Jasper Kent - Twelve

Less than twenty-four hours before, I had been the clandestine observer of another scene from which others might perhaps have turned away. Then I had stayed to watch out of the memories of how I myself had suffered, despite the nausea that rose within me. Now my motivations were far more mixed. Certainly I had to keep watch over Domnikiia to ensure her safety, but many men would have chosen to turn away on seeing the woman they loved in the arms of another. Although I had long been reconciled to the fact of Domnikiia's profession and though I truly believed that these men meant nothing to her, surely I should still have looked away and attempted to quell the jealous monster rising within me.

Instead, I felt only excitement, not just at seeing two other human beings engaged in so intimate and private an activity, but specifically to see the woman that I loved behave so utterly unlike how I had been brought up to believe a woman should – so much like a base animal. It pleased me also to see the man so deceived, to see him so overpowered by his own primitive instincts and to know that while for a moment he had all that he could care to have, in the long run he had nothing. It was I that had Domnikiia's heart, Domnikiia's love and Domnikiia's soul. Though they might queue for her all the way around Saint Vasily's and back, I would still mean more to her by a gentle touch of my hand than they with all their sweaty exertion ever could.

The man was already naked to the waist, save for a bandage on his arm. As he walked across the room with Domnikiia wrapped around him, he slipped his hands under her buttocks to support her. Together they came all the way over to the window, and the flesh of her back was pressed smooth and flat against the glass panes as he leaned against her. They pulled away from the window slightly and stood for a few moments, their mouths inseparable, his fingers meandering up and down her spine. Then he stepped back and Domnikiia dropped to her feet, looking upwards towards his face, which I could now see for the first time.

It was Iuda. He stared down towards Domnikiia with a look of dreadful tenderness and bent his head lower as though to kiss her, but I knew instantly what was his real intent. I leapt to my feet, but there was nothing I could do. If I shouted, I would not be heard, and even if I was, it would not stop him. It would take over a minute for me to go back down the stairs, cross the square and get to them. Had I brought a gun, I could have shot at him, but even that would have had no effect on a vampire.

I could only stand and watch as he parted his lips and prepared to plant them delicately on Domnikiia's throat. He brushed her long hair back over her shoulder and pulled it to one side with his hand, so as to make the flesh of her neck clear for his bite and also – or so it seemed to me in my numbed terror – to make it easier for me to see. His lips descended and Domnikiia's head arched back slightly as he made contact with her. Over her shoulder I could see only his devilish, grey eyes staring out into the night towards me. He did not drink for long, but soon raised his head and took a step back from her. She sat back unsteadily on the windowsill, her hands reaching out sideways for support. Her head was raised to look into his face, but I was unable to see whether the expression on hers was of terror, submission or ecstasy.

Iuda drew his knife from his pocket. My sudden, laughable fear that he might harm her was immediately quashed by the knowledge of the harm he had already done. He put the twin points of the knife to his own chest and, briefly closing his eyes, drew them across, etching two neat, red lines below his right nipple. Drizzles of blood seeped out of the wounds and ran down his firm stomach. Domnikiia rose to her feet and approached him, bending her knees slightly to lower her mouth to the level of the lesions. She placed one hand on his left breast and the other on his shoulder, pulling herself towards him as she pressed her mouth against his chest and, only moments after he had drunk hers, drank his blood.

Iuda placed his hand on the back of Domnikiia's head, pressing her into him. He closed his eyes and raised his head to the ceiling with a smile of sexual elation on his lips. Then his head dropped and his eyes flashed open, gleaming victoriously out of the window and across the square.

And though the room I was in was in utter darkness, and though there was no way that Iuda could be aware that I was there, I knew he was staring directly at me.

I FELL BACK INTO MY CHAIR. I HAD BEEN WARNED WHAT IUDA HAD intended to do. I had flown from Kurilovo to Moscow to make it in time. I had stood at the very door of the building in which it had happened. And yet I had quietly and without intervention watched as Iuda had done everything I had feared, as he had destroyed yet another creature that was dear to me, as he had taken first Domnikiia's life and then her soul.

I dashed from the building and across the square towards the brothel. Halfway across, I glanced up at Domnikiia's window. Light still shone from it, but inside I could see no sign of either Domnikiia or Iuda. Even as I watched, the light was extinguished. I paused. If I went into the brothel, there was nothing that I could do. I was in no state to kill. If I went in there, I would be easy prey to Iuda and even to… I could not face thinking about it. I could not face anything. I turned and fled into the dark city streets. I would kill her tomorrow, and let her live tonight.

I do not know where I wandered that night. Every waking nightmare I had experienced on my journey during the day had come true. I felt a strange sense that Iuda had cheated. I had carefully worked out that he could not be in Moscow for several hours – certainly that he could not have arrived before I did. And therefore, if he could not have done so, it followed that he did not do so. Hence he had not just intermingled his blood with Domnikiia's and thereby transformed her into a creature as hellish as himself. It was an argument of perfect logic, except that I had witnessed the occurrence which I had just concluded could not have occurred. Domnikiia had become a vampire, and no amount of appealing to the gods of reason was going to change that.

And after all, it took only a little imagination to come up with a dozen ways in which Iuda could have made it to Moscow before me. How could I apply any physical laws to such a creature? By some legends, he could transform himself into a bat. How fast can a bat fly? It doesn't matter; a vampire in bat form may travel much faster. He could have reduced himself in size to some minute homunculus and been carried to Moscow in my own saddlebag. Preposterous? Who was I to say? Moreover, it did not matter. Somehow, Iuda had got to Moscow. In some way, it had been possible. I had smugly calculated that he could not make it, but I had observed rules to which Iuda had no need to conform. It was like playing chess against an opponent who could suddenly announce that his queen can move in a way that I had never been taught.

Even to invoke the supernatural was unnecessary. All Iuda had needed was another coach and a human driver. He could lie in the back, slumbering in his coffin, protected from the daylight by blackened windows, while his accomplice drove him pell-mell to his rendezvous with Domnikiia. I had already suspected that he might have some human servant, who could perform those daylight tasks that he could not.

There was no need to choose the correct explanation. The problem was that I had not considered the possibilities earlier. If I had not been so arrogant in my belief that I had beaten Iuda, then I could have stopped what had happened. I was horrified by my own stupidity.

But the real horror came in knowing that there had been no coercion on Iuda's part. Domnikiia had willingly done what she did. She did not love me, or God, or even life enough to resist the temptation offered to her of the prospect of eternity, even if that eternity came through eternal damnation. She knew that the Oprichniki were vampires – I had told her. She knew that they were evil. All the times that we had spoken of it – when she had said that living for ever was just a fantasy, when we had laughed together at Iuda's pompous letter – each time she had been hiding something away from me, some secret notion that in reality Iuda was right and I was wrong.