30
LITTLE LADIES
Stalingrad was a city untouched by the Germans, so far. It sat, proud and whole, on the banks of the Volga, its white buildings reflecting the summer sun across the water, turning its surface to diamonds. The tractor factory worked round the clock, its stacks belching smoke into cloudless, hazy blue steppe sky, and its workers came and went in shifts, faces lined with exhaustion. But it was a city with tidy, bustling houses, where the trees stood intact, where there was still car and truck and foot traffic on the roadways. The promise of war simmered just below the surface, in every nervous dart of a mother’s eyes, in every muffled clang from the factory. But after Leningrad and Moscow, it seemed an exotic land of plenty.
Nikita spotted the anti-tank trenches already being dug on their way in, the barriers that would be dragged across the road. The fresh-faced uniformed soldiers who looked like babies as they unloaded crates of landmines.
War was coming, and the Red Army was trying to pull off another miracle.
The truck from the Institute let them out in the business district, and Nikita hated watching it rumble off and disappear into traffic. Now they were stuck here for the time being. With Rasputin.
They’d dressed him in army greens like Katya’s, short boots and gaiters, and crammed a hat down on his head. A poor disguise, but less conspicuous than what he’d wanted to wear. He’d asked for glossy boots and a Russian shirt like he’d worn in his time, and had grown emotional when they’d told him no. Whether for joy or despair, the man was always near tears.
“Oh,” he said now, turning in a circle, gaze sweeping their surroundings. “I’ve never seen this place. It looks so different.”
“A modern city, to be sure,” Philippe said, and laid what looked like a casual hand on his arm; Nikita saw the mage pinch his shirtsleeve between thumb and forefinger, a guiding touch like a mother would use with a child who might run off into the street. “Should we find some place to eat?”
Pyotr scouted ahead and found them a quiet corner of a café. Well away from the windows, under a dim lightbulb that needed changing. That put Rasputin in the corner, and the tired-looking waitress didn’t look at him twice when she came to take their order of coffee and whatever sort of spread the kitchen could pull together for such a large group.
“Let’s get some wine,” Rasputin said when she was gone, voice eager. “I haven’t had any since I woke.”
Nikita frowned. “No.”
“But I want some.”
Philippe smiled and patted the back of his hand. “You’re still building your strength back up, Grisha. You probably shouldn’t drink.”
In another situation, Nikita would have found Rasputin’s dramatic frown comical. “Wine can’t hurt me. I’m–”
“Yes, yes, you are,” Philippe said in a rush to keep him from finishing his sentence. His smile was strained. “But still. I’m not sure it would be wise just now.”
Rasputin shook Philippe’s hand off his own like it was a fly, and slapped his palm down hard on the table.
Katya jumped.
“You think you’re wiser than me?” Rasputin asked Philippe, angry now, eyes flashing. “Is that it? Do you, who’ve met me only once before, think you know what I should and shouldn’t have?”
There was a more sinister undertone there, too. Rasputin was the vampire. The master. Shouldn’t he be in charge?
Nikita darted a sideways glance to Sasha, who sat white-faced and staring down at his hands, fingers twitching.
“Of course not,” Philippe said, smooth and soothing. “We’ll ask the waitress.”
Rasputin heaved a deep sigh and looked contrite. “I’m sorry, my dear Philippe. I’m still weak, and it makes me grumpy and foolish.”
“That’s quite alright. Miss?” The waitress had returned with cups half-full of coffee. He smiled at her with a play at genuine warmth. “Might we get a bottle of wine?”
She looked surprised – but only a moment. Then a blank sort of calmness came over her. Rasputin stared at her, and Nikita’s skin crawled; which one of them, he wondered, was compelling her at the moment?
“I’ll see if we have any,” she said, and rushed off.
“They won’t have wine,” Feliks said with a snort. “Nobody but Stalin’s got wine these days. It’s just rotgut and vodka.”
“What a shame,” Rasputin said, shaking his head sadly. “A horrible shame. I remember the wine they served at the palace. And in all the glittering cafes of Petrograd!” He tilted his head back and swept his hand through the air, a grand, reminiscing gesture. “Tart, and sweet, and delicious. Always a bottle of wine for Grisha. And these greedy Communists–”
“Hush,” Nikita snapped, and the man looked like he’d been slapped.
“You can’t talk about that in the open,” Philippe said, imploring. “We can’t reveal ourselves, not yet.”
Rasputin glanced at each of them in turn, frowning. “Why not? Why should we hide? We must educate the people about the generosity and plenty of Nicholas’s empire, so that they may join us.”
Ivan clapped a hand to his forehead. “Jesus Christ,” he murmured. “We’re all going to die.”
“Grisha.” Philippe was still trying to be diplomatic. “This is no longer a country for the espousing of ideas and free discussion.”
“You have to shut up,” Nikita said. He wasn’t going to placate the lunatic. “If we all get thrown in the gulag before the fighting starts, we’re fucked.” And waking the old monster up would have been a massive waste of time and effort.
Rasputin studied him a long moment, face unreadable – save his eyes. Those, Nikita thought, were full of anger.
“You’re a very bitter man, captain,” he said at last. “We will have to pray together, you and I, so that you can welcome God’s wisdom and grace.”
“Sure,” Nikita lied, voice flat. “We’ll have to do that.”
The waitress returned, carrying a dusty bottle of something that was obviously homemade. “This is the best we can do, I’m afraid,” she said, and looked genuinely sorry.
Rasputin beamed at her. “That will be fine, my dear.”
~*~
It wasn’t the same as it had been before. Sasha had long since grown used to the rhythms of their makeshift family. Ivan’s belly laughs and Feliks’s snarky sourness, and Kolya inserting the occasional scathing comment. Pyotr asking lots of questions, and Nikita presiding over them all like a stern but loving big brother. Katya had come in quietly at first, sharp-edged and cautious, but had thawed and shown them her warm side. Philippe was a know-it-all, but the sort of person who could fit in anywhere, conforming to the situation at hand.
It was a conversation.
But Rasputin sucked all the air out of the room.
His thoughts, his wants, lay like a pall over their table, something nearly tangible, almost like smoke. He ate ravenously, and messily, with his hands, spilling crumbs and bits of tinned meat into his beard.
Before they woke him, Nikita had called him a “sex maniac.” So it was no great surprise that – as he gobbled food and slurped coffee, gesticulating with greasy fingers – he started talking about women.
“Women are such wonderful company,” he said, licking crumbs off the web between thumb and forefinger. He turned a messy smile toward Katya, and Sasha, sitting beside her, felt the shudder that moved through her, heard the faint whisper of her clothes as she squirmed in her seat. “They are so much more sensitive than men. Receptive.”
Sasha wanted to squirm too, and to pull Katya behind him and bare his teeth at the starets. He could smell the heat and fresh-sweat smell of lust rolling off the man, an acrid stink that expanded every time his eyes landed on Katya. He wanted her. And why not? She was beautiful and young. But she was one of them, and Nikita’s lover, and there was no hint of affection or respect in Rasputin’s light eyes.
“So many are brought into temptation,” Rasputin went on. “They can’t help it; it’s in their nature. I always took it upon myself to pray with them, and drive the sin from their hearts.”
“And their bodies,” Feliks muttered.
“What?”
“Do we have to keep talking about God?” Ivan asked. His face flushed dark with unhappiness. “I don’t like to mix prayer and pussy. Bad combination in my book.”
Feliks snorted into his coffee.
Rasputin turned to Ivan. “Pleasure isn’t a sin,” he said, seriously. “God didn’t put us here so that we could only toil and suffer.”
Feliks swept a hand over top of his head in an unmistakable gesture that Rasputin, ironically, missed.
Sasha wanted to crawl under the table. He didn’t have his wolves with him, and the hot-blooded want pouring off Rasputin made him want to claw at his own skin.
Submit, submit. Always in the back of his head.
Rasputin swilled rotgut like it was expensive champagne, and he ate great handfuls of food, but Sasha could still scent his hunger. Blood-hunger. Sex-hunger.
He pulled in tight, shoulders jacked up around his ears, and failed to suppress a whimper.
“Sasha,” Katya whispered beside him. She put a soothing hand on the back of his head. “Are you okay?”
He nodded, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t sure he would be again, unless something happened to Rasputin.
God, that was a horrible thought for him to have. They needed the vampire now.
But.
But…
“Ivan,” Nikita said. “You made arrangements?”
“Yeah.”
“Time to go, then.”
“You know,” Rasputin said. His voice was beginning to sound slurred. He’d had the whole bottle by now. “It would be nice to–”
“Already taken care of,” Nikita said darkly.
~*~
Ivan had scouted yesterday and procured them a set of rooms in a house owned by the sort of landlady who would turn the other way, and engaged some entertainment for the afternoon.
The rooms were a little shabby, but clean and neat. The hardwood floors gleamed in the afternoon sunlight that filtered through the curtains. There was a living room with a sofa, two chairs, and well-trod braided rugs. Two bedrooms and a bathroom with a claw-foot tub. It seemed luxurious after the base.
Four bottles of vodka sat on a side table.
Four prostitutes sat on the sofa, already half-undressed and smiling as they entered.
“Oh,” Katya said, quiet and startled.
Nikita darted a glance her way and saw that her cheeks were pinking. He settled his arm around her waist, briefly, patted her hip. “I thought we’d go for a walk.”
She looked relieved when she turned to face him.
“Would that be alright?” he asked.
“Yes.” She smiled a little.
“The boys have earned a little fun.” Before the fighting started.
She nodded. “They have.”
“I saw some books downstairs in the parlor,” Philippe said. “I wonder if the landlady might let me look through them.” He left them with a thin smile.
“Ladies,” Ivan greeted, beaming at the prostitutes with that cheeky, little-boy smile that made women fall at the big man’s feet.
Pyotr was blushing furiously, but Nikita saw the eager way he eyed the slim, young woman with the pale hair and small breasts.
Only Sasha looked stricken.
Nikita touched his shoulder. “Come with us,” he said. “We’re walking down to the river.”
Sasha managed a halfhearted smile. But before he could respond, Rasputin turned to face them.
“Nonsense. The wolf child will stay with me. Hasn’t he ‘earned a little fun’ too?”
Nikita ignored him. “Sasha?”
“I…” Sasha started to frown, and then the unhappiness slowly smoothed away. He looked resolute, like he was going into battle. “I’ll stay.”
“You don’t have to,” Katya said.
“No, I want to. You two go. I’ll be fine.”
Nikita didn’t believe him, but there was something firm in his eyes. A determination.
Nikita tipped his head in silent question, and Sasha nodded. I can handle myself, the boy’s expression said. Trust me.
And so Nikita did. He took Katya’s hand.
“Behave yourself, Ivan,” he said on their way out, and his answer was a delighted laugh.
~*~
Sasha’s resolve almost crumbled when Katya and Nikita slipped out the door. Their genuine concern, the way Katya had implored him to come with them with her gaze…it was almost his undoing. But he was sure of this. As much as he loathed the idea of staying, he thought he had to. He was the wolf here. It was his job to serve his master…or, in this case, prevent him from doing anything unspeakable.
As they’d walked from the café, Rasputin’s palpable, buzzing excitement reached a fever pitch. It droned like insects in Sasha’s ears, danced in the nerves in his fingers, and toes, and teeth.
Submit to me.
Revel with me.
And the blood hunger was still there. His lust.
They were going to find a woman for him, Sasha had realized. And Rasputin would feed from her, he was certain.
Well, not if he could help it. He was the reason this creature was awake, and it seemed like he should be the one to stop him from harming anyone.
“Come take your pick, Grigory,” Ivan said with a magnanimity Sasha knew was fake. A convincing sort of fake, though.
The girls looked dismayed – at first. Once Rasputin stepped forward and met each of their gazes with his own, they became not only passive, but enraptured. There were countless tales of women chasing after Rasputin, and Sasha thought almost all of that could be attributed to vampirism.
“Hello,” he greeted.
“Hello,” they chorused back.
The youngest one blushed and looked down at her lap, biting her lip like a smitten schoolgirl.
One of the others, breasts threatening to spill out of her dress, batted her lashes and said, “Don’t you look uncivilized.”
“My dear.” His grin stretched wide. “I’m not civilized at all. Have you ever met a man from Siberia?”
“I think I just have.”
“Yes.”
He pulled her to her feet and towed her toward one of the bedrooms.
Sasha knew a moment’s relief when the door was shut. It wouldn’t last, he knew, but even a door was a welcome barrier between the two of them.
But then, of course, he was uncomfortable for a whole different reason.
Virgin though he was, he understood how this would work, and it unfolded as he expected it would.
Kolya crooked a finger at the wide-hipped prostitute with her hair done in ringlets, and she went with him into the other bedroom.
Ivan and Feliks joined the other two on the sofa, and the women – both young, both pretty, one of them the pale-haired, seemingly timid girl that Pyotr had been instantly drawn to – giggled shyly and climbed into their laps. Sasha couldn’t see much beyond their heads from his vantage point sitting on the floor behind the sofa, but he could feel the excitement in the air, smell sweat and the first musky hints of sex.
Pyotr came over and sat beside Sasha with a resolute sigh. He rearranged his pants as discreetly as possible. “Don’t worry, you can have a turn after.” He smiled at Sasha, but his eyes strayed to the blond girl currently sitting astride Ivan’s lap.
Sasha was getting hard – he didn’t think a saint could have prevented it at this point, especially as Feliks’s girl let out a breathy sound and her head began to rise and fall over the back of the sofa, her fingernails sunk into Feliks’s shoulders. But he shook his head. “No.”
Pyotr nudged him. “You haven’t ever, have you? Don’t worry. We won’t make fun of you.”
He shook his head again, harder this time. “No, it’s not…” His cheeks warmed, because, okay, he was a little embarrassed. But that wasn’t the issue. “I need to be on guard.”
“On guard for what?”
“Hopefully nothing.”
~*~
“It’s almost lovely here,” Katya said, shading her eyes with a hand and staring off across the water.
They’d found a little patch of grass to sit on near the water, just beyond the reach of the city’s shadow as afternoon raced toward dusk. A breeze trailed the river, lifting her hair, drying the sweat at her temples.
“Hmm,” Nikita murmured in response, distracted. He had one leg drawn up, arm resting on his knee. He looked toward the river and afforded her a chance to study his profile.
His hair needed trimming, and the dark circles beneath his eyes were vivid as bruises. A smudge of dirt marred the sharp line of his jaw. It was easy to forget, in the grind of daily life, that he was beautiful.
So much that was beautiful went overlooked. A sunny day. A sluggish river. The twitter of birdsong. The war took the small things from them, and left behind only thorns and nightmares.
“You wouldn’t have stayed,” she said, realizing, without surprise, that it was true.
“What?”
“Even if I wasn’t here, you wouldn’t have stayed behind with the others, would you? Had your turn?”
He snorted. “I’m tired of things that aren’t real.” He looked at her then, face guarded. “No, I wouldn’t have stayed.”
“I didn’t think so.”
His gaze moved across her face; she could feel it tracing her features, his expression slowly softening. “I figured out the answer to your question. The one about after the war.”
She took a deep breath and held it.
“I want to run away from all this. The Eastern Front. Go to Siberia, or America. Somewhere. Together.”
When she exhaled, she smiled, and he smiled back.
~*~
“Greedy fucker. He’s only got one dick! What does he need four girls for, huh? I oughta–”
“Ivan, shut up,” Kolya snapped. “Look at him. Sasha, what’s wrong?”
“Blood,” he said, and it was. The first rich, copper notes of it, creeping out from under the bedroom door.
About fifteen minutes before, when the slender blond girl had just pushed Pyotr down into a chair and slid to her knees between his legs – Pyotr almost cross-eyed with want, pink-faced and panting for it – and the other girl was trying to coax Sasha to his feet, the bedroom door had opened and Rasputin had stepped into the main room, barefoot and naked save for his shirt, the long tails doing a halfhearted job of covering him.
Ivan, sprawled back against the couch and smoking a cigarette, voice slurred, had said, “What? Need someone to show you how it’s done?”
Feliks had laughed.
Rasputin had smiled and said, “I thought the ladies might like to join us.”
And to everyone’s amazement, the two prostitutes had joined him, leaving them all gaping in their wake.
A moment later, Kolya’s girl had stepped out of the other bedroom, hand propped on her hip, cigarette clenched between her teeth, rumpled and satisfied-looking. She’d sauntered in behind the others, and the door had shut.
One starets, and four women.
Everyone had shaken off their languor then.
So far, all Sasha had heard was the squeak of bed springs and soft feminine moans. A few giggles, murmured words from Rasputin.
But now, suddenly, he smelled blood.
He shot to his feet, growl already rolling through his chest.
“Sasha,” Kolya said, taking a step toward him. “What are you–”
He launched himself at the door.
There was no voice in his head this time, no unrelenting pressure telling him to bend and scrape and serve. He was just him, and in the absence of the call to submission, he remembered just how very strong he was.
The door was locked, but the mechanism gave like tissue paper when Sasha hit it. One lunge took him through the door and into the room, where the hot, fresh scent of blood filled his nose and narrowed his world down to the tableau on the bed.
The girls were all naked now, three of them sitting upright and unnaturally still along the side of the bed, while Rasputin lay over top of the fourth. It was the pale one, who Pyotr liked, and she looked even paler now, staring up at the ceiling as if in a trance.
Rasputin twisted around to see who had kicked the door in, his mouth red with blood. Blood stained the girl’s throat, two dark punctures where his fangs had penetrated her flesh.
A terrible, painful pressure swelled in Sasha’s chest, and when he opened his mouth, out rolled a snarling, snapping, growling bark. It was loud enough to break whatever spell the starets had put on the girls, and they all shrieked and clapped their hands over their ears.
Rasputin threw a hand toward Sasha. “Don’t–”
Sasha tackled him.
They hit the carpet and Rasputin gasped.
Sasha dug in with hands curled into claws, snarling and snapping his teeth at the monster’s face. When he spoke, he didn’t recognize his own voice; it didn’t sound human. “You weren’t supposed to hurt them!”
He had Rasputin on his back, and he didn’t try to fight back. He threw up both hands and shrank back, defenseless and pleading. “I wasn’t hurting her. I was only going to take a little from each – they wanted me to!”
Sasha growled at him, teeth bared, face-to-face. He was dimly aware of the girls shouting and fleeing, of a confusion of voices out in the main room, but all he cared about was ripping this monster to pieces. He–
Submit, the voice said in his head, so forceful it sent pain arcing through his skull. His growl turned to a whimper.
Rasputin grabbed his head, suddenly, clenched his fingers tight in Sasha’s hair. His face was all calmness, his eyes huge and bright. “Look into my eyes, Sasha. Look at them. Listen to me.”
Submit, submit, submit.
It was too…
What was he…?
A gray fog boiled up in his mind. No anger, no aggression. No…nothing.
He wanted to be a good boy. To please his master. He wanted…
Rasputin’s hand slid down his throat, and tipped his head to the side. Pulled him down, down.
Yes, he was good. A good boy.
The pain of the bite was a relief. It meant he was good. It meant…
Someone grabbed him under the arms and hauled him up, away. His master’s fangs caught, tore his skin, long grooves down his throat. Blood ran hot and slick down into the collar of his shirt. The room tilted, and then there was something hard at his back: the wall. He was sitting.
And Nikita was crouched in front of him. He looked worried. He always did.
Poor Nik, always so…
“Sasha!”
~*~
Nikita pressed his hand to the ragged wound in Sasha’s neck and watched the boy’s eyes flutter shut. He tried not to panic. He panicked anyway.
“What did you do to him?” he roared, twisting awkwardly to look at Rasputin over his shoulder.
The starets still lay sprawled on the carpet, Ivan kneeling behind him, holding both his arms. It might have looked and felt like a supportive posture, but Nikita knew it wasn’t.
Katya knelt beside Nikita, and something soft brushed the back of his hand. “Here, use this.” A towel.
He lifted his grip only long enough to put the towel between his hand and the wound, and then put firm pressure back on it.
“I didn’t harm him.” Rasputin sounded winded; and why not: he’d been thrown off the bed, apparently, and had one-hundred-fifty pounds of wolf-boy sitting on his chest.
“Nik,” Katya said, and he turned back around.
Sasha’s eyes fluttered open again, and he stirred a little, growling quietly. “Wha…”
“Hey, easy. You alright?” Nikita asked, sounding calm, like he wasn’t about to have a coronary. He checked under the towel, and the bleeding had already slowed. The nasty wounds in his throat were turning pink, starting to heal.
Sasha tipped his head back and blinked a few times, an eerie blankness giving way to confusion. “What?” he asked.
“Are you okay?” Nikita asked again.
Sasha took a long moment, struggling to think. Finally, he said, “I don’t know.” There were none of his usual sad little smiles, his assurances that he was strong enough to handle whatever they threw at him. He wasn’t himself, and that terrified Nikita.
“Hold on.” Katya took over with the towel, shooting him a questioning glance.
Nikita got to his feet, turned around, and kicked Rasputin as hard as he could. In the face.
Ivan said, “Shit.”
Rasputin howled and grabbed at his nose, which had broken with a muffled crunch. There was blood immediately, leaking through his fingers onto his shirt, and the carpet.
A hand grabbed his shoulder, and Nikita whirled, fist clenched and ready.
Philippe took a startled step back, but didn’t check his anger. “You can’t do that,” he hissed. “You fool.”
That was it. He was done. “I’ll do whatever the fuck I want. You know what?” To the room at large, he said, “I’m fucking done with this sideshow. I’m in charge now.” When Philippe started to protest, he ran over him: “Fuck you, I don’t care. I’m the captain. I’m in charge. He” – he pointed at Rasputin, still whimpering and holding his nose – “is your responsibility now, Monsieur.” He snarled the French word, sick to death of the taste of it in his mouth. “Not mine, and not Sasha’s. I’ll make the battle plan, I’ll decide when we move, and where, and you just keep that asshole entertained until it’s time to use him as an attack dog. We clear?”
It was quiet for a long, pained moment, save Rasputin snuffling through his broken nose.
Something dangerous lurked in Philippe’s gaze when he said, “Fine, captain. You’re in charge. I thought you were already, but I guess you had to flex your authority, didn’t you?”
“Yeah. Guess I did.”
~*~
Sasha’s eyes were open, and he knew that he was in a bedroom, lying on his side on the bed. That it was evening, and someone had taken the prostitutes back to where they’d come from, that his human pack was near. But something wasn’t right.
He felt disconnected, like a filter now existed between the world and his awareness of it. He didn’t like it, but found he was too disinterested to get riled up about it.
He heard someone breathing, and then Nikita crouched down beside the bed so they were on eye-level. His face was set in a careful way, like he’d practiced a polite frown of concern in front of a mirror. Sasha recognized that the mask was barely held together, that terror waited to leak through the cracks. “Are you hungry?” he asked.
“No.”
“Do you need anything?”
He almost didn’t answer, but the longing was too great, suddenly. “I want my wolves.”
“Alright.” Nikita reached to stroke his hair back, scratched at his nape in a way that made Sasha go boneless with contentment. “We’ll get them.”