David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

“Good afternoon,” said Shadak. The prisoners looked at him fearfully. He rolled his shoulders and took a breath and smiled his good host smile. “I hope that you are fucking comfortable you pieces of shit,” he said in carefully modulated tones.

The quartermaster glared at him through swollen eyelids. “Fuck yourself,” he said. “Babushka will come for you soon.”

Shadak smiled. “Is that so? Well,” he said, “I look forward to meeting Babushka. Is she here among you?”

The prisoners were silent. If Shadak didn’t know better, he would say none of them had the faintest clue what he was talking about. Above them, the M2HB began to chatter again.

“Come now,” he said. “It is obvious that Babushka has been here for some time.” A bullet made a star in one of the cabin’s little portholes. Shadak gestured to it. “She is certainly in the region.”

“You,” said Andrea.

“Me?” said Shadak. “No. I am my own creature today I think. But I will assume that Babushka is in one of you. So here is my bargain. Let me pass, and I will not execute each of you to see where she may rest.”

He didn’t know if Babushka was in any of them — but he could tell that his threat had had the desired effect. They all regarded him nervously.

“Are,” said the cop.

Another bullet whanged off the bulkhead. They were getting closer. Shadak spared a glance out the shattered porthole. The boats were much closer than they should have been — they appeared to be trying to close — suicidally. Shadak wondered if the Babushka might not be trying to call his bluff. There was another sound on the hull — not the sound of a bullet striking precisely, but a hollow impact. It sounded like a pok.

“In,” said Martin Lancaster.

“In?” Shadak felt his smile leak away. And for an instant, he felt himself back in the Black Villa — his true self, crouching as a tall, black-robed thing came towards him. Something lashed out of its middle.

“The way,” said the quartermaster.

“Oh fuck you,” said Shadak, “take me to Alexei Kilodovich. Or I’ll fucking kill you.”

“Easy,” said Martin Lancaster, “enough,” said the cop, “to arrange,” said Andrea.

And with that, the boat pitched to one side, and Shadak tumbled. He glanced up just in time to see a thing that looked like a pinkish-grey length of intestine flash by the porthole, as a sharp stink of ammonia reached his nostrils.

And then Shadak was gone from there — back on a cold stone plaza — in the place where his true self had been locked and imprisoned for two decades. Ominous clouds scudded across the sky overhead. Things moved in the shadow of the Villa’s overhang. Black branches from a dead fig tree rustled in the wind. And in the middle, by the well, the black devil Kilodovich stood over him — a thick length of tentacle whipping from its midsection.

Miles Shute had moved to the top of the wheelhouse of the fishing boat Aleksandr Shabalin to get a better shot. He couldn’t be sure, however, that instinct didn’t have something to do with it as well. Because consciously, Miles had no idea what was going on until the attack had nearly played itself out.

At first there were fifteen men who’d spread across the deck of The Aleksandr Shabalin . It took five of them to run the boat, and the other ten were eyes and firepower — nine of whom had been spending the day staring down into the water before the little cruiser had opened fire on them.

Three of those went down under fire — which was not surprising but still distressing. Miles hadn’t been here long, but he felt as though he’d made a bond with almost everyone he’d met — they’d all been violated by psychic puppet masters, after all. Even if he couldn’t place their names, watching three of them go down was queasy-making.

The other twelve were worse.

The first one disappeared while Miles was making his way to the iron rungs of the ladder that had been pounded into the front of the wheelhouse. There was some shouting, but he didn’t pay it much heed until he got to the top, and noticed two others turned away from the gunboat, scratching their heads and peering into the churning water off the portside. Miles yelled at them to pay attention then turned back to the launch, aimed the MP5, and let off a short and ineffectual burst. Two 50-calibre-sized furrows in the wood in front of Miles splintered open.

By the time Miles had summoned the nerve to put his head back up, another three were gone. He saw one of them in the water to starboard, splashing and screaming for help before a slick thing wrapped up around his throat and pulled him under.

Miles sniffed. The fishing boat smelled of diesel fuel and fish gut — but the air was suddenly sharp, with the stink of ammonia. He frowned, and squinted across the water at the cabin cruiser. The machinegun had stopped, and as he noticed, the boat itself was listing in the water, toward the rocky coast. Its motor whined. Miles held up the binoculars. He could see the water frothing at the seaward side. The only two men he could see were manning the gun. They were turning it away from the fleet now, and toward the frothing water.

Something whipped out of the water then, and lashed across the chest of one of the men.

“Shit,” said Miles. He lowered the binoculars, caught in that moment of wonder between perception and understanding. He was near to convincing himself that he in fact hadn’t seen what he’d just seen, when he looked down to the side of the boat, and watched as a torso-thick tentacle flopped onto the deck and whirled itself around old Orlovsky’s ankles. Miles followed the tentacle over the edge of the gunwale — and in the dimness of the twilight, saw the thing it was attached to. The thing had a torpedo-shaped body that gleamed in the dim light where it broke the water. A single, giant eye gleamed up at him with terrible, alien intelligence.

“A giant fucking squid,” said Miles, and, “Wow,” and without another thought he emptied the MP5 into the thing. The water frothed and a wave of ammonia nearly choked him, and Miles had another thought.

He was pulling the trigger. Him.

Babushka had left the building.

Kilodovich swept his robes aside — lifted the tentacle away from little Amar Shadak, and knelt on thin, clicking knees. The thick swath of hair still obscured his face, but Shadak could see the faintest outline of cheekbone — two rows of teeth — and a distant blue flicker of corneal reflection. Was it a skull under there? A bare death’s-head skull, come to torment him? Frighten him like some superstitious schoolboy?

Fuck it. Amar Shadak rolled his shoulders and forced his mouth into the barest of smiles. He took a breath. Balled his child’s hands into fists and stepped back.

“Kilodovich, you fucking bastard,” he said. “You cannot frighten me away with these tricks. I am almost upon you now.”

The robes rustled, and a voice like a desert wind wafted from behind the folds of the hood:

“ I am sorry, ” said the black thing.

“You are sorry,” said Shadak. “Fantastic. We’ll see how sorry you are when I stick a nail up your urethra and fill your eyes with acid.”

The black thing didn’t answer. Shadak stepped away from him. “Why the fuck are you even here?”

“I cannot stay long,” said the Devil. “It is a busy time for me now.”

Shadak laughed. “Busy? Well it is good of you to stop by! Welcome to this hell you have made for me!”

“I am sorry. I have done terrible things to many people in my lifetime. And I am very sorry.”

Shadak crossed his arms and glared at Kilodovich. “You betrayed me,” he said.

“I am sorry.”