The People's Will Read Online Free Page B

others gathered around too. Osokin noticed that Lukin was among them. Whether he had taken part in the battle or, like himself, had been merely a bystander, Osokin could not tell.
    With grunts and gasps the chair was finally lifted back to an upright position. Otrepyev leaned forward and stared into the prisoner’s eyes. Osokin had a clear view of both men. They were of about the same age – late forties, perhaps fifty – but apart from that, in appearance they were almost opposites. The prisoner wasnot short by any means, but compared with the towering Otrepyev he seemed puny. His blond, straggling, unkempt hair contrasted with the neat dark brown of Otrepyev’s. But his cold, grey eyes spoke of a fierce intelligence which, Osokin guessed, was not nearly matched by that of the colonel.
    One thing, however, was beyond doubt: that these two men knew each other. The entire chamber became hushed. One of them would 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