The Third Section Part 12

'TOLYA!' DMITRY BANGED his fist against the wooden door and shouted again. 'Tolya!' He waited only seconds for a response, but knew this was no question of politely listening for the sound of footsteps and waiting for the butler to open the door and enquire into the nature of his visit.

He had hesitated just a moment in shouting from across the street and when he had called out his voice had been drowned by another exploding sh.e.l.l. Then Tyeplov and the other two had vanished inside. Tyeplov was forewarned of the existence of vampires and was a strong man, but if it turned out that both Ignatyev and the other figure Dmitry had seen were voordalaki then he would be in no position to defend himself.

Dmitry stepped back a few paces and then charged at the door, aiming his shoulder at its centre. It did not yield. He tried again, but the only damage he succeeded in inflicting was upon himself. He stood in front of it and kicked, but with the same lack of effect. He stepped back out into the street. It was a large building. All the houses in the block stretched back a long way, and this one had windows on either side of the front door. None of them was showing any light. Dmitry went back up to the door and then stepped out on to the window ledge to the right. He turned away from the building and pressed his back against the gla.s.s, finding what little grip he could on the window frame, and then raised his foot.

Dmitry paused. He did not even know for sure that Ignatyev was a vampire; there might be some entirely different explanation. He might break into the building and chase through the rooms, searching in one after another, only to find the three men quietly playing cards. Tyeplov would regard him as obsessed a jealous lover who could not stand for a moment to see the object of his affection happy in the company of others. Worse still, Dmitry might find the three men in a situation that genuinely could be a cause for jealousy. He would rather live in ignorance.

But none of that would serve as an excuse. Were Tyeplov to die, he would be unable to listen to Dmitry's reasons for not coming to his aid, but Dmitry would hear them all, over and over again, becoming less convincing with each repet.i.tion. He could not live with it. He thrust his heel backwards and heard the gla.s.s shatter. He turned and slipped through the broken window into the house.

The room was unremarkable a study of some kind, but Dmitry did not linger to examine it. His only useful observation was that it was empty. There was a door in the far left-hand corner. Dmitry reached into his knapsack and drew out his wooden sword and his pistol. He knew that a bullet could not kill a vampire, but he had witnessed how effective it could be in disabling one, if only temporarily.

The door led back to the hallway. It was darker here. Dmitry glanced and saw the locked front door. More doors led off the hall as it disappeared into the gloom at the back of the house. A flight of stairs ascended just opposite the point where Dmitry had entered.

'Tolya!' he shouted again, and then listened. There was no response. He proceeded along the hall, glancing at the bottom of each door he pa.s.sed, but seeing no sign of light. The sound of cannon firing and sh.e.l.ls landing was quieter in here, but still the building shook every minute or so as another explosion brought the fall of the city a step closer. Soon the corridor ended in a door from beneath which shone the faintest glimmer. Dmitry stood and listened, his hand resting on the doork.n.o.b.

'Tolya!' Still silence. He opened the door swiftly. It was a kitchen. On a shelf stood a candle, burned almost to nothing. He was at the back of the house now. The windows looked on to a small yard and beyond it other houses, some with lights in their windows.

There was a sound m.u.f.fled as it penetrated from a different room. It could have been a scream; it could have been a cat. Immediately following came a heavy thud, directly above. Dmitry turned and dashed to the stairs, climbing them three at a time, his arms, still clutching sword and pistol, swinging wildly to speed his ascent. The stairway turned twice and at the top he momentarily lost his bearings. The landing was long and narrow, matching the hall below. Dmitry ran along it, but soon found himself at a window. He looked out and saw the street by which he had come. He turned and ran back down the corridor, ignoring the doors on either side, imagining the layout of the rooms below so that he could place himself directly above the kitchen.

At the far end he came to a door, in exactly the position he had expected. There was light coming from this one not just from beneath it, but along one side and through the keyhole. Dmitry scarcely broke his run as he opened it and burst into the room beyond. Then he froze.

The scene was composed like a painting a crystallization of domestic ennui as if captured by de Hooch. All three men were in the room. Tyeplov was at the washstand, his wet hands half covering his face as he gazed between his fingers at himself in the mirror on the wall. On the other side of the room, on the floor, on a striped rug just beside the bed though not quite parallel to it, lay the body of the unknown civilian. His head was closer to Dmitry than his feet and it lolled backwards, so that the man's eyes stared upwards, as if pleading with Dmitry to help him.

He was beyond help. The gash to his neck was vivid and red. A streak of blood across the carpet revealed the exact spot at which his throat had been severed, where it continued to ooze from the man's veins, not smoothly but in pulses, as his fading heart struggled foolishly to do its duty to the last. It was a moot point whether the man could yet be regarded as dead.

Between the body and Tyeplov, still seemingly frozen in the moment of Dmitry's arrival, was Ignatyev. He was on one knee, halfway through the process of moving on from the first victim of the night to the second. Moments before he must have been kneeling over the dying man, inflicting that fatal wound and enjoying the flavour of the blood that spilled from it. Now he had turned. His left leg was bent, its foot tensed against the floor, ready to launch him across the room at the ingenuous, unseeing Tyeplov. It meant that Ignatyev's face was turned directly towards Dmitry, and Dmitry could see in every detail the residue of the abomination he had just committed. His chin was red with blood. His mouth half open showed tendrils of ruddy saliva that clung and stretched between his teeth. His moustache, normally blond, was fringed by a dark band where blood had soaked into it. Other matter was caught up among the bushy whiskers, whose exact nature Dmitry didn't care to consider.

'Tolya!' Dmitry hissed.

Tyeplov stood upright and turned, looking first at Dmitry and then at Ignatyev. His face was the epitome of consternation. Ignatyev was on his feet now, changing his direction to move towards Dmitry. Dmitry's pistol fired, this time with none of the chance and indecision of the fight in the casemate. The bullet went into Ignatyev's neck and emerged the other side. Behind him, on the mantelpiece, a vase shattered and its fragments fell to the floor. Dmitry could see the wound, just below Ignatyev's Adam's apple.

The vampire took a step backwards, but the effect was nothing like as devastating as when Wieczorek's face had been just inches from the muzzle. Dmitry held his wooden sword tightly, low and out to his right, ready to stab upwards into the creature's chest, but still he noticed how his hand shook. He tried to speak to warn Tyeplov but found that his throat could produce no sound. He sidestepped into the room, placing himself between Ignatyev and his unarmed friend. Ignatyev turned, always keeping his face towards Dmitry. His mouth was closed now, but the blood on his moustache and chin was a constant reminder of the vile ent.i.ty that he was. It hardened Dmitry's resolve as he readied himself for a fight to the death.

But Ignatyev did not attack. He raised his hands, open-palmed in a gesture of pacification. The expression on his face was one of confusion, as if he was asking Dmitry what it was that he should do next. Dmitry did not care to fathom the voordalak's motivations. It might be a ruse or it might be a sign of weakness. Dmitry guessed it was the latter and took a step forward.

The room vanished in an instant. The rear and side walls were gone, along with the bed, the mantelpiece, the fireplace and half of the floor. Ignatyev was gone too. Dmitry felt the floorboards beneath his feet s.h.i.+fting, and suddenly he was falling, only to be saved by firm hands that he knew to be Tyeplov's grabbing him under the arms and pulling him back.

The sh.e.l.l had exploded just outside, its noise filling the air, but insignificant compared with its more concrete effects. Dmitry gazed out into the starry night and saw in front of him the rooms of other houses, much like this one, their walls ripped away to reveal what lay within. The gun had been way off target for it to have hit here, and in at least one of the buildings the occupants had been taken completely by surprise: a woman stood in her nightdress, her back against her bedroom wall with only just enough floor remaining for her to stand on. She was looking down, looking to where her husband so Dmitry presumed lay in the remains of the room beneath. He reached up towards her with his hand, then fell back and moved no more.

Dmitry looked down into the crater beneath him. Two bodies lay there, in the rubble that was the amalgamation of a bedroom and a kitchen. One had been dead even before the sh.e.l.l hit. It lay on a wooden table, standing strangely undamaged in the chaos around it, partly shrouded by the striped rug. Ignatyev was almost directly beneath Dmitry, writhing as if he were a pinned insect. The floor beneath him had opened like a trapdoor, the end closest to Dmitry remaining in situ as though hinged there. Ignatyev had slid down until his leg penetrated a gap in the surface. At that point he must have swung round, for now he hung almost upside down, his leg still trapped against the floorboard, the femur clearly shattered. His fingers clawed upwards, though they could do nothing to free him.

Dmitry knew that he would escape in time. He must finish the monster now, while it was vulnerable. He looked for a way down into the shattered kitchen and realized the fastest, or at least the safest, would be the most traditional. He half turned and gave a shout of 'Stay there!' though Tyeplov displayed no intention of doing otherwise, remaining frozen pressed up against the wall. Dmitry raced out of the room back to the stairs and was down them in a moment. Soon he was in the kitchen, face to face with Ignatyev, except that from the view of each of them, the other's face was upside down.

Dmitry considered what to do. Ignatyev lay back on the sloping floor, watching him, waiting. There were two options. He could stab the creature with his wooden sword, or attempt to behead it with his steel one. The former seemed the more reliable option, except that Ignatyev's chest was too high for Dmitry to reach, certainly not with the ability to apply any force. Dmitry looked around him. Nearby stood the kitchen table, the body of Ignatyev's last and thankfully final victim still sprawled on it. If Dmitry could pull it just a little way across the room, then he could climb on it and plunge his wooden blade into the monstrous heart.

He grabbed the table with his left hand and gave it a heave. It wouldn't budge. He glanced over at Ignatyev again and saw that he was still unable to move. He put the wooden sword on the table within easy reach, and then tugged at it again, this time with both hands. He pulled again, and again.

On the third attempt, it yielded, as did the remainder of the ceiling above. Somehow the table had been supporting the fragile remnants of the wall, but with Dmitry's help that support had gone, and the collapse of that part of the building was complete. Dmitry was thrown backwards, but managed to roll under the table itself, which saved him from being hit by any of the debris.

It was quiet again within seconds, and Dmitry slid himself out of his protective refuge. He regained his feet as quickly as he could and looked around the room. The sloping floor had fallen in completely, and Ignatyev was no longer trapped. He was standing upright, his weight clearly on only one leg his broken bones causing the other to bend at an impossible and unusable angle. In his hand, he held Dmitry's wooden sword. He approached, hopping at first, but even as Dmitry watched, his left leg began to straighten and he dared to place increasing amounts of weight on it. He looked down at the wooden sword in his hand and then grinned, snapping it in two like a twig and casting it aside into the rubble. His grin became broader, so that Dmitry could see his still-b.l.o.o.d.y fangs. Whatever indecision might have come upon him in the room above had been forgotten in the fall. Now he approached Dmitry with only hunger and hatred in his eyes. Dmitry drew his sabre and prepared to defend himself, but he knew he could do little to stave off what fate had decreed for him.

'No!'

The voice came from above. Both Dmitry and Ignatyev looked up and saw that it was Tyeplov, still managing to find some small patch of solid floor in the ruined bedroom. Ignatyev looked at him for a few seconds, then turned his attention back to Dmitry. His leg seemed fully healed now, and his gait was quite normal.

'No!' came Tyeplov's voice again.

Ignatyev gave one last contemptuous look at Dmitry and turned away. He scrambled over the collapsed masonry of the walls and was soon out in the yard at the back of the house. The wall that divided it from the next property had vanished, and soon so had Ignatyev. Dmitry felt no urge to pursue him. Instead he looked up to see Tyeplov's face just disappearing behind the edge of the jagged hole in the ceiling above. He heard footsteps going across the landing and raced to catch him, clambering over the table and the body that still lay upon it and making his way out into the hall.

He was halfway up the stairs when he heard the sound of breaking gla.s.s, and at the top he quickly saw that the window overlooking the street had been shattered not simply broken, as Dmitry had the window below, but utterly smashed. Tyeplov had thrown himself through it. Dmitry stood and looked out of its splintered remains, just able to catch a glimpse of a tall figure sprinting away down the street.

'You will have heard of Sheshkovsky's Room.'

Yudin asked the question as they reached the bottom of the stone staircase. They were in a short cramped corridor. The brick walls curled over to form an arched roof which only just failed to brush the top of Yudin's head. The walls themselves were only a little wider than his shoulders. If they wanted to pa.s.s each other they would have had to turn sideways, and it would even then have been an intimate operation. The only light came from the lamp in his hand, which made the damp walls glisten. The floor, again brick, was dotted with shallow puddles. Along each side of the pa.s.sageway were three small wooden doors, with another one at the far end.

'A myth,' Tamara replied dismissively.

'Possibly but a useful one. Some say that the room still exists, in the building beside the chain bridge.'

'Unlikely,' she replied, forcing herself to appear at her most rational.

She could not see Yudin smile, but she heard it in his voice. 'A fascinating approach to torture, nonetheless. The suspect would be placed in a chair and Chief Secretary Sheshkovsky would engage him in quite friendly conversation. And then at the pull of some unseen lever, the floor of the room would drop away, along with the seat of the chair, and a team of experts would use knouts to beat at the man's nether regions until they bled.' He took out a key and unlocked the nearest door, inviting Tamara to enter with an opened hand. 'And then Sheshkovsky would resume his questioning.'

Inside, the room cell would perhaps be a better description was quite large, certainly in comparison with the corridor they had come from. It contained a single piece of furniture: a solitary chair. Tamara walked cautiously towards it, eyeing the floor as she went, but it seemed solid enough. When she reached the centre of the cell she saw that the chair was not entire simply a wooden frame from which the seat had been cut out.

'My re-creation,' said Yudin. 'Far simpler with none of the unwieldy engineering.'

She turned and looked at him. In his hand he held a knout; behind him, on the wall, hung several others. He caressed its three leather strands, each of them tipped with a small lead ball. Tamara knew that he wanted her to show fear, but she did not feel it.

'They call this a plyet,' he said. 'His Majesty His late Majesty changed the law to make this form of lash the only one we're allowed to use.'

'And you wouldn't disobey His Majesty,' said Tamara, eyeing the plethora of different whips on the wall behind him that belied his words.

'We serve His Majesty.'

'And I'm sure he approved of everything you have down here.'

'He didn't disapprove.'

'His successor might.' Tamara glanced at Yudin as she spoke. He seemed to take what she had said in his stride.

Yudin stepped outside again, taking the lamp with him, and the cell was plunged into darkness. By the time Tamara had followed him, he had opened up the door opposite and gone inside. The cell was the same size and shape as the last, but even more spa.r.s.e empty at first glance.

'These chambers go back to Ivan the Third,' explained Yudin. 'The features are not entirely original though the idea dates back even further.' He glanced upwards and towards the centre of the room. At first, Tamara saw nothing, but then the lamplight caught metalwork and she saw, suspended from eyelets in the ceiling, two sets of iron manacles. Yudin walked towards them and put his hand in the air. He pressed his palm flat against the brickwork above him without even having to fully straighten his elbow. 'Unfortunately, people are so much taller these days,' he said.

As they left, Tamara noticed two dark stains in the floor, neatly positioned beneath each set of metallic cuffs. Still she did not experience the fear or nausea that Yudin was clearly antic.i.p.ating that would be the reaction of most women. She thought of the train to Pavlovsk, and of Stasik's little body cradled in her arms, and of the stench that came from his clothes. Yudin had not yet shown her anything to compete with the Lord above.

'Of course,' he continued, 'these things have their advantages too.' He opened the middle door in one of the walls. The s.p.a.ce behind was tiny. Only a child could have stood up in there. 'In olden days, these would have been quite s.p.a.cious.' Yudin's tone was deliberately light. 'Now, they can break a man in hours.' He closed the door. 'The one opposite is just the same.'

They moved on. They were at the end of the pa.s.sageway, faced with doors, one on either side, another at the very end. Yudin unlocked the one on the left, but did not open it. 'We won't step inside here,' he said. He pushed the door ajar and thrust the lamp inside. A thousand tiny voices squealed together, punctuated by the sound of sharply pointed claws scrabbling over the stonework and the slither of scaly tails. He swung the lamp back and forth and a hundred pairs of black, gleaming eyes sparkled back at them.

Yudin closed the door quickly. 'They soon learn to lose their fear,' he said. 'Particularly when they're hungry. Man's fear lasts longer.'

Still Tamara failed to feel the terror that Yudin so evidently wanted to induce in her. She had seen rats before in the streets, beside the river, even running along the railway tracks, to hide under the platform when a train came in. They survived, like any other creature, and their greatest threat to man was that they stole his food just as man stole theirs. A room full of wolves would seem a better way to make a person afraid. But Tamara was being rational and she knew that that was a state of mind that Yudin would have eradicated long before he brought his captive to this room.

'Why are you showing me this, Vasiliy Innokyentievich?' she asked.

'Because you expressed an interest.'

Tamara searched her memory, but could not think of anything she might have said to give that impression. 'I did?' she asked.

'When you began to investigate a crime. An investigation leads to an arrest, an arrest to an interrogation, an interrogation to a confession.'

'If the man is guilty.'

'Or the denunciation of a friend if he is not. Either way, your investigation will come to an end down here. Are you prepared for that?' As he asked the question, he moved to the door across the pa.s.sageway and began to unlock it.

'What about this one?' asked Tamara, indicating the door at the very end of the corridor. It was different from the others: more st.u.r.dily built, with iron bands across acting as braces. In addition to the lock, there were three heavy bolts at different levels sealing it tight. And unlike the other six doors it had no grille in it at eye level to allow the activities within to be observed.

Yudin glanced at the door and then at her, silent in thought. His face seemed to smile, although his lips never moved, and a look of excitement, exhilaration even, came into his eyes. Then, in an instant, the expression faded, and he turned back to unlock the other door. 'Perhaps another day,' he said quickly, and then disappeared into the room that he was happier to show her. She was reminded of the story of Bluebeard.

Even before following him in, Tamara could hear the trickle of water. Inside, her first impression was that the room contained a coffin. It ab.u.t.ted the side wall and was made of stone more a sarcophagus than a coffin. Above it a lead pipe protruded from the wall, pouring water into it, filling it almost to the brim. Not a coffin, or even a sarcophagus, she thought, but a bathtub. A small notch in the side allowed the water to flow out again without the tub br.i.m.m.i.n.g over completely. It ran along a gutter and then disappeared through another hole in the wall. The water stank with the familiar reek of the sewer.

'Are you prepared to do it?' repeated Yudin. 'To do whatever it takes to extract the information you need?'

She considered, but not the prospect of bringing a man down here to discover his secrets. She considered the image of Irina Karlovna, lying on the bed, the description of Margarita Kirillovna in much the same circ.u.mstances, along with those of the others who had died. If whoever had killed them had the stomach to do what he had done, then was it fair that she lacked the stomach to discover the truth?

'If it becomes necessary.'

The smell from the water seemed to become stronger, filling the room.

'Many fear drowning more than anything,' said Yudin wistfully, staring down into the rippling water. Then he looked up, straight into Tamara's eyes. 'Danilov is seventy-four years old. Could you bring an old man down here?'

'He's not the murderer not of Irina.'

'But he may know who is.'

'Then he'll tell me.'

'He's kept his secret for thirty years,' Yudin persisted.

Tamara corrected him. 'Forty-three years.' She was finding it hard to breathe. The stench reminded her of Petersburg and of 1848.

He smiled, almost imperceptibly, then turned to look back into the water, its odour seeming not to affect him. 'The water comes from the Neglinnaya, as far as I can make out, and must drain into the Moskva. Filthy these days, of course, but that only adds to the effect.'

Tamara tried to breathe through her mouth, but the stench had already filled her nostrils and she could not escape it. She felt bile rising in her gullet and closed her mouth tightly to restrain it, which forced her once again to inhale the foetid air through her nose until she could stand it no more. She turned and fled, at last, she knew, giving Yudin the response he was hoping for, though not for any reason he would predict. It was simply the smell the miasma that had filled Petersburg in 1848 and had brought with it cholera. It had spread from the rivers and ca.n.a.ls and through the streets and into the houses and taken her children from her. Half of her wanted to stay there, to breathe deeply of the foulness and be taken by the disease that had taken her family, and it was not fear of the disease that made her run, but fear of the memories that the stench brought with it.

Once out of the cell and away from Yudin's lamp, she found herself in darkness. She turned the wrong way and felt the wood of the door that was forbidden to her against her hands. From the other side she thought she heard a sound a voice pleading for help but she realized it was only an echo of the cries she had heard from Stasik as he lay in agony, years before. She turned and went the other way, not quite running, trailing her fingers along the enclosing walls, counting the doorways that she pa.s.sed. She tripped as her toe caught the first of the stone steps, but was able to push out with her arms and brace herself on the walls on either side before falling.

She climbed the stairs in the way she had done as a child, leaning forward and half crawling so that her hands touched the steps in front of her, ignoring the filth and grime that they picked up, almost pleased that in the darkness she could not see it. The steps flattened out and she thought she must be in Yudin's office, but she remembered the small landing where the stairway had branched into two. She turned right, and soon felt the steps rising again.

At last she came up against another door. She pushed at it, but it would not open. Her hands fumbled around, searching for a handle or latch. Eventually she gripped something metallic. She pulled on it and the door opened. Now, finally, in Yudin's office, there was some little illumination, but it did not stop her flight. She crossed the room and carried on upwards on the stairs that she knew led to the surface. Soon another door was in front of her, but this one opened easily. She spilled outside and took in great gasps of the cool, clean night air. Eventually her breathing slowed.

She waited for Yudin to join her, but he did not. She knew she should go back down only to his office and speak to him, but she was unable. Instead she headed home. The taste of the foul air below was still on her tongue, its scent still in her nostrils. She lit a cigarette and drove the stench and the memories away.

It was the small hours before Dmitry made it back to his lodgings and went to bed, but he did not sleep. The enemy bombardment had begun to subside, but still the occasional blast could be heard, which was enough to keep him awake as was his state of mind.

It should have all been quite inexplicable. Dmitry had been at the mercy of Ignatyev and yet the creature had not killed him. More than that, Ignatyev had desisted at Tyeplov's instruction. Why should Tyeplov command him? Why should he obey? And yet the explanation came in the image that filled Dmitry's mind as he lay in the darkness and gazed at the ceiling.

It was the scene in the bedroom, before the explosion the dead man on the floor, Ignatyev turning away, blood streaming from his lips, and Tyeplov, his face in his hands at the washstand. Dmitry let his mind create music to accompany his recollection, but the tunes that came were strangely light-hearted; clarinets and piccolos danced over the melody, laughing at Dmitry. And there was good reason for it, for there was one aspect of the tableau that proved Dmitry to have been an utter fool.

In the mirror on the bedroom wall, above the washstand, Tyeplov had shown no reflection.

Dmitry had never seen him in daylight. He had seen him consort with men who had later proved to be vampires Mihailov, Wieczorek and now Ignatyev. When Mihailov and Wieczorek had come to them in the casemate, it was not as two vampires come to feast on two men. They were merely rejoining their comrade in the hope of sharing at least a taste of the blood that Tyeplov had so cunningly taken into his possession.

And that was another way in which Dmitry felt a fool. It was so absurd he even chuckled at it thinking of himself as some deluded young virgin, tricked by an old letch. Tyeplov had wanted him only for his body. If that were true in the normal sense, then Dmitry would not have minded; he was not a romantic who needed to be flattered to be seduced. He had enjoyed Tyeplov's body just as much as he had believed Tyeplov enjoyed his. But for Tyeplov, the night they had spent together had not been the goal of his seduction, but merely a phase of it, a way to weaken Dmitry's resistance when the moment came for the final consummation of the flesh, which Dmitry would have found impossible to enjoy.

The same thing must have happened that night. Whoever their poor victim had been, Dmitry could only suspect that Tyeplov and Ignatyev had lured him with promises of much the same enjoyments as Dmitry had experienced. Clearly Tyeplov had learned from his mistakes with Dmitry, and had allowed Ignatyev to strike swiftly.

The bed suddenly shook. Someone had sat down on it, beside Dmitry. In the darkness, Dmitry could see only a silhouette, but he knew Tyeplov's scent intimately. He felt a finger placed on his lips.

'Have you guessed?' said Tyeplov softly. He held his finger there for a few moments more and then pulled it away so that Dmitry could speak. Dmitry lay still, terrified by the simplicity of the situation. There was no need for conversation or seduction or for leading men away down a quiet city street. Tyeplov had come to his room, and would kill him and devour him, all in the s.p.a.ce of one night, and Dmitry would be able to do nothing about it. Even if he could fight off one vampire, Ignatyev would be somewhere near.

'Where's your friend?' he asked, his voice hushed and bitter.

'I'm alone.'

'Why should I believe you?'

'Why should I lie?'

'You've lied to me before.'

Dmitry felt Tyeplov lie down beside him and rest his arm across his chest. His face was now close and Dmitry could feel breath on his cheek. The smell was repellent, like rotting meat. Dmitry wondered that he had never noticed it before, but then realized: in their previous encounters, Tyeplov had not recently eaten.

'Have I?' said Tyeplov.

Dmitry thought back. Perhaps he hadn't. 'You deceived me.'

'I had to. Look at what you did to Wieczorek.'

'And look at what you did to that poor fellow tonight. Why do you need to pretend with me?'

'You're different.'

For a ghastly moment, Dmitry feared that Tyeplov was about to tell him that he genuinely loved him, that, though he l.u.s.ted after human blood, in Dmitry's case a deeper emotion meant that he would resist his basest urges, and hoped that Dmitry could overcome his natural revulsion at such a creature and reciprocate his affection. It was a revolting concept. Unholy. A union between man and beast, fouler even than the beast itself.

'Different?' he asked.