Page 158 of White Wolf

“We need to go find Rasputin,” Nikita said.

Sasha had seen the aftereffects of battle outside of Moscow. He’d seen the devastation in Leningrad. But those had been cold wounds – ugly scars that had stopped bleeding.

This devastation, though, was fresh.

They walked into a city on fire. Where once there had been houses and cafés now stood black craters full of rubble. Buildings had been reduced to gravel, scattered across the road. A tattered bit of fabric lifted on the updraft from a fire and floated back down like an autumn leaf. There were bodies. And bits of bodies. Greasy smudges on the tarmac that should have been bodies.

A woman sobbed brokenly somewhere.

The sun reflected off a thousand points of broken glass.

It stank of fire, and scorched rubber, and roasting flesh, and death.

People ran past them, barefoot, hair standing up, smoke-stained, eyes sightless and wild.

Sasha’s stomach ached so badly that he stumbled over to brace himself against a section of intact wall and dry-heaved, long trails of saliva gathering on his lip.

That was when he heard the baby crying.

He wiped his mouth on his sleeve and lifted his head, scenting the air, trying to get a read on the sound. His wolves crowded around him, nosing at his hips, whining a question.

The crying wasn’t far.

“Come,” he told his wolves, and vaulted over the wall, stomach settling. He couldn’t be sick if he thought he was needed.

He walked across the blackened threshold of what had once been a house, but was now only a jagged skeleton of a foundation. The walls had burned all the way down to the ground, but a few odd bits had remained. A half-discernable chair. A section of light blue fabric dotted with flowers…which turned out to be an unscathed patch of dress on a woman who was nothing but a network of shriveled black shapes like branches.

The cries were louder, now, and as he crouched beside the woman’s corpse, he caught his first sweet whiff of clean baby. He stuck his hands in the rubble and started to dig.

And dig.

His wolves helped him, paws turning black in the soot.

There was a hollowed-out space beneath the floorboards, a place to hide valuables. That’s where the woman had managed to stow the baby before her house was struck. Sasha pried off one last warped board and there it was, pink and red-faced and squalling, totally unharmed.

The wolves poked their noses into the hole, tails wagging.

“Here you are,” he murmured, lifting the child up into his arms. “Come on, it’s alright.”

When he sat back on his haunches, he saw that there was a girl of about twelve watching him, her dress scorched at the hem, her eyes wide and wild.

“Is this your little sister?” he asked.

The girl nodded, and came forward silently, arms outstretched.

Sasha handed over the precious bundle carefully.

The girl tucked her sister in tight to her chest, fussed over her blanket a moment. She looked at Sasha, stared at him, then nodded, turned, and walked off into the smoke.

~*~

They found Rasputin sitting on the front step of the house they were renting, a house that was, miraculously, unharmed. He had both hands in his hair, yanking at it, weeping openly, tears running down his face and into a beard that was already shiny with moisture.

Philippe went to sit beside him, patted his shoulder.

“Why?” he asked. “Who was this? Who? Oh, never did I think I should have to see war like this. It’s terrible. Terrible!”

Nikita stared at the man with open, but weary hatred. “It’s the Germans. And this is only the beginning. They’ll come for us overland now.”

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