Dmitry stood up. His head b.u.mped slightly against the ceiling, but it would take more than that to distract him from what he was looking at.

'My G.o.d!' hissed Shulgin. Dmitry remained silent. 'Have you ever seen anything like that before?'

Dmitry had already asked himself that question. In his mind he was back in a street in Moscow, outside the Maly Theatre, thirty years before. A dead soldier lay in a pool of his own blood, the pathetic victim of a creature that Dmitry had hoped could be left in the past. Today only traces of blood were visible, mingled with the mud that they had washed away. Dmitry doubted whether this time very much of it had been allowed to go to waste. The wound was of the same nature as back then, but far, far deeper. Still flecked with dirt, torn vein and sinew and even bone could be clearly seen in the deep laceration beneath the chin, ensuring that neither Dmitry nor Shulgin could doubt what had happened.

Half the man's throat had been torn away.

CHAPTER III.

IT WAS A matter of blood Romanov blood. It had been for the past 143 years.

Yudin stared across his desk at Raisa Styepanovna. She knew none of it; he had been careful to see to that. But he had known about it for what? forty-three of those years, ever since Zmyeevich had explained it all to him before sending him out into Russia to do his will.

Zmyeevich. Yudin felt a thrill of fear course through him just at the thought of the great vampire. Once they had been allies though neither had seen things as being quite on equal terms. Even then, Yudin had been afraid; afraid that he might take a step too far, either deliberately or in error, and find himself facing the wrath of a creature that had learned to kill learned to enjoy killing centuries before Yudin had even been born. Eventually, inevitably, their alliance had come to an end, and Yudin had barely escaped with his life. But escape he had, defeating Zmyeevich if only for a moment. And that gave him hope that if it came to it, he might defeat him again. And more than that, he knew Zmyeevich's secret.

Zmyeevich had been there 143 years before, in 1712, as had Tsar Pyotr Pyotr the Great. It was the year Petersburg became the capital of Russia. The two of them had done a deal. Yudin had heard the story from both sides, from Zmyeevich and from the Romanovs the descendants of Pyotr and he believed neither of them, not fully. But the two had come to some sort of arrangement.

However they liked to dress it up, Pyotr had agreed to join with Zmyeevich as one of his own kind, a voordalak that lived by night and feasted on blood. But Pyotr had tricked Zmyeevich and only gone halfway with the process, gaining from Zmyeevich his vast knowledge, but not falling under his power.

But Zmyeevich had taken blood from Pyotr and that gave him hope, hope that if a Romanov of any generation could be persuaded to drink Zmyeevich's own blood and then to die with it still in his body, the transformation begun with Pyotr would be complete. That Romanov would be reborn as a vampire and would be subject to Zmyeevich's will. And if that Romanov were himself tsar, then the whole of Russia would be Zmyeevich's plaything.

Raisa knew little, but she had her part in it. What she had just handed to him, tiny though it was, might make all the difference between success and failure. Yudin studied her in the dim light of his underground office, but she turned away from him to gaze, as she always did, into one dark corner of the room. There stood a large wooden chest of map drawers. On top of it was an item that neither of them could see, but both knew was there. A dark blanket was draped over it, to prevent accidents.

Yudin had known Raisa for many years, more years than the unenlightened observer might think possible for a woman of her evident youth. When they had first met, in 1818, she had been just seventeen years old, the fifth daughter and eighth child of a Kievan prince. He had not gone by the name of Yudin then. When they were first introduced he had been Vasiliy Denisovich Makarov.

After they had become friends and briefly lovers he had told her his true name, Richard Llywelyn Cain, though by then she knew him well enough to doubt the truth of anything he told her. More recently she had been happy to accept that he had, for the time being, become Vasiliy Innokyentievich Yudin. The one name that she had never a.s.sociated with him was that for which, of all his pseudonyms, he had the most affection the name of Iuda.

Sadly, he knew of no country on Earth where he could pa.s.s himself off with the name of Christ's betrayer and not raise an eyebrow no country in Christendom at least. Perhaps one day he would travel to the orient, but in Russia, to call himself Yudin was the closest he could safely come to it. The name Iuda had been a deliberately obvious alias when he had worked as one of a group of twelve vampires who, disguised as mercenaries and a.s.suming the names of Christ's apostles, had come to Russia to feed on the remnants of Napoleon's invading army, although Yudin had had his own agenda. That had been a long time ago before he had ever met Raisa Styepanovna. Before he himself had become a voordalak.

'How did you get this?' he asked, gazing down at the gla.s.s vial cupped in his hand. It was small, perhaps the size of the top two joints of his middle finger, and the dark liquid that flowed from one end to the other as he moved his hand scarcely half filled it. But that did not matter it was a question of quality, not quant.i.ty, and this blood was of the highest quality imaginable. It excited him just to know that it rested in his palm. This was Romanov blood.

'He let me kiss him,' she said lightly, still looking at the blanket as if she could see what lay beneath.

'The tsarevich let you kiss him? As simple as that?'

She turned her head to look at him. 'He's a goat they all are. He expected more.'

'Did he get it?'

'Not after I'd taken what I wanted. Anyway, he had a party to get back to.'

'He didn't notice?' Yudin again looked at the vial and at Aleksandr's blood within.

'Perhaps later. I took it from his lip. They never feel it, do they?'

Yudin had carried out many experiments to determine that. To say 'never' was an overstatement, but a voordalak could secrete a substance that numbed its victim to the superficial pain. For himself, he had never had the desire to save anyone pain; neither had Raisa. But in this case it was a necessary concession.

'How much did you take for yourself?' he asked.

'About twice as much again.' She turned her head towards him and gave a little pout. 'I have my needs too,' she said.

It was easy to understand how Aleksandr had been tempted by her, even though any such emotion was lost to Yudin. The party had been given by the American amba.s.sador in Petersburg. There had been no problem for Yudin in procuring an invitation for Raisa. It wasn't certain that she'd be able to get anywhere near the tsarevich, but she'd clearly proved her abilities. That little vial of blood was the result. He slipped it into a drawer of his desk.

'What do you make of Tamara Valentinovna?' he asked, changing the subject.

She turned back to the desk, sitting opposite him. 'I despise her.'

'Is that wise?'

'Oh, she doesn't know.' Raisa was a little more enthusiastic now, then switched to a tone of mockery. 'She thinks we're friends.'

'Keep it that way.'

'For how long?'

Yudin considered, but he had no answer. His plans were not yet fully formulated. 'For the time being,' was the best reply he could offer. 'And then, she can be yours. They all can, if you want them.'

Raisa's eyes grew distant. Yudin could guess what she was thinking, and the idea aroused him just as it must have done her. Young blood was always to be relished, and Raisa worked and lived in a house that brimmed with it. Images of death and terror and blood-smeared flesh washed through his mind, delighting him. Perhaps, when the time came, he would not let Raisa have them to herself. Perhaps he would make her share.

'You pretend you're different, but you're not,' said Raisa, both guessing and interrupting his thoughts. There was no joining of their minds as there would have been if one had created the other, but after so many years she understood him better than he found comfortable.

He smiled slightly. 'You and I are both different. That's why we're alive.'

'What do you know of her?' asked Raisa.

'Tamara Valentinovna?' He skimmed through the files on his desk and found Tamara's, although he could remember perfectly well the basic information it conveyed. 'Born in Moscow in 1821. Daughter of Valentin Valentinovich Lavrov a cloth merchant and Yelena Vadimovna. Married. Moved to Petersburg. Had children. Began affairs with numerous gentlemen of varying n.o.bility. One of them was a senior figure within the Third Section not myself, I hasten to add and so we were soon making good use of her; just as all those others had been. Recently she requested a move to Moscow ...'

'Enough!' said Raisa abruptly.

'You asked.'

She stood and walked back over to the chest, reaching out her hand to pull off the blanket. As she grasped it she paused, looking back towards Yudin. 'Aren't you going to stop me?' she asked.

Yudin shrugged.

She tugged at the cloth and it fell to the floor, revealing a mirror. There was nothing special about it. The frame was of gilded wood. Its three sections were joined with hinges, like a triptych. It would grace any lady's dressing table as once it had.

'Spieglein, Spieglein an der Wand, 'Wer ist die Schonste im ganzen Land?'

Yudin smirked as he spoke the words of the Grimms' fairy tale. It was utterly apposite, as Raisa gazed into the mirror, searching for her lost beauty. But it was not original. He must have uttered the words a hundred times, on every occasion he caught her standing despondently in front of a looking gla.s.s, which was often. He hated to repeat himself, but he knew how much it annoyed her, so he continued to say it.

She ignored him, or at least put on a good show of doing so. He got out of his chair and stood behind her, gazing like her into the gla.s.s. The windowless room was lit only by lamplight, but still every detail could be seen. His desk, his chair, the shelves upon shelves of books, the stairs up to the world outside, the doorway down to what lay below. The only thing missing was any trace of either him or Raisa.

'You promised me,' she said.

'I'll keep my promise,' he replied and he meant it, though he knew she had little basis for believing him.

'When?'

'When I know how.'

'It's been thirty years.' Her voice bore the weariness of those years. 'Thirty years in which I've never been able to look upon my own face.'

Yudin's eyes scanned the mirror, coming to rest at the point where he imagined his reflection should be. It was there he knew it. Years ago he had carried out experiments that proved that the reflected image of a vampire could be seen by man and vampire alike, but that the minds of both for some reason blocked out that image and replaced it with nothing or rather with what the mind expected to see. He knew that the image he saw, behind where his body should be, was a construction of his own intellect, formed from memory and guesswork. He could see a door that was closed, but that was because it had been closed when he last glimpsed it. If, somehow, one of those sad wretches from the chambers below were to ascend the stairs and silently open the door, intent on revenge for what had been done to them, then he would be quite oblivious to it. His own imagination would continue with the happy illusion that the door remained safely shut.

He turned and looked, but the door the real door was still closed.

'I'm getting close,' he said, almost forgetting that it was Raisa and not himself he was speaking to.

'I have no reason to believe you,' she said, 'except that I know you're even more curious than I am.' She understood him perfectly. He wasn't in the least curious to see his own face in the mirror, but was desperate to understand the mechanism that prevented it.

'I'm expecting a delivery soon,' he explained. 'A new piece of equipment. From Iceland!' His enthusiasm was real dimmed, but still surviving from when he had been ... from before. But he also knew he had been down similar roads already, always to find a dead end. It was a simple idea: a looking gla.s.s that could reflect the face of a vampire. And yet it had eluded him for a quarter of a century.

She turned away from the mirror to face him. 'So am I still beautiful?' she asked.

'Of course,' he said. He wondered if she even thought it worth listening to him. For one thing, he could so easily lie, and for another, he did not know whether he any longer had the ability to judge. Every sensation, every human desire, had been dimmed when he had made that transition and become a voordalak. The hunger for food and the thirst for drink were gone, as was the desire for the touch of female flesh. For Yudin, such things had always been weaknesses base, animal desires that acted only as a distraction from what truly interested him. But with hunger came the appreciation of the work of a great chef; with thirst came a palate that recognized a fine vintage; with l.u.s.t came the admiration of a beautiful face. His intellect understood that Raisa Styepanovna was beautiful, but his heart felt nothing. He saw her as though through a gla.s.s, darkly, and was glad of it. He had lost all his visceral human yearnings and replaced them with one: a taste for blood that he could easily control. But what had remained of him? The only thing in himself that he had ever loved: his curiosity.

Raisa raised her hands and put them to her face, running her fingertips across her pale skin. 'I feel ... old,' she said.

Yudin peered at her. He genuinely couldn't see it, but he knew that he could not trust himself. And it was a possibility. A vampire could be forever young, but only if it remained well fed. He looked into her eyes and saw a smile in them. He knew what she was asking, and since he had not completely banished his own corporeal desires, he was happy to indulge her and himself. Their conversation had given him a thirst.

He turned and went to the door behind them, unlocking it with a key that he kept inside his jacket on a chain. He opened the door and held out his hand, showing Raisa Styepanovna that she should lead the way. She lifted her skirts slightly and began to descend the narrow stone staircase. Yudin closed the door behind them and followed her down, down to a department of the Third Section that not even Dubyelt had the first inkling existed.

It was a journey Tamara knew she had to make. The house where she had grown up, still her parents' home, was scarcely two versts from where she now lived and worked. She certainly wasn't going to make the suggestion that they should visit her. She hadn't written to say she was moving back and so they had not heard of her by any means for quite some time. They knew as well as she did that they were not her parents, but she had no doubt they possessed as much love for her as they did for her brother, Rodion Valentinovich whose pedigree she had no reason to question.

She crossed Great Nikitskaya Street, the halfway point of her short journey, and felt suddenly more nervous. She stepped back into a doorway to light a cigarette, taking off her mitten so that she could hold it. The match flared brightly, illuminating her face, but n.o.body was near to see it. She breathed in, enjoying the noxious, sulphurous smell in antic.i.p.ation of what it portended. She felt instantly calmer. A man walked past and glanced at her through the dancing snowflakes. She noticed a look of outrage beginning to form on his face, but then he walked briskly past. People could object as much as they wanted. A word from her could have him arrested. She enjoyed the sense of power, even though she had never used it so trivially.

Emboldened, she stepped out into the street and continued walking, cigarette in hand. In the case of the gentleman who had just pa.s.sed, she realized, there would have been no need to threaten arrest. He had recognized her, and she him. She had seen him at least twice at Degtyarny Lane he might even be heading there now. Tobacco was nothing in comparison with his vices.

Would Valentin Valentinovich and Yelena Vadimovna ever have the slightest chance of understanding her, she wondered. She hoped she would never find out. Yelena at least would be prepared to listen, perhaps to sympathize, but it was difficult to envisage in similar circ.u.mstances her doing the same, even to protect her own husband.

Vitaliy Igorevich had been Tamara's first love, and her only love. She had moved to Petersburg to be with him when they married, in 1840, when she was nineteen. He had been twenty-eight. On the eve of their wedding he had, a strict traditionalist, presented her with his diary. She had stayed up almost the whole night reading it, reading of the seven lovers he had previously known, of his feelings towards her as expressed to himself and of his hope for the future, not only for them, but for Russia. By morning she had discovered ways in which she loved him that she had never guessed, without any diminution of the ways in which she already loved him. That evening she discovered yet another way to love him, and for him to express his love for her.

It was in 1844, when Milenochka was three and Stasik was nearly one Luka not even dreamed of that things changed. Up until then Tamara had always felt a liking for Prince Larionov, not least for the fact that he was her husband's most enthusiastic sponsor. Vitaliy was a physician. He did not come from a wealthy family Tamara herself had probably brought more money to the marriage and so he spread his work between meagre employment at the Army Medical Academy and more lucrative private practice. Prince Larionov, a regular patient, recommended Vitya's services widely to his friends, and even occasionally paid for those services when his friends saw fit to ignore their medical bills.

But in 1844 Larionov had called on Tamara during the day, while Vitya was at the Academy. There was nothing so unusual in that, but the story he told her was concerning. There had been a death a few weeks earlier in the Academy hospital. A young soldier had been horribly burned when a cannon exploded near him. The tragedy was that it had not even taken place on the battlefield, merely during artillery training at Volkovo Polye. Whether much could have been done to save him was a moot point, and Vitya had been just one of several doctors who had tried, but the soldier had come from a n.o.ble family and his death might have ramifications. Tamara remembered the word as it had formed on Larionov's lips 'ramifications'.

Essentially, as Larionov had tactfully explained, it was possible that rumours might spread that would mean Vitya was never welcomed again as a doctor in a private house, either in Petersburg or in Moscow. And then Larionov had added that there also existed the possibility that such rumours might not spread.

In retrospect, Tamara realized that Larionov was probably a little taken aback by the naivety of her response. She was genuinely touched by his concern and desperately hoped that together they could find some way to save Vitya's career.

'What can we do?' she'd asked.

Larionov had smiled, and Tamara saw in him for the first time the hint of something vile. 'How well you put it,' he said. 'Because your husband's fate depends very much upon what you and I do together.'

At the same moment Larionov had placed his hand upon her leg and his smile had widened, but only on one side, and Tamara had understood everything. When Larionov left her house, seconds later, he could have been in no doubt as to how she felt about his proposal, but he displayed no diminution in his self-confidence. She should have told Vitya, but she could not imagine the words on her tongue. She didn't have the openness that Vitya had shown when he gave her his diary. All she could do was hope that Larionov would accept defeat.

It was three weeks before Vitya mentioned that a number of patients four, to be precise had told him they no longer required his services. It was no great financial loss Vitya never charged more than he knew his patients could afford, and these families were on the outer fringes of the aristocracy but it troubled him that people who had once put so much trust in him could suddenly turn him away.

Tamara understood immediately. This was just Larionov flexing his muscles. Those families were not significant of themselves, but as soon as Larionov whispered his lies into the ears of a more respected household there would be no stopping the gossip.

The following day, Tamara had gone to visit Prince Larionov. He had screwed her there and then, in his salon, having told the footman to step outside. Tamara had tried to think of Vitya, but that only made it worse. As the weeks and months went by, she learned to think of nothing. But Vitya lost no more clients, and even gained a few, thanks to Larionov's enthusiastic recommendation, as he never failed to explain to her. It was intended to make her feel worse, to feel more controlled by him than she already was and it succeeded.

After about a year Larionov grew tired of her and pa.s.sed her on to a friend pa.s.sed her on, like a book he had enjoyed and was pleased to recommend to another. But already she had heard things from Larionov's lips that he would hope never made it to the ear of the tsar, but never dreamed she would be in a position to tell. It was through her fourth lover that she became connected with the Third Section. By then Larionov had long forgotten her, but she had acquired a reputation among men in a certain stratum of society, and while no one was as barefaced as Larionov about it, Tamara could not doubt that Vitya's new-found success was in some way down to her own. And when she thought that, she hated herself more. Vitya was a brilliant man he didn't need her help to succeed.

The fourth man for whom Tamara acted as a harlot was Actual State Councillor Popov, of the Third Section a.s.sistant to Dubyelt himself on all matters related to censorship. Tamara told Popov and Popov told Dubyelt and Dubyelt told Orlov and Orlov told His Majesty. Prince Larionov's fall from favour was rapid, but not widely publicized. He was allowed to retire to his smallest country estate a mere fifty serfs. Somewhere near Kazan, Tamara recalled. If he returned to Petersburg or Moscow he would be arrested. She would have liked that.

Popov tired of her body too, but not of her mind. He introduced her to General Dubyelt and her status as a courtesan became officially sanctioned. There was no way out of it for her now whatever power Larionov might have had to destroy her and Vitya's lives was as nothing compared with what Dubyelt might achieve. And, she convinced herself, she was acting for her country and risking less in that cause than the common soldier did every day.

And then 1848 had come.

She stopped. She was outside the Lavrovs' home her home in the south of the Arbat. She threw what remained of her cigarette to the ground and it hissed as the snow melted and then extinguished the glowing tip. Five weathered stone steps separated her from the front door of the house in which she had grown up. She looked up to the window above the window of what had once been her bedroom and then turned and gazed out across the snow-blanketed street. She always remembered it as snowy, and always remembered watching and waiting. Sometimes it was to stare longingly at the figure of a man departing, sometimes eagerly, knowing that he would soon return. And then the memory came to her of the man just standing there in the street, almost at the spot where she stood now, his neck craned, like hers, to look up at the window. But that had been a different man and the more she tried to recall him the more the memory made her feel afraid, and also protective; protective of ... her mother?

The door opened, banishing her recollections.

'h.e.l.lo, Dubois,' she said with half a smile to the butler who had evidently spied her presence before she had even needed to knock the same French butler she had known since she was seventeen.

'Madame Tamara.' His speech was as understated as ever, but she could tell that he was surprised, and pleased.

He took her hat, coat and mittens and almost but not quite ran to announce her to her parents. They had changed little, in her eyes at least. Yelena Vadimovna was now sixty-two, but did not show it as she ran across the room to greet her daughter. Valentin Valentinovich moved more slowly, partly due to his age, partly due to his generally more restrained manner, but his embrace was as tight as Yelena's had been.

They talked a lot about very little. At first they spoke of the war and of Rodion, Tamara's brother. He was stationed at Helsingfors. Apparently, the British fleet in the Baltic was even larger than in the Black Sea, though the waters were unnavigable until spring. The whole family had been back for the New Year and they'd left the eldest boy, Vadim Rodionovich, to stay with his grandparents to be educated in Moscow it was a shame he'd already gone to bed when Tamara arrived. Then, realizing perhaps that it revealed too much if they spoke only of her brother's side of the family, they began to turn the conversation on to her.

They asked her where she was living and Tamara was vague. They asked if she was still working for the government, and she said she was. They asked which department, and she said His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery. They asked which section and she said the fourth. They were pleased working to help educate the poor was an ideal job for Tamara.

'I must admit though,' Yelena had eventually said, 'to a little surprise that you've come back to live in Moscow after all these years. Not that we're not both delighted.' She glanced at her husband, as if to verify his agreement. Tamara seized the opportunity to turn the conversation in the direction that she both feared and yearned for.

'I came to research my parents,' she said. She almost felt herself flinch in antic.i.p.ation of their response. She knew how they always reacted, yet still she kept on doing it.

'"Research" us,' said Valentin. 'That's a nice way of putting it.' But his laughter was forced a last-ditch attempt to avoid hearing what he knew she was about to say.

'My natural parents, I mean.' Tamara put every effort into making it sound unimportant. Only at the last moment did she manage to say 'natural' instead of 'real'. The mood of the room changed instantly.

'Oh, for heaven's sake, Toma, haven't we been over this enough?' Yelena stood as she spoke, and began to pace across the room.

Valentin shook his head sadly, and rubbed his hands against his thighs. 'Insulting. Most insulting,' he mumbled to himself. 'Ungrateful.'

Tamara felt like a little girl again. She'd always hated to upset them, but she'd grown to learn it was often a trick. Whenever she was naughty, the easiest way to punish her was to make her feel that she had let them down. She felt the tears rising in her, but held them back. On this occasion they were probably being genuine, to a degree. She was being insulting, and ungrateful but that didn't diminish the fact that what she was saying was true.

'I don't love either of you any less for it,' she said, hearing the sudden emotion in her own voice. 'I probably love you even more.'