Page 28 of White Wolf

In any event, he couldn’t very well starve.

With a sigh, he got to his feet and went to investigate.

Everyone save the captain and Monsieur Philippe were crammed into a single compartment, talking and noisily eating.

Sasha paused and hung back, uncertain. He was starving, suddenly, but he didn’t know if they’d...

“Ah,” Ivan said, noticing him. He grinned with his mouth full. “Come here, wolf pup, and eat something. You’re too skinny.”

That settled that, then.

He went to perch sideways on the first seat of the compartment opposite them, feet planted in the aisle, and reached for the food the big man passed to him. A generous heel of bread, wedge of hard cheese, and half a sausage.

Sasha stared at them in his hands a moment, thinking of following Papa through the forest, their lunch packed away in the rucksack.

A lump formed in his throat.

“It’s good,” one of the men – the one with the too-long dark hair and black eyes – said. “You should eat. Before Ivan eats it straight out of your hands.”

“Hey!” Ivan protested.

Sasha chased away thoughts of home and broke off the point of the cheese wedge. Hard and salty. Good, as promised.

~*~

Every hunter worth his salt could read a landscape, so Sasha set out to do just that as he ate and listened to the Chekists. Whatever evil they’d inflicted upon the world, he was stuck with them for the moment, and he wanted to know them. To know a man was to discern his weaknesses.

Also, he was curious.

There was Ivan, yes. And next to him was Feliks, who ate all of his bread, and then all of his cheese, and then all of his sausage. “Best for last,” he explained when Pyotr asked him.

And Pyotr was young, golden-blond, on the small side, sweet-faced. Ivan leaned over and whispered to Sasha that he was “the little brother,” whatever that meant.

Kolya was the spooky one who looked like he could see straight through to your soul.

They were rough and crass, cursing and shoving one another. But there were signs of deep affection, too – in the way Feliks reached to tipped Pyotr’s hat back and flicked him on the end of the nose, grinning. In the way Kolya sliced his cheese in half with a wicked length of knife and tossed it into Ivan’s lap, calling the man a “bottomless pit.”

Even monsters had brothers, Sasha supposed. Warm friendships.

Ivan threw his head back and yelled, “Nikita! Come eat!”

Nikita?

The captain stood up several rows ahead of them. So that was his name: Nikita.

“Not hungry,” he called back in a more reasonable tone.

Kolya snorted. “What did we talk about on the way?”

“Your insubordination?” the captain suggested.

Ivan burst into a loud, braying laugh. “Don’t hurt his feelings,” he told Kolya in a stage whisper. “Not in front ofguests.”

“Fuck you,” Kolya shot back, evenly, eyes never leaving the knife he was wiping with a cloth.

The captain sat back down, disappearing from sight.

“Old man!” Ivan shouted. “Do you want food?”

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