Page 142 of White Wolf
“What a shame,” Rasputin said, shaking his head sadly. “A horrible shame. I remember the wine they served at the palace. And in all the glittering cafes of Petrograd!” He tilted his head back and swept his hand through the air, a grand, reminiscing gesture. “Tart, and sweet, and delicious. Always a bottle of wine for Grisha. And these greedy Communists–”
“Hush,” Nikita snapped, and the man looked like he’d been slapped.
“You can’t talk about that in the open,” Philippe said, imploring. “We can’t reveal ourselves, not yet.”
Rasputin glanced at each of them in turn, frowning. “Why not? Why should we hide? We must educate the people about the generosity and plenty of Nicholas’s empire, so that they may join us.”
Ivan clapped a hand to his forehead. “Jesus Christ,” he murmured. “We’re all going to die.”
“Grisha.” Philippe was still trying to be diplomatic. “This is no longer a country for the espousing of ideas and free discussion.”
“You have to shut up,” Nikita said. He wasn’t going to placate the lunatic. “If we all get thrown in the gulag before the fighting starts, we’re fucked.” And waking the old monster up would have been a massive waste of time and effort.
Rasputin studied him a long moment, face unreadable – save his eyes. Those, Nikita thought, were full of anger.
“You’re a very bitter man, captain,” he said at last. “We will have to pray together, you and I, so that you can welcome God’s wisdom and grace.”
“Sure,” Nikita lied, voice flat. “We’ll have to do that.”
The waitress returned, carrying a dusty bottle of something that was obviously homemade. “This is the best we can do, I’m afraid,” she said, and looked genuinely sorry.
Rasputin beamed at her. “That will be fine, my dear.”
~*~
It wasn’t the same as it had been before. Sasha had long since grown used to the rhythms of their makeshift family. Ivan’s belly laughs and Feliks’s snarky sourness, and Kolya inserting the occasional scathing comment. Pyotr asking lots of questions, and Nikita presiding over them all like a stern but loving big brother. Katya had come in quietly at first, sharp-edged and cautious, but had thawed and shown them her warm side. Philippe was a know-it-all, but the sort of person who could fit in anywhere, conforming to the situation at hand.
It was a conversation.
But Rasputin sucked all the air out of the room.
His thoughts, his wants, lay like a pall over their table, something nearly tangible, almost like smoke. He ate ravenously, and messily, with his hands, spilling crumbs and bits of tinned meat into his beard.
Before they woke him, Nikita had called him a “sex maniac.” So it was no great surprise that – as he gobbled food and slurped coffee, gesticulating with greasy fingers – he started talking about women.
“Women are such wonderful company,” he said, licking crumbs off the web between thumb and forefinger. He turned a messy smile toward Katya, and Sasha, sitting beside her, felt the shudder that moved through her, heard the faint whisper of her clothes as she squirmed in her seat. “They are so much more sensitive than men. Receptive.”
Sasha wanted to squirm too, and to pull Katya behind him and bare his teeth at thestarets. He could smell the heat and fresh-sweat smell of lust rolling off the man, an acrid stink that expanded every time his eyes landed on Katya. He wanted her. And why not? She was beautiful and young. But she was one of them, and Nikita’s lover, and there was no hint of affection or respect in Rasputin’s light eyes.
“So many are brought into temptation,” Rasputin went on. “They can’t help it; it’s in their nature. I always took it upon myself to pray with them, and drive the sin from their hearts.”
“And their bodies,” Feliks muttered.
“What?”
“Do we have to keep talking about God?” Ivan asked. His face flushed dark with unhappiness. “I don’t like to mix prayer and pussy. Bad combination in my book.”
Feliks snorted into his coffee.
Rasputin turned to Ivan. “Pleasure isn’t a sin,” he said, seriously. “God didn’t put us here so that we could only toil and suffer.”
Feliks swept a hand over top of his head in an unmistakable gesture that Rasputin, ironically, missed.
Sasha wanted to crawl under the table. He didn’t have his wolves with him, and the hot-blooded want pouring off Rasputin made him want to claw at his own skin.
Submit,submit. Always in the back of his head.
Rasputin swilled rotgut like it was expensive champagne, and he ate great handfuls of food, but Sasha could still scent his hunger. Blood-hunger. Sex-hunger.
