28
A THREAT
They all decamped to Katya’s room, her roommate once again absent; the whole pack, two- and four-legged, crammed into the narrow space. The sour-faced matron in charge of the kitchen hadn’t wanted to send them with food, but Ivan had managed to charm a loaf of bread and several cans of SPAM from her.
Nikita chose not to eat, knowing one of his people would chastise him about it later.
“Explain it to us, Sasha,” he urged.
Every face in the room was open, listening. Wanting their young wolf’s take on it.
Nikita felt a surge of warmth. Of belonging. It was a sensation he probably didn’t deserve to feel, given the things he’d done, but one for which he was grateful. Sasha kept calling them a pack, and he felt it now, that sense of being a part of something purely good and loving.
It was staggering.
Sasha set his half-eaten slice of bread down in his lap with a sigh. His alpha female sniffed it, nose twitching with interest, but didn’t eat it out from under him.
“Philippe said it was like a triangle,” he said, and again sketched one in the air with his finger, like he’d done for Nikita outside the abandoned cabin in the forest. When he’d been hopeful and bright-eyed. “Vampire, mage, wolf. The mage and the wolf are the left and right hands of the vampire.”
“Every powerful fucker in the world has a left and right hand to do his dirty work,” Ivan said, tone consoling.
Sasha gave a bitter smile. “I knew that. In theory. But I didn’t expect it to feel like this.”
“Welcome to our world,” Kolya said with a sigh.
“Siberians aren’t used to bending the knee,” Feliks said. “You’ll get used to it.”
“No,” Sasha said. He pressed a hand to his chest. “It’s something inside. There’s this voice – I heard it as soon as his eyes opened. It wants me to submit to him, and–” His voice shivered. “I know it’s not just following orders. It’s like he wants in, and if I let him, I won’t be me anymore.”
One of the wolves whined quietly.
Everyone looked like they’d been slapped.
“Can he control you?” Katya asked, tapping the side of her head with a finger. “Like a psychic?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’m keeping him out, but, it takes effort.” He hunched his shoulders, looking miserable. “It doesn’t matter what happens to me. I know that.” Another sad smile. “I can’t let you all down.”
Ivan snorted.
Nikita traded a look with Kolya.
Kolya said, “Sasha, if you want to run away, you can.”
Sasha jerked upright, gaze so startled it was almost frightened. He looked to Nikita. “But–”
“I won’t speak for everyone,” Nikita said, “but I know, personally, that I’m tired of following the orders of maniacs. Fetching you from Siberia was our order,” he said to Sasha. “And letting Philippe…do what he did to you, those were our orders. But nobody knows Rasputin even exists except for us. I say we use him if we can – if he’s useful – but I won’t let him make us worse monsters than we are. Fuck the triangle. Either he helps us beat the Nazis, and the Communists, or he can go back in the fucking ground.”
It was quiet a beat.
“Seconded,” Kolya said.
Ivan: “Third.”
Feliks and Pyotr said, “Fourth,” together, and then looked at each other, startled.
Katya nodded. “I agree.”
Sasha glanced around the room, expression disbelieving – and very touched.
“We do it as a pack,” Nikita said. “Or else we, I don’t know, fuck off to America.”
Ivan produced a flask from his pocket with a grin. “I’ll drink to that.”
~*~
It was sometime in the deep, black dark of the middle of the night when Nikita eased away from Katya and out from beneath the covers. She rolled over and pressed her face into the warm spot he’d left on the pillow, but didn’t wake.
The small room was crowded with sleeping Chekists and wolves, warm from the combined body heat, a small shelter in a very large, very frightening storm.
Nikita wanted to stay here with them all, and pretend to sleep, but he knew that he – like always – was the captain. The ultimate root of all their troubles. So it was right that he go and try to make it a little easier for all of them by himself.
Katya didn’t wake, but Sasha did, sitting up suddenly against the wall, bright eyes blinking, little blue moons in his face. He started to rise, but Nikita shook his head and made a stay motion.
Sasha studied him a long moment, then nodded.
The base was quiet, but no military installation ever truly slept. He heard the clomp of boots in another hallway. The sound of a door closing. And down below, in the labs, the lights blazed and white-coated assistants whisked back and forth, running tests and talking in hushed, excited voices.
Nikita spotted Philippe coming out of a room – the one where Rasputin was being kept – and he ducked into a lab to avoid being seen. Several of the assistants gave him strange looks, but didn’t comment. Someone had informed them that he was none of their business.
He gave it to the count of ten, then peeked back out and found the hall empty for the moment. He headed down to Rasputin’s door, and it was the dumbest he’d ever felt, sneaking around like a kid up after bedtime. But it was worth the indignity in order to avoid Philippe.
It had been a long time since Nikita had walked down a hallway without his coat, and his rolling, authoritative gait – the one he’d cultivated throughout his years as a Soviet attack dog. It was jarring to walk softly now, up on the balls of his feet, sneaking. But it got the job done.
The door to Rasputin’s room was ajar, and he whirled inside and eased it back without making a sound. Gave himself a moment to catch his breath, because his heart was pounding, he realized, so hard it was making his head throb.
Two small lamps illuminated the room, a soft glow for an uncomfortable patient. The starets lay propped on a mound of white pillows, dressed in a hospital gown, covers drawn up to his chest. His hair and beard seemed pools of shadow in the low light, his face drawn and framed with shadows.
Nikita smelled the meal someone had brought him, broth and bread. And the faint, but distinct copper tang of blood.
As he stood at the door, wondering if he should retreat, Rasputin’s eyes opened. It was just as shocking as the first time, when he’d tasted Sasha’s blood.
Eyes that could look right through your soul, Nikita’s mother had said. Everyone had said something like that. From church officials to princesses, everyone who’d ever met the holy man face-to-face talked of the intensity of his gaze.
Rasputin attempted something like a smile. “You’re the captain, yes?” he asked in his croaking voice. He hadn’t spoken in twenty-four years, Nikita realized.
He drew himself upright, forced his body into his official, captain’s posture. “Yes, I’m the captain.”
“Come closer.” Rasputin beckoned with one bony hand. “Let me look at you.”
His skin crawled, but he complied. He didn’t think the sensation was the result of psychic tampering, though, not like with Sasha. There was no little voice in the back of his head telling him to submit. This was just his usual revulsion when it came to this man.
And Rasputin could sense it. His smile widened as Nikita drew up beside the bed. Someone, Nikita noted, had combed the man’s beard and hair.
“You seem troubled, captain,” the starets said, and offered his hand, limp and repulsive.
Nikita stared at it, but couldn’t bring himself to touch it. “Do I?”
Rasputin sighed and brought his hand back to his lap. “A lot has changed since I went to sleep. Philippe says the opposition rose up and took the government. That they killed my dear Nicky and Alix.” He made a choking sound and shook his head, eyes wet. “It’s not even Russia anymore. There is no belief in God anymore.”
“It’s still Russia,” Nikita said. “We’ve just got to get it back from the Bolsheviks.”
Rasputin sighed again. Beneath his gown, his shoulders were sharp points. “Philippe also says you are ambitious.”
“Philippe says a lot of shit.”
Rasputin jerked upright, eyes even wider, startled.
“For instance, he’s been saying for months that you aren’t just a raving, khlyst lunatic, and that waking you up was our best bet for overthrowing the Communists. That between your power, and his, and Sasha’s, we could win this war and take back Russia.”
Rasputin opened his mouth, and Nikita spoke over him.
“I don’t really believe him, but I have to, or else face the fact that the Communists are here to stay. And that’s not tolerable. People are starving. People are getting sent to the gulags every day. Stalin didn’t even have enough men to fight this war when it started because he’d killed or exiled anyone with any sense in the military.” Anger was bleeding into his voice, all the bright rage that he kept locked up tight. “Praying hasn’t gotten us anywhere, so you can spare me the holy man routine. God’s got nothing to do with what’s happening here – this is the devil’s work. So I’m not here for your prayers. I want your power. If you’ve got any.”
Rasputin studied him for a long, unblinking moment. “Philippe said you would be like this.”
“Yeah?”
“He said you’re an angry and bitter man.”
“Tell me something I don’t know.”
The starets tilted his head, an unnervingly birdlike movement. Nikita was aware suddenly of how quiet it was in the room: neither of them twitched; the only sounds were of their breathing.
“Prayer is the most powerful thing on earth,” Rasputin said. “You should trust in it more.” When Nikita didn’t respond, he nodded and said, “But yes, I will help you. It’s what our dear emperor would have wanted.”
“Good.” Nikita turned to leave.
“Captain.”
He glanced back over his shoulder.
Rasputin smiled, eyes glittering. “Won’t you stay a while and tell me more about my wolf?”
Nikita was back at the bedside in two long strides. “He is not your wolf,” he hissed. “If you touch him–”
“The way that you’re touching me?”
He glanced down. He had a fistful of the man’s gown, knuckles white with effort.
He let go and staggered back a step. He’d touched him. Rasputin, who he loathed, and he’d touched him.
The starets – the vampire – chuckled, a low, dirt-choked sound that brought up gooseflesh on Nikita’s arms. “Maybe you are bitter and angry so that no one will see how afraid you are, captain.”
Nikita wanted to wash his hands. To run out of the room.
“You need not fear me. I have God on my side, and soon, I will have you, too, I think.”
Nikita took a deep breath and drew himself upright, forced his hands to relax at his sides. “I will say this once. If you harm a member of my pack in any way, I’ll kill you myself.”
Rasputin only smiled. “It was very nice to meet you, captain. But I think now I should rest.”
Nikita felt like he’d been standing out in the snow without a coat. By the time he reached the small room where he’d left the others, he was wracked with chills. He had to clench his teeth to keep them from chattering.
He let himself inside and leaned back against the door a moment, breathing in the fug of body heat and wolf musk, letting the warmth roll over him like a comforting blanket.
Several wolf heads picked up, looking at him, testing the air for his scent, then laid back down. Sasha was still leaning against the wall, and his eyes opened a crack, cool slits of blue.
Nikita leaned down and patted the top of his head in silent greeting, a gesture that earned him a smile…and then a sniff and a questioning look. He could smell Rasputin, then.
“It’s alright,” Nikita whispered.
Sasha didn’t look convinced, but he finally nodded.
Nikita went back to the cot where Katya lay alone, still trying to draw his warmth from the sheets. She shifted when he slid in beside her, patted his chest and murmured something against his shoulder.
“It’s alright,” he told her.
But maybe it wasn’t.
He laid awake for a long time, listening to his makeshift family breathing around him.