Page 117 of White Wolf

The rest of the guys joined them. Ivan tall and imposing at her back. One of the wolves nudged his way forward and asked to be scratched behind the ears.

She wasn’t doing this alone, she reminded herself, and took immeasurable comfort in their proximity.

Nikita leaned in close to say, “When the war’s over, I’ll bring you back one summer to see the Nevsky Prospekt. Lunch and shopping and the best hotels.”

She shivered a little – not because she believed the fantasy, because the city was bombed to hell and would take years to regain its glory, but because he’d said “when the war’s over,” and that meant he expected them to be together still, then.

She closed her eyes and said a little prayer, as the scent of ash and dust drifted across the lake toward them.

The barge turned into the Neva River, and here the destruction became more visible: great craters in the earth where the Germans had tried to bomb supply ships and trucks. The smell of put-out fires intensified as they got closer to the city itself.

The trip up the river seemed to take forever, the tension onboard silent and stifling. And then, suddenly, there it was. Leningrad, a sad shadow of itself, the shoreline crouched defensively, unlit, unwelcoming.

She felt a hand close around hers, cool and rough: Nikita. He laced their fingers together and gave her one fast squeeze before he let go and unslung the carbine he carried. They were here.

The barge fetched up to the dock with the help of a handful of skinny men in patched clothes who waited on the dock, eyes sunk deep in their heads, gazes wary as they noted the Chekists who waited to depart.

Then they caught sight of the wolves.

“Shit!” one of them shouted, leaping back and dropping the rope he held.

One of his comrades cuffed him on the back of the head. “Tie up the boat, fucker! You want to starve?”

“Three hours,” the captain reminded Nikita, and his look suggested he hoped they didn’t come back.

“Right. We’ll be here.”

Katya imagined a stopwatch, the click as it started their countdown.

Three hours wasn’t a very long time to dig up a man.

Ivan got off first, and Katya let him lift her out and set her on the dock. He did the same for Philippe, guiding the old man with a hand at his elbow, and then the others jumped over, wolves included. The tie-up crew staggered back, exclaiming.

The bravest of them scowled and said, “You could’ve at least butchered them before you brought them over.”

“They’re not for eating,” Nikita said, his captain’s bite in his voice, hat tipped at a stern angle. “Get the fuck back or I’ll confiscate the gold teeth out of your head.”

The man grumbled, but complied, ducking his head and stepping aside. Everyone was afraid of the Cheka, even starving men.

Sasha and his wolves led the way, and they proceeded up the dock to the ruined city, Ivan and Feliks lugging an empty footlocker between them, everyone else with a gun cradled in their arms.

The worst of the bombing had taken place in the west of the city, where the Germans were trying to break up the Red Army lines, and along the lakeshore, where the trucks had driven across the frozen water in the middle of winter. But even the intact parts of the city, such as this, bore the marks of war. The boarded-up Bronze Horses – a desperate attempt to preserve art. The ash like smudged fingerprints on the gaily painted building facades. Ash in piles, drifts like dirty snow against the building foundations. They walked past ruined and stripped cars, nothing but empty shells. Looted storefronts, their glass broken out, and never replaced; inside a few tattered bits of furniture that hadn’t yet been used for firewood.

It was late afternoon, and overcast, a fog rolling in off the river. Katya glanced back over her shoulder after they’d gone a ways and couldn’t see the barge anymore; a cold shiver skated down her back, and she faced forward again, jogging to keep up.

Three hours. They were running.

At least until they hit the first police checkpoint.

For a city so large, it was unnervingly quiet. People were keeping indoors for safety. Drapes were drawn in all the upper windows, some covered with patchwork quilts, some with blackout curtains. None of the streetlamps were lit, and it was an eerie gray twilight they walked through, the wolves halting suddenly, growling low in their throats.

Sasha froze and flashed his teeth, tested the air with his nostrils.

A voice called out, “Who’s there?”

The wolves fanned out and disappeared into the gloom, circling, Katya knew. They weren’t as foolish as humans; they never walked abreast up to a threat, like their two-legged pack members were about to.

The fog swirled, and the beam from a shuttered lantern blasted through it, revealing three uniformed officers who recoiled visibly when they spotted the Chekists in their trademark black.

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