The People's Will Read online

  Ibrahim Edhem Pasha’s face leaned over him.

  ‘You’d have done better to have killed me,’ whispered Iuda, his voice weak.

  ‘I think it would be better to preserve that pleasure for someone who will really enjoy it.’

  ‘You’re going to ransom me? To Ţepeş?’

  ‘We’re going to try.’

  ‘You’re a fool. He will come here and take me, and you will get nothing.’

  ‘Here?’ There was a twinkle in the Pasha’s eye. ‘We’re not going to keep you here.’

  ‘Anywhere in the empire. Your people will not be safe.’

  ‘Then perhaps we should find you a prison outside the Ottoman Empire. We have friends. Ţepeş will not find you, unless we choose to hand you over to him.’ A pause. ‘Or you could simply tell us the whereabouts of Ascalon.’

  Iuda said nothing. The Grand Vizier gave a signal to one of his men and a heavy wooden lid was placed over the crate in which Iuda lay. He’d listened to the sound of nails being hammered home, and then felt the rough shaking of being moved up the steps, on to a cart, on to a boat, and so on for many days. It was the same sensation he now felt as he was carried on the last leg of his journey away from Geok Tepe. Back then he had not known his destination, but he had been told on his arrival, as they strapped him into the chair that was to be his resting place for the next three years.

  He often wondered if there was meant to be some joke in it, a connection between the name Ţepeş and Geok Tepe. But the words came from different languages. Tepe was the Turkic for hill – Geok Tepe meant ‘the Blue Hill’. Ţepeş was Romanian and meant something quite different – it meant ‘the Impaler’.

  Iuda’s coffin was set down on the ground with a thump. He could hear no voices outside. Minutes passed. He tried to push away the memories of his betrayal and his three years in Geok Tepe, but he could not do so entirely.

  It had been too long, and in all that time, one fact had remained. Ţepeş, or Zmyeevich, or whatever he might call himself, had not paid the ransom. He had chosen not to deal with the Ottomans and their Turcoman allies.

  Iuda noticed the minutest change in air pressure within his coffin as the iron bands across its lid were unclamped. He saw a crack of light appear between the lid and the side, and feared for a moment that it would soon be the end of him, but then realized it was merely lamplight.

  A hand reached inside and pushed up the lid, and as he saw it Iuda was sure of what he had previously suspected; Zmyeevich had not paid any ransom because he did not need to.

  On the middle finger of the hand there was a ring; a ring in the form of a dragon, with a body of gold, emerald eyes and red, forked tongue.

  CHAPTER VI

  DMITRY TOOK LITTLE part in the torture. He would not have objected, but neither would he have drawn particular enjoyment from it. If the victim had been human, it would have been a different matter, but Iuda was a vampire, and Dmitry could experience little pleasure in his pain.

  Zmyeevich, on the other hand, relished the concept. And so Dmitry was happy to sit and watch – and learn; learn both the techniques of a master and whatever information Iuda might reveal.

  It would be familiar territory for Iuda. The wire rope that still dug tightly into the flesh of his neck – now the only thing restraining him – was fastened at its other end to an eyelet in the ceiling of an underground cell that lay deep beneath an office that had once been the Moscow centre of the Third Section. It was the lair in which Iuda – under the name of Vasiliy Innokyentievich Yudin – had based himself for almost a decade and it was in these dungeons that he had tortured so many who had information which might protect the life of Tsar Nikolai I, along with those he tortured for reasons more personal to him.

  In the subsequent years Dmitry too had made his mark in the Third Section, and so now, although the organization no longer existed, it had been easy enough to requisition these rooms beneath the Kremlin and make them a base for himself and Zmyeevich while they stayed in Moscow; and for their prisoner. Iuda had chosen the place for himself as the ideal haunt for a vampire. They would trust his judgement.

  Light would have been the most effective tool in the armoury of a vampire torturer, and yet down here it was the one thing of which they were deprived. They might have taken him up and held him close to the door above, opening out on to the Kremlin, but even if they hadn’t been seen, Iuda’s cries would have been heard. Down here it was much safer. It did not matter; Zmyeevich knew other ways to inflict suffering upon a fellow vampire – ways that Dmitry would never have dreamed of.

  To cut him, to make him bleed, to sever a finger or an entire limb; these were all things that would inflict pain upon the victim, but a voordalak could withstand most pain – certainly one of the age and the experience of Iuda. He could easily reassure himself that he would heal – that however great the agony there would be no lasting effect, not even a scar. The worst that could happen was that the vampire would die – and that could never be to the benefit of the torturer.

  Zmyeevich had tried these basics, cutting and severing. In total Iuda now had thirteen fingers and three thumbs, the excess scattered on the floor, his hands replenished by regrowth. Zmyeevich – with a little help from Dmitry – had drained Iuda of blood until he was almost dry. Normally that would bring on a light-headedness in a vampire, a mood of compliance in which the creature might reveal its darkest secrets. Iuda was made of stronger stuff. They had needed to feed him in order to be able to begin again. It had been easy to get hold of a victim – a young boy who had been impressed by Dmitry’s uniform and thrilled at the offer of a visit to the Kremlin Armoury. It was better that it was a child – less blood. They didn’t want Iuda to become too strong.

  But it had all taken time. Now it was almost a day since they had arrived in Moscow, Dmitry travelling, like Iuda, in a crate. For him there was always the liberty, at least during the night, to open up the lid and step outside, but he rarely indulged himself. For most of the journey, Dmitry had been as much a prisoner as Iuda. But now things had changed.

  After Iuda had fed, Zmyeevich switched to a different set of techniques in his attempts to extract the information he wanted. He made small cuts in Iuda’s body using a sharp steel knife. They would have healed rapidly and hurt little, but Zmyeevich had quickly inserted small shards of wood – he’d brought along a whole sack of them for the purpose.

  ‘A wooden stake through the heart kills a vampire because the flesh cannot heal rapidly enough,’ he explained. ‘Wood in any wound will have a similar, if less terminal effect. Hawthorn is best, though it is not essential.’

  Soon Iuda’s belly, back and thighs were a latticework of short, deep cuts, from every one of which protruded a twig or a stick. Iuda screamed as each one was inserted, and screamed again whenever Zmyeevich took hold of one and chose to twist it, pressing it into the wound.

  ‘And then there’s always this,’ he said after a little while.

  He cut Iuda once again, just as he had before, and this time slipped a clove of garlic, skinned and cut in half, into the wound. He repeated the process half a dozen times, and each time Iuda screamed as the white flesh of the vegetable penetrated his own.

  ‘This is where the myths about our fear of garlic come from,’ Zmyeevich explained. ‘The smell, the taste, the sensation on the skin – these are nothing. But buried in the flesh, it becomes something quite different.’

  Dmitry nodded. He’d known even as a human of the belief that vampires feared garlic, but had never experienced it himself. Now, perhaps, he would be a little more wary. Zmyeevich continued the process until there was scarcely an inch of Iuda’s body that had not been implanted with either wood or garlic. Iuda screamed and shuddered with each new penetration, but did not grow weak. By the end of it, Dmitry saw Iuda more as a leg of mutton, prepared in a Petersburg hotel by some expert French chef who knew how to get the flavour of garlic to infuse every last fibre of the meat.

  ‘Come and look
,’ suggested Zmyeevich when he was finished.

  Dmitry approached, and peered closely at Iuda’s wounds, first examining one where a thick splinter of oak held open a flap of skin and fat just below Iuda’s bottom rib. Around it the flesh attempted to grow and reform, just as might the flesh of any wounded voordalak, but whenever it touched the wood, it was repelled, and so the laceration was in a constant state of flux, always trying to heal – never succeeding.

  Next he looked at where Zmyeevich had placed a sliver of garlic. Here things were far worse. The flesh made no attempt to regrow. It lay dead and black, leaving a gaping hole in Iuda’s side. Yellow pus oozed from somewhere in the dark crevice that Dmitry couldn’t see. Even to a human the smell would have been repellent. To a vampire – smelling rotting vampire flesh – it was unendurable. Dmitry stepped away and breathed deeply.

  ‘Just an address.’ Zmyeevich was talking to Iuda now. ‘You must have had another home here in Moscow. Simply tell us where it is.’

  It was only the second time Zmyeevich had bothered to ask, the first being right at the beginning, before he’d even laid a finger on Iuda. But Iuda would not have forgotten. It was a subtle approach; none of the great questions, along the lines of ‘How much of my blood have you hoarded?’ or ‘Where is Ascalon?’ It was just a simple question that could do little harm. And once Iuda was broken and told them the answer, everything else would follow.

  But Iuda did not answer.

  Zmyeevich turned away and let his eyes wander across the panoply of equipment that he had brought with him. His eyes fell upon an item and he walked over to it – a simple wooden bowl. He placed it on the floor and knelt down in front of it, rolling up his sleeve as he did so. He reached to the pile of knives – of every shape, size and purpose – and selected from them a lancet. He held the blade against the flesh of his forearm, touching it at one place and then another as though attempting to select the perfect spot. Then, without hesitation, he cut. Blood flowed quickly, running across his skin and dripping from his bare elbow into the bowl below.

  While he had shown not a glimmer of fear or pain as he made the cut, now Zmyeevich’s face became contorted with strain and concentration. Dmitry understood the reason. If nature were left to run its course then the tiny cut to Zmyeevich’s arm would already have healed, with scarcely a few drops of blood shed. Only by the force of his will could he keep the wound open and deliver from it sufficient blood for his purpose – whatever that might be.

  Soon he had enough, and he relaxed, breathing deeply, sweat glistening on his forehead. The flow of blood waned and died, and the gash began to close. Within seconds there was only smooth skin.

  ‘Hold his head,’ instructed Zmyeevich, standing and bringing the bowl over to Iuda. Dmitry did as he was told, though unsure of Zmyeevich’s intent.

  ‘Open his mouth,’ Zmyeevich barked.

  Dmitry complied, forcing his fingers between Iuda’s lips and then his teeth, still failing to comprehend what was to come. Zmyeevich held the bowl of his own blood close to Iuda’s mouth and began to tip it forward. Iuda had not seen Zmyeevich bleed himself – his eyes had been closed and his head hung as he tried to cope with the pain of his myriad wounds. At the hint of blood on his lips he opened his mouth a little wider and drank greedily. Dmitry took the opportunity to push his fingers in deeper, so that Iuda would not be able to change his mind.

  After a moment, the flavour of it hit Iuda. Dmitry could well imagine it – the blood of one voordalak tasted foul to another, at least at first. Even for those who wanted to imbibe, it had to be forced down, like medicine. With practice the instinct could be overcome, but Iuda was far from that point. He tried to spit, but had no strength, and the blood flowed out over his bottom lip and chin.

  ‘Tastes like piss,’ he muttered, forcing out more blood as he spoke.

  ‘No.’ Zmyeevich’s voice was almost soothing, like a mother trying to persuade her infant to eat. ‘You must drink it all down. You must savour the blood of your master.’

  At these last words Iuda raised his head and looked into Zmyeevich’s face. Suddenly he seemed to understand whose blood it was. At the same moment Zmyeevich raised the bowl again, and began to tip the thick, warm liquor into Iuda’s mouth. Dmitry held his head firmly, but as the fluid dripped on to his tongue a second time Iuda began to writhe, thrashing his head from side to side and kicking out with his legs, his actions a desperate attempt to force the drink from his mouth and to break free of Dmitry’s grip.

  Zmyeevich smiled triumphantly, but Dmitry was bewildered. Vampire’s blood might taste foul to the uninitiated, but it was nothing worse than that. Why should the thought of drinking it produce such terror in anyone, particularly in one usually so calm, as Iuda was? And that it was the blood of a voordalak of the eminence of Zmyeevich should make the consumption more an honour than a humiliation.

  At last Iuda ripped his head free of Dmitry’s grasp. He jerked it forward and brought the bridge of his nose into contact with the bowl, knocking it to the ground and spilling its contents across the grey flagstones. Dmitry felt a pang of regret at the loss of so precious a fluid.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Zmyeevich, addressing Iuda rather than Dmitry. ‘There’s plenty more.’

  He righted the bowl and picked up the lancet once again, preparing to yield another portion of his own vital fluid.

  ‘No,’ muttered Iuda. ‘Not that. I’ll tell you.’

  Still Dmitry could not comprehend why the taste of Zmyeevich’s blood should be regarded by Iuda with such horror, to the point that it had broken him where all Zmyeevich’s twigs and garlic cloves – still protruding from his lacerated body – had failed.

  ‘You’ll tell me what?’ asked Zmyeevich.

  ‘Zamoskvorechye,’ he whispered. ‘Klimentovskiy Lane – number 14.’

  His knees buckled and he slumped forward, hanging with the wire rope around his neck as his only support, finding even that more comfortable than standing.

  Zmyeevich looked at Dmitry and said one word.

  ‘Go!’

  Dmitry was on his way.

  Number 14 stood opposite the Church of Saint Clement, after which the road was named. The building was rendered in red stucco, like the church itself. It was not a long walk from the cellars beneath the Kremlin: out through the Nikolai Gate, across Red Square, down the hill past Saint Vasiliy’s to the Moskva Bridge. It was all very familiar, the same pathways that Dmitry had taken in his youth, when he’d first come to Moscow to train as a cavalry officer. Much had changed, but most remained the same. Once over the bridge it was only a short walk, crossing the Vodootvodny Canal, and he was standing outside the building.

  It seemed empty, but not abandoned. It must have been three years, probably a little longer, since Iuda had had the chance to visit. They had not asked about keys; there would have been little point – Iuda certainly did not have them in his possession. Presumably somebody kept them for him, perhaps kept an eye on the building too. They could be watching now. It could all be a trap – but Iuda’s fear had been genuine. Dmitry tried the door and was not surprised to find it locked. He glanced up and down the lane, but saw no one. It was well past midnight now. He threw his shoulder against the wooden panel and the lock broke away easily from the doorframe.

  Dmitry stepped cautiously inside. He remembered the swinging blade that could so readily have decapitated Iuda in Geok Tepe. It was by no means beyond Iuda to have rigged up something similar – probably something far better – to deal with the unwary intruder. Dmitry fetched a paraffin lamp from his bag and lit it.

  His inspection of the ground floor and first floor was cursory. Every window was curtained and shuttered, and the rooms themselves were empty of all but a few scraps of furniture. The layers of dust were suggestive of far longer than three years’ disuse, but Dmitry knew Iuda would not have spent much of his time here; the instinct for any vampire was to be underground.

  The steps down to the cellar lay directly benea
th the main staircase. Dmitry opened the door at the top and descended, still circumspect in case of any snare that Iuda had left. What might it be? Would Iuda have merely been defending his lair against human trespassers? Or would he have been afraid of his own kind coming in here and discovering his darkest secrets? It would be like him to cover all eventualities – but there could be no doubt as to which of the two species harboured his truest enemies.

  Dmitry reached the bottom of the stairs safely. He was faced with another door. He reached for the handle and opened it. Beyond, the cellar was vast, taking up half the ground plan of the entire building. At its centre was a stone plinth, and on that lay a simple wooden coffin. Its place of honour in the middle of the room reminded Dmitry of the solitary chair that had held Iuda fast in Geok Tepe.

  Dmitry approached. The coffin lid was in place. Still there seemed nothing to protect the slumbering figure of Iuda on those occasions when he lay here. But today he was not here. It made sense that he would not have set a snare to catch himself on his own return. Dmitry drew his sword and held it out, slipping its blade into the crack beneath the coffin lid, then twisting and pushing it to one side. If there were any trap installed, he hoped he was standing far enough away.

  The lid fell to the floor with a low clatter, but there were no other consequences of Dmitry’s action. He glanced around; nothing in the cellar had changed. He approached the plinth and looked inside. The coffin, as he had expected, was empty, its silk lining still showing the slight imprint of where a body had once lain. This was not what they had been expecting at all. Zmyeevich had been sure that there would be documents, journals – with luck even some of Iuda’s experimental samples. They hadn’t expected Ascalon itself, but at least some clue. But Dmitry had examined the entire house, and this coffin was the only thing that suggested Iuda had ever been here.

  Dmitry raised his sword and used the sharp tip to make a long, straight incision in the coffin’s lining, down the whole of its length. He ripped away the smooth material and hurled the bundle into the corner of the cellar. But beneath, there was nothing – just the hard wooden sides and bottom of the casket, and …