Twelve

I reached over the side of the bed to where I had dropped my dagger the previous night. I felt a twinge of pain, but at the same time I noted that the wound to my arm had been bandaged while I slept. The dagger was not there. I glanced around the room and saw it. It was on a chair, sitting on top of my neatly folded coat. My boots were beside it and my sword hung from its back. I would have no time to reach it before the door opened. Then my panic abated. It was daylight. Whoever was entering the room, it could not be a vampire. If it was Domnikiia then she would be quickly destroyed without any need for my intervention. Even so, I could not help but cower against the bedstead, clutching the blankets up to my chin.

It was her. She was carrying a tray on which I saw some bread and some cold meats and a pot which, from the smell, I immediately knew to contain coffee. She walked across the room, past the window, and put the tray down on the dressing table.

'Good morning,' she beamed. I said nothing. She came over to the bed and sat beside me. Even though it was now clear to me that she was no vampire, still I shrank from her. There was no sign that she noticed. She put her arms around me and laid her head on my shoulder, kissing my neck and squeezing me tightly.

'That was a nice surprise,' she said.

'What?' I managed to whimper.

'Waking up with you, of course!' She sat up and slipped her legs underneath the blankets. 'I did know you were back in town, though. Pyetr Pyetrovich said you'd called. Even so, I didn't expect you'd go to quite such lengths to see me. I don't know how you're going to get back out without anybody noticing. You could have bathed first, too.' She rose and went over to the dressing table.

'I'm sorry,' I mumbled, simply as an instinctive response. My heart was pounding and I felt a heady relief. It was like the resurgence of reality after a nightmare – a nightmare that has contained a horror so dreadful that there is no solution to it but to turn back time and discover that the horror never existed. What I had seen at Domnikiia's window the previous night had been no nightmare, but it was just such a horror. And yet, somehow, its inevitable consequence had not taken place. Domnikiia was human. In all my contemplation through the night I had found no sensible course of action to take, and yet now the solution came in a simple, inexplicable fact. She was not a vampire.

'Oh, I'm sorry, Lyosha,' she said with genuine distress. 'I was joking. You know I'll always love you however much you stink.' It felt cruel not to smile and acknowledge her humour, especially on seeing the disappointment in her face, but I was too deep in thought to react in any way. She came back over and handed me a cup of coffee. 'How's your arm?'

'Where were you last night?' I asked.

'I was visiting a client, if you must know. I don't do all my work here.'

'What time did you get back?' My voice was hushed and passionless as I tried to disguise my shock and fear.

'What is this, Lyosha?' she said, rising to her feet in anger. 'You know what I do. Do you want details all of a sudden?'

'Tell me!' I moaned with a pleading intensity, leaning across the bed towards her. She knelt down beside the bed and put her hands to my face.

'What is it, Lyosha?' she asked, staring into my eyes to discover what had brought this on in me. 'Why are you like this?'

'I saw you with Iuda last night,' I told her simply.

'What?' Her incredulity appeared genuine.

'Through that window,' I explained, pointing. 'I was watching.'

'You were spying on me?' She was more disappointed than angry.

'It's too late for that,' I said, taking her by the wrists and rising to my feet. 'I saw the two of you together and I saw what you did.'

'Lyosha, I saw no man in this room last night.' She was icy calm, perceiving that her life might depend on what she told me.

'Ha!' I snorted. 'You should be a lawyer. You saw no man, but you saw Iuda.'

'I didn't return here until almost midnight, and then I went straight to bed. Tell me what it was that you saw.'

'I saw what happened. I saw you and him, together. I saw him when he carried you over to the window. I saw when he bit you.

I saw when you…'

Domnikiia put her hand to the collar of her nightdress and ripped it away to expose her neck. 'If he bit me, then where are the marks?' She arched her head first to one side and then the other, stretching her neck so that I could clearly see that there was no sign of any contact with a vampire.

Dumbstruck, I put my hand to her throat and stretched the skin, peering closely to verify what was already quite evident. I sat back down on the bed, bewildered, and she sat beside me. I lay my head in her lap and stared vacantly at the ceiling.

'I think perhaps you dreamed it, Lyosha,' she said soothingly, reminding me, for the first time, quite specifically of my mother. I shook my head miserably.

'No. It was no dream. I saw it. I saw something.'

'And you thought I had become a vampire?' There was a mocking tone in the question.

'Yes,' I said, and a tear came to my eye. I took her hand in mine and pressed it to my lips. She thought for a moment before the obvious question came to her.

'So what were you doing here this morning?'

'I came to kill you.'

She took it well. 'I see.'

'But I couldn't,' I explained.

She thought for a moment longer. 'So…' She didn't complete her question. Instead I felt her hands on my chest, pulling my shirt open, searching for something. 'You're not wearing it,' she said. 'The icon – you've taken it off.'

'I gave it to Dmitry.'

'But it would have protected you. If I had been… If I had been a vampire, I could have killed you – or worse. Are you mad? You gave away your only protection.'

'It doesn't work as protection,' I explained. 'They're not superstitious.'

'I'm superstitious,' Domnikiia shouted. 'It would have kept me off you.' She thought for a moment more. 'Is that what you wanted?' she asked, incredulous. 'You're an idiot, Aleksei Ivanovich; a sentimental idiot.' She paused before adding quietly, 'But thank you.'

'As if anything could keep you off me,' I muttered. She smiled and then bent forwards to kiss me.

'We still don't know what you saw,' she said, returning to the point. 'Perhaps they can do that – change their faces to look like someone else.'

'I never saw her face,' I confessed. I had realized already that my reasons for supposing it had been Domnikiia at all were scarcely substantial.

'Well, it looks like I had a lucky escape. I wouldn't like to have been killed by an idiot while I slept. So what did you see?'

'Just her back – her hair. It was so like yours.' I had already realized the implication.

'Oh my God!' whispered Domnikiia. 'Margarita! She sometimes uses this room when I'm not here. It's bigger than hers. The connecting door's never locked.' She sprang to her feet and went over to the door.

'Wait!' I called. 'Given what I saw, she'll be a vampire too by now.'

'So what am I supposed to do, just leave her?'

'Let me go first.'

'What if she is a vampire?'

'It's daytime,' I explained. 'She won't be able to do much.'

I picked up my dagger from the chair and then went over to the door. I felt Domnikiia, behind me, pressed close to my body. For all that I feared for her safety, it was reassuring to have her there. As I turned the door handle, I felt a debilitating weariness within me. I had no more stomach to be chasing around Moscow killing vampires, or even killing Frenchmen. I just wanted them all to go away and leave me to enjoy my life. But I knew I had to go on. I opened the door.

Inside, it was dark. The curtains were closed and in the little light that there was, I could make out a figure on the bed.