Page 37 of White Wolf
“Let’s say I believe you,” he said.
Philippe chuckled. “I know you do.”
“Yeah. Let’s say that. What are you trying to do here? What do you want with the boy?”
For the first time, the old man’s calm confidence wavered, something uncertain shining through. “In 1901, I conducted many séances with the tsar and tsarina. During most of them, I admit, I didn’t even try to contact anyone. I read Nicholas’s intentions and served as a mirror, if you will, reflecting back to him the things he was afraid to pursue without some encouragement.” He took a drag and the smoke left his lips in an uneven stream, stuttering as his breath hitched. “But there was one time. Only a few years ago…I made contact with another…entity. A powerful one. I was searching for someone to…someone like Sasha.”
The avoidance turned Nikita’s stomach sour.
“I asked for help from this entity, and it gave me a name. Aleksander Kashnikov. It took a long time to find him.”
“Probably because he was just a kid,” Kolya said, but there was an edge of something worried and frightened beneath his caustic tone.
Philippe ignored him and turned to Nikita, presenting him with his whole face, his earnest, searching eyes. “Captain Baskin, what are you prepared to do in order to reinstate the empire?”
It was probably the vodka – he was on his fourth mug, now – that made Nikita admit, “Anything.”
Philippe nodded, approving. “Then you need me. And I need this boy Sasha. And we are going to raise the dead, you and I.”
A shiver crawled down his back, shook through his arms and legs, filled up his empty, hungry heart with something wild and hopeful and crazy. Again, it was probably just the vodka.
“There’s only seven of us,” he reminded.
“Yes,” Philippe said, grinning now. “But there’s alsomagic.”
~*~
Sasha had only ever slept on a fur pallet in the woods on hunts. And in his own bed. And in between his parents, when he was little, when he had nightmares about clawed, fanged things crawling from under the bed.
Pyotr’s bed smelled like Pyotr, sweet and faintly stale with old sweat, the musk of skin when he turned over restlessly and pressed his face into a cool spot on the pillow. The radiator chugged with a manufactured heat that was nothing like the fires of home, and he was too hot, kicking the covers down and down again by increments.
Monsieur Philippe snored in the other bed, dead to the world, sleeping in a corpse pose with his hands folded over his breast.
Through the wall, Ivan’s snoring sounded like a bear snarling.
There was another sound, though, something soft and unobtrusive, but noticeable. Not something mindless, like a dripping faucet or the ping of the radiator. No, something alive.
Without realizing why, Sasha slipped out of bed and padded barefoot out into the hall, still in his heavy wool pants and nubby sweater.
Light from outside, ambient city light, still spilled through the window, fuzzy, grease-fire orange. Just bright enough for him to make out Ivan on his stacked mattresses, and Feliks on the sofa, a blanket draped over him, one arm flung up above his head. Both of them looked innocent as children in sleep.
The sound was coming from the kitchen. The window was open a crack, and Nikita stood with his elbows braced on the sill, staring through the smeared glass to the street below, smoking a cigarette with his shirtsleeves rolled up, his hair falling limp on his forehead.
“You should be sleeping,” he said when Sasha passed through the threshold, without turning to look at him. “We have an early day tomorrow.”
Sasha edged a step closer. He didn’t know what to think of these men, but he wasn’t afraid anymore. “Are you really a White?” he asked, voice just a whisper.
Nikita exhaled a stream of smoke toward the gap between the window and the sill. “Do you think I’d admit to being one if I wasn’t?”
“No.”
He nodded. “I really am.” He twisted to glance at Sasha over his shoulder. “Planning to turn me in?”
“No.” And he wasn’t, but he tasted the sharp tang of panic on his tongue when he swallowed. “What’s going to happen now?”
“Something magic, Monsieur Philippe says.”
“Will it work?”
