Mikhail lay very still, listening to the sound of Wiktor’s sandals scrape on the stairs going up. The little fire popped and spat sparks, and Andrei’s breathing was like a rumble of freight cars on a distant track. Mikhail shivered, full of frost, and stared at the bloody piece of rabbit meat.
I command you not to eat, Wiktor had said. Mikhail stared at the meat, and watched a fly buzz slowly around it. The fly landed on the meat and crawled happily over it, as if searching for a tender place from which to draw the first sip of juice. I command you not to eat.
Mikhail looked away. Andrei coughed raggedly, twitched, and then lay still again. What was wrong with him? Mikhail wondered. Why was he so sick? His gaze slid back to the rabbit flesh. He thought of wolf fangs, distended and dripping, and in his mind’s eye he saw a big pile of bones licked clean and white as October snow. His stomach mewled like a kitten. He looked away from the meat again. It was so bloody, so… awful. Such a raw thing would never be found on the gilded plates of the Gallatinov dining table. When was he going home, and where were his mother and father? Oh, yes. Dead. All dead. Something gripped tight in his mind, like a fist around a secret, and he couldn’t think about his parents or his sister anymore. He stared at the rabbit flesh, and his mouth watered.
One taste, he thought. Just one. Would it be so bad?
Mikhail reached out and touched the flesh. The fly, startled, buzzed around his head until he swatted it away. Mikhail drew his fingers back and looked at the faint smears of scarlet on the fingertips. He sniffed them. The odor of metal, a memory of his father oiling a silver sword. Then Mikhail licked his fingers, and tasted blood. It was not a bad taste, nor a particularly good one. It was faintly smoky, and a little bitter. But even so, it made his stomach growl louder and his mouth water more. If he died, the wolves-and Wiktor was one of them-would rip him to pieces. So he had to live; that was a simple truth. And if he wanted to live, he would have to force down the bloody meat. He waved the persistent fly away again and picked up the rabbit flesh. It felt slick and slightly oily between his fingers. Maybe there was a little bit of fur on it, too, but he didn’t look too closely. He squeezed his eyes shut, opened his mouth. His stomach lurched, but it needed to be filled before it could be emptied. He pushed the flesh into his mouth and bit down.
Juices flooded over his tongue; they were sweet and gamy, a taste of wildness. Mikhail’s head pounded and his spine ached, but his teeth worked as if they were the masters and everything else was servant to them. He tore hunks of flesh off and chewed them; it was a tough old rabbit, thickly muscled, and it didn’t want to be swallowed without a struggle. Blood and juice trickled over his chin as he ate, and Mikhail Gallatinov-six days and a world away from the boy he used to be-tore the flesh between his teeth and swallowed it with famished relish. When he came to the bones, he scraped them clean and tried to crack them open to get at the marrow. One of the smaller bones burst apart, red marrow exposed. He thrust his tongue into the broken bone and dug out the congealed blood. He ate as if it were the grandest meal ever served on a gold plate.
Sometime later, the hollowed-out bones fell from his bloody fingers, and Mikhail sat on his haunches over the little pile and licked his lips.
It hit him with a frightening force: he’d liked the bloody meat. He’d liked it very much. And that was not all. He wanted more.
Andrei suffered another fit of coughing that ended on a strangled note. The body stirred, and Andrei called out weakly: “Wiktor? Wiktor?”
“He’s gone,” Mikhail said, but Andrei kept calling for Wiktor in a voice that rose and fell. There was terror in that voice, and an awful weariness, too. Mikhail crawled across the stones to Andrei’s side. There was a bad smell over here, a sour and decayed odor. “Wiktor?” Andrei whispered, his face hidden in the folds of the cloaks, only his pale brown, sweat-damp hair showing. “Wiktor… please… help me.”
Mikhail reached down and pulled the cloak away from Andrei’s face.
Andrei was perhaps eighteen or nineteen years old, and his face-gleaming with sweat-was as gray as a well-used dishrag. He looked up at Mikhail with sunken brown eyes and gripped Mikhail’s arm with skinny fingers. “Wiktor,” Andrei whispered. He tried to lift his head, but his neck wasn’t strong enough. “Wiktor… don’t let me die.”
“Wiktor’s not here.” Mikhail tried to pull away, but the fingers clenched tighter.
“Don’t let me die. Don’t let me die,” the young man pleaded, his eyes glassy. He coughed once, softly, and Mikhail saw his thin, sallow chest lurch. The next cough was stronger, and the one after that made Andrei’s body shake. Andrei’s coughing turned into strangling, and Mikhail tried to work his arm loose but Andrei wouldn’t let him go. There was a terrible rattling deep in Andrei’s chest, a wet, thick, sliding noise. Andrei’s mouth opened wide, and he coughed violently with tears streaming from his eyes.
Something oozed out of Andrei’s mouth. Something long and white and wriggling.
Mikhail blinked, and felt the blood drain out of his face as he watched the worm writhe on the stones beside Andrei’s head.
Andrei coughed once more, and there was a sound of a heavy mass breaking apart in his lungs. And then they flooded out of his mouth. The white worms tangled and entwined around each other, the first hundred or so clean and ghost white, but then the next ones dappled with crimson lung blood. Andrei shivered and retched, his eyes staring at the shock-frozen boy, but he couldn’t open his mouth wide enough for all the worms to get out. They began to ooze through his nostrils as well, and Andrei strangled and choked as his body expelled its cargo. And still they surged out, now dark scarlet and sluggish, and as they spilled onto the stones Mikhail screamed and wrenched his arm loose, leaving bits of his skin under Andrei’s fingernails. Mikhail tried to rise, stumbled over his own feet and fell backward to the floor, landing hard on the base of his spine. Andrei reached for him, trying to find his hand, and lifting up out of his bed of cloaks, with blood-black worms frothing from his mouth. Mikhail began to choke, too, and as he scuttled away across the stones he felt the rabbit meat rising; he swallowed it down again, thinking of wolf fangs tearing him to shreds. Andrei got to his knees, and then with a terrible lung-ripping cough he expelled a black knot of worms the size of a man’s fist. They streamed from his mouth and down his chest, and were followed by dark ribbons of pure blood. Andrei fell onto his face. He was naked, his body already the yellowish-gray of a corpse. His wiry muscles jittered, his flesh rippling and seething under a sheen of sweat. Mikhail saw darkness spreading across Andrei’s back: brown hairs, bursting from the pores. In a matter of seconds hairs covered Andrei’s back and shoulders and were creeping down his buttocks and thighs, darkening his arms, bursting from his hands and fingers. Andrei lifted his face, and Mikhail saw it caught in the change, blood still drooling over the lengthening jaw. His eyes had retreated further under a protruding brow, his scalp hair sleek and shining, his throat banded with dark hair. Andrei shivered as his spine began to crack and contort, and he opened his fanged mouth to shriek-a hideous commingling of animal and human anguish.