The Third Section (55 page)

It was over before she even noticed. She had felt that the crescendo and accelerando of the music could never stop, but finally it did and the crowd exploded into cheers and applause with which Tamara happily joined in, while noting with not a little pride that some of it was directed at herself. She felt hands patting her on the back and arms embracing her and she did not resist them. Someone handed her a mug. She sniffed it and then gratefully downed the cooling ale inside.

Then, to a cheer, the band struck up again and, to an even greater cheer, Tamara stepped back out among the dancers.

The boom of the fireworks outside reminded Dmitry of the guns at Sevastopol, but he did not fear the sound any more. Soon he would be beyond all fear. The process had already begun.

There was little pain. Her playful bites during their lovemaking had in the past caused him more discomfort than this. The
overriding
sensation was the smell of Raisa’s hair, which pressed against Dmitry’s face. He could see nothing of what she was doing to him. Only the slight sound of her tongue lapping away at him and her occasional moans of pleasure gave any clue as to what was happening.

After they had made love, they did not speak. She had lain in his arms, just as ever they had done before. After what seemed like an eternity, she had asked one question.

‘So, will you join me?’

‘Yes.’ Dmitry’s answer had been a whisper, but he had always known what it would be. She wasted no time. First she had kissed him on the lips and then her mouth descended on to his neck.

She remained there, drinking from him, for two or three minutes, and although he could feel little at the point where she drew the blood, the effects of its loss were becoming clear. He felt light-headed – happy even, though that was not truly his mood. Then, just as Raisa’s letters to Tyeplov had described, he began to share her mind. His first sensation was of his own blood. The taste itself was foul, though he imagined he would get used to it, but he also experienced the pleasure which Raisa took from it. He understood that soon he would know that pleasure for himself. He tried to explore other corners of her mind but found himself unable. Each door he came to was barred.

Raisa pulled away from him and looked into his face. Her expression was of a joy he had never seen in her. The blood smeared around her mouth – his own blood – should have revolted him, but the ecstasy to which it had driven her, as she ran her tongue around her lips to taste a little more, could only turn revulsion into hunger.

‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘Not everything.’ He knew that she was talking about those closed doors of her mind. ‘First you must drink.’

She knelt up on the bed on one knee, her right leg up, so that her thigh was horizontal. In her hand she had a knife. She drew it across the inside of her thigh, just inches from the top, and blood began to drip down on the sheets.

‘Quickly,’ she said. ‘Before it heals.’

Dmitry leaned forward and placed his mouth over the wound.
He
licked at the blood on the surface. It tasted foul, as his own blood had always done on those occasions when he had had cause to taste it, but the joy he felt from knowing it was Raisa’s blood, knowing that it was willingly given, was overpowering. He pushed forward with his tongue, using its tip to force open the tiny wound she had created in herself, trying to make it wider and deeper so that more blood could escape. Then, as though her heart had suddenly beaten more strongly, a spurt of blood forced its way into his mouth. He swallowed it in an instant and waited for more, but it did not come. He knew he would have to take it. He pressed his lips to her skin, sealing the wound, and then began to suck. The blood flowed smoothly, and he allowed his mouth to fill before swallowing each gulp.

Music came to him, music that was louder and more powerful than ever before. For all he loved the melodies and rhythms that he had created in his mind in the past, this was the sound of true genius. This would make Bach, Mozart and Chopin weep for their inadequacies. It grew louder with each gulp of her blood that he swallowed, and the harmony grew darker, more unnerving. There was a distinct moment at which he realized that the music was no longer magnificent, but terrifying. He wanted to make it cease, but could not. It filled his head with images of pain and torture and betrayal, as though it were played by an orchestra that had been damned to Hell. He tried to listen to the fireworks outside, to use their noise to make the music end, but he could not. And through it all, hiding behind the music but clearly there, was the sound of laughter; Raisa’s laughter.

Suddenly, he could no longer taste blood. He pulled away. The wound in her thigh was gone – healed. He felt her hand on his hair, pulling his face upwards to look into hers, and stretching open the wound to his neck as she did so.

‘That’s enough,’ she said. ‘Now we need to finish you off.’

The foul music still played and images filled his mind. One predominated. It was himself – a little boy of about five – playing with a wooden sword, sparring with a grown man, who brandished a real sword; his father, Aleksei. Was this, Dmitry asked himself, how it was supposed to end?

‘No,’ he said weakly, but she did not listen. She pushed him
down
on to the bed with a strength he could never have guessed she owned. One hand pressed down on his forehead and the other on his chest as her mouth returned to the still-fresh wound that she had created and began to drink once more.

Still the music grew louder, as did the laughter, even though there was no chance now for it to escape her mouth. But it did not come from her mouth; it came from her mind. Dmitry felt her grip on him relax and tried to move, but he was too weak. He raised his hand just a few inches and looked down on it. It was pale and thin. He could not hold it there for more than a moment and was forced to let it drop.

He saw Raisa’s face above him again. His blood was now spread over her cheeks and neck. She was panting – pleased with herself. It was only a respite. Her teeth went down on him once more and he felt her tearing at his flesh, turning now to that as his blood ran short.

The music grew ever louder, though the sound of her laughter was gone, and Dmitry realized that he had no feeling in his limbs. It was as if he had no arms and no legs, and the sensation continued to work its way up his body until only his head existed, then only his face, then only his eyes.

Then the music stopped.

THEY FOUND THE
body beside the river, a little way out of town, downstream, two days after the coronation. He hadn’t been that difficult to identify – he was wearing the uniform of a cavalry major, and the word was already out that Major Dmitry Alekseevich Danilov had failed to report for duty on the morning of His Majesty’s great day. There was no clear idea of precisely when he had died, but the speculation was that it had occurred the night before the coronation. No one knew why Major Danilov might have wandered into a rough part of town, but there seemed little doubt that vagabonds had fallen upon him and had cut his throat – quite brutally, as reports were keen to point out.

Tamara knew differently. Nadia had told her that Dmitry had called on Raisa, and that she had seen neither of them leave – a puzzle in itself. But both were gone. The reason for Dmitry’s absence was soon revealed, but of Raisa there had been no further sign. Until Tamara heard the news, she had suspected they might have eloped – hoped it at least. After she learned about the state of Dmitry’s body her first guess was that the one remaining vampire, Mihailov, must have come upon the two of them in Raisa’s room and slain them both. She had no doubt that before very long on some other riverbank or remote spot Raisa’s body would be found, and that the newspapers would linger with similar glee over the details of the wound to her neck – though few would be smart enough to make a connection with Dmitry.

Then the letter had arrived.

Yudin had made most of the arrangements for the funeral.
It
was to be in Petersburg, on Vasilievskiy Island. Then, on the evening before they were due to travel up, Yudin had announced to Tamara that he would not be attending the ceremony. He told her that he felt responsible for Dmitry’s death, and that he could not put Svetlana Nikitichna through the agony of seeing him and blaming him. It seemed more like a way to assuage his own conscience than to save Svetlana pain, but there was nothing Tamara could do about it.

That morning, as she had been about to set out to catch the train, she had found the letter. It had been slipped under the door by an unknown messenger some time in the small hours. She picked it up, but did not have time to look at it until she was on the train to Petersburg. The text was not long.

My dear Tamara Valentinovna
,

By the time you receive this, I shall be gone. Whether I shall be dead is a matter for fate to decide. And on this occasion, fate will take the form of our mutual friend, Raisa Styepanovna. I will not bore you with detailed explanations. Suffice it to say that I did not make it to Klin in time, and before I could reach Raisa, Tyeplov had converted her into a creature like himself. The fact that I was fully aware that such a transformation could only be enacted upon a willing supplicant made her actions all the more a betrayal. I was destroyed
.

And yet out of my misery came hope. I learned of her consumptive state, and her plan to defeat it by allowing, more than that, by asking Tyeplov to make her into a vampire. I also learned of her hope, so I choose to see it, that I too would follow her down that path. I suspect that I will. I shall call on her and ask her what it is she wants from me. If I am right, then we shall be together. If I am wrong, then who knows? I cannot ask you to pray that I am right, but I do ask that you will pray for God to guide me
.

You may ask why I should choose to reveal all this to you, an acquaintance whom I have known for less than a year, and who in that time I have met but rarely. As I think you guess, my dear Toma, I know your secret, even though you do not.
I
know who your parents are. I would dearly love to reveal it to you here and now, but it is not my decision to take and even if it were, I would not commit it to the same pages upon which I have revealed an intention which, I have no doubt, will make you despise me
.

Suffice it to say that, as you guessed, Domnikiia Semyonovna knows the truth, as does Papa. They will be returning soon, thanks to His Majesty’s pardon. Ask them to tell you. Let them know that I insisted they hold nothing back from you. But please, Toma, tell my father nothing of what has become of me. He would no more accept it than you do
.

To have at last met you has been one of the greatest joys of my life
.

Yours eternally
,

Dmitry Alekseevich Danilov

It was a bizarre letter, from a man, Tamara deduced, with only a tenuous grip on his wits. But his message was clear, the first part of it at least. Raisa had become a
voordalak
. When Tamara had met her on her return to Degtyarny Lane, when she had said that Dmitry had saved her from Tyeplov, it had been a lie. Tyeplov had made her into one of his own. Tamara had seen no change in her, but what should she see? It was only by daylight that her altered nature would be revealed.

But worse than that, she had tricked Dmitry. Where was the need for such cruelty? Perhaps that was the tell-tale sign of her new nature. But she could feed on anyone. Why pretend to him that she would make him like her? Dmitry was right; Tamara was revolted by the idea, and if she’d had the chance she would have screamed at him to be revolted too. But Raisa had not allowed Dmitry to live on by her side. She had waited until he had come willingly to her, and then devoured him. Did that make his blood taste all the sweeter, the fact that she’d played him for a fool in order to get it?

The most generous light it could be seen in was that something had gone wrong – that Raisa had tried to make Dmitry like her, but had failed. Either way, Dmitry’s corpse, drained of blood,
lying
on the bank of the Moskva was ample proof that for him there was no life after death. Out there, somewhere, Raisa still roamed, still feasted upon the blood of the living, but for Dmitry there was nothing.

But it was the second part of Dmitry’s letter that thrilled her. The knowledge he had of her parents. He had given her hope; hope that was more substantial than anything she had encountered on her long quest. The news of the pardon would have reached Siberia by now. Aleksei and Domnikiia might travel quickly or slowly, but they would come, Tamara felt sure of it. And when they did, they would know the truth. That had been Dmitry’s promise.

The burial took place the day Tamara arrived in Petersburg. Dmitry’s coffin had travelled by the same modern means as Tamara – the railway – a few days before. It had been carried over to Vasilievskiy Island by another example of Russia’s surge into the nineteenth century, the Nikolaievsky Bridge. Konstantin had told her that his father had ordered it to be erected so far downstream so that the imperial family would not be able to see the endless funeral cortèges crossing it from the window of the Winter Palace. She thought he had been joking, but now was less sure.