18
MEN LIKE YOU
Ivan insisted that when a man went too long without the company of a woman, the backed-up lust went rancid and turned to violence. Nikita didn’t disagree with him, but the last time he’d visited Natalia, he’d left tired, but far from satisfied.
He hadn’t ever thought of himself as someone who wanted a substantial relationship – he didn’t tend to meet charming young women eager to accept courtship when he was looting through houses in the name of Communism – and certainly had never sought one. He could have found a wife, if he’d wanted to. But his cause had always been the most important thing. His brothers-in-arms had satisfied his need for human closeness – as much of it as he would allow. And he’d shoved all lascivious thoughts deep down beneath his layers of grief, fear, and general disgust with the state of the Soviet Union and this hellish war that was on.
He chose to blame it on abstinence when he woke from a vivid dream and found himself flushed and achingly hard, curled up on his side beneath his blanket, slick with sweat, breathing raggedly through his mouth.
He blinked to clear the sleep from his eyes and tried to calm his racing heart.
Dawn was just breaking, its light milky and barely-there through the gap in the tent flaps, not visible at all through the canvas walls. He was, thankfully, alone. Sasha’s insistence that he was plenty warm, and that he needed to sleep with the wolves – that was never going to sound normal to his ears – had left them with more tents than sleepers. As technical co-leaders of the expedition, Nikita should have bunked with Philippe, but the old man had said he would sit up for first watch, and then never come into the tent.
So. Alone. With a painful erection and a pulse that wouldn’t slow. He couldn’t remember being this desperate for release in his life. And he couldn’t pretend he’d been dreaming about anyone other than their sniper.
There was no shortage of beautiful Russian women.
But Katya possessed a quality that had always driven him crazy: competency.
Last night, sitting around a fire that was really just smoke thanks to damp wood, she’d polished her spotless rifle with methodical, deft movements. Nikita could tell with a look whether or not someone was comfortable with his or her weapon, and Katya was comfortable. If she’d listened to their conversation, she hadn’t shown that she cared. She’d set up her tent by herself without trouble.
He’d dreamed of her with her hair unbraided, her lips red and bruised, her deft, gun-polishing fingers wrapped around him.
She haunted him now that he was awake too: visions of the sleek, pale body hiding under her uniform, skin chilled and hungry for touch.
He strained his ears for the sound of anyone moving around the camp, and heard only the early twittering of birds. He could ignore the problem and eventually it would go away. Or he could help things along and be done with it.
With a sigh of mixed exasperation and relief, he unfastened his pants.
It was the first time he’d touched himself to do something besides piss or bathe in months, and the moment he got his hand around his cock, he knew it wouldn’t last long.
It didn’t. As riled up as he was, it only took a few intense minutes, his face buried in the musty blanket, shameless fantasies of Katya playing out behind his closed eyelids. He had the presence of mind to cup his hand and catch his release, sparing his clothes the indignity of stains. The wave crashed over him hard, pulling him down into a wakeful sort of sleep, a crushing exhaustion that set him reeling.
He dozed for what must have only been a moment, battling his heavy eyelids when the sweat began to dry and the spring chill snaked into his clothes. He still lay on his side, pants still open, hand resting on top of the blanket, his open palm sticky.
Ugh.
That was when the shame settled in. Not just for the act, but on behalf of the object of his lust.
He managed to do up his pants one-handed, stepped into his boots and, leaving them unlaced, left his tent and made his way across camp toward the stream that lay through a screen of bushes and down a hill from their tents. His damp shirt clung to his skin, and leaving his jacket behind would prove only the second-worst mistake of the morning.
At another time he would have been careful, but still groggy in the aftermath, he did only a cursory scan of the streambank, looking for wolves, or bears, or whatever the fuck might be out here, before he knelt and plunged his hands into the icy-cold water, washing them clean.
The water was so cold that it burned, and he hissed in discomfort as he worked his fingers together under the surface.
A voice said, “Oh,” and he came fully awake in an instant, surging to his feet, reaching with one numb, wet hand for a gun that wasn’t there. He didn’t have his hat or coat, but his clothes were black; anyone coming upon him would know what he was, and any number of villagers would take the chance to kill a lone, unarmed Chekist in the forest.
But it was only Katya, the dark, wet length of her hair caught in one hand, a bar of soap held in the other. The cold had brought out the color in her cheeks. And her hair, he reflected dimly, was unbound, just as he’d fantasized. He’d caught her in the middle of washing, he guessed, water droplets dripping between her fingers and landing on the leaves below with quiet patters. Water dotted the shoulders of the shirt she wore. Her eyes, surprised and wary, looked amber in the early light.
He had a sudden, intense worry that she knew what he’d just been doing, and that he’d been thinking of her. He thought those eyes of hers could look straight through his skull and see every awful, dirty thing he’d dreamed about.
But that was dumb. He was being dumb.
“Hello,” he said.
She looked at him a long moment, wringing out her hair. “Hello.”
“What are you doing?” he asked, because he was an idiot.
She pulled a small piece of burlap from her trouser pocket and wrapped the soap in it before tucking it away again. She started to finger-comb the tangles from her hair, the mass of it heavy across one shoulder, long enough to hang past her breasts. “What does it look like I’m doing?” From someone else, it might have sounded flirtatious, but Katya’s voice was cold, just shy of hostile.
He wanted that to make it easier – there could be no mistaking her hostility for any kind of invitation – but instead, he found himself approving of her coldness. She was here for the war, to do a job, and she had no interest in any of the men around her. He approved of that wholeheartedly – and that approval made him like her.
He nodded, acknowledging the stupidity of his question. “Water’s awful cold, is all.”
She shrugged and her fingers kept combing. A challenge infused her gaze, daring him to make a reference to the water matching her temperament.
He wanted to put his whole face in the stream, suddenly, so he did the next best thing: crouched at the bank, cupped water in his hands and rubbed it vigorously across his cheeks and chin. It worked. The last haze of sleep cleared, and all thoughts of sex promptly shriveled up along with his cock as a shiver overtook him.
He stayed like that a moment, hands and face dripping, the gurgle of the water and the singing of the birds the only sounds.
“I don’t disapprove of you, you know,” he said, surprising himself. If the small sound she made behind him was anything to go by, he’d surprised her too. “I have no problem with women, or snipers. I just don’t want to be responsible for anyone else.” It was ninety-percent of the truth. He also didn’t want Soviet loyalists finding out what they were really up to.
Katya released a deep breath. “Well,” she said, less certain, less cold. “I can look out for myself.”
“I’m sure you can.”
He heard her footfalls rustling through the leaf litter, and expected she had walked off. So when he stood and turned, drying his hands on his pants legs, he was surprised to see that she’d sat down on an old tree stump and was separating her hair into bunches so she could braid it. Her face was still cautious, but less aggressive.
“Can I ask something?”
He put his hands in his pockets to keep them from freezing. He longed for his coat, but wasn’t about to walk away from her, God help him. “Yes.”
Her gaze flicked down to her boots, fingers quick as they began to plait. “I’ve seen men like you. In black. They were in my town.”
“They’re in every town.”
She nodded. “I watched what they did. What they did in my home.” She shivered a little, and he wondered what she was remembering, how awful it was. “So I can’t figure out what you lot are doing out here in the woods.” Her gaze lifted, touching his boldly. “With an old man, and a bunch of wolves, and a man who thinks he’s one of them.”
“We do what we’re told to do.”
“So do I. But it usually makes sense.” When he didn’t respond, she said, “What is Sasha?”
Not who, but what. Smart girl.
“That depends. Do you believe in folk stories?”
“I used to.”
A sudden snapping of twigs and rustling of leaves startled them both. Nikita hadn’t seen the rifle before, but Katya instantly let go of her hair to reach for it where it rested against the stump. It was leveled on the shrubs beyond the stream by the time two gray wolves emerged, panting and unconcerned.
“You’re a little trigger happy,” Nikita observed.
“Sorry, I’m not used to living with wolves,” she shot back.
Nikita didn’t tell her that the sight of the animals made him want to reach for a gun, too. He’d studied them enough to know that these two belonged to Sasha – were part of his pack. As was the lanky, coltish brown-gray one that joined them. That was the omega, Sasha had told him.
Another crash, and Sasha himself appeared, holding a brace of hares in each hand, grinning ear-to-ear. “We got breakfast,” he announced happily.
Nikita said, “I can see that.” He jerked a thumb back toward camp. “Go wake up Feliks and tell him to get a fire going.”
“Right.”
The rest of the pack melted out of the underbrush and followed Sasha up the hill, their lanky, nineteen-year-old, cloak-wearing alpha.
It was never going to stop being strange.
When he – and his wolves – were gone, Katya said, “He’s very sweet. Nothing like the rest of you.”
Nikita fought the urge to smile. “Ah. We’re horrible, then.”
“You’re Cheka.”
They were. A sobering reality.
“But he’s sweet.”
“So you said. Are you sweet on him?”
She’d laid her rifle across her lap and resumed braiding her hair again. She snorted. “No. He’s just a boy.”
“Some women like that.”
“Some women have the luxury,” she said, and he didn’t think she meant to let the melancholy bleed into her voice.
Nikita’s stomach cramped with hunger and he leaned his shoulder against a narrow tree trunk to keep from swaying. The fading adrenaline from his orgasm, and the shock of the cold weren’t helping. But that note of sadness in her last words had snared his attention. (Also, he loved the way her skinny white fingers moved as she plaited her hair into two neat braids.)
“You’re young,” he said, and thought he said it gently. That was his aim, anyway. “And pretty. You could have the luxury, if you wanted it.”
Her mouth twitched, not quite a smile. “I have my orders.”
“So does everyone. It doesn’t mean you can’t want other things, too.”
She tied off each braid with a bit of twine from her pocket and then shot him a level look. “Is that what all men think about all women? That we want husbands and children and hearths?”
Nikita returned her look. “I don’t think anything.” Except that she was lovely, and hurting very, very badly. He saw his own guilty grief when he looked in her eyes.
Her eyes fell to her rifle, and she polished it absently with her sleeve. “I want to be where I’m needed. That’s all I think.” She bit her lip. “I guess I don’t understand why I’m needed here.”
“Welcome to the military.”
She huffed a sound that was almost a laugh.
“For what it’s worth,” he said, “I think what we’re doing here, no matter how it looks, might turn out to be something important for Russia.”
She lifted her brows. “The Soviet Union, you mean?” But there was no censure in her tone, only curiosity.
“Yes,” he said. “Of course.”
~*~
She couldn’t figure them out, and that unsettled her. After several days in the wilderness, she knew that Feliks was the default cook, and hated it. Knew that Kolya was spooky, quiet, and no doubt capable. Knew that Pyotr was uncertain and young – he smiled at her in a way that the others didn’t, more nervous than Sasha, but friendly all the same. Nikita was their leader, and the most unsettling of all. It had been easy to think of him as cruel before this morning – the gray eyes, and clenched jaw, and unsmiling mouth – but not after he’d spoken to her kindly, without condescension or licentiousness.
In fact, none of them had said anything untoward. They’d been cool, distant, secretive even, but no one had offered a leer, or a wink, or a suggestive comment. Not even their captain – the way she understood it, the leader always got the first taste, and passed things along to his men if he felt generous. But not Nikita.
That morning, at the stream, she’d thought seriously about shooting him and then taking off on foot. She’d rather face a firing squad than the indignity of a Chekist’s attentions again. But fear had gotten the best of her – no matter how often she told herself she didn’t care what happened anymore, she hadn’t been able to stand the idea of death – and so she’d waited. And he hadn’t done anything but talk to her. Kindly, even.
She watched him now, stolen glimpses across the breakfast fire. Feliks had skinned and gutted the rabbits and roasted them on a spit; they were thin, but delicious, and she ate quickly, greedily, lest someone took her share, noting that Nikita ate little, and said nothing.
During one of her covert glances, she saw Kolya elbow him in the ribs, and Nikita took a mechanical bite.
A wheezing breath and a rustle of fur coat announced Monsieur Philippe’s arrival as he sat down on the rotten log beside her. He was another mystery – the biggest, actually. Whatever Sasha was, he was still Russian. But Philippe was French. And cheerful. He spoke Russian flawlessly, but his presence here conjured more questions than answers.
“Good morning,” he greeted her. “Excellent rabbit, don’t you think?”
It was warm, and fresh, and greasy on her tongue. She nodded. “Yes.”
He leaned in close, until their shoulders touched; it was an effort not to shift away. “Sasha was an accomplished hunter back in Siberia,” he said, tone confidential, “and now he’s unmatchable.”
“Hmm.” Probably because he had a pack of wolves helping him now. Which was apparently something these people all took in stride.
“I expect you’re quite the hunter yourself, my dear,” he continued, and the rabbit turned to lead in her stomach.
“A marksman,” she corrected. “Not a hunter.”
“Is it really so different? Men are just animals, after all.”
When she glanced at him, she found his brows lifted, smile curving his small mouth.
It was difficult to swallow. “No, I guess it’s not.”
She turned her head away, not wanting to look at him any longer, and saw that Nikita was staring at her.
She ducked her head and kept eating.
~*~
Sasha had never known a feeling like this. He wanted to call it friendship, but that wasn’t right. Every friendship he’d ever maintained had been built upon mutual interest, interaction, and play. That could be said of this, too, but there were no words between them, no differences to overcome. The wolves were his pack, and he loved them unconditionally. There was no room for jealousy, or anger, or fear. He spoke to them – soft, soothing, affectionate words of praise – and they spoke back with little whines, and the warmth of their bodies against him at night, and the gentle press of wet noses into his palm. No dog and master had ever shared this kind of bond. They knew him, his wolves, and he knew them.
Knew that his alpha female was the cleverest hunter, the most ferocious, but that two of the beta males were stronger, quicker. Knew that his little omega was nervous, sometimes fearful, and that he needed lots of ear-scratches and kind murmurs. He knew that they had accepted Nikita, Ivan, Feliks, Kolya, Pyotr, and Katya as their own, but that, like Sasha, they didn’t like the fire-ash-smoke smell of Monsieur Philippe. It couldn’t be helped, though – Philippe was a mage just as Sasha was a wolf; they were the left and right hands of a more powerful being. Familiars, Philippe called them, each with their own special gifts and uses.
At night, when the others were huddled in their tents and bedrolls, Sasha and Philippe sat by the dying fire, under the stars, the wolves keeping watch, and Philippe educated him in the true ways of the world.
“Once there were twin brothers,” Philippe said, voice becoming resonant and sure; a story-teller’s voice. The last log on the fire collapsed, sending up a whirl of sparks that lifted into the night sky like fireflies. “Left abandoned on the bank of the Tiber River, they were suckled by a great she-wolf, and taken in by a shepherd and his wife.”
Sasha blinked, surprised. “Do you mean–”
Philippe smiled. “Romulus and Remus, yes. The founders of Rome. The immortal children of the god Mars. Immortal warriors – and vampires.”
The little omega snuggled in tight to Sasha’s side, and he found that he believed this story, no matter how impossible. He was living proof of the impossible.
Philippe heaved a deep sigh that was echoed by the omega. “Remus is long dead, I’m afraid. Killed by his brother, as the story goes. Not quite when, however. But that’s a story for another time. Before his death, Remus sired two purebred vampire sons, half-brothers: Vladimir – Vlad III, you know, The Impaler – and Valerian. Both are still living. Vlad’s been buried for a long time, and Valerian – well, again, that’s a long story.
“But I’m getting off topic. Yes. My point is that ever since the she-wolf nursed the twins, there’s been a complementary relationship between wolves and vampires.”
Sasha felt the fine hairs stand up all over his body. “Are there–” his throat felt tight “–are there vampires here?”
In the last of the firelight, Philippe’s eyes seemed an unnatural color. “There is one. A very powerful one. He slumbers, underground. When the time is right, we shall wake him, you and I.”
“Why?”
Philippe sat forward, face and voice earnest. “Look around you, Sasha. The world is on fire. This war, this bloody war, is the product of idiot mortal short-sightedness, and the evil of men like Hitler, and Stalin. The immortals of the world have been asleep; they’ve been hiding in the shadows, denying what they are. Men can’t end the war that they started, but we can. We can end it once and for all. It’s high time the powerful held the power.”
The breeze stirred the coals, glowing a painful red inside the ring of stones. An owl hooted softly.
“What about my friends? My family?” Sasha asked, quietly, hand tightening in the omega’s ruff.
“If we end the war, then we’ll save them all. Isn’t that what you want?”
“Yes.” And it was.
~*~
They marched north through the forest and fields for a week, the sky beating at them with sun and snow in turns, so that the ground was a slushy, muddy mess. Katya was tired, and cold to the bones, and sore. Aside from Sasha learning how to better become a wolf, she hadn’t figured out what any of this was about. She’d stopped questioning it. As Kolya put it tersely at breakfast one morning, she should be happy she wasn’t dead in an anti-tank ditch somewhere.
Truthfully, she wouldn’t have cared if she was, but she’d nodded, because she sensed that he hated her.
So she found solace in the fact that none of them had tried to rape her, and that Sasha and his pack of wolves kept them well-fed with fresh game. Pyotr and Sasha were sweet and friendly, and the old man liked to ask her questions about her training. It wasn’t the most terrible situation of her life – not by a long shot.
And then there was Nikita, who looked at her in a way that made her stomach hurt.
She was lulled by the repetitiveness of it, and she let her guard down. And so she wasn’t on her toes the day they came across the scouts.
It was mid-morning. An overcast day, the clouds low and heavy, cold wind tugging at their clothes. They walked in what had become their usual formation: Sasha and the wolves fanned out in the front, on point, the others in the middle, Katya in the rear…and then Nikita behind her.
She’d told him a few days ago that she was fine, that she didn’t need guarding, and he’d given her an unimpressed look and stayed where he was.
She’d be loath to admit that, at this point, the regular crunch of his footfalls was a comfort, especially when the wolves started circling and barking, like they were doing now.
She pulled up short. “What is it?”
Nikita stepped up beside her, frowning. “Dunno. Sasha!” he called through cupped hands. “What are they on about?”
Sasha drew in a deep breath and made a canine chuffing sound on the exhale, frowning. “Humans.”
“Hunters,” Ivan said with a dismissive wave. “Goatherders. Something.” He laughed when one of the beta wolves, a mostly-black one, shoved his head into his hand and whined. “Leave off, beast. Sasha, tell them to go on.”
Sasha ignored him. “I don’t like it,” he said, still testing the air with his nose. “They’re armed.”
“As hunters are,” Feliks said. “Come on. What’s more dangerous out here than you?”
Sasha stood poised a moment, head cocked to the side. A white wolf on two legs. And then he took off at a lope, his wolves with him.
“Sasha!” Nikita called after him. But he was gone, light-footed as a deer, slipping between two tree trunks and disappearing. “Fuck.”
Katya felt a tightening at the back of her neck. Sasha was always running off into the woods, but they hadn’t encountered another human in all their hiking.
“Hunters wouldn’t be this far from civilization,” she said.
Nikita shrugged, but the movement looked stiff. “They might. If they’re trailing something.”
They stood side-by-side, staring across the bleak landscape. Wind scudded low, rippling tiny waves in the mud puddles. Nothing stirred: not a deer, or a rabbit. Between the trees at their backs and the trees Sasha had ducked between lay a slick, open expanse of ground. It was a wide-open clearing, where nothing and no one could take cover. If someone was approaching from the west, she’d have a perfect view. The tree behind her was a sniper’s dream nest.
Katya slung her rifle over her back and took hold of a low birch branch.
“What are you doing?” Nikita sounded almost worried – it must have been a trick of her imagination.
“I want a good shot, if it comes to that. Here, give me a boost.” She lifted her left foot, not expecting him to help – and was surprised to feel his hands cup her knee and hoist her upward. He looked strong, and proved stronger, propelling her to the next branch up.
“Thanks.” She scrambled for a handhold, found it, and pulled herself the rest of the way up into a perfect perch in a crook near the trunk.
His hand landed on her boot. “Alright?”
When she looked down at his face – and God, the aristocratic cut of his features, the way his gray eyes had a blue cast in this light – a jolt of awareness crackled through her. The weight of his hand, of his gaze, of his breath turning to frost in the air between them. She wanted, absurdly, to shove his black fur hat off his head and spear her fingers through the dark waves of his hair, feel the warmth of his scalp in her hand. Wanted to climb inside his coat, up close where his heat bled through his clothes, smell the sweat and dirt on his throat.
The sudden, visceral urge horrified her. She’d been close, skin-close, to a Chekist before. When she closed her eyes and turned her face away from Nikita’s concerned gaze, she could see the other face – the crooked, nicotine-stained teeth, the harsh lines around his mouth, the grimace of effort as he tore at her skirt…
She made a frightened, involuntary sound in her throat.
“Katya.”
“I’m fine,” she said, but she wasn’t. Because she’d allowed him into a dark and secret part of her psyche. A damaged place in which rape and intimacy had become so tangled that she wanted to sink her teeth into his skin for reasons that shocked and confused her.
“Katya.”
“I’m fine,” she repeated, and this time she forced herself to be, taking a deep breath, fixing her gaze on the clearing ahead of her. She unslung her rifle and snugged the stock into her shoulder.
He lingered at the base of the tree; she heard the quiet rush of his breathing. It took every ounce of self-control not to look at him again, to keep her thoughts fixed on the threat of strangers.
Then, thankfully, Kolya said, “Nik,” and he walked to join the others.
They were conferring in a huddle, and her breathing was mostly back to normal, when the first gunshot cracked through the quiet forest.
She watched one of the men go down in a flutter of black and her heart lurched up into her throat. Her palms filled with sweat and she juggled the rifle for one horrifying second. Oh God, oh God…
All her training, all her rifle-polishing, all her hours spent staring at the ceiling and telling herself that she was icy-cold and indifferent now, and one shot was enough to send her reeling.
No!
No, she thought. No. She wouldn’t fall apart. This was what she was for now.
She shoved down her panic and took stock, just as another shot rang out. Ivan was down, and two of his friends had ducked down to shield him. Kolya and Feliks, she thought. Nikita was shouting something, waving with one arm, drawing his gun with the other.
Another shot rang out – she heard it whizz through the limbs somewhere below her – and someone yelled with alarm. They had to get Ivan to cover…and they were, working as a group to wrestle the big man into a shallow depression off to her right, Nikita laying down cover fire with his Nagant pistol, Monsieur Philippe holding – impossibly – fire in each hand.
She needed to find their attackers, and did so. She spotted a group of uniformed German troops hunkering behind tree trunks off to the west, close enough to hit them with handgun rounds.
Katya took a steadying breath. Germans. Scouts. Brave idiots who’d crossed the river somehow and snuck behind enemy lines. Nazis. She’d been groomed for this, and she knew what to do.
She was dimly aware of the Chekists shouting, returning fire. Getting Ivan safely down into the ditch – he was alive, moving, cursing a blue streak. But she couldn’t let herself dwell on that right now. She leveled her sights on the nearest German. Young, just a boy, red-cheeked, wild-eyed. They hadn’t expected to come up on a group of secret police, but they were going to take the chance to kill them all the same.
She found his face through the sights. Sketched the math in her head, the trajectory, the wind speed. Quick, quick, easy as breathing. She pulled the trigger, the rifle kicked, and he fell.
Click-clack. The hot cartridge bounced off her wrist as it fell. It burned her, but it wasn’t as hot as her blood was now. Now that she’d killed, and all vestiges of fear had burned off her skin like steam.
She’d had one round in the chamber, which left her with five more. Two Germans stared at her, slack-jawed, while a third knelt above their fallen comrade, gloved hands hovering over the ruin of his face.
She took a second Nazi, a vivid flowering of blood as the round went through his throat.
She searched for another shot, calm down, sunk deep in her own head. A sniper and not a woman, not anyone who was afraid.
It was quieter now. The Chekists had reached a safe distance, ducked down into the depression, their voices just a murmur at her periphery.
The Germans weren’t retreating, and she found that odd. They weren’t firing at her, either. By this point, they had to have at least some idea of where the rounds had come from.
Why weren’t they running? They should have been.
She lined up her next shot...
And someone grabbed her foot.
She knew immediately that it wasn’t Nikita, his warm, questioning weight from before. This hand gripped her ankle tight and yanked.
It happened so fast she barely had a chance to make a grab for the branch beneath her, and then it was too late, her hold too tenuous and his too strong. She toppled out of the tree and landed on top of her attacker.
They hit the ground with an oof. His elbow caught her ribs and forced all the air out of her lungs. Something hard cracked against her skull and her vision went white. The world tilted.
No, no, no.
Her hands went slack and the rifle slipped, slipped…
No!
She lay on her back, the German poised above her. She couldn’t take a breath, and she couldn’t move. For one awful moment, she could clearly see the rage and fear in his eyes, the veins standing out in his temples, the gleaming black enamel cross at his throat.
Then her lungs opened and she gulped in a deep breath, and he was just another man on top of her. Another man trying to hurt her.
He grabbed her wrist and pinned it by her head, shouted something at her in German, his breath hot, spit pelting her face. He had a gun in his other hand, a slim black pistol that was much more expensive and effective than her own Nagant revolver.
But that didn’t matter, because she had a hand free, and she wrapped it around the hilt of the knife strapped to her thigh.
His knee pressed into her ribs.
And she flashed lightning-quick to drive the blade between his.
The knife stabbed the breath out of him; she’d hit his lung, and could hear it, the awful wet wheeze, feel the rush of breath across her face. His eyes bugged and he coughed, his grip going slack on her other wrist.
She shoved him off of her and scrambled to her feet, head swimming, world tilting crazily. She was aware of shouts, but they seemed a long way off. Saw movement, but only at the periphery, unable to see anything clearly but the German who pawed at the knife she’d driven into him.
She braced a hand against the tree trunk to steady herself, drew her revolver, and shot him in the face. There was a meaty thunk as his skull shattered, an explosive spray of blood. And then he was still.
Someone drew up beside her – Nikita. He held his own gun, breath coming in sharp pants, brows knit together with concern. “You alright?”
She nodded…leaned to the side and vomited.
She needed to ask him about the rest of the Germans, to see if Ivan was alright, help them devise a plan for whatever followed.
But she was victim to her heaving stomach, gagging until her eyes watered, clutching the rough bark of the tree to stay upright.
A cool hand cupped the back of her neck, and to her shame, she didn’t shake it off; she needed it too badly, its solid, comforting presence, keeping her grounded as the shakes overtook her.
“Are you hurt?” Nikita asked, and she managed to shake her head.
She dry-heaved for what felt like a long time; when it was over, and her stomach had stopped clenching, the hand left her neck and hooked her under the arm, helped her stand upright again. She was too weak to thank him, to do anything but wipe her mouth with the back of her hand and lift her eyes to his.
He looked worried, but not panicked. Things were handled, then. “Feliks and Monsieur Philippe are tending to Ivan,” he answered her unasked question. “He’ll be alright. The Germans are dead.”
She nodded. Croaked, “Good.”
He pulled a flask from inside his jacket with his free hand and passed it to her. “Drink that, and sit down.”
She didn’t argue.
~*~
The flask was full of vodka. Two long sips quieted her stomach and eased the shaking in her bones, warmed her insides so her teeth stopped chattering.
She was a marionette, going where she was told, sitting down when guided.
Four sips of vodka brought her back to herself completely – that and the cold wet nose that nudged her hand.
She was sitting with her back against a tree, on a rare dry patch of ground, and one of Sasha’s wolves was licking her knuckles. It was the omega, the rangy one with the sweet eyes.
“Hello,” she murmured, turning her hand over so his tongue slid against her palm. It was oddly comforting.
Over top of the wolf’s worried face she saw Sasha’s, head cocked to the side, his hood and the brightness of his eyes making him look less human by the moment.
“Katya, are you alright?” he asked, earnest and kind.
She flicked her tongue across her dry lips, chasing a drop of vodka. On an empty stomach, she already felt the heat of it spreading through her, going right to her head, fuzzing the sharp edges of everything – especially her fear. “I am.” Her voice came out rough and she cleared her throat. When Sasha frowned, she offered him a bare smile. “Promise. But thank you.”
She scanned her surroundings for the first time. Ivan sat a few feet away, stripped to the waist with his jacket draped across his shoulders, Feliks fussing with a length of bandage that had been wrapped around his midsection and which was darkening with blood.
“How–” she started to say.
“The bullet only grazed him,” Monsieur Philippe answered, appearing at her side with a swirl of fur. “He’ll be just fine, though you wouldn’t know it to listen to his griping. How are you, my dear? Do you need something for the nausea?”
“No, I…”
But he was crouching down in front of her, taking her chin delicately between gloved fingertips. Looking into her eyes. “Hmm. How’s your head? Seeing double?”
“No.” She wanted to flinch away from him, but found she couldn’t, too wrung-out to care.
“Good. Your pupils look fine.” He peered into them, his own gaze cheerful and inscrutable as ever. “I think it was maybe just the shock that made you sick, and not the fall.”
She released a deep breath when he let go of her. Looked around for Nikita and found him standing with his arms folded, white-faced and grim.
“I want to see the bodies,” she said, raising her voice to be heard.
His brows lifted, and she expected some sort of reprimand. But he said, “You sure?”
“Yeah. I need to.”
He nodded.
~*~
First was the man who’d pulled her out of the tree. She made herself look at his face, the pulpy mess of bone, and blood, and brain matter. Memorized the shape of it because this was war. It was so easy to think of it in terms of ideals and speeches and flags, but it was this: the breaking-open of living things.
Next were the two she’d killed with her rifle; tidy shots that had dropped them where they stood.
Another had been shot at close-range, in the back, as he fled.
The last had been burned. A black husk, still smoking.
“Who did this?” she asked, covering her nose and mouth with a hand to block out the smell.
Nikita gave her a surprised look. “You haven’t seen the old man’s fire trick?” He made a circular motion with one hand.
“No.” She thought of his fingers against her face, tried to remember if they’d felt warmer than they should.
“You should ask him to show you. He likes that,” Nikita said, bitter. “I tracked ahead about half a mile.” He nodded toward the snow-veined mud that lay ahead of them, disturbed by only one set of footprints. “These were the only ones. Must have been scouts. Or deserters.”
“Deserters would have hidden. They wouldn’t have fired on us.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Just probably?”
A grin touched his lips as he turned to her. “You’re feeling better, then, if you’re arguing with me.”
She was struck all over again by the clean lines of his face, but it was a quieter sensation that stirred in her stomach this time. The fierce attraction tempered with a sense that he was safe, that he was looking out for her.
She sighed and nodded.
“Was that the first time you’ve killed a man?”
Had he asked mockingly, she couldn’t have stood it. But it was a simple question, laced with sympathy even. So she nodded. Her voice came out small and wavering. “Yes.”
He reached for her, telegraphing the movement, not wanting to startle her, and squeezed her shoulder. “I wish I could tell you that it doesn’t get easier, but unfortunately, it does.”
She nodded again, swallowed, felt a sob building in her throat.
“You’re a very good shot,” he said, kindly. “You saved us all today.”
She leaned into the scant comfort of his hand on her shoulder, and her legs buckled.
His arm went around her shoulders, quick and instinctual, solid and grounding.
Katya told herself it was a wave of dizziness that pressed her head down onto his shoulder, but it was the simple need for comfort and closeness.
His neck smelled of sweat, and dirt, and gun oil, just as she’d thought, but sweeter than she’d imagined.
Somewhere behind them, she heard the murmur of voices, but they were alone here, and she allowed herself a moment to bask in something as strange and wonderful as human contact in the aftermath of death.
19
REMAINS
“I think it best not to let the wolves eat them,” Monsieur Philippe said, a suggestion for which Nikita was grateful.
They piled the bodies up – a messy business – and then Philippe stood over them, hands cupped in the air. Nikita knew what was coming, but it was still a shock when he heard the thump and hiss of fire leaping to life from his palms and igniting the corpses.
“Shit,” Katya said beside him, stunned.
“I know.”
They left the remains to smolder – it smelled alarmingly of every other kind of cooked meat – and headed up a slow rise to a wooded ridge that proved to be the site of an abandoned village.
Five wooden cottages and a one-room church sat hunkered down amongst the tree trunks, their windows dark, sills piled with snow that had melted and refrozen a dozen times into long wet spikes. One door hung open, the floorboards warped with water damage.
Nikita stepped through and almost choked on the smell of dampness and mold. A few heavy cooking pots had been left behind, and bed frames, but no personal effects. The cobwebs and squirrel nests suggested the residents had left years’ prior.
“They’ve been gone a long time,” Sasha confirmed, sniffing the air in what was now a normal sight, head tipped back, nostrils flared as he searched for scents none of them could hope to pick up.
“Before the war,” Nikita told him, and earned a startled look. “When the state took up all the farmland.”
“Oh.”
“Good place to camp out for the night,” Kolya said with a meaningful look, and Nikita nodded his agreement. None of them had said it, but he knew they were all thoroughly rattled after their run-in with the Germans. Walls, and a roof, and a more solid defense would be welcome.
“Excellent idea,” Philippe said. “Though I believe one of the cottages with, um, with its door shut would be preferable.”
~*~
They found one that had been carefully shut up before its owners migrated. It was cold, musty, and the spiders had found their way in through the cracks, but it was mostly clean and it kept the wind off. Feliks knocked a bird nest from the flue with an old broom handle and soon they had a fire going in the hearth, its orange and yellow shadows cheerful across the floorboards.
They sat in a half-circle around the fireplace, choking down SPAM and pumpernickel sandwiches, the wolves warm, solid, and musky at their backs. There was a time when having seven wolves in a cottage with you would have been a horrifying prospect, but now Nikita could only feel glad that no one would have to sit up and keep watch tonight; nothing could sneak past the wolves.
Katya sat beside him, and he noticed. In a way that he probably shouldn’t, but couldn’t seem to help. She’d stuck close…after. Even once she’d pulled away, her warmth had lingered against his side, the shape of her head burned into his shoulder like a brand.
It had all happened so fast – by the time he could register shock, and then fury, fear for her, she was already back on her feet and putting a bullet through the Nazi’s face.
He’d dared to touch her, that German. Every ounce of rational thought had abandoned Nikita in that moment. If she hadn’t shot the man, Nikita would have gouged out his eyes with his thumbs and driven his knife through his throat. He was still reeling from the impulse; violence was in his job description, but a dispassionate, clinical sort. This, though – this had been like the urge to kill Philippe when he’d first thought Sasha dead.
If he’d had any delusions about his burgeoning feelings toward Katya, he didn’t hold them any longer. He wanted to drag her into his tent like a caveman, sure, but his sentiments went deeper than that.
It terrified him.
Ivan crammed the last bite of disgusting sandwich in his mouth and rooted around inside his coat with a grunt of discomfort.
“Don’t mess up my bandage job,” Feliks told him.
“Fuck off. Oh, here it is.” He pulled out a big canteen that Nikita would bet ten-to-one contained vodka. “I want to propose a toast.” Yep, vodka. “To the sniper who saved all our asses today.” He thrust the canteen across Nikita and toward Katya with a wide, sincere grin.
Katya watched him a moment, expression guarded. Finally, her lips twitched – not a smile, but some sign of emotion – and she took the canteen, sipped at it gingerly.
Ivan grinned at her the entire time, taking the canteen back when she handed it and tipping it back for a deep slug. “Here.” He shoved it into Nikita’s hands. “Drink up to our Nazi-killer.”
He slid a sideways look to Katya, and found her almost smiling now, dabbing her lips with the back of her hand.
He imagined he could taste her mouth on the canteen when he drank.
“Did they teach you how to spar at your sniper school?” Kolya asked. He sounded disapproving – Katya would probably think so – but Nikita recognized his problem-solving tone; she needed hand-to-hand training, he’d decided.
Katya’s eyes shifted between them all. Still uncertain, still on-edge.
Nikita squeezed her knee in what he hoped was a reassuring way before he could second guess the wisdom of the gesture.
“Not really,” she said. Her pulse fluttered in her throat, a visible tremble in the firelight.
Kolya made a grunting sound of acknowledgement. “We’ll start tomorrow.”
“I…” Katya started.
“I can help,” Sasha chimed in, smiling and excited. “Kolya and Feliks taught me, before I was – well, now I’m really fast.” And strong as a goddamn ox, he didn’t say.
“Kolya and Feliks?” Ivan asked, mock-offended. “Was I just holding up the wall?”
“You, too, I mean, of course–”
Nikita turned his shoulder to their bickering so he could face Katya. “It would be a good idea,” he said, almost consoling. Maybe she really didn’t like the idea.
But she took a deep breath and reached to smooth a stray piece of hair back, a gesture that looked unconscious, but somehow brave, coupled with the smile she attempted. “No, it would be good. Maybe they have some tricks they can show me.”
Surprised, he felt his own smile threaten. “Yeah. Kolya’s probably the most dangerous person I’ve ever met.”
Her brows quirked. “Yeah, but Kolya didn’t try to strangle me this afternoon.” Another act of bravery, trying to joke about the attack.
There was a story there, he knew, something that went deeper than the Germans she’d shot today. But he left it for now. “Don’t insult his mother’s cooking and he won’t ever.”
Another weak smile, and then Monsieur Philippe spared him any more awkward attempts at private conversation.
“I have a proposal,” he said. “Sitting around a fire calls for storytelling, doesn’t it? Let’s have some stories.”
“Monsieur, I think that’s the first good idea you’ve had,” Ivan said, laughing.
~*~
“Where did you get that book?” Feliks wanted to know. “The one you read from when you…” He gestured toward Sasha, whose resulting grin looked wolfish in a very literal sense.
“The wolf book,” Philippe said, sitting up a little straighter, eyes seeming to brighten. “Now that’s a story.” He folded his hands in his lap and told them.
“The book,” he began, “is, as you might have guessed, wrapped with the skin of a wolf. Legend says it’s as old as the first wolves, but I don’t believe that. It would have taken nothing less than magic to preserve the leather, no matter how well-tanned, for this long.” He chuckled at his own joke and continued:
“It is, essentially, a spell book. It’s also a history of the relationship between wolves and their keepers – all of it in Latin, of course, or else I’d let dear Sasha read it.”
“Keepers?” Nikita asked, skin prickling with uneasiness.
“Yes. There are preternatural creatures who are born, but wolves are not among them. All wolves are made – through a process much like what you witnessed, Captain. Throughout history, they’ve always been made with a purpose in mind: to serve and to protect.”
“And let me guess,” Nikita said with a sneer, “you’re Sasha’s keeper.”
“I’m not, no.” If he was lying, he hid it well. “Sasha’s master is my master. He’s very old, and very powerful, and currently sleeping beneath the earth. Recovering.”
The only sound was the crackle of the flames.
In a small voice, Katya said, “Recovering from what?” As she spoke, she shifted closer, so her knee pressed into Nikita’s thigh.
Philippe looked sad. “Grievous wounds. The men who attempted to murder him thought they’d succeeded. He was examined at the morgue, pronounced dead, and interred.
“Thankfully, he had allies who knew of his great gifts of healing. His body – still very much alive, only slumbering – was exhumed in secret, and he was taken to a secure location where he could heal in peace. He still lies there, buried, ready to be reawakened.”
The fire crackled.
“He’s a vampire,” Sasha said, and Nikita actually jumped a little.
“What?” everyone said at once.
“Yes,” Monsieur Philippe said. To the rest of them: “Gentlemen, you’re sitting with a werewolf and his very literal pack. Don’t tell me you draw the line of disbelief at vampires.”
Nikita felt his heart pounding against the walls of his chest in that acute and painful way it did when he was nervous. He was nervous, he realized, skin prickling with a sudden cold sweat.
And then Philippe turned and looked directly at him. “Do you doubt me?”
Nikita swallowed, grateful that his voice came out clear and strong. “No. Not about that.”
The old man snorted. “The plan remains the same. And I continue to promise: no harm will come to Sasha.”
“Even though he belongs to a vampire?”
“We all have masters,” Philippe said. “We all serve men greater than ourselves.” He lifted his eyebrows meaningfully, and Nikita thought about his mother’s worried face as she tucked him in, thought about her tales of tsars and tsarinas…and he ground his teeth together.
Beside him, he could hear Katya’s breathing, fast and shallow. Yet another unsuspecting victim he’d pulled into his doomed quest to start a revolution.
~*~
He drank too much. He knew that, and knew also that he’d wake shaky, with a bad headache, sluggish and dim-witted. He didn’t care. He thought drinking too much was a natural reaction to finding out that, one: vampires were real, and two: the boy you’d come to think of as a friend, as a little brother, was the property of one.
By the time he went out to piss, he was off-balance. Had to catch himself on the doorjamb and take a moment getting the door shut behind him.
Shit, he’d had far too much.
He was in that underwater stage of drunkenness in which his surroundings seemed achingly clear, but he stumbled through them, clumsy and slow, thoughts getting muddled between his brain and his tongue.
“Fuck,” he murmured to himself, when he finally slumped against a tree and the night spun around him. It took a full minute figuring out the mechanics of his pants. He felt better after, though. Somewhat. The cool air felt good against his face and throat, and the quiet soughing of the wind in the branches sounded almost like a lullaby.
The crunch of footfalls sent him lurching around, clutching at the tree trunk to keep from falling over, wild, drunk panic surging through his veins. He had his revolver on his hip, but not his carbine, and he probably couldn’t shoot straight anyway. Maybe if he shut one eye…
But it was only Pyotr, pale-faced in the moonlight.
He sagged and let the tree hold his weight.
In a careful voice, Pyotr said, “I was worried you might…fall down.” Because he was that drunk. So drunk that the youngest and smallest of them had worried enough to come searching for him in the dark.
“I’m alright.” But he wasn’t, because in the dancing shadows, Pyotr’s silvered face looked so much like his brother’s that Nikita was hit all over again with the guilt of getting his best friend killed. And possibly worse – keeping Dima’s little brother, so in need of guidance and a brotherly shoulder to lean on for reassurance – at arm’s length to spare himself the heartache.
He thought he might be sick.
“Oh. Hey, whoa.” Pyotr was at his side, suddenly, his grip surprisingly strong on Nikita’s arm. “Let’s sit down.”
Nikita was aware that they walked, but couldn’t feel the ground beneath his feet, head reeling. They ended up side-by-side on a rickety wooden bench outside the cottage, the wood groaning when it took their combined weight.
“Here.” Pyotr put a canteen in his hands. “Have some water.”
He did, and it was cool and good against his tongue; once he started drinking he realized he was parched, the inside of his mouth desert-dry, and he gulped it all down in a rush, spilling it on his shirt, clumsily wiping his chin with his sleeve. Another wave of sickness rose, but he belched and it subsided.
“Shit,” he said, panting from the effort of drinking so much so fast.
Pyotr chuckled. “I’ve never seen you drunk before.”
“Don’t get used to it. I imagine it’s not a good look.”
Pyotr braced his shoulder against Nikita’s like he knew that was just what he needed to stay upright. “You’re upset about what Monsieur Philippe said.”
“I’m upset about everything that man says.”
“But now. Tonight,” he pressed. “You’re worried about Sasha.” Notes of regret and unhappiness in his voice. Jealousy – but not really, a sweet facsimile of that sentiment.
Nikita sighed. Exhaustion was creeping up on him, slow and sure. In another few minutes he’d need to lie down. He felt raw and exposed now, afraid he’d say the wrong thing…but afraid not to say it, always so buttoned up and guarded when he was sober. “I’m worried about all of you,” he said. “All the time. Every second of every day.” The vodka made him brave in a way he knew he’d regret later, but he turned to Pyotr, faced him the best he could in the dark. “The cause was easy to chase when I was a boy, before anything bad had happened. Before your brother–” His voice cracked and Pyotr’s eyes widened, a sudden bolt of grief blanking his face.
“We can’t win,” he said, and knew for the first time it was true. Really, painfully true. “Right now, with the war on…” He shook his head. “If I was brave, I’d tell all of you to desert and run off to Siberia somewhere.” He felt his lips pretend to smile. “But I’m a coward.”
Pyotr looked scandalized. “You’re not.”
“I am. That’s the reason I can’t be the brother that you need right now. It hurts too much.”
Pyotr looked away from him, jaw clenched so the tendons in his throat threw shadows down into his shirt collar. “That’s not fair,” he said, quiet but firm. “You didn’t force us to be here. If any of us gets killed, that’s our own fault. It’s the Soviets’ fault. Stalin’s. The war’s.” He gained fervor as the list grew, staring angrily ahead at the dark trees. “I don’t–” He sighed. “Dima was your best friend. I know that. I think he was closer to you than he ever was to me. But he was my brother, and I miss him too. I…” He choked a little, swallowed it down. Pressed his hands to his knees and blinked down at them. “I don’t need you to be my brother, Nikitos. I wanted us to be friends, but…”
Nikita put one clumsy hand on his shoulder. “Pyotr–”
“But if that’s too hard, then please, just…lead us. That’s all we really need. That’s enough.”
He stood up and Nikita’s hand fell away, too slow to keep up.
“I’m worried about Sasha too,” Pyotr said. “He’s too trusting.” And he walked away.
Nikita groaned and dropped his face into his hands. It occurred to him then that he’d forgotten his gloves in his pocket and his hands were freezing. He made no move to fix that, though, staring through the gaps in his fingers down at the mud under his boots. The icicles on the edge of the cottage roof had dripped for weeks, until they were gone, keeping the thatch of pine needles wet; their boots had churned up the damp earth beneath, turning it to a sticky muck that was as unpleasant and hard-to-get-out-of as their present situation.
Someone huffed a breath right in his ear and he jerked upright, a shocked sound caught in his throat.
It was the alpha female wolf, studying him with her head cocked, yellow eyes seeming almost sympathetic – if it was possible for a wolf to look like that.
Sasha stood a little ways behind her, his hood pushed back for once. His hair was getting longer, down to his shoulders now, ragged at the ends and silver under the moonlight. He wore the kind of thoughtful expression Nikita hadn’t thought him capable of before, pre-wolf.
“Is that what you really think?” he asked. “That we can’t win?”
All he wanted to do was lie down and shut his eyes. He slumped back against the wall of the cottage and rubbed at the headache that was brewing in his temples. “We can’t.”
Sasha sighed and came to sit beside him, in the place Pyotr had vacated. The wolf sat down at his feet, her head resting on his thigh. He reached to stroke her ears as he spoke, and his voice came out surer, and more adult than Nikita had ever heard it.
“Be honest with me,” he said. “Why did you go to Siberia to get me?”
Nikita blinked at him a moment, gathering his sloppy thoughts. “I was ordered to.”
Sasha nodded. “Yes. And why did you follow orders?”
This line of questioning seemed stupid and juvenile. “Because I would have been killed or sent to the gulag if I didn’t.”
“And why don’t you want that to happen?”
Nikita frowned. Because dying or being imprisoned in a silver mine, worked to death in freezing temperatures, sounded like horrible fates.
But that wasn’t the reason Sasha was looking for, was it?
He took a deep breath. “Because the only way to topple the state is from within.”
“Do you still believe that?”
“Yes.”
“Is it worth it?”
“Yes. Damn it, Sasha–”
“I was really scared,” he said, quietly, and Nikita shut up. “The whole time, all the way here. But then I realized that you were scared, too, and I felt a little better. At first, I thought I was scared because everything was new, and I didn’t want to die, and didn’t want to get hurt. And now I think maybe I’m scared for the same reasons you are – because it’s important. Saving Russia is important.”
Nikita felt himself smile, but knew there was no humor in the expression, only sadness and fondness. “Maybe we want to save Russia because we can’t save ourselves.” Or the people we love, he added, thinking of his mother, of Dima, of these brothers around him who he’d surely lose.
“Maybe. But Nikita.” Sasha shifted closer, eyes too-bright, vivid blue. “We’re going to win.”
“Yeah? Why do you think that?”
“Monsieur Philippe’s been telling me all about wolves, and vampires, and mages.”
“Has he?”
“It’s a triangle.” He sketched one in the air with his fingertip. “Mage,” on the bottom left, “wolf,” on the bottom right, “and vampire,” at the top. “The wolf is the right hand, the mage the left. Only a mage can make a wolf, and only a wolf can raise a vampire. It’s a perfect circle.”
“I thought it was a triangle.”
Sasha made a face at him. “They’re all very powerful in different ways. They keep each other in check, yes, but when they work together, they are more powerful than anyone can imagine.”
“So the mage does the fire-starting and the magic tricks. And the wolf is the attack dog. What does the vampire do?”
Sasha shrugged. “He is the strongest of all.”
A disturbing thought occurred. “Sasha, what if all Philippe wanted you for was to wake up this vampire – if he even exists?”
Sasha looked wounded by the idea. “He exists.”
“Does he?”
“I exist.” He gave a low growl that wasn’t threatening. Gestured to his own chest. “Why wouldn’t vampires?”
“You make a good point.”
“I know he exists,” Sasha said, shaking his head, expression thoughtful. “I just…I met someone, when I was little. Spoke to a fancy man in the woods. I was only little, and I don’t know how, but I could tell he wasn’t ordinary. I’d convinced myself I dreamed it, but then, during the procedure.”
His eyes came back, intense enough to make Nikita want to shrink down into his coat collar. “When the knife was inside me, when – when the wolf came in – something happened. I could sense…others.”
“Other wolves?”
“Some. And maybe something else. Something stronger. It was like I was just me, and then suddenly I was a part of something bigger. Like I got…stitched into a quilt.” He sighed. “I’m not saying it right.”
“No, you’re saying it fine. I think I know what you mean.”
“You believe me, then?” He sounded hopeful.
“Yes.”
He smiled. “Do you believe me when I say we’re going to win the war?”
How different he was from the shaking boy who’d boarded the train in Tomsk. How confident. It was contagious. “I want to.”
“Good. You should.”
~*~
Sleep, Monsieur Philippe had suggested. While they had a roof over their heads, and some residual warmth from the fire, and wolves to keep watch.
Wolves.
Werewolves.
Vampires.
She couldn’t have slept if she’d wanted to. Even if she tipped back all of Ivan’s vodka.
She couldn’t process it all. She’d known something about Sasha wasn’t…normal…but to hear it spoken about so plainly. The impossible. As if it were as normal as tea and dirty laundry, and the mud beneath their feet. It astounded her.
The men snored around her in their bedrolls, dog-tired and dead to the world. In the dim light of the dying fire, she could make out their distinct shapes, all of them a safe distance. One of the wolves slept up near her head, half-curled around her without touching. She could smell its musky, woodsy scent every time she inhaled.
At another time, it would have terrified her, a hulking wild animal blowing gently against her face as it snored. But now, amid all the other crazy, she found it comforting.
After a long quiet stretch, in which her mind refused to relax and accept the things she’d learned, she heard the cottage door creak open and then close again. Careful footsteps across the boards. Knew it was Nikita by the sound of his breathing as he lay down behind her, just far enough not to touch, but close because the narrow walls demanded it.
She listened to the sound of his clothes rustling, little pops and groans as the floor settled. Finally, he let out a deep breath and was still.
The wolf at her head stood up, circled a few times, and flopped back down with a sigh that gusted warm carrion breath against her face.
Ivan snored. A log crumbled to ashes on the grate with a quiet little gust.
She startled hard when Nikita spoke.
“It gets easier to believe the longer you think about it.”
When her heartbeat had settled enough not to give her away, she rolled over to face him, wearing what she hoped was an indifferent expression. Moonlight fell in through the window above him, just enough to see the gleam of his eyes, and the shape of his mouth.
He smiled and she guessed she was more transparent than she thought. “Are you frightened?” he asked.
“Well.” Her mouth felt dry, cottony. She tried to wet her lips but it didn’t do much good. “It wasn’t a vampire or a werewolf that gutted my father. Raped my sister. Burned down my house.” Raped me, she didn’t say.
Anger darkened his face. “No. I guess they didn’t.”
Something about being close to him, about seeing the way his jaw tensed, made her feel less frightened. Less alone. A dangerous sensation, one she doubtless couldn’t trust.
“I think it’s hard to believe,” she whispered, “because it seems too easy. After everything.”
“Fairy tale monsters coming in to kill all the Nazis and rescue the Motherland?”
Yes. Exactly. She shrugged. “Are you so sure they’re monsters at all?”
He sighed. “I know they’re real. I’ll have to think about the monster part.”
A yawn snuck up on her; she tried to smother it into her bed roll, but no such luck.
“Go to sleep,” Nikita said. “The wolves will keep watch.”
“Not sleepy,” she protested, but her eyes were already closing.
She dreamed of wolves, and men with fangs…and the Chekist lying beside her.