“Where is goddamned the book, Powell? And where is your little dance partner?”
Oh shit. “She’s out. Getting groceries.”
“Good. But if I’m not out of here with that book in my hand before she comes back, the first bullet is for her.”
“Is this what you want, Bolshevik pig?”
Both men turned at the sound of Ana’s voice. She was calmly holding the book in front of her, sidestepping towards Jerry.
“Give it to me and you both live.” He pointed the revolver at Ana’s chest.
Whatever reply he was expecting to his threat, he probably wasn’t expecting both Jerry and Ana to break out laughing.
“Get lost, asshole. You can go ahead and shoot, but you’re not getting the book, Professor.” He now recognized the university prof from New Year’s Eve. “It’s not mine to give and it sure as hell isn’t yours to take.”
“I know why he wants it, Jerry. And I know who he is.” Ana stood next to Jerry’s chair, tall and angry.
“He’s that professor from the Empress—the fancy ballroom dancer.”
“No, he’s a Bolshevik bastard.” Ana took a step toward Gervaise, ignoring the threat of the gun.
The gun lifted to point at her head. “What makes you think I’m a Bolshevik, little girl?”
“Because I know that face. When we first met, I thought you looked familiar and I told Jerry so, but now that I see your eyes in better light and hear your voice without the music playing, I know you, Yakov Yurovsky.”
“How—?! My name is Jakob Gervaise. Professor Jakob Gervaise.”
“Maybe so, but you are also the direct descendant of Bolshevik assassin, Yakov Yurovsky.”
Jerry was confused as hell, but he kept quiet. He was nowhere near his phone to call 9-1-1 and there was no way he could reach the fireplace tools to use as a weapon before he got shot. He didn’t care if he died, he just didn’t want this asshole to get Ana’s book, and therefore, Ana.
The gun in Gervaise’s hand shook. “How could you know that, shlyukha?”
“You call me a whore? Vy ne chto inoye, kak sobaki , kotoryye ne mogut lizat’ svoi yaichki.” Gervaise’s eyes went wide and Ana smiled. “Yes, a dog who cannot lick his own testicles. I know you, son of Yurovsky, as I knew that Bolshevik dog himself.”
“Impossible.”
“Possible. Very possible. After his men shot me and stabbed me with their bayonets, I still would not die. The jewels sewn within my garments had protected me, kept me alive long enough to watch my entire family butchered by your kin. I looked him straight in the eye and he shot me in the head.” She tapped her forehead with a fingertip and the bullet hole appeared.
Gervaise scrambled to his feet. He still had the weapon, but Jerry was pretty sure he was no longer in control of the situation. “You are insane! Sumasshedshiy!”
“Perhaps I am crazy, but I am still Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova!” Suddenly Ana was her old self, the young girl Jerry first met, complete with all of the bullet holes, bayonet piercings, and blood.
Six gunshots and a pair of empty-chamber clicks shattered the relative quiet of the loft. Acrid gun smoke filled the air and Jerry gagged. He pulled himself up out the chair, needlessly worried for Ana’s safety, but she still stood tall and unharmed. Of course, he thought. What could bullets do to her that they hadn’t already done?
Gervaise threw the gun and Jerry ducked just in time. The weapon slammed into the wall behind him with a thud and fell to the floor. Jerry didn’t think he could take the older man in a fight, but it suddenly became very apparent that he wasn’t going to have to. Without moving from where she stood, Ana stretched her arm out, grabbed the man by the throat, and picked him up. She looked over her shoulder at Jerry.
“I now know why I am here, Love. It is to avenge the murders of my family. God has given me the opportunity to slay he who slayed us.”
The professor gagged and kicked and grabbed at Ana’s impossibly long arm, his beady eyes looking like they were going to pop out of his head from both fear and constriction of his airway. But he was no longer armed, or even a threat.
“Ana, put him down.”
“It is my sacred duty, Jerry. For the honour of my family.”
“There’s no honour in murder.” His headache was fading.
“It is an execution, not murder.”
“That’s what this guy’s great-grandfather thought, too, I bet.”
“Yakov Yurovsky murdered innocent children. He murdered me!” Gervaise stopped struggling, although he was still conscious, barely.
“‘Vengeance is mine, saith The Lord’, or something like that. Would God want you to avenge your family? Isn’t that something only He can do?”
“But—” She lowered Gervaise to the couch and loosened her grip enough to let him breathe.
“What would God want, Shvibzik? What would Alexei want? Or Tatiana, Olga, or Mashka?” He stepped up beside her and put his hand on her arm. “Would they want you to become a murderer, like the Bolsheviks who executed them? This man didn’t kill your family. This man didn’t put a gun against your head and pull the trigger.” Suddenly Jerry understood it all. Understood not just how to get through to Ana, but why. “What would Grigori want you to do?”
“Forgive him?”
“Exactly. But not just him. Forgive his great-grandfather. There was too much bloodshed and horror in 1918. End it here. Be the better person. Be the Grand Duchess that Queen Victoria would have been proud of. Right here and now, the Last of the Romanovs holds in her hand the power of life and death. Reverse all of the mistakes your well-meaning father made before you. Do what your Papa is not here to do. Forgive.”
“But…”
Sirens approached. Someone must have heard the shots and called 9-1-1. Jerry had no idea how he was going to explain all of this. He scooted over to the fireplace and grabbed the poker. He wasn’t at his strongest, but he was pretty sure that the fight was out of Gervaise. “Ana, my Love, forgive him.”
“He killed Mashka.”
The sirens were nearly there. “Ana…”
“And Jimmy. What could my puppy ever do to your precious revolution?” She tightened her grip once again.
“Ana! Shvibzik!”
She released Yurovsky’s heir, and the man slumped, barely conscious. She looked at Jerry and nodded, then dropped to her knees in front of Gervaise. She took his hands in hers and lifted them to her lips. She kissed the dark, curly-haired back of each, straightened her back, and lifted her chin. Three or four car doors thumped shut out on the street, but Ana paid them no heed. “Jakob Gervaise, descendant of Yakov Yurovsky, I forgive you, and your forefathers; not in the name of the Russian Imperialist Romanov family, but merely in the name of my Papa, Nicholas, my Mama, Alexandra, my sisters Olga, Tatiana, and Maria, my little brother, Alexei, and myself, Anastasia. I forgive you.”
Jerry could hear glass smash down the stairs at the street level and indistinct shouts. The cavalry had arrived.
ANA COULD SENSE that something was seriously wrong. She looked up at Jerry, thinking that maybe he was having a seizure, but her vision started to mist over. Panic set in and she shook her head violently, trying to shake her head clear, but the flat she had called home ever so briefly wavered and faded. She tried desperately to solidify, but something fought against her.