‘No, no. He just got lucky.’ He lay back on the bed, exhausted, choosing not to mention his son’s involvement in the evening’s fiasco. He’d left Dmitry at the club, and while he had established now that the boy had not followed him from there, he still could not tell when in the evening the pursuit had started and, more than that, whether Dmitry knew just how much of his time Aleksei spent here. And why.
He stretched out his leg and Domnikiia put her hand to the heel of his boot, pulling it off him. She did the same to the other boot. He began to take off the remainder of his clothes.
‘So what are you going to do?’ she asked.
‘Try again,’ he said, though he knew little more than that. How he would try, he had no idea, but there was no escaping that Kyesha was his responsibility. Even if one had to look back to 1812 to find the link, each of the deaths that had occurred and would occur in Moscow were Aleksei’s fault.
‘Did you find out for sure?’ asked Domnikiia. ‘Whether he’s… a vampire?’
Aleksei shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I feel sure.’
‘Then you must be right. You’d know, if anyone did.’
‘You think so? I’ve seen half a dozen vampires over the past years, only to discover them to be human.’
‘Not like this though.’
‘No, not like this – but I have to be certain.’
He was naked now, and they stood face to face. He reached down and began to pull her nightgown over her head. She raised her arms, her long hair stretching upwards above her until it finally slipped from the neck of her dress and fell gently down on to her shoulders. They lay down on the bed, facing each other. Aleksei ran the three fingers of his left hand down the side of her chest, over her abdomen, her hip and along her thigh and then back again. Their eyes remained fixed on one another. She was still the most beautiful creature he had ever seen.
‘What have we done to deserve this?’ she asked.
He laughed. ‘I think we both know that,’ he said.
‘Other men cheat on their wives. They get nothing worse than a guilty conscience.’
‘Amateurs,’ he said dismissively.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Other men may be unfaithful, but one has to be a true expert to select a paramour quite as perfect as you. If I’m being unduly punished, it’s only for my excessive good taste.’
‘That explains it for you, but what about me? It’s not like I’m guilty of good taste.’
‘Ha! Ha!’ he said sarcastically, before leaning forward to kiss her. She responded and he allowed himself to be lost in the sensation of her lips, her arms, her body. He allowed all thoughts of Kyesha and of vampires and, more than anything, of his own guilt to slip from his mind, the concept of his adultery being smothered by its very enactment. It would work for a while.
‘We’re really in trouble now,’ he said afterwards, as they lay side by side in the still darkness. ‘If God caught a glimpse of half of that then the punishment’s going to be harsh and swift.’
‘Don’t joke about it,’ she said.
Aleksei fell silent. He had already seen one man that evening who would by now have paid the price for his adultery – presuming, as was likely, that he was married. It was an unjust payment for so trivial a sin.
Kyesha’s sin – the path he had chosen to take when he became a voordalak – dwarfed those of them alclass="underline" the man in the street, Aleksei, even those who planned to murder their tsar. But Kyesha would soon pay a fair price for his choice, and it would be Aleksei who would take the payment, before another twenty-four hours had passed. Tomorrow, Kyesha would die.
Another serpent, trampled beneath the hooves of another horse. This time the horseman was Saint George. The icon over the Resurrection Gate had not changed over the years; Moscow’s patron saint had remained triumphant. Tonight, Aleksei would play the saint, and Kyesha, already a vile beast, would become the serpent. Again Aleksei had his two swords – one wooden, one steel – but this time he would abandon stealth. Tonight he would deal with Kyesha face to face.
‘What happened to you last night?’ As ever, Kyesha seemed to arrive from nowhere.
‘Is that a question?’ asked Aleksei. ‘If it is, you have to win the right to ask it.’
‘You already owe me one answer.’ Kyesha had not seemed annoyed when he first arrived, but Aleksei’s tone quickly made him drop the veneer of politeness. ‘And I think the question is of greater import than the matter of how you spend your evenings.’
‘Not here,’ said Aleksei.
‘The Lobnoye Mesto again?’ suggested Kyesha.
‘I don’t think so, not after what happened on Monday. This way.’
Aleksei led Kyesha south, across Red Square, but past the Lobnoye Mesto and on to the grander building beyond – Saint Vasiliy’s Cathedral. The name instantly brought another Vasiliy to his mind – his wife’s lover, back in Petersburg. The very idea of jealousy seemed trivial when put in contrast with tonight’s concerns; with what would be happening within the cathedral in just a few hours’ time, perhaps less.
A bribe of a few roubles earlier in the day had ensured a promise that a side door would be left unlocked, and the promise had been kept. Even so, there was no guarantee that they would be left alone, although it was unlikely anyone would enter at this time of night, and if they did, the church was a maze of chapels in which it would be easy to hide. Aleksei knew full well that he did not need consecrated ground to carry out what he planned to do, but he knew also that some vampires had a slightly more reverent view of religious institutions than others. With luck, their location might unnerve Kyesha, if only a little.
They climbed the narrow stone steps and emerged into a candle-lit chapel. Aleksei had not gone into the cathedral by that entrance before, but soon found his bearings. They were in the chapel of Saint Nikolai, the southernmost of the ten chapels that formed the cathedral’s labyrinthine interior.
‘It’s best if we move further inside,’ said Aleksei, in a low voice. They stepped out into the gallery that surrounded the Chapel of the Intercession from which the cathedral took its official name. It stood at the centre of a square formed by the eight remaining small chapels. The four larger of these, of which Saint Nikolai’s was one, sat at the corners of the square, and the four smaller along the sides. A later addition of another chapel, to house the remains of Saint Vasiliy himself, not only served to disrupt the symmetry, but also to give the cathedral its more familiar title. Aleksei followed the gallery anti-clockwise. The dark, brick-lined passageway created by the walls of the chapels was only wide enough for one man at a time. Beyond it, the gallery opened out again, the plain walls giving way to floral tiling, and Aleksei led Kyesha into the Trinity Chapel.
The candelabras hanging above them were only partially lit, casting flickering shadows over the mixture of brickwork, murals and icons. High above, Aleksei could see the inside of the dome, whose hemispherical shape gave no clue as to the complexity of the onion dome outside it. The chapel domes and the central tower grew out of the base of the cathedral like a clump of mushrooms growing from a single root; there was no connection of any kind between the towers at the higher level, but the chapels and corridors below provided a route between them – for those who knew it.
‘You seem more formal than usual tonight,’ said Kyesha, gesturing at Aleksei’s uniform.
‘We had an inspection today,’ lied Aleksei. ‘I haven’t had time to change.’ The truth was quite different. Aleksei needed a way to conceal his sabre, and what could be better than carrying it in plain view where it would be overlooked as simply part of the uniform? Seen where it was expected to be seen it was far more innocuous, but just as deadly.
‘You still owe me an answer,’ said Kyesha, sitting down with his back to the wall and gesturing that Aleksei should do the same. Aleksei unbuckled his sword – it was impossible to sit on the floor with it on – and leaned it against the wall before sitting. He had no need to be reminded of Kyesha’s last question.