Page 56 of White Wolf
“Where would you be,” he said quietly, “if you didn’t have to be here right now? Where would you go?” He glanced up, a glimpse of blue through the screen of his lashes. Asking. Resigned, but wanting to know.
Nikita worked his jaw a moment before an answer came, and then it wasn’t a good one. “I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it.” He’d been consumed with the idea of avenging the royal family his entire life; he’d never allowed himself thoughts of a life of his own, a wife, children.
Sasha’s smile was faint, and lopsided. His finger moved back and forth, leaving a streaky mark on the table. “I always thought I might like to travel the world. See all the cities I read about in my history books.” He sighed. “Guess that doesn’t matter now, does it?”
“No,” Nikita said, throat tight. “I guess it doesn’t.”
“I don’t want to die,” Sasha whispered.
“Youwon’t.”
“I might. And that doesn’t matter either.”
Not to Russia it didn’t, no. Not to the world. And what good was it if it mattered to Nikita? He was just one man leading a dying, doomed revolution. He’d forgotten how to be a person a long time ago, and relearning now, in the midst of war, was the most painful experience of his life.
If Sasha died tomorrow…after Dima…
Well, he didn’t suspect his commanders would have any use for him after he gutted Monsieur Philippe like a fish.
15
TURNING
Sasha tossed and turned, the bread and SPAM soup he’d had for dinner squirming in his belly, until he finally flopped over on his back and gave up the pretense of sleep just before dawn. They were in a basement-level bunk room full of cots. Ivan had left the door open a crack, and a sliver of light from the caged bulbs set along the hallway ceiling reached across Sasha’s legs and up the wall. A ribbon of yellow that emanated enough glow by which to see his hands when he held them up in front of his face.
He had beautiful hands, his mother had always said. Long-fingered and light as a thief’s. He could hold a bit of her knitting as easily as his rifle.
His rifle. He missed it. The heft of it in his palms; the sharp smell of cordite cutting above the snow; the warmth of a spent shell against his fingertips when he picked it up and pocketed it. The boy he was now, with knuckles bruised from boxing lessons and a cramping stomach didn’t much resemble that competent hunter from Siberia.
He dropped his hands to his chest and rolled onto his side, squinted through the dark. The others were asleep around him, snoring, breath heavy and labored. All except Monsieur Philippe, whose bed was empty, his blankets folded neatly.
He was off preparing, Sasha guessed. He’d explained the procedure to Sasha…but trying to recall the details now, he found that he couldn’t remember them clearly. Something about being receptive. About letting the power bind to him…
Sasha closed his eyes tight and concentrated on not being sick.
~*~
Katya woke and didn’t know why. Dawn’s first fingers teased at the window glass, a gray puddle of it lying across the floorboards. Her roommate continued to snore; the door was still shut; all was quiet. But her skin crawled and she shivered, snuggled deeper beneath her thin blanket.
She lay awake just long enough to remember a scrap of dream, something frightening and shapeless, the sense of being chased through a dense forest, and then sleep claimed her again.
~*~
Nikita took shorter and shorter drags from his cigarette, drawing it out. The curls of smoke stood out white against the slate gray dawn. The sun was up, but veiled with clouds, the dew lost amid the snowmelt, all of it dazzling and too-bright to his eyes. He squinted.
He heard a door open behind him, and Kolya said, “They’re ready.”
He sucked down the last bit of smoke and flicked the butt out into the mud.
“Did you eat yet?” Kolya asked when he joined him.
“What do you think?”
Kolya muttered something disapproving under his breath.
Soldiers sat at the long mess tables inside, shoveling bread, and sausage, and eggs into their mouths. Nikita wondered, briefly, how many local families went hungry this morning, all their hens and eggs gone to the Red Army. A fleeting thought, and then the dread retook him as they descended the iron staircase to the subbasement where the lab, and Sasha’s fate, awaited.
He’d awakened just after dawn this morning with a hard knot in his stomach. When he’d crept upstairs then, all had been quiet. He’d been smoking longer than he realized, because now the lower levels were buzzing with activity.
