CHAPTER XIV

I WAS ABOUT AS FAR FROM MY BED AS IT IS POSSIBLE FOR ONE THING to be from another in Moscow. As I headed back across town, the air was heavy with the stench of smoke. Buildings were ablaze everywhere – perhaps half of the city was burnt or burning. Even south of the river in Zamoskvorechye, houses were on fire.

The flames had not reached the stable where I had been staying, but I felt no inclination to be caught asleep in a wooden building if the fire did reach it during the day. I was desperately tired, having been up all night, and I suspected that the night that was to come would require similar exertions of me. Across the street was a small church, abandoned by its priest and his entourage before the French arrived and, crucially, made of stone. I gathered up what few possessions I had left in the stable and made my way over. It was a matter of little trouble to break into the crypt and I slipped inside.

It was cold and dark. Outside, even though it was now midmorning, the city basked in an eerie twilight caused by the thick smoke that hung over it. Somewhere through it, I could just make out the disc of the sun, shining brightly, but lessened in its power by the smog that the fires all around constantly replenished. Within the crypt, it was darker still. It was an ideal place for anyone who wanted to sleep undisturbed during the day.

I paused, remembering that there were still seven others in the city who needed a dark, secluded place to sleep through the hours of daylight. What if, by some unlucky chance, one or more of the Oprichniki had chosen this very place to secrete their coffins? Would I awake to find that I had slept alongside the very creatures that I hoped to destroy?

On the other hand, there were many, many churches with crypts in Moscow, and many other similarly safe places that weren't crypts at all. It would have surprised me if the Oprichniki could even go near a holy place such as a church, although I immediately remembered that Foma and Ioann had met me outside one less than two days before. But I was very, very tired. For all I knew, the smoke outside was so thick that the Oprichniki might be able to wander around in the open without need to fear the sun. I lay down, using a stone step as a pillow, but despite my exhaustion, I could not sleep.

Since I had last closed my eyes, my whole conception of the world around me had been ripped apart. So many things that had seemed mysterious about the Oprichniki could now be explained: their enormous strength, their avoidance of daylight, the tales of death that had followed them on their journey up the Don. Most of all, I now understood their motivation. They did not fight for their country or for my country, but for the most primitive instinct of all; they fought for food. But even that did not quite fit. They killed more than they needed, surely, for food. At the farmhouse in Goryachkino, three of them had killed thirty men. Did they need ten each for their cravings to be satisfied?

'Satisfied.' It was the word Pierre had used when he was describing their attack on his camp. They had continued to kill even though they were satisfied – even though they had eaten all they could. So perhaps they killed for other reasons beyond food – for pleasure, much as rich, idle men (and I must include myself at times amongst them) hunt animals that they could never eat. Or perhaps they killed so many for much the same reason as the Russian army did – because they were enemies on our soil. Perhaps they were merely doing what we had gladly asked them to do – helping to kill our enemies. Could I really blame them for doing what I had asked and for getting some enjoyment out of it? I had chosen to join the army, so many years before, because I wanted to travel. I had killed, I would guess, one man for every twenty versts of Europe I had crossed. Was not their justification – that they needed to eat – better than mine, which was, to reduce it to its most basic, that I was curious?

I cast such thoughts from my mind. I knew in my gut that these creatures were evil. There was much in the knowledge of past generations that an enlightened man of the nineteenth century could regard as primitive – in science, warfare, literature and music – but that did not mean it should all be dismissed. I'd been arrogant enough to laugh at my grandmother's stories – laughing to hide my fear – but now she'd been irrefutably proved to be right. I still had to discover some of the details, but she had been right about the existence of vampires, and I was not going to dispute their vile nature. I would not disagree with centuries of accumulated wisdom on what is good and what is evil; on what is right and what is wrong. Every atom of my experience and of the wisdom handed down to me from my forebears told me how I should regard these creatures, and there was no amount of logical, rational consideration of their behaviour that could change that. They were abominations against God and they had to die. I had begun the task the previous night and I would continue the next night – and the next and the next until the job was complete.

I tried to sleep once again and this time found that drowsiness quickly overcame me. I thought of the seven other figures lying elsewhere in the city in similar dark places also seeking the reinvigoration of slumber. As I dozed off, it occurred to me to wonder how they had managed to sleep out in the countryside as we had headed out west to meet the advancing Russians, with no permanence as to where we would be from one day to the next. The question did not occupy my mind enough to keep me awake.

Nor did the implications of what Maks had done, or of what had befallen him. I had realized almost as soon as I had discovered that the Oprichniki were vampires that Maks might well have had Simon, Iakov Alfeyinich and Faddei killed not because of his loyalty to France, but out of his loyalty to humanity. 'Humanity.' It was the very word Maks had used the last time we spoke, moments before I abandoned him to those creatures. It seemed almost certain that he had known what they were. Beyond doubt was the fact that his death had been the most gruesome imaginable. And yet I managed to sleep.

When I awoke it was into total darkness. I leapt to my feet, afraid that I had slept all day, but as consciousness returned to me, I realized it was dark simply because I was still in the crypt. A heavy, throbbing ache gnawed at the right side of my chest. The events of the previous night came back to me in an engulfing wave of remembrance. The pain in my chest was where the stake that had penetrated Varfolomei's body had merely bruised mine. I went over to the door and looked outside to find that it was still daylight – the middle of the afternoon. The smell of a burning city hung in the air.

There was little that I could do until that evening's meeting. I would arrive early and hope that Vadim and Dmitry were there early too – before any of the Oprichniki arrived. Three of us against seven would be better odds. It was something of a blessing that my mind was occupied by the night ahead, else I might have broken down at the state to which the city had been reduced. Whole blocks of once grand buildings lay in smouldering piles of charred remains. The leaves of trees, some already turning brown with the onset of autumn, had become grey from the thin layer of ash that coated them. Was any of that ash, I wondered, in fact flecks of the dust into which Matfei and Varfolomei's bodies had corroded, swept up by the wind into the air and mixed with the smoke from the fires? How long would it take for their remains to be spread thinly across the whole city; the whole country; the whole planet? How much of the dust that fills our homes, that is beaten out of our carpets, that we inadvertently inhale every day, comes from other such creatures, killed long ago by righteous men, their residue spread to the four corners of the earth?

Here and there amongst the burnt-out buildings mementos of the souls that once inhabited them had survived the conflagration. China bowls and plates scattered the floor where the cupboards that had held them once stood. In one house a heavy oak table had survived unscathed while all around it had been consumed. In another lay a pile of empty book bindings, their paper contents burnt away while they had somehow survived. There were few that died in the fires. Even if Moscow had not already been abandoned by its people, fire in a tightly packed city is always more of a danger to property than to life. The fire is seen at the end of the street. The neighbours shout. People flee their homes and stand out in the road to watch. And still the flames have moved up the street by less than the width of a single house. The inferno moves as slowly as the tide, but with the same determination. The greatest risk to the onlookers is not the flames or the smoke, but the chance that an entire building might collapse outward into the street, crushing those who stand and gawp.

Where I was now, amongst the ruins, that scene of conflagration had been played out hours or even days previously. Elsewhere in the city, it was at that moment taking place. In the remains of some of the grander houses – grander before the fire levelled the homes of both the rich and the poor – crouched figures poked among the debris, scavenging for anything that might be of value. Some rich families had left their finest jewellery behind, hidden beneath floorboards or behind panelled walls. But they could not hide it from the fire. With the floorboards and the walls gone, all these things fell to the ground. Precious stones survived the flames intact; precious metals melted and reset, but lost little of their value for it. Those who scavenged risked burning their fingers on the still-glowing embers, but they thought it a worthwhile price to pay. Others were wiser, and sent their children to do the foraging.

Still wiser were those who foraged not for wealth, but simply for sustenance. In kitchen gardens – accessible from the street now that the houses to which they once belonged had been razed – men, women and children scrabbled for the few rotting cabbages and potatoes that remained, which they either ate raw immediately, or hid inside their coats to savour later. Whilst Russians scavenged both inside for jewels and outside for food, the French troops had no concept of the possibility of starvation, and concentrated in their looting only on what was traditionally valuable. In the weeks that were to come, many would discover that they would gladly exchange a ruby for a beetroot, or a diamond for a potato. A few would cling to their spoils for ever, deluding themselves to the last that a rich man can never go hungry.

It was Thursday and so our rendezvous was at the Resurrection Gate, the northern entry to Red Square. I arrived soon after eight, almost an hour before we were due to meet. The sun had already set and, as I stood and waited, looking at the weatherbeaten mosaic icons above each arch of the gateway, I was thankful that the fires had not got this far – at least, not yet.

One icon depicted Saint George, the city's patron saint, running his lance through the mouth of his monstrous foe, the dragon that lay spread-eagled, almost in supplication, beneath the hooves of the saint's steed. It seemed indisputably final – good, as is right and proper, vanquishing evil. But was there more to come? The dragon had its long, serpentine tail wrapped around the horse's hind leg. Was this just a last contortion of the beast's death agonies, or had the dragon conceived a plan whereby it might dismount its foe and, against probability and against legend, devour the saint? The icon illustrated just a single moment. We could see neither how the dragon and saint had arrived at this confrontation, nor how it was to be resolved. To find out, we have only the mythic tales – written by men, not by dragons.

With a smile, I allowed myself the indulgence of picturing me – Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov – as a modern Saint George, saving Moscow from a new spawn of monsters that were threatening it. They were not dragons but, it occurred to me, they had been brought here by Zmyeevich – the son of the dragon. Had it been his father that George had killed? Had he brought the Oprichniki to Moscow for revenge? I laughed out loud at the path my imagination had chosen, then glanced around; no one was there to have heard me. I wondered how an icon of me might look, doing battle with Matfei and Varfolomei in that cellar. Again, the iconographers would be able only to capture a moment. They would not show that it was I who, in part, had invited the monsters into the city, nor could they show, as yet, the final scene of the story. When and how would I feel the serpent's tail wrap around my ankle and drag me to my doom?

'It feels like it's been a long time, Aleksei Ivanovich.'

I turned. It was Dmitry. It had been six days since I had spoken to him and then I had felt a hatred towards him that I thought I could never overcome. It had begun to fade almost immediately but it had been a long six days, and now my opinion towards him hinged on one simple question: did he already know? I had worked alongside the Oprichniki for a few weeks and, although there had been many small things that had made me feel uneasy about them, it was not until I had seen Matfei in that cellar – in fact later, when I had seen his body crumble to dust – that I had known for certain what they were. Dmitry had known them for much longer. Could he possibly have avoided finding out? I had suspected right from the beginning that there was something about the Oprichniki that he was keeping from us, but never something like this. Perhaps he just had his own suspicions and had dismissed them as ridiculous. If he did know, then I had no idea what to say to him. If he didn't, then he had to be warned.

But when I looked at him, I felt another certainty. He was simply familiar old Dmitry; a man of reliable, almost mundane, simplicity. He was not a man who existed in a world of vampires. If he had known of it, it would have changed him, and I would have known. I stepped towards him and embraced him heartily.

'Oh, Dmitry!' I muttered into his shoulder. He flinched. It seemed that six days had done more to heal my mental attitude towards him than they had done to heal the physical injuries I had inflicted on him when we last met.

I took a step back. 'Are you all right?' I asked him.

'It still hurts a little,' he replied, without bitterness. 'You knew what you were doing.' I think it was meant as a compliment. He looked at me intently and his face showed concern. 'I think the question is better aimed at you. Are you all right?'

'I've been . . . busy.'

'You look terrible. Have you slept? Have you even eaten?'

Over the past days, I hadn't thought to consider my own circumstances. I had bought food, at preposterous prices, from marketplaces when I had had the opportunity. I had slept, but my rest had been disrupted as I had adjusted my sleeping pattern to synchronize with that of the enemy; not the French, but my new enemy, the Oprichniki. My body still ached with the bruises of my encounters with Varfolomei and Matfei. I had not washed. I had not changed my clothes. I had been sleeping first in a stable and then in a crypt. There had been no mirror for me to see myself in for days, but Dmitry's expression was mirror enough.

Dmitry fished into his pocket and brought out a block of something, wrapped in paper. He offered it to me. It was cheese. I sat down with my back against the Resurrection Gate, and ate it with a hunger I had not known was in me.

'I don't like to gloat,' said Dmitry, sitting beside me, 'but I've found this one of the easiest jobs I've ever had. Meet up with the Oprichniki of an evening, have a quick chat, and then let them get on with it. They're causing more havoc than we could ever do.'

'Yes,' I said forcefully, through a mouthful of cheese, 'and I've found out why.'

'"Why"? How is there a "why" about it?'

I looked at him gravely, wondering whether I had the words to explain what would be – and had until recently been to me – unbelievable. The words that we have to talk about these things are the words that are used to recount stories, not to convey the truth. I remembered how Vadim had broken to me the news that Maks was a spy. All I could do was speak directly.

'They're not human, Dmitry. They're monsters. They kill so that they can feast on the flesh of their victims.' It was a delight to speak about it. While what I knew remained simply thoughts in my head, my sanity had hung solely on the flimsy thread of its truth. By giving voice to it I became once again sure that the knowledge was real; a passenger in my mind, not a creation of it.

Dmitry was unmoved – neither shocked nor disbelieving, and yet apparently comprehending. In case there was any doubt, I decided to make things utterly clear for him, using the word that my grandmother had spoken with fear, my father with scorn. I used the word with precision.

'Dmitry, they're voordalaki.'

Dmitry shook his head, as if in a momentary spasm. 'So?' he asked. 'We fight alongside Prussians, Austrians, Englishmen. We don't care who they are as long as they are on our side.'

He hadn't even bothered to ask me how I knew. What I had told him was preposterous superstition and his reaction was not to deny it but to belittle it. He was not saying to me 'don't be ridiculous' so much as 'don't be sentimental'. It was at once obvious that I had been mistaken about him.

'So you knew?' I asked him.

'Yes, I knew.' His reply was dismissive, but that he needed to say more showed that he was also defensive. 'I knew that they are the most accomplished killers I have ever met. I knew that my country was threatened with invasion. I knew that they could kill a dozen Turks where all our guns and cannon might have killed one. I knew that we needed them and, most importantly, Aleksei, I knew that we could trust them. This is our country we're fighting for; it's not a time to be picky about how we fight. The French would do the same, but we're the lucky ones – they're working for us and they do what we tell them. If we ask that they kill only the French then they kill only the French – and by the hundred.'

We were interrupted by a third voice. 'They killed Maksim.' It was Vadim who spoke, stepping out from the shadows. I don't know how long he had been listening. 'He was Russian.'

I wished it were not the case, but the argument was far too easy to answer. 'They killed Maksim with our consent,' I replied. 'He was as good as French.'

Vadim nodded grimly. 'Perhaps you should tell me everything you've discovered,' he said. 'Dmitry Fetyukovich may have his own reasons for believing in the . . .' he hesitated to use such a superstitious word, '. . . voordalak, but I need a little more persuading.'

Vadim's arrival had so quickly transformed into a discussion that I had no opportunity to greet him, as I had Dmitry, with the affection that had been building within me over the past few days. But had there ever been an appropriate moment, it had now passed.

'I'll tell you,' I said, 'but we had better walk. The Oprichniki may arrive here at any moment.' We walked across Red Square. When almost empty, as it was now, it is the perfect place for a private conversation, if one stays close to the middle of it. No one can approach without being seen; no one can get within earshot. The nearest hiding places would be amongst the market stalls and simply constructed shops that ringed the perimeter of the square and – to my mind – detracted from its grandeur. No one was trading at this hour and those stalls which had not already burnt were abandoned. We were free to talk in private. A raised voice could echo from one side of the square to the other, but a whisper dies away unnoticed by any but those for whom it was intended.

I realized that I had to be careful of what I told them – more specifically, of what I told Dmitry. If it was no great surprise to him to discover the true nature of the Oprichniki, then that would make it even more of a shock to him to discover that I had killed two of them. I wasn't so sensitive as to worry about shocking Dmitry, but I felt fairly sure that he would sooner or later be telling the other Oprichniki what I had done. That I could do without.

I told them of how I had followed Foma. There was not much in that to contribute to my condemnation of them, but it established the pattern that I was later to see Matfei follow. Then I told them of my pursuit of Matfei, and told them what I saw beneath the tavern – of how he tore out the throat of that Frenchman with his teeth and of the wounds I found on the body when I got closer. Then I had to stay close to the truth, but not reveal all.

'I followed him further,' I continued, 'to another cellar, north of Tverskaya. I waited outside and soon I saw Varfolomei arrive. I was already pretty sure about what we were dealing with, so I waited until it was fully daylight before following them down. Inside, I saw them. They sleep in coffins. I could look close enough even to see their teeth. The stories you hear are true – they have fangs like wolves.'

The most unambiguous proof as to what these creatures were lay, of course, in the manner of their deaths, but I was unable to reveal that part of the story. Instead, I extemporized. Matfei and Varfolomei were in no position to contradict me.

'They awoke and came towards me. I don't know if they were going to attack me, but I backed away; back out of the door, into the light. They stopped, as if the doorway was a barrier to them. They dared not step into the light.' Still I faced a problem. Their fear of the light was not enough to convince Vadim as to what manner of creatures they were. I had seen them face to face – that had been enough for me – but without describing how they actually died, what proof did I have? I realized the best way to condemn dead men was also the most traditional – to claim that they confessed to me.

'So I felt a little safer and we began to talk,' I continued. 'They're not ashamed of what they are; they freely admitted it. They couldn't see why I should be shocked at it.' The reaction I was describing was in fact close to the one that Dmitry had displayed moments earlier, but it seemed the safest bet for how they might have reacted if I had given them the chance.

'And you believed them?' asked Vadim, as if I were a fool. I turned to him, my face expressing something of my outrage. 'I wouldn't have expected such credulity in you, Aleksei.'

'I wasn't being credulous.'

'Oh, come on!' Vadim raised his voice, and then lowered it, looking around in case he had been heard. 'Either I can accept that all that rubbish the peasants believe about the dead rising from their graves and drinking the blood of the living – things that no intelligent man has countenanced for centuries – is true, or I can believe that one of my officers got hoaxed by a couple of foreign mercenaries with a twisted sense of humour. That's hard enough to swallow, but it's the better option.'

'But I saw Matfei, tearing the flesh from a man's throat with his teeth!' Now it was my voice that was raised.

'You could have seen anything.'

I took a breath. It seemed I would have to tell them the evidence of my own eyes, whatever the risk. Before I could speak, Dmitry came to my rescue.

'It's true, Vadim. I've seen far more than Aleksei has. Not here, but back in Wallachia. I knew what they were when I called them here.'

'And you decided not to tell us,' said Vadim.

'I had promised them that I would keep their secret.'

'That wasn't your decision to make.'

'It was part of the deal. They wouldn't have come otherwise.' He could see that Vadim was still unconvinced. 'We need them, Vadim. When it comes down to it, they are very proficient soldiers. They have killed who we wanted them to kill. They will help us to drive out the French. You're not going to throw all that away, are you?' He was talking only to Vadim. There was little point in trying to persuade me.

'Forget about them,' said Vadim. 'I don't have any quarrel with them, Captain Petrenko.' He was at his most formal and therefore his most irate. 'My quarrel is about why you chose not to tell us what you claim to know.'

'Then quarrel with me later. We're in the middle of a war.' I had never heard Dmitry – or any of us – speak to Vadim in such an openly rebellious tone before. Vadim was not one to lord it over his subordinates, but Dmitry was crossing into unknown territory as to what he would put up with.

Vadim covered his face with his hands and breathed deeply. 'This is madness,' he said. 'Arguing as to whether you should have told me they were vampires. I should be dressing you both down for being so gullible.'

'Perhaps we had better postpone this,' I interrupted, nodding across the square to where I had seen two figures approaching. At a distance it was unclear who the shorter one was, but they were undoubtedly Oprichniki and the taller one could be no one but Iuda.

Vadim and Dmitry stepped apart, trying to look somehow nonchalant for the benefit of the creatures that approached us.

'We'll speak of this later, Dmitry Fetyukovich,' muttered Vadim through a false smile. 'If what you say is true, then that was no way for Maksim to die.'

'So what's a good way for a traitor to die?' came Dmitry's reply. Before anyone could add anything else, the Oprichniki were with us.

It was Ioann that accompanied him, but as usual, Iuda did all the talking.

'Good evening, Vadim Fyodorovich, Dmitry Fetyukovich, Aleksei Ivanovich.'

We each acknowledged his greeting.

'How is your work progressing?' asked Vadim.

'According to plan,' replied Iuda. 'We are restraining ourselves so as not to give too much alarm. At present the fires are causing as much trouble for the French as we are.'

'I think they've nearly run their course now,' said Vadim. 'The French have organized themselves enough to deal with them. On top of that, there's not much left to burn.' He said it with a casualness that belied how deeply we all felt for the devastation of the city.

'Good. They have been a cause of much concern to me and my friends. Indeed, we have not seen some of our friends for several days,' said Iuda. 'Have any attended your meetings?'

'We saw Matfei and Varfolomei last night,' said Dmitry.

'We?'

'Vadim Fyodorovich and myself.'

'So you were not at that meeting, Aleksei Ivanovich,' said Iuda, turning to me. I wondered if he already knew about what had happened to Matfei and Varfolomei and whether he was trying to read my mind. I was relieved that Dmitry had not mentioned my following them.

'No, I didn't make it. But the previous night I saw Foma and Ioann,' I replied, nodding towards Ioann, who still stood tacitly beside his taller comrade. 'It's not always easy to travel across the city, even at night. I'm sure the others are perfectly safe.'

'You are no doubt right, Aleksei Ivanovich – those whom you have not seen are quite safe, I'm sure. I myself saw Pyetr and Andrei only last night.'

Ioann shuffled his feet impatiently and looked around him.

'I think we had best be about our work,' said Iuda, noting Ioann's nervousness. 'I'm sure we shall all meet again soon.' He glanced at each of us in turn, in case we had anything more to say. Seeing that we had nothing, they turned and walked away.

Once they were out of earshot, I heard Vadim's voice in my ear. 'So, which one do you want to take?' The thought of pursuit that had been on my mind had evidently been on Vadim's too.

'You choose,' I said.

'You're going to follow them?' asked Dmitry, as if astonished that we could consider something so underhand.

'I would like to see for myself what Aleksei has described,' said Vadim. 'Then I might be convinced. I'll take Iuda.'

'Fine by me,' I said. My plan was not simply to follow, but to follow and to kill. To that end, I would prefer it to be Ioann. Strange though it was to admit, Iuda managed to carry some vestige of personality about him – relative at least to the other Oprichniki – that would make his death less of a pleasure. 'I'll take Ioann.'

'You don't have to join in if it goes against your conscience, Dmitry,' said Vadim with a knowing smile. It was unthinkable that Dmitry would allow himself to be left out of it.

'No, I'll tag along. I'll go with Aleksei.'

'It's all right,' I said, not wanting Dmitry to interfere with my true purpose. 'I'll be fine. You go with Vadim.'

'No, Aleksei. We're the old team. We work best together.'

I couldn't make any further protest without it being too obvious, and Dmitry knew it.

The two Oprichniki were still just visible, leaving the square to the right of Saint Vasily's. The three of us scurried through the burnt remains of the square's shops and then skirted around the left-hand side of the cathedral. Iuda and Ioann had separated, with Iuda heading in our direction. We ducked back into one of the many columned archways beneath the cathedral's steps. Iuda passed by without seeing us. With a brief smile and a wave of farewell, Vadim set off in pursuit.

Dmitry and I headed off in the other direction and soon caught sight of Ioann once again. He had turned west along the embankment between the Kremlin and the Moskva.

Ioann's travels of that night were not much different from those of Matfei the previous night, or of Foma the night before that. His chosen prey – like Foma's – was from a concentrated group of soldiers. During the night he found three separate barracks, two of which I'd mentioned when I'd briefed him and Foma a couple of days earlier. He slipped quietly into each one, making no sound as he entered or as he killed. We made no investigation ourselves of what he had done or whom he had killed. We both knew full well what had taken place – unlike Vadim, we required no further physical evidence.

Waiting and watching as Ioann went about his activities summarized for me the ambivalence of my attitude to the Oprichniki. My intent was to kill Ioann as soon as the opportunity arose and I should have been mortified at each killing that my delay allowed him to perpetrate. In reality, I could only be happy at those deaths. They were the deaths of French invaders. Their deaths were the very purpose for which we had summoned the Oprichniki to Moscow. My desire to kill Ioann was based solely on what he was, not on what he did. I supported him in his actions and condemned him for his nature. It was the exact opposite of why I had allowed Maks to die.

After his three repasts, Ioann's movement had become less stealthy. As I had observed in Matfei the previous night, once their hunger had been sated, then the Oprichniki became a little less feral in their movements. His walk was more upright – more proud – and, were it not for the circumstances in which the city found itself, he might have been mistaken for a Moscow socialite returning from a night of gaming or dancing.

With Dmitry's assistance, following was far easier than it had been alone. In a city, there is an established way for two men to follow another. The pursuers never need get near their quarry; they never even have to take a single step along the path that he has trod. While one remains stationary to watch where the target is going, the other runs down a sidestreet to get ahead of him. Once he has made it to a new viewpoint, the roles are switched. The man who is being followed never sees movement and never knows that he is being pursued.

This approach was complicated by the fact that I was urgently trying to evade Dmitry whilst still keeping track of Ioann, because I knew that Dmitry would try to thwart me in my goal of destroying at least one more of the repulsive creatures that night. Dmitry seemed to guess that I was planning something and so he spent as much of his time pursuing me as he did helping me to pursue Ioann.

Despite these intricacies, and the steady rain that began to fall during the night, we did not lose sight of Ioann. His resting place turned out to be not far from where we had first met him and Iuda earlier that night; close to Kutznetsky Bridge, the French quarter that had still managed to escape the flames. It was an address in a tightly built area, where the boundaries between separate properties within a block were so indistinct that one front door could have led to any one of three or more homes. Remarkably, these buildings too were as yet untouched by the fires which had already consumed many of their neighbours. Ioann crept up the steps to a door and slipped inside.

'Any more you want to see?' asked Dmitry, unenthusiastically.

'Yes,' I replied. 'I want to see where he goes.'

'He went in there. He's not going anywhere else tonight. It'll be dawn in an hour.'

But I was already setting off to see precisely where in the building Ioann lay. The fact that I had not been able to shake Dmitry off my back was not going to be a permanent impediment to my goal. If I could see where he slept, then I would have the benefit of a full day of sunlight to come back and slaughter Ioann in a manner of my choosing.

I reached the doorway, still ajar as Ioann had left it, and peeped inside. Within, I could see nothing but an empty hallway. I heard footsteps behind me. It was Dmitry, clearly (and wisely) unwilling to leave me alone with Ioann for even a few minutes.

'You see anything?' he asked. I shook my head and pushed open the door. There were three doors off the hallway, plus a flight of stairs. Beneath the stairs, open, was a fourth doorway which, undoubtedly, led down to the cellar. That surely was where Ioann would have gone.

More prepared than the previous night, I had brought with me a candle, which I lit. I held it ahead of me as we descended the stairs. Dmitry was close behind me, his hand against my back. A sudden fear possessed me. If we were to encounter Ioann – and maybe other Oprichniki as well – on whose side would Dmitry place himself? Was that hand on my back there to steady and reassure me, or would it be the case that if I turned to flee the voordalaki we encountered, Dmitry's hand would thrust me pitilessly into their midst? Dmitry had saved my life seven years before. We had been the closest of friends before that and ever since. I had named my son after him. It was a shocking reflection on one or both of us that at this moment I could doubt him.

At the bottom of the stairs, my candle illuminated on one side an archway into a small cellar and on the other a closed double door. A brief glance through the archway proved that there was nothing there. The ceiling was partially collapsed and no one had bothered to repair it in years. It was a miracle that no dinner party from the room above – tables, chairs, tureens, plates, servants, guests and all – had ever fallen through and landed in there. None had, nor had Ioann made his bed there.

Dmitry remained on the stairs, again almost deliberately blocking my exit. I pulled open the left-hand door and peered into the darkness beyond. This cellar was larger than the other; less dilapidated but still unused by the occupants of the house. No windows shone any light into it, and there were no other exits but the one at which I stood. Much as I had seen twenty-four hours previously, in the centre of the floor lay two coffins. This time they were not the makeshift crates of the night before. Whoever slept here slept in luxury. The coffins were solid oak, with brass handles. Where the vampires had obtained them, I could not guess.

I walked over towards them. Halfway across the room I heard a sound at my back. I had just walked into a cellar with only one exit. Anyone who had been expecting me could easily have hidden beside the doorway and stepped out only now to seal the trap. I turned. It was Dmitry, peeping through the doorway. For a man so familiar with the ways of the Oprichniki, he was remarkably timid about encountering them in their own environment. I beckoned to him to follow me, but he stayed where he was.

I took a step towards the first coffin. It was empty. Stepping over that, I looked into the second. There lay Ioann, his face the same rosy flush of repletion that I had seen in Matfei. Ioann had not even bothered to pull the coffin lid across him. In that windowless cellar, there was little chance of any sunlight disrupting his sleep.

'What's in them?' hissed Dmitry from the door.

I dared not make even that little noise. I simply mouthed to him. 'Ioann's in this one. The other's empty.'

'Then let's get the hell out of here before the other one comes back.' Dmitry spoke louder this time, and once he had spoken, he was gone. I could only defer to his experience and assume that these creatures did not like their slumbers to be disturbed.

I went back up the stairs to the hallway and then out of the front door, looking around to see where Dmitry was. I heard a hiss and looked to its source. It was Dmitry, settled atop the low roof of a building on the other side of the street where he could observe this building unnoticed. I ran across and climbed on to the roof to lie beside him.

'Not a moment too soon,' he said, pointing towards the far end of the street. The unmistakable form of Iuda had appeared. Unlike Ioann, he had retained his stealthy creeping posture. Perhaps he had not eaten. Perhaps he was wise enough to understand the continued need for caution once he had. Whatever the reason, he kept to the walls and to the shadows throughout as he progressed down the street.

'No sign of Vadim, though,' whispered Dmitry smugly. 'Evidently he lost track of him.'

'Either that or he's so good at avoiding detection that he's keeping hidden from us as well as Iuda,' I replied. For my part, I wasn't sure which was more likely. Vadim was a little older than the rest of us, and his skills in this sort of work had never been quite up to the abilities of me, Dmitry or Maks. Maks had always excelled at it – both in hunting and in avoiding being hunted. No one could get close to Maks unless he wanted them to – unless he trusted them. I pulled myself up. It was another train of thought that I did not wish to follow.

Iuda had reached the steps of the house. With a swift glance around, he went inside.

'I trust you don't want to follow him too, and check where he's going, Aleksei?' said Dmitry.

I smiled. 'No, I think we can make a guess on that one.'

We climbed down from the roof and headed back up the street.

'Well,' said Dmitry, 'if Vadim's out there, he's bound to see us now.'

But of Vadim there was no sign. 'Iuda must have given him the slip,' I said.

The sun was just peeking over the horizon as we turned the corner into the next road. Iuda had left his homecoming to the latest possible moment.

'Shall we go and steal some breakfast then?' asked Dmitry, in a manner so casual one might have thought that the mysteries of the past few days had never occurred.

'No,' I said. 'I'm tired. I'll see you tonight.' With that I parted company from him, heading in whichever direction he wasn't.

I meandered through the city streets for about an hour. I had all day to return and destroy the creatures that slept in that cellar, but it would feel better to get it over with sooner. Turning back to the blocks of houses to the east of Red Square, I saw the now all too familiar glow of flames. The fires, thanks to the rain of the previous night, were generally dying down. But the rain had now stopped and there were still areas of Moscow that remained untouched by the flames and so were still ripe for the burning.

I began to run back to where Ioann and Iuda lay. Although I had slightly less stomach for killing Iuda than for the others, I still knew that it had to be done. The fire in this area, however, would make my job much easier. Even so, I had to make sure the vampires found no route of escape.

When I got there, half of the block beneath which the two Oprichniki lay was already ablaze. Within five minutes their cellar too would be a furnace. I couldn't remember the folklore in detail, but I did remember the slight fear that Foma had shown when I mentioned the fires to him. I felt quite confident that fire was one of the ways by which vampires might be destroyed. Even if they tried to escape the fire, they would have to leave the safety of the cellar to do so. If the flames did not destroy them, then when they came out into the street, the light of the sun would.

It was still not certain enough, however. Their cellar lay beneath a massive sprawl of buildings. It was conceivable that, with a degree of luck, they might find their way to safety without ever having to expose themselves to daylight. It was a risk I did not want to take.

I raced into the house and down the cellar steps with none of the trepidation that I had shown during the night. The doors behind which the two coffins lay remained closed. Already I could smell smoke creeping in from the neighbouring houses. I looked around me. In the collapsed cellar opposite I saw a short beam of wood. It was perfect. The cellar doors had on them two large handles through which the beam would fit, barring the door securely.

I turned and lifted the wooden beam. When I turned back, I saw that the doors had begun to move. Somebody was beginning to push them from the inside. The vampires were awake and were about to make their bid for freedom. I flung myself against the door, the beam stretched out in front of me with my full weight behind it. Whoever was pushing the doors open was taken completely off guard and they slammed shut. I had only moments before he recovered. I could not both lean against the door and use the beam to bar it permanently. I took my weight away and slipped the beam behind the two iron handles, fearing at every moment that the doors would spew open before I had made them safe. They did not, and now that the beam was in place, they would not. I breathed again.

I knew that I should leave, that I had as much to fear from fire as the vampires did, but I felt the urge to wait, to make certain that they perished. I sat down on the steps. Almost immediately, I heard someone banging against the doors. At first it was the rapid beating of someone demanding attention, then it was the slower, heavier thud of a shoulder trying to break down a barrier. The door held. Soon there was coughing. I could see smoke beginning to seep under the door. I remembered one of my grandmother's stories, wherein a voordalak could transform itself into mist or smoke at will. Could that be true? If it was, then I might have expected to see evidence of them doing it already. And still the coughing and the banging continued, so I felt I was safe.

With the fire so close upon me, I decided it was time to leave. As I began climbing the stairs, the beating on the doors returned to the rapid pounding that cried attention. Now, between coughs, it was accompanied by an excruciated scream.

'Help! Help!'

I could not resist smiling at the thought of Iuda or Ioann, whichever it was, dying in such pain after what they had inflicted on others. At a conscious level, it never even occurred to me that the cry was in Russian. Soon the voice lost the strength even to scream. I heard the sound of a body slumping to the ground and the voice relaxed from a scream to a prayer.

'My God, have mercy upon me.'

It was only then that I recognized the voice as Dmitry's.