Day 30: 3,245 words; 52,999 total

Part 12: Je ne regrette rien

Someone was taking the pins out of my hair.

I opened my eyes and focused on the pale blur that resolved into Anton's face. It felt wrong to me, and it took me a moment to realize that what was missing was his habitual gently mocking smile. He looked - sad?

I reached up to help him with my hair, but he caught my hand.

"Leave this to me. It'll help your headache."

I nodded numbly and let him undo all the twists and locks. The night outside made the window into a passable mirror, so I could see my hair settling into the usual lanky disarray.

"Can I bandage this?"

He meant my hand, which was still oozing blood. There were smears of it on the glass, darkening as I looked at them. I nodded, and Anton reached for a first-aid kit that stood at his feet. He cleaned my hand carefully, taking care not to aggravate the wound, and the fact he made no attempt to touch the blood was - endearing, I thought.

I wondered how long I'd been sitting on the stairs. The blood on the window was still almost fresh, and so were the drops pooling under it. Not more than ten, fifteen minutes then.

"Father couldn't get away - not with everyone else there," Anton said.

I licked my lips, tried swallowing. It seemed to work. "I know. Appearances."

"Yeah." He put his arms around me, and I wondered whether I was so cold that he felt warm, or whether Arthur's hospitality had stretched to a discreet supply of blood for those who fancied it. "I have a feeling the rest of the meeting will be short."

"I threw... a cog in Arthur's plans." I knew that with something like this, he needed all the blood clan leaders there to show their support. Anton was probably only able to slip out because he represented the entirety of the Butor clan.

"It livened up the party." Anton snorted. "Ewig totally refused to comment, and both father and Arthur looked ready to kill people, with Eudokia leading the cheer. They really like you, you know."

"Great." My laughter sounded sharp, rough, unfamiliar. "Marcian's blood, if they want me to explain..."

"They'll have to go through me first."

I smiled. It was like being guarded by a puppy. A puppy who could break a werewolf's neck with his bare hands and thought nothing of waltzing into an arena full of Kalashnikov-wielding mobsters with nothing but a pocket knife, but still.

I must have fallen asleep then, dreamless and dark, because the next thing I was aware of was Kirill carrying me to the car. They let me have the whole back seat to myself, and I dozed off with my head against a speaker that was softly playing a Vladimir Vysotskij song. The one about the palace and the seagulls, or were those pigeons?

When the car turned into Radclyffe Lane, I was feeling human enough to sit up and comb my hair with my hands. I even got out of the back seat before Kirill could hold the door open for me, and I kept upright without swaying as he undid the reinforced wards on the house and let us in.

I vaguely registered some kind of comment about food or drink or something like that, but I didn't pay it much attention as I went upstairs. I stood under the shower for a long time, letting the water beat into my trembling shoulders.

I remembered bathing in the river in Katanga, watching out for the snakes, gun in my hand in case guerillas caught me unaware. I stretched both arms towards the shower head, luxuriating. Vampires had it right. Decadence beat ascetism hands down.

I walked out naked into the bedroom. Someone had turned on the night light, and there was a nightdress and a dressing gown set out on the bed. I smelled Kirill's cologne in the room, as if he'd left just as I'd shut down the water.

The clothes were not the flashy stuff he sometimes got me, but the black silk embroidered set, an almost demure slip and the gown cut generously enough to swirl around my legs like a cape. I fastened the three tiny buttons at the front and watched myself in the mirror. A gothic maiden in the dim light, my hair still curling from Eudokia's styling, almost beautiful.

I needed that. I needed to be as far away from fatigues and dirt and pain as I could.

My handbag was sitting on the bedside table, and I took the box out of it, more for comfort than anything else. I heard the television downstairs, Anton watching a "Lost" re-run. There was a light in the room at the end of the upstairs corridor, Kirill's study, and I walked there on soundless feet. The snake, with me still, calming as I had done.

The electric lights were off, but the candles were lit, each with a set of mirrors behind it, enhancing its light, and the box I was holding made a soft thunk as I laid it on the desk. Kirill was sitting in one of the armchairs, book in hand. He didn't look up as I sat down in the chair closest to his. I put my feet on the seat, curling up on myself. I remembered all the nights I'd watched him here, plotting with Arthur and Eudokia, and how when they left, he'd turn to me and ask for my thoughts on what they'd talked about. Fun times.

"Were any conclusions reached?" I asked.

He put the book down. Marinina, I noticed, and he had to be more stressed than he showed. Crime novels were his comfort reading material.

"Not really. Everyone had their own ideas, but there's no reason they can't pursue them all at once. We're going to go after their business interests, since they were unwise enough to get financing from a bank that has ties with one of Karim's hedge funds. Julian apparently has contacts on the publishing circuit, and he volunteered to use that tack to bring down Green's status."

I felt my eyebrows rise. If Julian was abandoning his moping after the deposed Princess of the city, I should be on the look-out for flying pigs. Or maybe his sense of self-preservation had cut in, finally.

"Virgil and Ophelia both opted for a frontal assault, but Arthur talked them down to just keeping the place under surveillance," Kirill continued. "Alhambra will pitch in, as well as track down their sources of artifacts. While we wait for the next move, there's the matter of finding out their exact plans - Arthur was hoping he could count on your intuition in that regard."

"Sure." I watched the way the candlelight reflected on his hair, adding a golden sheen to the deep black.

I thought I was sitting out of his reach, but he managed to put his hand on the armrest of my chair as he leant forward. "Rachel-?"

I brushed my fingers against his knuckles, false reassurance I didn't feel. "I'll be fine. Just female irrationality."

He called on a few choice demons, switching languages at random. "Tell me one thing. Should I kill him for you?"

"You don't even know who he is." I had to smile. My vampire in shining armor.

"Then tell me?"

Busted. "How much do you know about what happened in Katanga?"

"Only what you've told me, and a few rumors." He didn't look surprised. The knots in my mind usually all came down to one thing, after all. "In the fifties and sixties, you were working for someone who was conducting magical experiments that involved a large number of deaths, and that wasn't the most unpleasant thing about it. You ended up shutting him down. You don't like the fact that it took you that long. Ewig was that man, wasn't he?"

I looked at the flickering candle flames. I'd always liked fire. Latent pyromania, perhaps.

"He was Jibril as Sadat then," I began. "I should have guessed from the name that he was bad news. Immortal, omnipotent - he liked playing God as much as calling himself one, and he was rubbish at both. But he got me hooked too deep to see that.

"As to why - it really starts earlier. When my father sent me to America, to his friends in New York who later arranged my studies at Finisterra, I thought that was only because I never got along with my stepmother. I was half goy, and a living reminder of my father's youthful indiscretions. Synagogue on the Shabbat, and then Church on Sunday with my aunts, so I didn't really fit. But I think my father knew something about what was coming. It could have been just reading the papers, or one of his tzaddik visions - did I tell you he was a tzaddik?"

Kirill shook his head. "You never talk about your childhood."

"Well, there's not much to talk about. It was normal, as normal as it got for a half goy in Lvov. Then I went to America, and the war began. Father died in the first month, some kind of stupid mess with Soviets shooting blind in the night. By the time it got really bad, when the Germans came, I was at Finisterra, and everyone told me to forget the world, focus on what lay beyond the veil.

"News got out slowly even there. The deaths disturbed hermetic workings for years, so finally they had no choice but to gather students and tell them. That was 1944. I called up a demon that night, Ronove, and almost had my head clawed off, but I got him to give me the truth, more out of surprise than by any trade I made. All my family were dead, up to the third generation."

Kirill made an abortive motion with his hand, as if he'd wanted to ask me a question, but didn't want to interrupt. I could guess which question that would be.

"I was powerful, then. Hybrid strength, I guess - my mother was a hedge witch, and a terror in her own right, from what I heard. Gifted fast-track, seminars with the post-grads, the whole hog. Calling up Ronove barely gave me a headache. After that, I trudged on for a year and more, determined to finish my studies and make a difference, I guess. I had some vague ideas about working for the Tribunal - you remember that debate, on whether Shoah was terrible enough for it to intervene in Daylight matters?"

"I took part in that," he said wistfully. "Not that it made much difference - my standing was precarious, since I'd taken part in engineering the alliance between the Whites and Reds, throwing all the weight behind Stalin. There was talk of Tribunal trials for all Russian vampire leaders at one point."

I hadn't known that, though I was aware of the truce that ended a twenty-year civil war that had threatened to shatter the Concordat on more than one occasion. I'm not the only one who rarely talks about the past.

"That was resolved in early 1946." The fact that all the killers had been left to Daylight justice still left a bitter taste in my mouth. "I was twenty-two, with all the pride and foolishness that went with it. I decided that if the mages hadn't done anything for justice, it was time to take matters in my own hands. I left Finisterra before I got my degree - it just didn't seem worth it anymore.

"Though I did stop to tar and feather my mentor as my first act of rebellion against society." I smiled at the memory. "I've been told Theramenes hasn't grabbed a student's tits since then.

"The less said about the next six years, the better. I don't know why the Tribunal didn't catch up with me - pure dumb luck, I guess. I killed some people, nearly got killed myself a few times, got my driver's license and marksman certification. By 1952 the ground was starting to get hot under my feet, and too many Kabbalists were moving to Israel to make even Tel Aviv a safe haven. I was working with some Daylighters who agreed with my principles and didn't ask how I got to places no-one else could. In exchange for their help, I took care of some business for them. One day, I was supposed to put the fear of God into some Palestinians in a refugee camp in the West Bank. By the time I realized I'd tripped a ward where no ward should have been, it was too late.

"Jibril's companions - counterparts of my group, save for the anti-Nazi sideline - wanted to kill me outright, but he was interested in what a hermetic mage was doing there. I nearly took his arm off once he untied me. It didn't phase him in the least."

There was a drop of wax sliding down the length of the closest candle, twisting and turning as it ran down the uneven surface.

"He kept me tied up, in that bunker, and talked at me for three weeks. Justice, civilization, a new world order with magic making sure it went right this time. By the time he let me out, I was sold, hook, line and sinker.

"A year later I was in Katanga. I used the things I'd learned as a terrorist to pull together site security, barter with the tribes, hunt when I had the time. We rode out regime changes and a civil war. I don't know what I was thinking, then. That I was his muse, his inspiration as he cut people up and poisoned them only to watch them go insane?" I shook my head. "I was such a kid. He didn't even want me in his bed, not more often than once a month or so."

I fell silent for a moment, then almost jumped as Kirill put his hand on my shoulder. I hadn't noticed when he got up. He stepped away immediately with an apologetic look on his face.

"What was the point of the experiments?" he asked softly.

"Breaking down to the subconscious, the reptilian brain under all the human conditioning. Unleashing the innate magic powers it controls. Healing, premonition, intuition. And telekinesis."

"Creating a Tribunal special agent."

I nodded, clenched my fingers tighter. "He started on Daylighters without an ounce of magical talent, then moved on to stronger and stronger mages. Sensory deprivation came first, alternated with sensory overload. Indoctrination. Pain. Indulging instincts - sex, aggression, self-preservation - and punishing all signs of higher emotions. Some of it was psychosomatic, Jung-based, a lot was through different kinds of poisons. Alchemy, to change the body chemistry and enhance abilities. He's very good on alchemy."

The medical jargon helped, a little. "Once the subconscious was in control, the ego coexisting with it or pushed back, it, it had to be taught to use its powers. Falling off a cliff, having to fight overwhelming odds, solving labyrinths to get to the antidote of a poison. In the final test," mud and darkness and ice in my veins, "he put the subject into a pit full of river jacks. Rhinoceros vipers. They're the deadliest in the world, neuro and hemo, and you can't survive a bite, can't survive without-"

A sob caught in my throat, and I had to breathe carefully for a few minutes before I was able to speak again. Kirill kept his silence, standing somewhere behind me and to the left.

"Using the subconscious magic burns out magical talent, or more precisely re-routes it," I started again. "As the balance shifts, so does control. And then it starts burning out the life, until the subject dies, or goes crazy and commits suicide."

"How did he control it?" Kirill's voice was calm.

"An intravenous combination of drugs and alchemy - a trigger for the full shift and mitigation of the burnout. He didn't have the patience to use meditation, or maybe he didn't want the subject shifting modes at will."

"Did it work?"

"There is a box on the desk," I said. I heard him walking towards it. "Open it."

I heard the catch and the screech of unoiled hinges. I knew what he would see: rows of ampoules filled with a golden liquid, and a syringe that had been outdated twenty years ago, subtle shifts in medicine changing the style until it was instantly recognizable as an antique.

Kirill was silent. I rose to my knees in the armchair, turned to look at him. He met my eyes; all that showed in his face was wonder and understanding, as if a piece of a puzzle had slid into place.

I smiled as I stood up and smoothed the skirts of my dress and robe. I stretched my hand out. The snake came to my call, and so did the power.

A gust of wind, and all the candles in the room went out, bar one.

I stared at that single light. "I watched as they put Jibril away in a crystal coffin. I watched him scream as the ice took him. And it felt like they were freezing me in."

"How do you feel about him now?" Kirill's voice was still so damn calm.

"Contempt. Disgust. Hate, not as strong as it was. Curiosity about how the hell he got out so fast." I shrugged. "I try not to think about Katanga, so it hit me hard."

"You threw blood on him." The greatest vampire insult. "He did not wipe it off."

"I'll believe he has a conscience when pigs start to fly." I turned and looked at Kirill. In the light, his eyes shone like black diamonds. "I can leave as soon as-"

"No." He still made no move. "I promised to take you dancing. I'm not in the habit of breaking my word."

I hesitated, torn between laughing and slapping him and just falling into his arms. Then my body made the choice for me, as thirty-five hours without sleep and riding the snake caught up with me. My knees trembled, but before they gave out, Kirill caught me.

"I didn't hate him for changing me," I whispered into Kirill's chest. "I hated him for controlling me."

This close, I felt how he held his breath for one fleeting moment. "Do you want-"

I wondered - him to let go of me, to leave, to take me to the guest bedroom I'd never slept in, not once?

"Just to sleep." I tangled my hands in his shirt, and it might have been the snake, because from the word go the snake has liked Kirill Yevgenyevich far too much. "Stay with me?"

He must have sensed I didn't feel like being carried around, because he helped me walk back into the bedroom and let me sit down on the bed myself. I slipped under the covers and watched him take off the formal clothes he wore.

He paused as he unfastened his cufflinks. "By the way, Rachela? Do you prefer that name?"

"No." I stretched out, felt the silk of the nightdress sliding over my skin. Sleep hovered at the edges of my eyelids, and what did it hurt to tell him, when he already knew so much? "Leave Rachela Tepper to her grave. It's Rachel Malory now."