have to speak; the prisoner or his … rescuer, if that was what Otrepyev truly was.
In the end, it was the captive’s lips that moved first.
‘It’s been a long time, Dmitry Alekseevich,’ he said.
CHAPTER II
IT HAD BEEN almost twenty-five years since iuda last saw that face, in circumstances remarkably similar to those in which the two vampires now found themselves. Then Dmitry had cast Iuda into a dungeon. Today he acted as liberator. No, that went too far. Iuda may have been free of the Turcomans, but that did not mean he was free. That would depend on the reason Dmitry was here. And there would be a reason. Iuda’s freedom – his life itself – would depend on his ability to fathom Dmitry’s motivation.
He’d got it wrong before, terribly wrong, the last time they had met. He’d pondered it over the years – particularly during that first year, when he’d had little else to do – but still he could make no sense of it.
Dmitry had been a vampire for only a matter of weeks back then in 1856 – Iuda for thirty years. They’d been down there in the tunnels beneath the Kremlin: Iuda, Dmitry, Dmitry’s half-sister Tamara and their father Lyosha.
Lyosha – a man who had seemed able to defeat Iuda even as he died, pathetic and old. It was a common enough diminutive for the name Aleksei; Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov. He’d returned from exile. He’d been half drowned and shot, and still, somehow, he’d goaded Iuda into a mistake. No. It wasn’t Lyosha. Iuda had made the mistake all on his own. He’d wanted to twist the knife, to destroy not only Lyosha but what Lyosha loved. And that meant his son. And Iuda had destroyed Dmitry; transformed him willingly into a vampire. And yet it was nothing if Lyosha did not know it.
But in all that consideration of Lyosha, Iuda had failed to take account of Dmitry. Rather than let his father hear the truth, he’d chosen to protect him. He’d kicked out with both feet and knocked Iuda into one of his own dungeons, then drawn the heavy bolts across and turned the lock.
Iuda was trapped.
He’d designed and built the dungeon himself, with one end in mind – to make a prison that could hold a vampire. The chamber he was in now, beneath the citadel of Geok Tepe, was constructed with much the same intent, but on a grander scale. But in Moscow in 1856 he had known that he could not escape a prison of his own design. He would have to wait. Someone would come.
Sustenance was not an immediate concern. Although he had built this cell to be the cage for a voordalak, he’d been using it as a larder. There were four humans in there with him. They’d even attacked him, wrapping their chains around his neck and dragging him down as Dmitry bolted the door. But they were weakened, and chains were no weapon against a voordalak. He soon subdued them, and returned the shackles to their correct use – restraining the humans themselves; making them available when his hunger surfaced.
But they would not live for ever. There was a little food for them, left from their last meal, but even with the most careful rationing it would eventually rot. The humans lasted three weeks. He knew which one would be the last he left to die: Marfa Mihailovna. In saving his father from the truth, Dmitry had been quite happy to sacrifice his mother, whom he’d known full well was in there. Once again, it made little sense.
Of the four prisoners, Marfa Mihailovna’s blood had been the least appetizing, but that was not why he had kept her alive. The hope had been that she would offer some amusement. By goading her over the fate of her son and her husband, described in exquisite and revolting detail, he expected to raise in her some reaction that might make his imprisonment less tiresome. But it was too late. She was already a broken woman, and Iuda had only himself to thank for that. Occasionally though, in moments of lucidity, she would ask where Dmitry was. At first he believed she had genuinely forgotten her son’s fate, but later he realized she was merely reminding him – reminding him, with a hint of pride, that it was her son who had locked him in there.
At least before she died – as she died – she could facilitate Iuda’s eventual escape.