Page 241 of Golden Eagle

A man sat on a stool beside his bed. Dark-haired, bearded, dressed in a long, dirty black kaftan, his head bent so that his face rested against Alexei’s wrist.

“Grisha,” the current him said, aloud, unheard by the specters of the past.

He remembered this hematoma; a terrible swelling in his lower leg.

Beside him, Dante shuddered; a palpable sensation, though he remained silent.

Rasputin lifted his head, licking his lips. He’d left a small puncture at Alexei’s wrist, amid the visible veins there. He hadn’t taken much, no. That would come later.

They were alone, though Rasputin checked with a glance over his shoulder. Then he scored his own wrist with his fangs and pressed it to Young Alexei’s slack mouth. “Drink, little one. It will help.” He brought his other hand up to cup the back of Young Alexei’s head and lift him up, encourage him. The lips closed over the wound, feeble at first, barely conscious. But a few swallows gave him strength, and then he latched on, drinking steadily.

Rasputin left his wrist there, in Young Alexei’s shaking grasp, and with his other hand flipped back the bedclothes, exposing the terrible, blue-and-purple swelling above the boy’s ankle. He bent his head, and bit, and carefully drained the hemorrhage away.

“The press about him,” Alexei murmured to Dante. “Everyone said he was a heretic; a devil-worshiper. He was only a vampire. And he saved my life – one drop at a time.”

Then, softer: “He was always kind to me. I never thought he was monstrous…but when Nikita told me what he’d done…”

He’d tried so hard to deny it: to them, yes, but to himself, too.

He turned to Dante, still in that awful suit, with the tied-back hair. “Why? Why would he try to kill them all?”

“I think,” Dante said carefully, “that, like Gustav, he wanted a place at the right hand of the devil, and it didn’t matter who he killed to achieve that.”

“Could he be that terrible? That worth it? Romulus?”

“He must be,” Dante said, helplessly. “No one does anything like this without a reason.”

“Why did he turn me?”

Dante didn’t answer, head tilting, gaze saying,You know.

“Everyone wants an army,” Alexei murmured. “God,everyone.”

The scene shifted, again. His parents in one of the palace’s pretty sitting rooms, having tea with Rasputin.

“God is a part of everything,” Rasputin was saying, in that voice Alexei remembered so well, even now. Low, and rough; uncultured, but honest. “It is only through accepting Him in our hearts that we find ourselves the beneficiaries of His grace.”

Alexandra shifted forward in her chair, tea forgotten, listening raptly.

Alexei searched her face, aching with nostalgia – for signs of compulsion. It had been impossible to know, then, as a mortal boy, but Rasputin had passed his strong gift for compulsion down to every vampire he’d sired. Surely he’d used the power on their family; surely that was why they’d all fallen under his spell, and granted him unprecedented access to their inner sanctum; why they’d trusted him over highly-trained and valued advisors. It had to be a trick, all of it: an immortal’s powerful sway over humans.

But Alexei looked closely at his parents’ faces, now, stepping in close, unseen, really scrutinizing – and he didn’t find what he’d hoped. Didn’t see the blown-pupil, glazed-over, slack-jawed compliance of the compelled. No: Mama was bright-eyed, eager, present. As was Father, though toned down, as was his way.

Not compelled. Merely…infatuated.

The knowledge that his parents had gone along of their own free will was the sort of thing that had the potential to destroy him.

He wanted to scream.

Instead, he swallowed hard and said, “They wanted to believe in a miracle, and he offered one.”

“He was very convincing,” Dante said, not sounding convinced at all.

“To them, he was.” Alexei couldn’t bite back his bitterness. “And…to me. Though I was only a child.”

Dante waited a beat, as, in the vision, Rasputin took Alexandra’s hand between both of his. “It’s not your fault, you know,” he said, finally, tone gentle. “Youwerea child, and you had no control over–” He cut off when Alexei whirled to face him.

“It was my illness that created the vulnerability; it was for my sake that they entertained him.”

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