Dmitry remained on the stairs, again almost deliberately blocking my exit. I pulled open the left-hand door and peered into the darkness beyond. This cellar was larger than the other; less dilapidated but still unused by the occupants of the house. No windows shone any light into it, and there were no other exits but the one at which I stood. Much as I had seen twenty-four hours previously, in the centre of the floor lay two coffins. This time they were not the makeshift crates of the night before. Whoever slept here slept in luxury. The coffins were solid oak, with brass handles. Where the vampires had obtained them, I could not guess.
I walked over towards them. Halfway across the room I heard a sound at my back. I had just walked into a cellar with only one exit. Anyone who had been expecting me could easily have hidden beside the doorway and stepped out only now to seal the trap. I turned. It was Dmitry, peeping through the doorway. For a man so familiar with the ways of the Oprichniki, he was remarkably timid about encountering them in their own environment. I beckoned to him to follow me, but he stayed where he was.
I took a step towards the first coffin. It was empty. Stepping over that, I looked into the second. There lay Ioann, his face the same rosy flush of repletion that I had seen in Matfei. Ioann had not even bothered to pull the coffin lid across him. In that windowless cellar, there was little chance of any sunlight disrupting his sleep.
'What's in them?' hissed Dmitry from the door.
I dared not make even that little noise. I simply mouthed to him. 'Ioann's in this one. The other's empty.'
'Then let's get the hell out of here before the other one comes back.' Dmitry spoke louder this time, and once he had spoken, he was gone. I could only defer to his experience and assume that these creatures did not like their slumbers to be disturbed.
I went back up the stairs to the hallway and then out of the front door, looking around to see where Dmitry was. I heard a hiss and looked to its source. It was Dmitry, settled atop the low roof of a building on the other side of the street where he could observe this building unnoticed. I ran across and climbed on to the roof to lie beside him.
'Not a moment too soon,' he said, pointing towards the far end of the street. The unmistakable form of Iuda had appeared. Unlike Ioann, he had retained his stealthy creeping posture. Perhaps he had not eaten. Perhaps he was wise enough to understand the continued need for caution once he had. Whatever the reason, he kept to the walls and to the shadows throughout as he progressed down the street.
'No sign of Vadim, though,' whispered Dmitry smugly. 'Evidently he lost track of him.'
'Either that or he's so good at avoiding detection that he's keeping hidden from us as well as Iuda,' I replied. For my part, I wasn't sure which was more likely. Vadim was a little older than the rest of us, and his skills in this sort of work had never been quite up to the abilities of me, Dmitry or Maks. Maks had always excelled at it – both in hunting and in avoiding being hunted. No one could get close to Maks unless he wanted them to – unless he trusted them. I pulled myself up. It was another train of thought that I did not wish to follow.
Iuda had reached the steps of the house. With a swift glance around, he went inside.
'I trust you don't want to follow him too, and check where he's going, Aleksei?' said Dmitry.
I smiled. 'No, I think we can make a guess on that one.'
We climbed down from the roof and headed back up the street.
'Well,' said Dmitry, 'if Vadim's out there, he's bound to see us now.'
But of Vadim there was no sign. 'Iuda must have given him the slip,' I said.
The sun was just peeking over the horizon as we turned the corner into the next road. Iuda had left his homecoming to the latest possible moment.
'Shall we go and steal some breakfast then?' asked Dmitry, in a manner so casual one might have thought that the mysteries of the past few days had never occurred.
'No,' I said. 'I'm tired. I'll see you tonight.' With that I parted company from him, heading in whichever direction he wasn't.
I meandered through the city streets for about an hour. I had all day to return and destroy the creatures that slept in that cellar, but it would feel better to get it over with sooner. Turning back to the blocks of houses to the east of Red Square, I saw the now all too familiar glow of flames. The fires, thanks to the rain of the previous night, were generally dying down. But the rain had now stopped and there were still areas of Moscow that remained untouched by the flames and so were still ripe for the burning.
I began to run back to where Ioann and Iuda lay. Although I had slightly less stomach for killing Iuda than for the others, I still knew that it had to be done. The fire in this area, however, would make my job much easier. Even so, I had to make sure the vampires found no route of escape.
When I got there, half of the block beneath which the two Oprichniki lay was already ablaze. Within five minutes their cellar too would be a furnace. I couldn't remember the folklore in detail, but I did remember the slight fear that Foma had shown when I mentioned the fires to him. I felt quite confident that fire was one of the ways by which vampires might be destroyed. Even if they tried to escape the fire, they would have to leave the safety of the cellar to do so. If the flames did not destroy them, then when they came out into the street, the light of the sun would.
It was still not certain enough, however. Their cellar lay beneath a massive sprawl of buildings. It was conceivable that, with a degree of luck, they might find their way to safety without ever having to expose themselves to daylight. It was a risk I did not want to take.
I raced into the house and down the cellar steps with none of the trepidation that I had shown during the night. The doors behind which the two coffins lay remained closed. Already I could smell smoke creeping in from the neighbouring houses. I looked around me. In the collapsed cellar opposite I saw a short beam of wood. It was perfect. The cellar doors had on them two large handles through which the beam would fit, barring the door securely.
I turned and lifted the wooden beam. When I turned back, I saw that the doors had begun to move. Somebody was beginning to push them from the inside. The vampires were awake and were about to make their bid for freedom. I flung myself against the door, the beam stretched out in front of me with my full weight behind it. Whoever was pushing the doors open was taken completely off guard and they slammed shut. I had only moments before he recovered. I could not both lean against the door and use the beam to bar it permanently. I took my weight away and slipped the beam behind the two iron handles, fearing at every moment that the doors would spew open before I had made them safe. They did not, and now that the beam was in place, they would not. I breathed again.
I knew that I should leave, that I had as much to fear from fire as the vampires did, but I felt the urge to wait, to make certain that they perished. I sat down on the steps. Almost immediately, I heard someone banging against the doors. At first it was the rapid beating of someone demanding attention, then it was the slower, heavier thud of a shoulder trying to break down a barrier. The door held. Soon there was coughing. I could see smoke beginning to seep under the door. I remembered one of my grandmother's stories, wherein a voordalak could transform itself into mist or smoke at will. Could that be true? If it was, then I might have expected to see evidence of them doing it already. And still the coughing and the banging continued, so I felt I was safe.