“Please,” he’s saying. “You can’t leave.”
A knee jams into my side. Oleg rolls me onto my back and drops his knees on my arms, pinning me. Face beaded with sweat, he leans on me with all his weight. I’m wheezing, grunting for breath.
“I’m sorry,” he repeats, the smell of alcohol radiating from him. His eyes still aren’t focusing. He won’t look at me. I’m trying to scream, but nothing is coming out of my mouth except coughing and retching.
Lights flash behind my eyes as I send my fingers clawing over the bedspread.
“Forgive me,” he says, voice shaking.
My fingers slide over something hard and smooth. The variable speed drill. Scratching at the hard plastic, I manage to get hold of the heavy tool.
With all my strength, I swing it in a wobbling arc.
Oleg shrugs as the drill bounces off his shoulder. I drag the tool over his shoulder blades, trying to hit him in the back of the head. He leans a forearm across my upper chest and presses harder, the drill resting uselessly against his head.
“I cannot let you leave,” he says. “They will be here soon. They will come for what was lost in Stalingrad.”
I pull the trigger.
The drill bucks in my hand and grinds, the bit tangling itself instantly in Oleg’s hair. As it wraps the greasy locks into a clump, his head snaps back and his mouth opens wide in surprise. The groaning drill bit keeps turning as Oleg gasps for air, a moan building deep in his chest. He reaches for his head with both hands.
The drill roars—warm jets of air venting over my fingers.
“Stop! Stop!” shouts Oleg. His head is yanked to the side, eyes squeezed closed and his yellowing teeth exposed in a rictus. Clumps of hair are ripping from his scalp, turning in bloody circles on the end of the drill. I close my eyes and turn my head, continuing to squeeze the trigger as he tries desperately to grab the drill.
The Saint Christopher chain he wears around his neck makes a clink as it is caught in the bit. Oleg’s shouts are cut off mechanically as the chain closes over his throat. Now, I only hear the clicking of the drill as it maxes out its torque.
After a few seconds, I let go. Oleg falls face-first onto the mattress, barely conscious.
I push him off me and plant a knee in his back. I release the trigger on the drill and the tension of the chain across his neck relaxes. The bedspread is smeared with rusty stripes of blood from his torn scalp. I wait until he draws a scraping breath.
Oleg whimpers, spitting and retching. Bright droplets of blood are welling out of his scalp. A white froth scabs his lips.
The Ukrainian is alive but confused.
Urgently, I hobble toward the door and push it open. Pausing in the doorway, I press my forehead against the cool doorframe. I can hear every ragged breath Oleg takes, as he lies in a heap on the bed.
“What are you doing, Oleg?” I ask, my voice echoing flatly against the concrete block walls. “What do you want with a relic?”
The man is crying, face pressed into the comforter.
“They are dying,” he says, voice muffled. “The long-lived ones will do anything to survive. They control everything. They know everything.”
I hear police sirens outside and look to the phone. The receiver is still lying next to the cradle. I hear the screech of brakes on pavement.
“You tried to kill me,” I say.
Oleg rolls off the bed and onto his knees. He looks up at me, hair wild, blood smeared on his face. Blue and red flashes of light from police cars outside roll off his gray skin. His hands are clasped together, as if he is praying.
“I tried to protect you,” he says. “You learned their name.”
“Whose name?” I ask.
“You should run from here. They are coming.”
“Who!? Who is coming, Oleg!?”
“Miss June,” he says, tears in his eyes. “It’s the avtomat.”
8
MOSCOW, 1713
In the darkness of Favo’s laboratory, my sister and I join each other in study. Tutors from the far reaches of the world stand beyond our locked door. We learn the languages and religions of Europe and Asia by candlelight. And as Elena and I learn more, we speak more. Every evening, our minds are filled with knowledge of the greater world.
And at dawn each day, we train our bodies.
Elena has learned to cloak herself in cosmetics and clothing, transforming her appearance nearly at will with the use of soot and pigment. I am taught the ways of warfare: saber, lance, and musket. The lessons are hard and cold. Once a week, I don my armored cuirass and crouch and crawl over the rough stone of an underground passage to the palace dungeon.
In this deep place, there is a circular room with sheer stone walls that stretch up to the bright gray, predawn sky. It is an oubliette, a nearly featureless pit with two wooden doors. On the blood-soaked stone, my growing skills are set against those of silent opponents who have been plucked from the black cells on the lowest levels. These doomed criminals shiver, breath pluming in the cold as they stalk in circles, blades glinting. Promised freedom, my opponents fight like animals.
The fights are fair, within pravda, and I am annihilation.
Months after my awakening, Favorini perfects a pliable wax substance that can be painted to look like skin. It is easier for me to move among humans with some semblance of a man’s face, my features hidden in a beard and mustache. The girl must wear a hood, claiming modesty and keeping her angelic face hidden from the probing stares of humankind. Both of us are forced to practice using our faces and voices to express emotion, to inflate our lungs to give the imitation of breath, and to exercise the empty camouflage of eating and drinking.
Even masked in faces, we are never sent to the surface in daylight.
Instead, Elena and I spend long midnights walking the ice-kissed courtyards of the Kremlin, our footsteps echoing up to the many pointed domes of the palace towers. Our presence is known only to the merchants, who open early-morning stalls in the Red Square, and the many guards who follow us at a distance. We do not speak to others, and are known only as the tall man and his daughter—a pair of moonlit shades in constant motion and discussion.
During these years, a great new city is being built—a metropolis to rival any of those in Europe. The tsar has conscripted tens of thousands of serfs to build it. Stone and timber are being hauled from all corners of the empire to an icy, disease-infested marsh at the head of the Neva River. We overhear rumors of waters choked with the bodies of fallen workers, and a new capital rising—Saint Petersburg, the city built upon bones.
Favorini has informed us that it is to be our new home.
“There have been more raids on the builders in Petersburg,” says Elena. “The tsar is gathering forces to repel them. Do you think he will conscript you into the imperial army?”
This is our last morning together in Moscow. We march for the new city in hours.
“Yes,” I say.
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” I say.
Elena peers up at me from beneath her hood. Black ringlets curl over the ceramic contours of her face. Favo has improved her appearance since I first saw her cheek, a fiery crescent in the darkness. From a distance, she looks cherubic—a little girl with smooth skin and small bright teeth. Up close, I can see her hands are still hard, tiny gauntlets made of fine china.
“What if you are hurt?” she asks. “What if you die?”
I shrug. These thoughts stir nothing inside me.
“You think only of yourself,” she says. “If you are gone, I will be alone. Who will I talk to?”
“A human, perhaps,” I respond.
“Favo? He is growing old. His wrinkles grow deeper every week. And besides, he is only a man. We are avtomat.”
I am silent. She stares defiantly up at my face, eyes challenging me.
“I have no one else,” she says. “You have no one else.”
Elena is small beside me. She is in no way a child
, but she is vulnerable.
“I promise to look after you, Sister,” I say. “Always.”
“Good,” she says, crossing her arms as if she feels the cold.
We have grown used to this place, even if only under the light of the moon. It is strange to be leaving it, when it is all I have ever known.
“It must be nice to have such strength,” says Elena. “Aren’t you afraid of anything?”
I think about the question, allowing this notion of fear to fall through the tumblers of my mind. Around us, morning birds call to one another from trees that trace their limbs like black veins over the morning sky.
“Dishonor,” I respond. “I fear the pain of breaking my Word.”
“Always pravda,” she says.
I put a hand on her arm.
“That is my soul you speak of.”
She shrugs off my hand, standing.
“Very well,” she says. “But I am glad to obey logicka.”
She walks away toward the palace, glancing back.
“To think, I could have ended up as irrational as you.”
I watch Elena cross the cobblestones on little buckled shoes. Her body is buried inside a fur-lined cloak, skinny legs hidden under layers of a silken silver dress. Flecks of snow glitter in her black curls and do not melt.
Irrational or not, I love her as a little sister. In a world of human beings, Elena is my only kin. Rising to follow her, I notice a peasant woman has stopped to watch us.
Over the months, stray glances and mumbled tales have accumulated about the tall man and his daughter. The murmur finally erupted into rumor. Old wives’ tales and superstitions are passed among the peasants like lice. Elena and I have been recognized as those who have no breath in the cold. Those whose faces are pale or never seen. Those with tireless footsteps and fine clothes.
They call us vampir.
Ludicrous, but as the stories grew, our presence in Moscow became dangerous, and finally, impossible. As the tsar prepared to move to the new capital, the presence of his eternal successor became obligatory.
Our traveling party departs for Saint Petersburg soon after dawn. The courtyard is crisply freezing under cascades of weak sunlight. Sheets of steam rise in a haze off warming rooftops as morning hearth fires are stoked. A skim of ice lends a fantastical sheen to the cobblestones of the palace, and we seem to glide out over a river of mercury.
Elena and I ride together at the rear of the traveling party. Unlike the humans who ride ahead of us, we do not shiver or rub our hands together. Our nostrils do not send plumes of vapor into the air. The girl and I do not yawn or stretch or stamp our feet to get the blood flowing.
Favorini turns in his saddle, winks at us, and stays in line.
Despite all the horror stories of mud and starvation and fires in Petersburg, the old man is excited, his wrinkled face often collapsing into a smile below bright blue eyes. He is riding light on a brown mare, tramping through the manure and ruts left behind by the hundreds who have preceded us. The tsar’s entourage has already devolved into a sprawling, raucous party. Peter leads somewhere at the front, and the company is protected by the imperial army riding ahead and behind.
More than once this morning, we have seen diplomats and nobles on the wayside, vomiting up breakfasts accompanied by numerous drafts of vodka forced by the tsar onto those around him. It is a typical merry journey for Peter. Less so for anyone near him with a weaker constitution.
An occasional imperial guard threads through the middle of the procession, scanning for any who have fallen behind, incapacitated.
A few hours north of Moscow, we leave the open farmlands and enter a winding path through the Khimki Forest. Narrow bands of pine trees tower over us, needles and leaves wafting lazily down and an occasional pinecone snapping through branches. As a crisp breeze pushes through the green walls of the forest, the whole world seems to sway.
Elena and I do not notice the rider immediately.
A gray horse canters into our line, drawing nearer. I notice the rider has a stiff gait, something off about the mechanics of his shoulders and legs. He is a tall man, dressed in the fine embroidered kaftan of a noble, with a silver cloak draped over his thin frame. His face is exposed, high cheekbones cutting through chilly air. As he turns his gaze on other riders, they look away quickly.
Riding haughtily with his gauntleted hands out, armor shining, the nobleman is an intimidating vision. No one dares challenge his presence. I watch as the other riders move to avoid him, consciously or not. And although he never looks directly at me—his horse grows closer and closer.
Finally, the nobleman is riding beside Elena and me, silver-blond hair spilling over his shoulders and across his breastplate. Favorini is three wagons ahead, gesturing animatedly and chattering at a European diplomat. Without looking at either of us, the pale man speaks. His inflection is flat, but I sense a Swedish lilt to his words.
“Greetings, dvoryane,” he says, in a high clear voice, staring straight ahead. “I am Herr Talus Silfverström, sent by our master to collect you.”
Elena and I share a glance.
“Our master?” I ask.
The silver-haired man turns his face slightly and I see the flash of perfectly white teeth, as though carved from bleached ivory.
“The Worm Mother,” he says. “Master to all avtomat. She is calling you home.”
“I have no such master,” I say, low and deliberate.
“It has not been easy to reach you,” Talus says, voice urgent. “This task has necessitated much patience on my part. Years of patience.”
His smile fades. “Return with me to where you belong. All will be explained, in time.”
Elena and I share a glance of confusion.
“Return with you where?” she asks.
“To your own kind,” he says. “These people have filled your head with foolish notions. My master will remind you who you are. That is all you need know. Obviously, any here who recognize your nature must be purged.”
I let my horse saunter a few steps, ignoring a glance of panic from Elena. She is fond of Favorini and his knowledge, while I am honor bound to serve my Word and therefore my tsar.
“We cannot accompany you,” I say. “I am bound to the empire.”
“Ah, is it a tsar you serve? Or is it a word?”
I do not respond.
“I know more than you could guess, Pyotr. About your midnight walks, certainly.”
The silver-haired man smiles.
“You were watched by the emperor’s men at all times in Moscow. It took months to properly spread the stories of vampir. My rumors had to be sown from the countryside and took root slowly.”
“That was you—”
“And now you are here. Guarded but not watched. Finally, a place where you can eliminate your feeble mechanician and escape.”
“Such an action would defy honor.”
“All actions are honorable in service to your master,” he responds with a thin smile. “You of all people should know that.”
The silver-haired man lays a gauntlet over the hilt of his stocky sword. His horse ducks closer to mine and his left hand settles around the small of my back. When he hisses at me, I feel no heat on his breath.
“Come away, now. You do not wish to engage me. It would not end well for you, and especially not for the little strategist—”
My massive right arm snakes around his torso and I catch a fistful of his silver hair in one hand. My left hand closes over his pommel, my fingers wrapped around his hand with room to spare. I am taller than this man, my limbs longer, a great strength taut in the metal of my bones.
The threat to Elena has turned my grip to cold iron.
“Stay, and I will end you,” I say.
“That’s optimistic,” Talus responds, still smiling.
I shove the man away from me, his horse whinnying and stumbling. His head swivels as he gains control of his mount, silvery-blond hair splayed out. Anger twists at his
thin lips. A master artisan has made his face, with features so angular and convincing.
Talus is a work of art come to life.
“Once you reach the city of bones, you are lost,” he calls. “To deny the Worm Mother will make you both outcasts. Enemies of men…and avtomat.”
I regard him silently, let my horse march on.
“Very well,” he says, yanking his reins and wheeling his horse around. “Continue down your stubborn path. But the decision you make today will last for a long time. A very long time, indeed.”
Clenching his legs, the pale man sends his horse galloping away. The dark woods quickly swallow his shining form. Our conversation lasted mere seconds, but I find myself staggered by the implications.
Elena pulls her horse beside mine. On the trail, under a cathedral ceiling of swaying trees, she looks at me in wonder.
“There are others,” she says.
Elena breaks into a smile. My face is not as good at performing the same action. Thinking about making the shape, something moves in my jaw and the skin around my mouth pulls back a bit.
“This makes you glad?” I ask.
Together, we continue warily alongside the rest of the oblivious entourage.
“I’m not sure. I think so.”
“How could they know of us?”
“Our anima,” she says, thinking it through. “We do not know where they came from, or who found them. Perhaps the others know us from…a time before now.”
“It does not matter.”
“Are you not curious about them, Peter?”
I ride for a moment, thinking.
“I am meant to serve my ruler, little one. There is nothing beyond that.”
9
OREGON, PRESENT
Avtomat. Oleg said something called the avtomat are coming.
You should run from here.
The words ring in my ears as I stumble out of the motel doorway and onto the narrow sidewalk. Two police cars are parked across the half-empty parking lot, lights flashing in the dusk. I’m still catching my breath as police officers rush toward me, smears of black in the twilight.