David Nickle - Rasputin's Bastards

But here — the old bastard was unbuttoning his fly now!

“This isn’t right,” said Kolyokov. Krieghoff’s grin went wide.

“No one will know,” he whispered, and started across the room.

Kolyokov felt a calm come over him. When he destroyed the real Krieghoff, he’d done so using his abilities — the old man’s mind had become supple enough that he could penetrate it like a syringe and fill it with psychic poison enough to wipe the slate clean. Here in the metaphor, however, he didn’t seem to have any abilities. He would have to rely on such objects and circumstances as he could find.

Kolyokov looked at the table. It still contained the cards and the clipboard. But Krieghoff had taken his pencil. Of course it was gone: the only obvious weapon in the room, and Krieghoff had taken it for himself.

“This,” said Kolyokov, the realization dawning upon him as he spoke, “is not my metaphor. It is my prison, yes?”

Krieghoff took hold of Kolyokov, and started to spin him around. But Kolyokov ducked between his legs and rolled under the table.

“You are talking nonsense, boy,” said Krieghoff.

“Funny you should call me boy,” said Kolyokov. He made for the other side of the table, where the door was. “You’re just a boy yourself, aren’t you?”

Kolyokov came out from under the table just as Krieghoff was starting around it. He kicked out and managed to snag his chair. He sent it skittering across Krieghoff’s path. The Nazi stumbled — long enough for Kolyokov to reach the door. He yanked down on the handle — half-expecting to find it locked — and allowed himself a grin when it opened. Without turning to look, he stepped out the door and shut it behind him.

“Ah, shit.”

He was in the same room as before — but a mirror image of the first. Krieghoff stood at the far end, his grin wide and hungry as a fairy story wolf’s as he beckoned Kolyokov to join him.

The little bastards . They’d used the metaphor to make a prison for him — in one of the little rooms in City 512 that he remembered so well, but folded in on itself so that any attempt to escape the room brought it back.

Only it was more than a prison. They’d fashioned City 512 into a torture chamber — a place where he would suffer the horror that he had feared so greatly that he had killed an old man for merely contemplating the act.

He shouldn’t have been surprised: Children are nature’s sadists , he reminded himself.

But they are also unschooled . Kolyokov laughed to himself.

To a six-year-old prodigy, the spectre of a Nazi child molester might be the worst thing imaginable. Take away his psychic abilities, and my goodness! It was enough to make a fellow pee in his pants!

But Fyodor Kolyokov wasn’t six. He was seventy-two, and he’d faced down the real Ari Krieghoff a long time ago. He was the first of many adversaries, and far from the worst. Krieghoff’s resurrection now marked more annoyance than trauma revisited. And damned if Kolyokov was going to keep running away from an annoyance.

“Okay, Ari,” said Kolyokov. “My test is over. Now let’s see about you.”

Herr Doktor Ari Krieghoff threw back his head and laughed with monstrous lechery.

Clearly, thought Kolyokov, he had not a clue as to what was about to happen to him.

“Take off your pants,” said Kolyokov.

From the depths of Bishop’s Hall came a scream, high-pitched and garbled by shocked and dismayed sobs. Mrs. Kontos-Wu put down her Becky Barker book. “Now what on earth… ?”

She said it to no one in particular. She had been alone in the library since the peculiar boy had appeared and vanished again from the book-ladder, and that must have been — what? — hours ago. The sun had fallen below the line of trees to the west, and thereby shifted light from the library’s high windows brilliant gold to a deep purple. Mrs. Kontos-Wu was now reading about Becky’s adventures in France by the greenish-yellow light of the table lamp. She set the novel down so as to save her place, and got up. She walked over to the mahogany pocket doors, turned the brass latch, and slid them open. The hallway outside stretched away from her, long and empty.

“What do you think you are doing?”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu started and turned around. Lois was standing behind her. Her arms were folded over her chest, and she tapped one toe on the carpeted floor. She seemed very cross.

“I heard a scream,” said Mrs. Kontos-Wu. “So I went to—”

Lois shook her head no. “You didn’t hear a scream. There was no screaming. Go back, read your fucking book and relax!”

“Lois!” Mrs. Kontos-Wu felt her face flush. “I can’t believe you said that word!”

Lois blinked and smiled. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t know what came over me. Look — just go back and finish the book. Everything will be fine.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu frowned. “How did you get in here?” she said.

“I was back in the stacks,” said Lois. “You must have been concentrating very hard not to have heard me. What are you reading?”

“Becky Barker.” Mrs. Kontos-Wu went back to her chair and picked up the book. “ The Adventure of the Scarlet Arrow .”

“Let me borrow it when you’re finished,” said Lois. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Work?” Mrs. Kontos-Wu smiled to herself. “That’s not like you.”

But there was no answer. Lois was gone — vanished into the stacks. Mrs. Kontos-Wu shrugged and turned over her book.

It was a good book. Becky and her friends were in France — the foreign exchange program they were on all but forgotten after three men wearing fezzes had kidnapped Antoine, the irritating little Parisian brat whose parents were playing host to the three of them. One thing had led to another, and now Becky was tied up in the mail car at the back of the Orient Express, racing through a thunderstorm towards Istanbul and a rendezvous with the mysterious Scarlet Arrow. She had read all the Becky Barker books a long time ago, but Mrs. Kontos-Wu couldn’t for the life of her remember how this one turned out. Was the Scarlet Arrow a person? An actual arrow from a bow-and-arrow set? Or something entirely different, like an airplane or a gem or a necklace or a decoding machine for the Russians — something just called the Scarlet Arrow so as to throw Becky off the scent? The cover didn’t tell her anything — it was just a picture of a big swarthy man with a fez on his head and a curved dagger in his fist, threatening Becky in front of the Eiffel Tower. There was nothing for it but to finish the thing. Mrs. Kontos-Wu curled up in the chair and started to read.

“Shh.”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu rolled her eyes. “I was being quiet, Loi—”

She stopped. It wasn’t Lois. It was a boy — not the one she’d seen earlier, either. This one was taller, a little older than the other one, with badly clipped brown hair and wide, hungry eyes that she was sure she recognized from somewhere. He wore ill-fitting green trousers and a white T-shirt, and he had a bright red gasoline can in one hand. The other hand was at his mouth, forefinger extended across his lips. “Shh!”

Mrs. Kontos-Wu didn’t know why — a strange boy shows up at Bishop’s Hall with a can of gasoline, a girl should really say something — but she did as she was told. The boy smiled and nodded. He unscrewed the top of the can and began sloshing gasoline in a line around the edge of the room. When he came to a bookshelf, he made sure to slosh the gasoline up the spines of the books, but he didn’t bother splashing too high. Mrs. Kontos-Wu supposed that made sense — the paper would burn well enough by itself, after all.

Wait a minute . Mrs. Kontos-Wu set the book down and got up again. Burn ?