David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

“Ah,” said Leo. “Maybe we should just stay put here, big guy.”

“I’m not sure the Children want to be got,” said Heather and Kolyokov said, “you are not sure of anything,” and then he said he was sorry and Heather said it was all right she understood.

Leo sighed, and turned back to the glass, watching the harbour.

Kolyokov would get them killed if he had his way. They’d barely made it here alive after the first rescue attempt, and it had been a bad time.

There were extenuating circumstances, he supposed: Leo was still groggy from the slap on the head he’d taken from Vasili Borovich’s meat-puppet Oleg, and they didn’t have enough guns, and they also didn’t expect the old bastard and Alexei fucking Kilodovich to turn on them like that — in the middle of a fucking greenhouse. It was a miracle they hadn’t all been shot dead.

Of course, it might have gone better if Leo had gotten some help from the babe that seemed to contain two people inside her. They’d crept up through the greenhouse that night, and things had been going pretty well. The babe had gotten herself a little auto pistol from somewhere. Leo had his rifle. Things were good.

And then, when they saw the first guard — and Leo had been about to shoot — fuck if the babe hadn’t told him to put it down.

“It is Vasili,” she said in that Russian accent of hers.

The guard was not a guard at all. He was an old man — pony-tailed, with a thick beard, and blood caked on the side of his head. He staggered out from behind a row of tomatoes — where from the looks of things he’d been crying.

He looked first at Leo, then at the girl blankly.

She grinned at him.

“Vasili Borovich,” she said. “You are old as me.”

“Wh — ?” The older man frowned, and recognition dawned on him. “You? That cannot be.”

The girl laughed. “It is Fyodor,” she said. “Yes.”

“You are part of this?”

She shook her head. “Lena has cut you loose again — hasn’t she? You are pathetic.”

“Go to hell.”

“I am on my way there.”

“My God,” said Vasili Borovich. “It is you.” He stepped forward — too close to the babe. “You are dream-walking young girls now, hey?”

“It is an agreement we have reached. Unlike what you are doing.”

“I am not doing any of this. I am no longer the Koldun here.”

Leo interrupted them. “Hey,” he said. “Koldun! I heard about—”

They’d looked at him. “Put down the gun,” said the babe. “This is unexpected. Give me a moment.” Then she turned to Borovich and continued the conversation in Russian.

Leo had a moment to sit back and digest the situation. The Koldun! This old bastard was the Koldun — the guy who was supposedly behind the entire Babushka conspiracy — the old bitch’s right-hand man.

And now he was talking in Russian to the woman who was apparently possessed by the ghost of the guy Leo Montassini had, a lifetime ago, been sent to retrieve.

Leo had been around the block a few times — and in the course of circling that block, he’d been in more than one situation where things were closing in on him. If he didn’t have a knack for recognizing those points in his life, he wouldn’t be alive. So Leo Montassini raised up his rifle, stepped back, and cleared his throat.

“Tell me what the fuck’s goin’ on,” he said, “or I shoot both of you an’ get my friend Alexei on my own.”

The two stopped talking. They looked at one another. They looked at Leo, and his rifle.

“This one might do it,” said the babe — or Fyodor Kolyokov.

“Da,” said the Koldun. “He just might.”

“All right,” said Kolyokov in his weird squeaky girl voice, “don’t shoot us. Here’s the situation. Vasili here has just crawled out of the room where the Children are being kept. Alexei Kilodovich is in there. So is Holden Gibson.”

“Who?”

“Holden Gibson.” Now the babe’s voice was her own — it sounded American, maybe from the Midwest. “You know — big bastard. Runs the boat? You know — the boat?”

“I’m sorry,” said Leo. “I thought we were lookin’ for kids.”

“Fuck,” she said. “Didn’t Alexei tell you anything?”

“Heather,” said Kolyokov through the girl’s mouth, “let me handle this,” and she said, “Fuck off,” and he said, “Please,” and she said, “Fine.”

“The Children,” said Kolyokov, “and Alexei are to the west end of the greenhouse in a sealed-in room. When Vasili escaped, he saw Alexei knock Holden Gibson unconscious and take away his gun. Vasili made it out the door.”

“And he hung around here,” said Leo. “Right. And no one came to get him.”

“They are not pursuing,” said the Koldun. “They are all traumatized — from the great wickedness that I nearly perpetrated upon them.”

“Heh?” Leo frowned. “Great wickedness? Wha—”

“Not important,” said Kolyokov. “The main thing is we must see them now before it becomes worse.”

It had become worse anyway. With Vasili Borovich leading them on, they trod down the central path of the greenhouse and to the thick wooden door that led to the dormitories where the Children were being kept. By the time they were there, Leo was wondering at the difficulty they’d had getting this far — and how it would be if the Babushka actually had set her townspeople upon them.

“Right behind here,” whispered the Koldun.

And he’d opened the door —

— and Leo Montassini felt like he’d been kicked in the mouth. His sinuses ached, and his back molars felt like they were going to fly out — and the rifle dropped from his hands, as he was faced with the light, and the words, ringing through his skull:

GET OUT!

The rest of it was the kind of blurry fabrication that recollection becomes when it focuses on a dismal, embarrassing failure. There was a kick, and gunfire, and the stink of an asp that missed Leo’s skull and hit his shoulder (this one he focused on — dodging the zombified Alexei Kilodovich’s swing may have been Leo Montassini’s finest instant in the disastrous melee). Somehow he’d gotten out along with Kolyokov — probably, he was sure, because they’d wanted him to get out. And the three of them had made their way up the hill to the lighthouse.

Kolyokov hadn’t spoken through Heather for about ten hours after that. It was left to Heather to explain to him what had happened — what the attack in fact was.

“It’s like an ice cream headache,” she said. “Vladimir pulled it on us on the boat the first time. It makes you feel like your ears are bleeding, doesn’t it?”

“Ice cream headache. Nice.” It felt more like a needle in the eye to Leo’s way of thinking. “Who’s Vladimir anyway?”

Heather frowned. “He’s a kid. Like a baby. But he’s not a baby at all.”

“I think he was runnin’ Alexei for a while there.”

“He was.”

“Like the same way that Fyodor Kolyokov is running you.”

She looked at him. “Fyodor Kolyokov,” she said, “is not running me.”

Leo shrugged. “Okay.”

“He’s not. We’ve got an agreement.”

“If you say so.”

“Like,” said Heather, “we take turns. He’s not running me right now.”

“That’s true. Why is that?”

“He’s—” she frowned. “He’s taking a break.”

Leo nodded to Vasili Borovich. They’d tied him to a chair at the tower’s base, but it was really a formality. He was hurt and fucked up and not going anywhere. “Taking a break like him?”

“Look,” said Heather, jabbing her thumb in Vasili Borovich’s direction. “I don’t know about him, but Fyodor Kolyokov’s been through a lot.” She leaned close to Leo. “He’s dead you know.”