  Kyesha took a step towards him. Iuda felt his heart quicken as he welcomed in the familiar sensation of fear. This was not the kind of fear he had experienced with Zmyeevich on Rzbunarea – this was the good kind, the kind that told him he was alive.

  ‘Where are all the others?’ asked Kyesha.

  ‘Others?’

  ‘From the caves.’

  ‘Ah! Those others. Raisa Styepanovna has gone her own way. You are here. As for the rest – they’re still there.’

  ‘Still in the caves?’ said Kyesha. Iuda nodded. ‘Dead, you mean?’

  ‘Why should they be dead? They have long lives to look forward to.’ As he spoke, Iuda could see that Kyesha’s temper was on the verge of snapping. ‘Long, dull lives.’

  ‘Unlike you,’ muttered Kyesha. He launched himself into the air towards Iuda, covering far more ground in a single leap than any human could. The impact knocked Iuda backwards off the rock on which he had been seated. He felt a sudden panic fill him. Beneath his coat he had a dagger made of wood – a copy of the one he had seen years before in Aleksei’s hand. It would be so easy to use it now, so safe, but he resisted. Any safety such an action brought would only be for the short term.

  He felt his back hit the ground. Kyesha was already on top of him and had him pinned down. Iuda knew how immense the strength of these creatures was, but it always shocked him to feel it directly.

  Kyesha bared his fangs. ‘I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this,’ he said, ‘but there are two ways that an oopir likes to consume its prey. The quick way involves biting away the flesh of the neck. The slow way involves the gradual but ultimately total draining of the blood.’ He paused, and Iuda saw the lustful hunger in his eyes. ‘I hope you’re not in any hurry,’ he said.

  Kyesha would not have seen the look of relief upon Iuda’s face, even had Iuda not successfully repressed it. His head went down on to Iuda’s throat and his fangs found their way through the skin. The entire length of his body began to pulsate in time with the slurping sounds that emanated from his mouth.

  It was a fascinating experience. There had been no pain at the initial penetration. He had not yet isolated the chemical the vampire secreted to stop this. He did feel the sensation of blood being drawn from his body, but not enough yet to affect him. The strangest thing was – as Zmyeevich had described happening with Pyotr – the sense in which Iuda began to know Kyesha’s mind. He could see what he saw and know what he knew. It was a good job the reverse wasn’t the case, or Kyesha would have fled the mountains that instant.

  Iuda could now see through Kyesha’s own eyes. In truth, there was not much to see; just the bottom of his own earlobe and the side of his neck. More delightful was the fact that Iuda could taste what Kyesha tasted – he could taste his own blood. There was nothing new in that – Iuda, like any human, had sucked his own cut finger more than once, but to drink down great mouthfuls at a time was glorious, refreshing, invigorating. Clearly there were some compensations to being a vampire. In a way, he was sad that Kyesha would soon have to stop, but stop he would, and the sooner the better, for Iuda would still need his strength.

  Then he felt it, a tightening pain in his stomach which he knew was in fact a far greater pain in Kyesha’s stomach. The vampire pulled away from his body and raised his head upwards, screaming at the sky and clutching his belly. With a swift kick, Iuda was free of his weight and back on his feet. He felt a little dizzy – more from what he had been drinking than from the blood loss, he hoped. He grabbed the bandage he had placed on the ground beside where he had been sitting and pressed it against the wound on his throat. He held it there for a moment, and then tied it around his neck. He had little time. He reached into his bag for the few items he would need.

  Kyesha had raised himself to his feet and was staggering across the rocky landscape like a drunk. Iuda caught up with him from behind and kicked him hard in the back of the leg. Kyesha collapsed to the ground in a kneeling position, his upper body gyrating in a small, slow circle, but never falling.

  ‘What have you done?’ he slurred.

  ‘I’ve improved on a master,’ explained Iuda. ‘Your Pyotr certainly was great if he could fool Zmyeevich, but he did it in a very haphazard way. I need no troop of men to rescue me. What you drank was your own undoing.’

  ‘Po—’ muttered Kyesha.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ said Iuda, leaning forward to better hear him, and also tucking his dark hair behind his shoulders.

  ‘Poison?’ It took Kyesha an effort to say even that one word.

  ‘For you more than for me,’ explained Iuda. He straightened up and had to steady himself on Kyesha’s shoulders. ‘A concoction of my own, devised and perfected after much experimentation. The effect on me, having drunk it, is – I now discover – not unlike the inebriation caused by alcohol. The effect on you, drinking my blood, is far more debilitating.’

  ‘Will I . . . die?’ gasped Kyesha.

  Iuda cocked his head to one side and smiled. ‘A silly question. But my infusion won’t kill you. You creatures are – as you know – very exclusive in the methods by which you can be destroyed.’

  ‘So . . .’

  ‘Sh!’ said Iuda gently. ‘Now I’m just going to take back a little of what you’ve taken from me. That’s fair, isn’t it?’

  He grabbed Kyesha by the hair and pulled back his head, bringing his knife round so that the vampire could see it. He pondered which side of the blades to use, the smooth or the serrated. The razor-sharp edge of the smooth side would be tidier, but probably less painful, and though he had no qualms about inflicting pain on Kyesha – quite the reverse – he had other more important concerns for now. He brought the two sharp, parallel blades close in until he felt them press against the skin, then he tugged the knife back firmly towards himself and across Kyesha’s throat.

  Kyesha’s head moved back palpably under the strain of Iuda’s hold as the knife tore through neck muscles that had been trying to resist. Two wide, dark gaps opened up between his chin and his collarbone, out of which blood began to vomit. Calmly but quickly, Iuda put down the knife and picked up the small bowl he had brought for the task. He held it in front of Kyesha and let the blood cascade into it. The flow was slowing already, but it didn’t take long to fill the receptacle.

  He let go of Kyesha’s hair and put the bowl down carefully some way away on a flat piece of ground. It would be ridiculous to risk spilling it now. Then he returned to Kyesha, reaching inside his coat as he walked.

  The vampire had managed to crawl a little way away, in a hopeless attempt at escape, but he scarcely had the strength to move. Iuda strode over to him. His chest was matted with blood, and the ground around him was stained. Iuda grabbed his hair again and lifted his head. The two parallel lines across the neck where the blades had cut gaped open, but even as Iuda watched, he could see they were beginning to heal. He let go, but Kyesha’s head remained lifted under his own volition. The eyes opened and looked blearily in Iuda’s direction. The lips moved, but no sound escaped them.

  Iuda knew that he was decades old, but now, in this battered, vulnerable state, Kyesha looked more than ever the boy he had been when he had first allowed a vampire to drink his blood. Iuda would have loved to let him recover just a little more. Inside his overcoat he felt the handle of his wooden dagger, but then he hesitated. It would be too easy, and Iuda was in the mood for some fun.

  He picked his knife up off the floor again and examined it, walking contemplatively around behind Kyesha again. This time there was no need for neatness or precision. He flipped the knife over so that the jagged, toothed edge faced Kyesha’s neck, and grabbed his hair once again.

  The blood spilled forth with the same eagerness as before, but now it was of no especial interest to Iuda. He felt its warmth flowing over his hand, but it was hard to distinguish from the folds of flesh that caressed him as his hand moved deeper into the gaping wound. Muscle and sinew yielded easily. Kyesha did not scream, but that was unlikely to be the result of any bravery. It was difficult for a man – or a vampire – to utter any sound with his windpipe severed and his voicebox lolling on his chest.

  The bones of Kyesha’s neck proved more tricky. Iuda grabbed the hair tighter and pressed his knee into the back of the neck to brace himself. He could still feel pain in his own neck, where Zmyeevich had tried to kill him, but it was healing. He twisted and sawed with the knife, searching for a way through, but still the bones were too strong. Then suddenly one of the blades found a gap between two vertebrae, and he was through. He felt no more resistance.

  Iuda looked down at the creature, but did not see what he had expected. Beheading should have led to instant death and the predictable collapse of the corporal remains to dust. But what Iuda’s eyes saw and what his hands felt was still flesh and blood. He realized he had been too slow. In the time it had taken him to cut through the neck bones, the front of Kyesha’s throat had begun to regrow. The decapitation had to be complete.

  It was of little consequence. Iuda reversed the direction of his pressure and, with a flick of his wrist, the opposite edges of the blades cut back through Kyesha’s new-grown flesh with ease. At the same moment his right hand flicked forward as the knife became free, so his left lurched into the air, holding the severed head by its hair. He turned to look at it, but already the face was unrecognizable, falling away as it decayed and revealing a skull which itself crumpled and tumbled to the ground, its broken fragments retaining some slight vestige of shape as they lay in the grass. The hair entwined round his fingers broke apart and was scattered by the breeze.

  Iuda felt a moment of exhilaration, but it was immediately followed by a wave of exhaustion. He was still weak from what he had drunk and what had been drunk from him. He picked up his bag and went over to where he had left the bowl of blood, sitting down on the ground beside it. It was a joy to have the weight off his feet, but his arms still felt heavy as he moved them. He picked up the bowl and swilled its contents around. The blood was still liquid – the only part of a vampire’s body that remained in its original form after the creature’s death, and even then, only if extracted before death.

  He reached into his knapsack and pulled out a handful of glass vials. Each already contained a few drops of the liquid – itself extracted from the saliva of a vampire – that would stop the blood from clotting. He poured blood from the bowl into each of them in turn, watching it glisten, almost black in the moonlight. A little of it spilled on to his fingers. The taste for blood he had acquired in those few moments in which he had shared Kyesha’s experience still lingered, but he resisted it, wiping his fingers on the grass instead. He filled almost four of the vials. He should only ever need the first, but one could never tell. He wrapped them carefully in scraps of rag and then put them back in his bag. He still had one dose of Zmyeevich’s own blood, left over from the several he had taken during their plans to induct the tsar. But that blood would not suit his purposes, and might yet be needed to save him from his former ally once again.

  He went back over to Kyesha’s remains, now scarcely visible. Only his clothes were left. It would be ridiculous not to take the opportunity to pilfer. He felt through the pockets of the coat. There was a watch, which seemed to be of reasonable quality, and a small number of gold coins. Then, in the side pocket, Iuda found something he could not comprehend. Six roughly shaped items he first took to be stones and then realized were made of bone. What their purpose might be, he could not fathom, but they had clearly had some significance for Kyesha. He slipped them into his pocket, along with the money and the watch. He could work out what they were for later.

  He felt a sudden pain in his neck. He reached up and touched his finger to the bandage. The wound felt sore beneath. The bandage was damp, but not wet. The bleeding had stopped. He reached into the bag again and brought out a small package, wrapped in paper. He opened it. Inside was a small, dark lump of meat: kishka – another trick he had learned from Pyotr. To say it was meat was a misnomer; it was a sausage made from congealed pig’s blood. Normally, Iuda would not have willingly chosen to eat it. He was not squeamish about blood in general, but to consume it was a different matter. That was always one of the hardest things about passing himself off as a vampire.

  But today, he had to eat it – it was good for him, as his father used to tell him, a long, long time ago. And besides, now that he thought about it, blood didn’t seem unappetizing at all. He wolfed the sausage down in a few bites and followed it with a second. He felt a little better, but still tired. He packed up his things and prepared to set off; a short trek back to Simferopol, thence to hire a horse, and northwards. There were two further matters to be attended to: one might help rebuild his relationship with Zmyeevich; one was purely for himself.

  He dragged himself up on to his feet, but instantly felt ill. The loss of blood and the potion he had drunk beforehand combined to make him feel dizzy. He lay back on the frosty grass and let his eyelids droop. A few hours’ sleep there would do him good, despite the cold. He was in no hurry.

  It was almost eight o’clock, and the sun was still an hour from rising. Tamara had woken Aleksei early and he had been happy to talk to her alone, letting her mother sleep in. He had spent as much of his time as he could with her in the four days he had had in Moscow – and most of the rest with Domnikiia. Domnikiia had now woken, and was playing with Toma. Aleksei decided it was time to do some work.

  He still had a job to do. Aleksandr was – to all the world – a dead man, but there was still a tsar. Konstantin might not want to carry on using Aleksei in the role his brother had, and Aleksei wasn’t sure he wanted to continue it, but he at least had to put together some sort of documentation summarizing what he knew about the Northern and Southern societies.

  He went through to his study and sat at his desk, assembling piles of papers in front of him, but not looking at them. Ever since he had left Taganrog, he had wondered whether it might not be better to let the revolutionaries have their way. A republic might not be the best form of government for Russia, but it would be one in the eye for Zmyeevich – a way of cutting the Gordian Knot. Whatever influence Zmyeevich could then exert on subsequent generations of Romanovs, unpleasant though it might be for them, would have no bearing on the fate of Russia. If that was lost, Zmyeevich might not even bother with his revenge. Even if the revolutionaries went for the most moderate of their options – a constitutional monarchy – it could so weaken the role of the tsar that Zmyeevich would find him useless.

  The problem was, not all of them were so moderate, particularly not in the south. There might not be subsequent generations of Romanovs – certainly not from the core of the family. Look what had happened to the Bourbons, those who had not got away. Aleksei had been eight years old when the French Revolution began. Four years after that marked the start of the Reign of Terror. The French themselves called it, more succinctly, la Terreur. That was when Petersburg had started to fill with émigrés fleeing for their lives. It was not their sudden poverty or their fall from grace that had terrified the young Aleksei; it was the stories they told. Tens of thousands were slaughtered by the bizarrely named Committee of Public Safety, which believed that somehow the safety of the public was an issue unconnected to the safety of individual members of that public.

  They saw the guillotine as a clean, efficient, modern way of carrying out their year-long massacre, with an efficacy which only lawyers the likes of Robespierre could achieve – and take pride in. In Russia, the revolutionaries were more poets and soldiers than lawyers, but Aleksei knew what would follow them. At best, it could only mean their killing would be less well organized, but still they would massacre any they thought to be enemies of the state, and since they were the state – wasn’t it a French king who had said that? – that made them free to kill anyone they regarded as an enemy of themselves.

  Perhaps the very inefficiency of the current batch of Russian revolutionaries would mean they could not kill so many with such a degree of sanitization, and that therefore the people, literally revolted, would turn against them. The French idea of death carried out by a machine was vital to the success of the whole venture. But compared to a Russia like that, being ruled by a tsar who was himself ruled by Zmyeevich seemed almost desirable – at least a sane form of tyranny.

  Aleksei laughed out loud. It was a sorry state of reasoning that led him to such a conclusion. But the fault was in assuming there could only either be one outcome or another. There were two much more desirable possibilities: either to let the revolutionaries found a constitutional monarchy; or to defeat them, let Konstantin reign as tsar, and go on to defeat Zmyeevich when the time came. He’d beaten him once, when he had only just discovered what it was Zmyeevich was attempting. In future he, or whoever he chose to pass his knowledge on to, would be better prepared.

  But who would that person be? It was a cruel chalice and a bitter poison to pass on to a child. Could he do that to Dmitry? He would have no desire to protect a tsar. But in any case it was not a matter that needed considering now. What mattered now was the immediate threat to Konstantin.

  Aleksei pulled the papers towards him and started sorting through them, choosing which he would hand over intact to the representatives of the new regime, which he would summarize and which he would leave out. It would take all day just to do that.