Rasputin's Prodigy

by Michael Weinberger

  My fists clenched in anger, but what could I do other than stand there literally trembling in impotent fury, as Dimitri calmly disconnected the line. He could see my rage and the smile returned to his face, as he tensed in preparation for violence.

  He was silent a moment longer, before saying, “Perhaps this was something that would have been served better by simply calling me?

  I hadn't even realized I was holding my breath, until I made a conscious effort to let the air out. My hands were shaking so badly in their need to demolish the man standing in front of me that I didn't trust myself to move, so I just forced myself to take in a deep breath, trying to relax my clenched jaw, along with the rest of my too tightly wound body.

  Eventually I felt my fingers unclench and my jaw loosen enough to reply, “I thought it better to speak with you in person.” Dimitri seemed to regain a certain measure of his own composure at my words, and the realization of this fact shook me out of all the rage that had been burning through me. Dimitri, leader and Lord of the Russian vampire collective and quite possibly the oldest of all our kind had, just now and for at least the briefest of moments, been afraid of me.

  With a strangely renewed confidence Dimitri said, “A very presumptive move on your part to have come here uninvited.”

  “I am not interested in presumption Dimitri, only in diffusing the situation that has escalated between us.”

  “Indeed? And how do you propose we do that?” He asked.

  “Russia and the outlying regions belong to your clan and, as far as I am concerned, as long as your actions don't threaten the rest of us, I have little right nor the responsibility to act against you.”

  Dimitri frowned in confusion and then, using my own words against me, “You do realize your actions speak otherwise?”

  The rage returned and I growled, “The only reason we are here is because you have our people.”

  Dimitri's anger seemed to grow as well, “Truly? And how do you explain your alignment with the Romanov?”

  I initially had a mental hesitation before realizing he meant Alexei, “We were in the same place, at the same time, with the same people wanting to shoot us. That's it.”

  Dimitri let out a scornful laugh, “You expect me to believe that?”

  I took a step back, hoping to ease the tension that was building between us with distance, “The situation created the necessity last night, that's all.”

  Dimitri studied my face and looked as though he was going to throw another accusation at me, but the words never made it out of his mouth.

  Taking advantage of his momentary speechlessness I asked, “What is it with that guy anyway? I mean, I get that he has some voodoo that is a little bit beyond my understanding, but he's only one man.”

  Dimitri nearly shouted his answer at me, “He's not just one man! He is Starets and Grigori's finest student!”

  “Grigori?” I asked, “you mean Rasputin?”

  “Of course!” Dimitri looked at me with eyes on the verge of madness and he slammed his fists down on his desk shattering the heavy wood where his fist had hit.

  I stepped back again at the sight. Dimitri was small, frail looking to the point that it seemed as though a strong wind might blow him off his feet. Clearly that impression was about as far from reality as it could possibly be, and I suddenly felt very relieved that it had not come to blows between us.

  Dimitri looked down at the ruin of his desktop and then at his hands before visibly calming, “You don't realize what such a man is capable of.”

  I shook my head at the ironic whiplash that those words brought with them.

  “Are you actually trying to tell me that Alexei represents a greater threat to the world than you?”

  Dimitri studied me and then said, “Not Alexei, at least not exactly.” Dimitri looked away from me and sighed, “You are very young and have little knowledge of what Rasputin was beyond what the history books have described. You weren't here when the man began to study and meddle with forces that no man,” Dimitri suddenly looked back into my eyes, “even one as old as myself, should ever trifle with.”

  I thought I had read that Rasputin had dabbled in the occult, but I hadn't known if that were real or just more conjecture, enhanced by Hollywood. Now it would seem there was some truth behind those stories. Or, at least Dimitri believed there was.

  Dimitri seemed to read my thoughts and his eyes lit up in recognition, “So you do understand, at least a little.”

  “You're talking about some kind of occult knowledge that Rasputin passed along to Alexei, then?

  “Not just some arbitrary wisdom found in old periodicals, but the origins of our kind.”

  I froze, the breath stuck in my lungs and my eyes darted from side to side as my brain processed what Dimitri had just said. Even though I repeated those last four words out loud, I was saying them more to myself than to Dimitri, “Origins of our kind?”

  Dimitri's voice turned hard and mocking, “Do you truly think that we are some kind of genetic mistake? That some abnormality as random as a birth defect in our genetic code could turn us into the most superior creatures on the planet?”

  It wasn't something I “thought.” It wasn't medical theory, or even an educated hypothesis on the part of scientists who were tasked with filling in blanks when the facts ran out. Our condition was fact. Hard cold science, with no room for guess work, no room for error. The cause of our vampirism and its related effects on our bodies was as certain as the fact that we need oxygen to breathe, or that our ears are for hearing and our nose for smelling.

  I just stared at Dimitri dumbfounded and silent as he continued, “Look at me, I was an Ancient before your Alpha was ever born. I have seen the rise and fall of empires, and gained knowledge that could fill every library in the world twice over.” Dimitri held out his wrists to me, “Our blood holds the secret to immortality, can you think that this a mistake?”

  I just shook my head, not in any kind of disagreement with the statement as much as I was trying to shake the proverbial wheels in my brain so they would begin turning again. “So,” I asked in an attempt to stall for time while my brain tried to catch up with what Dimitri was saying, “what are we then?”

  Dimitri smile and raised his hands up and out to the side, “We! We are gods manifested on earth! We are divine entities walking in this world that belongs to us and us alone! This world, and all of its bounties are ours to harvest in order to enhance our lives. We are the inheritors of the world.”

  “And the humans?” It felt strange, differentiating myself from the rest of humanity as I had always believed that both my people and I were a part of the greater whole of humanity, as opposed to being something quite different.

  The excitement left Dimitri’s face and he just shrugged at the question, “They have their place, and I will give them credit for the creative advancements they have made in the last century, but in the end they have been placed here on earth for much the same reason as horses, chickens or cattle are here. They are resources for our use and have the sustenance we need to survive.”

  The indifference Dimitri clearly felt toward human beings was disconcerting, as it was clear that Dimitri felt the human race was little more than clever livestock.

  I shook off my unease and tried to change the subject, “And what does this have to do with Alexei's potential knowledge of our origins?”

  Dimitri sighed, “Given the length of my life, I have seen things that go beyond understanding. Things that science cannot now, nor ever will be able to explain.” Dimitri paused, as if reflecting on a particular experience from his memory before he began again, “There is power in that knowledge, but in all my years it was never something I could understand.”

  I waited as Dimitri laughed, “Perhaps I was always too afraid, so when I heard of a man, a human, who could guide me and instruct me in gaining and understanding that power, naturally I sought the man out. It didn't hurt that he was Russian.”

  “Rasputin?�
�� I said aloud, as the answer came to me, “you knew him?”

  “Of course,” Dimitri confirmed, “we traded knowledge. He tried to teach me about the occult, and I taught him about our kind, but where I struggled to understand what Rasputin was teaching me, he absorbed everything I showed him without effort. Eventually I realized what that demon of a man was doing.”

  My eyebrows raised, “What was he doing?”

  Dimitri pressed his lips together in a silent snarl before saying, “He was deliberately misleading me, putting conflicting information together in such a way that I would think myself too simple to be able to understand what he was trying to teach me. He...” Dimitri made a visible attempt to calm himself before continuing, “the arrogance of that man. To think he could take advantage of our arrangement, and then use what I had taught him in order to endear himself to the Tsaritsa by ‘saving’ her child. The child that I could have ‘saved’ just as easily, had I not been detained on a trip in counsel with Tsar Nicholas.”

  I didn't know why but Chris' face flashed in my head as a memory, or aberrant thought, fought its way to the surface of my mind. Chris had been human until he had been mortally wounded by a gunshot to the abdomen and would have died if Alpha had not given Chris a direct transfer of his own blood. It only took me a moment to connect the dots and my eyes went wide with shock as I turned to Dimitri, “You... the child? Alexei?”

  Dimitri stood with his chin thrust slightly forward, “The boy was the final piece of the puzzle that would have given me control of the entirety of the Russian Empire.” Dimitri shrugged, “The power behind the throne perhaps, but then that is always the way it is, isn't it? Kings, dignitaries, and in today's world Dictators, Despots and even Presidents are little more than figureheads for the real rulers of the land.”

  “But the Tsaritsa panicked and sought out Rasputin, instead of waiting for you?” I said.

  Dimitri growled, “I told the bitch to leave the child alone and let his physicians attend him in my absence, but we never liked each other and she used my absence to spirit the child off to Grigori. By the time we had returned to the White Castle the child's body had recovered from the transfusion I had given him before I left, and even though the secret of the boy's true condition and how he came to contract it was never revealed, Rasputin had poisoned the Tsaritsa against me to such a degree that she forced the Tsar to cast me out.”

  I heard the words coming from my mouth before I realized I was saying them, “You admit your intentions to use the child as a pawn for a power grab and you have the unmitigated gall to be indignant that the child's mother might find you a threat and have you removed?”

  Dimitri whirled on me, his eyes filled with rage, “Power grab?! Have you not been listening to me?” Dimitri began screaming at me, “We are gods! A god does not have to justify why he does what he does, he only has to be obeyed!”

  It was at that moment that my plan completely devolved. I had been planning to bargain the girls' freedom by reciprocating with whatever Dimitri demanded in return, at least to a degree. Now I could see that there would be no negotiating with this creature, this monster, who needed to be put down once and for all.

  I tensed my body in anticipation of violence, as I said simply, “You're insane.”

  Instead of exploding with an even greater rage, Dimitri seemed to calm and the smile returned to his face, “Insane?” He regarded me with a patronizing expression, “I am about to set into motion a plan that will net me all of Siberia. Either my connections within the government will grant me control of the territory or the late Dr. Whelan's biological bombs will render the area uninhabitable to anyone but our kind.”

  Dimitri stopped his tirade for a moment as he appeared to internally consider something, then he slumped his shoulders and spoke in a confessional tone, “Personally, I tire of waiting for the current adminstration’s permission.”

  I mocked, “And gods don’t have to justify themselves.”

  He missed my sarcasm and nodded his head in agreement, “The time has come for more drastic steps. There will be opposition, of course, even the threat of nuclear retaliation but, in the end, the truth is that Russia desperately needs the resources coming out of Siberia and would never risk destroying it in simple revenge. They cannot reclaim it, so they will have no choice but to make me an ally, as opposed to an enemy.”

  I shook my head, “Completely insane.”

  Dimitri shrugged his shoulders and walked to one side of his desk and sat on the edge, “History will tell, but today it was far more insane for you to come here.”

  Dimitri crossed his arms in front of himself and smiled, then with a bolt of speed he reached to where he had placed my gun on his desk.

  I had removed the ammunition so the move surprised me, but I instinctively charged forward at the sight of the gun anyway. Dimitri whipped his hand toward me and the hard steel of the weapon slammed against my face. Stars burst like fireworks in front of my eyes and I stumbled back. Dimitri moved with me as I retreated and one of his hands shot into my pocket where I had put the ammunition clip. My mind was slow to register what Dimitri was doing, but when I felt his fingers in my pocket and about to curl into a fist around the magazine, clarity quickly returned. I grabbed his wrist, trapping his hand in my pocket, but Dimitri wrenched his arm back with such power that it lifted me off the ground and tore the fabric of the pocket sufficiently for him to remove his balled fist along with the clip. I fell to the ground hard and heard Dimitri laugh as he slid the clip into the gun, ratcheting the slide to get a cartridge into firing position and aimed the gun at my head.

  I never heard the door open, nor any footsteps or sound of any kind that would indicate that someone else had come into the room, so when Dimitri suddenly looked up, eyes wide with shock and pointed the gun away from me, my head couldn't process what was happening.

  The sound of steel ringing on steel chimed in the air and the gun flew across the room. Dimitri pivoted and retreated behind his desk as someone leapt over me in pursuit.

  I had noticed the umbrella stand set on the floor next to Dimitri's desk when I had come in and had even taken note of the different umbrellas that had been sitting inside. Given Nazran's often rainy weather, an umbrella stand was not a surprising sight to see in any office space and I had paid it little mind. I watched from the floor as Dimitri's hand dipped into the forest of umbrellas as he ran past the canister, but when it came up again it held an ornamental walking stick. Dimitri twisted the ornamental handle and quickly pulled a long slender sword out of the walking stick. Shifting his weight to the balls of his feet Dimitri raised the sword defensively over his head. I watched in shock as Alexei slashed his hunting knife down at Dimitri who managed to parry the strike with the part of the walking stick that had been the sword’s sheath. Alexei barely flinched as he swatted the wooden sheath aside and continued the chase, with Dimitri leaping over his desk and thrusting the point of the sword at me. I rolled to the side, kicking Dimitri's legs out from under him, sending him sprawling to the ground. Alexei immediately came over the desk and would have pinned Dimitri to the ground like an insect specimen in a display with that massive blade of his had I not caught his wrists.

  “No!” I yelled, “he still has Lei!”

  Alexei looked like he was going to argue, but any words he was going to say were abandoned as both of us had to jump back from the point of Dimitri's sword as the Ancient slashed it at our legs. Dimitri's face was enraged by Alexei’s appearance and he directed his attack in Alexei’s direction. Alexei retreated but Dimitri expertly pressed his attack, continuing to drive Alexei back by using the longer length of his sword to thrust with deadly strikes, yet remaining outside of Alexei’s reach with the hunting knife.

  I tried to move in, but without a weapon of my own I wasn't going to do much good. I scanned the floor searching for anything I could use when I saw the glint of steel, under a leather chair in the far corner of the room. I ran for the gun, but Dimitri saw me mov
e, and after a thrusting strike at Alexei's chest, reversed his steps and charged to intercept me. Dimitri had the angle and managed to cut me off with a slash of the sword before I could get to the gun. He might have tried to retrieve it himself if Alexei hadn't also been pursuing him. He stood in front of the gun and held his ground, as I watched his sword become a literal blur of rapid strikes while Alexei's hunting knife appeared to barely move. I couldn't believe that Alexei hadn't been stabbed a half a dozen times until I realized that each slight movement of Alexei's blade was parrying the longer thrusts of Dimitri's sword. The rapier like blade that Dimitri was using was a stabbing weapon and only the point was truly deadly. By altering the direction of each thrust to a small degree the point was passing Alexei's body harmlessly with what seemed like minimal exertion as compared to the full body thrusting that Dimitri was employing.

  I watched as Dimitri tried to twist the blade mid-strike in order to redirect the point from what appeared initially to be a heart strike, yet ended as thrust to the throat. Immediately I realized that Alexei wouldn't be able to get his knife up in time to parry, but this time Alexei didn't even try. Instead he juked to the side like a boxer and attempted to move inside the range of the sword. Dimitri was ready for the move and slashed the edge of the sword down, the sharpened edge slicing a shallow line across Alexei’s back as he tried to duck forward into striking distance. Alexei arched in pain but still managed to launch his own strike, albeit towards a non-lethal part of Dimitri's left thigh, and his hunting knife sliced through the fabric of Dimitri’s slacks as well as the flesh beneath.

  Both wounds were painful but shallow and far from incapacitating. The fight had an elegant style and conveyed a sense of mastery on the part of both men, making it almost like watching the perfectly coordinated and choreographed dance. I, therefore, felt like a complete heathen when, as Dimitri parried Alexi’s latest move, I took the opportunity to lift the heavy leather chair and swing it baseball bat style into Dimitri's side. My inner caveman rejoiced even further as the sensation of the bone jarring impact traveled up the length of the chair before it broke over Dimitri's body, which collapsed at the point of impact and crumbled to the ground from the sheer force of my swing.