Page 1 of White Wolf

PROLOGUE

1931

Tomsk, Siberia, USSR

The man wasn’t supposed to be here. Sasha didn’t know who he was, or where he wasactuallysupposed to be, only that that place wasn’t here.

Between one blink and the next he appeared in front of Sasha, haloed by the early morning sunlight, sunk up to his calves in the snow, though there were no tracks coming or going in either direction to indicate that he’d walked here. He simplywas. Standing there, shaking his head, dazed and bewildered-looking.

Sasha stumbled to a halt, tipped his head back, strangely without fear, and stared at him.

He wore his blond hair long, down well past his shoulders, gleaming gold and faintly rippled at the ends. His hair alone – clean and regal and uncovered by a hat of any kind – would be enough to indicate he didn’t belong, but his clothes furthered the impression. They were the kind of clothes that Sasha had only seen in the illustrated books his mother read to him – clothes like a prince in a fairy story would wear. Cream breeches and knee-high boots, and a long, red coat with golden embroidery and buttons.

Nobody in Siberia ever dressed like that.

The man looked around, at the trees, the snow, the sunlight sparkling off it, and finally, when he’d run out of other things to see, looked at Sasha. He asked a question in a language Sasha didn’t understand.

“I’m sorry,” Sasha said. A small voice in the back of his mind wondered why he wasn’t frightened, but he couldn’t bring himself to be. Nothing about the man seemed threatening. “I don’t know what you’re saying.”

The man’s golden brows lifted. “You speak Russian?” he asked in flawless, though accented Russian. “Where are we? St. Petersburg?”

“No, sir. In Tomsk.”

“Ah. Siberia.” He looked disappointed. Sighing up toward the sky, he muttered, “What the hell am I doing in Siberia of all places?”

Sasha had no idea what to make of that. “How did you get here?” he asked. And then, because it had to be true, even though there were no more princes in Russia: “Are you a prince?”

The man smiled, and his teeth were very white, and the eye teeth, especially, were very sharp. “I am, yes.” He crouched down so that he was on a level with Sasha; his eyes were sky-colored. “And who might you be?”

It wasn’t right to give his name out to strangers, but this stranger was a prince! Even Mama would have been impressed with him, with his clean white hands and his long pale hair. “Sasha,” he said, without hesitation.

“Short for Aleksander, I imagine?”

“Aleksander Ivanovich Kashnikov. Your majesty,” he tacked on, pleased with his own manners.

The prince laughed, low and musical. “Well, Aleksander Kashnikov,” he said, voice dropping, like he was about to share a secret. “Seeing as how we’re all alone out here in the Siberian wilderness, I think you must be the person I was supposed to find. I want to tell you something, alright? And I want you to remember it.”

Sasha nodded.

“Don’t try to fight fire with fire,” he whispered. He leaned in close, but Sasha couldn’t feel his breath, nor smell the oil in his hair. “You’ve got to rip its fucking heart out and bleed it dry.”

“What,” Sasha started, gathering breath.

But the prince winked at him and then was gone.

No footprints, no sound, no nothing. Only gone.

“Sasha!” his mother called.

“Coming.”

~*~

Undisclosed Location, USSR

“Militsa! Stana! My dears, I’m thrilled to see you, but you shouldn’t have come all this way.”

Militsa waved away the protest as she bustled her way through the door, her sister on her heels. “What else do we have to do now that we’re in hiding? Being on the lam is so terriblydull.”

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