Rasputin's Bastards (17 page)

Fuck it
, she thought.
It’s now or never
.

“I am out of here!” Heather yelled, and with that, she spun around on her little sandaled feet and took off along the path to the lake.

“ — seek to expand!” hollered Hippie Pete behind her. “Hey! We do not go to the lake, where sometimes snakes come from! Stress, Heather!
Stress!
”

She ignored him and ran faster. This was too weird, and she needed the space to work out what it meant.

Heather spread out the sequence in her head: she closes her eyes for a couple of seconds in the lounge of the yacht, and suddenly here she is — back fifteen years ago, at a Transcendental Meditation camp where she spent two lousy, boring weeks before embarking on her more engaging career as a junior subscription scammer. It’s not just remembering — it’s reliving. Like she’d been transported back into her memories to relive that tedious, repetitive and ultimately short-lived phase of her life. The baby had said they needed to be prepared for something. What exactly did he mean by preparation?

Was it preparation for action? For this partnership and life-long friendship the baby had been prattling on about? Or just a neat way to keep her out of the way?

If that was the plan, it seemed to be working. As Heather ran she tried to will her eyes open. But all that happened was her eyes opened wider here, in the past. She saw the old growth cedar and pine trees more clearly, the sunlight as it sent shafts down between their branches, the bed of brown needles on the forest floor. This world was getting more and more real every step she took. Even though it wasn’t real — except in memory, and maybe the odd post-pizza dream.

That’s what they were doing — putting her people into these dream worlds, locking them up safe and sound, so the little bastards could do God only knew what when they got to God only knew where.

Heather slowed down. As an adult, she could make the run — Holden made sure they were all in fighting trim once he got going on the magazine biz — but she was using her untrained little kid legs. And when she was a little kid, she wasn’t much of a runner. Or an athlete at all. In fact, she couldn’t do much of anything well — not even —

“S-swim,” she said aloud. Heather thought about this. She couldn’t swim at that age.

She remembered bad dreams — of falling; of drowning; of being chased by the man with a hook for a hand. You didn’t always win in those dreams. Sometimes the water would get in your lungs, or the ground would come up to meet you — or the hook would catch you through a rib.

But you didn’t die. You thought you were going to die — but exactly the opposite happened. Your heart sped up — your breath caught — your eyelids twitched . . .

You woke up.

She put a hand on her side, where she was developing a stitch, and took off again. For the lake, with all the snakes. The stressful, stressful snakes.

But in spite of what Hippie Pete said, Heather didn’t think that the snakes would cause nearly as much stress as would death by drowning.

Heather came out of the forest at the top of a low cliff, which she could scale via a rickety wooden staircase that led down to a dock, on the edge of a smallish lake that was rimmed by rock and evergreen. Heather ignored the stairs, figuring she’d chicken out if she had to slow down to climb down twenty-five steps to a dock. She set her jaw, took a deep breath and ran full tilt over the edge of the cliff.

What followed was a brief moment of transcendent joy as Heather became airborne. Just as briefly, she worried that this weird dream-memory might turn into a flying dream — which would be bad, because she’d probably enjoy that too much to go down into the lake and drown herself properly.

But the moment passed quickly, and Heather’s feet struck the ice cold surface of the lake. The rest of her followed shortly, and before she knew it her head was underwater.

The stress was unbelievable. Every nerve in her body screamed at her to get out of the water:
Get back on shore! Don’t let the air out of your lungs! Find the bottom! Put your feet down! Get Your Head Out Of The Water!

Heather felt herself struggling, heard her heart thundering in her ears. She concentrated and force d herself to open her mouth, and watched as the quicksilver bubbles of lung-air fled past her eyes. The lake water poured into her mouth, her sinuses, and filled her lungs and chest in an instant.

She struggled to cough, push it out, as her limbs flailed and her nerves shrieked:

GET OUT! GET OUT! FOR CHRIST’S SAKE YOU SUICIDAL FUCKWIT, GET OUT!

Heather blinked. She was back in the lounge on board Holden’s yacht. The sky outside the portholes was a deep azure streaked by deep red clouds.

Inside, everyone was where they had been, straight and still in their chairs. The yacht’s engines thrummed beneath them, but there was another noise — softer, more insistent — that it took Heather a moment to recognize as breathing. Slow, synchronized breathing. Heather looked to the front of the room. The three children and the baby were sitting there now. Or rather, they were slumping there. The baby was on the table, back propped against the arm of one of the older children. His head lolled. The four of them seemed to be asleep.

Gingerly, Heather stood up. She braced herself — half-expecting the baby to send one of his punishing ice cream headaches her way. But nothing came. They were too busy, probably, keeping the rest of the people in a dream state. Heather sidestepped around the edge of the chair in front of her, bent to pull off her deck shoes. She laid them neatly on the floor underneath Holden Gibson’s chair. Barefoot now, she padded her way behind the table and then to the hatch that led to the aft deck and the bridge. Just in case anyone was listening in, Heather recalled her top secret personal mantra — which they would have probably expected her to be saying in her dream retreat about now. It would block them, maybe.

Mi
, she thought as she crept along the narrow corridor to the stairs,
mi, mi, mi, mi, mi
.

Alexei the KGB agent was alone on the bridge. He was manning the helm of the boat. There was no end to this guy’s skills.

Heather squinted. Alexei was the only person she’d seen so far that wasn’t a) a kid, or b) stuck in meditation.

Mimimimimimimimimimimimi
, thought Heather, and summoned a picture of the Maharishi from her memory. It wasn’t, unfortunately, from TM camp. It was the one with John Lennon and Paul McCartney from when The Beatles went all mystical the ’60s. It would have to do.

The yacht lurched then, as Kilodovich throttled back on the engine. He turned the wheel, and as he did so Heather felt another lurch, as the boat started to come about. Where in hell were they going?

As stealthily as she could, Heather climbed the rest of the way out of the hatch and crept to edge of the bridge. She poked her head up, and looked out over Alexei’s shoulder.

She suppressed a gasp. There was a coastline ahead of them — a wall of high black rock caught fire in the sunrise, waves breaking in a golden froth over the shallows. Nearer, she could see a great swarm of large birds, circling over their path like a funnel cloud. Further, thin lines of smoke rose from beyond the jagged edge of the rock-face. And approaching them was the oddest collection of boats that Heather had ever seen.

“
Mimimimimimi
,” she whispered, trying to drive the wonder from her mind. Alexei turned then, and for an instant their eyes met.

“Hey,” she said softly, and made a little smile. “KGB.”

Alexei’s eyes were still and lifeless for but an instant. Then they seemed to come alive — with a kind of light, borne from the back of his skull. Heather tried to look away — but she couldn’t now.

“
Mi,
” she said. “
Mi mi mi mi
.”

But it was too late. She felt herself slipping, falling toward the light in his eyes — smelled the scent of pine and tar and lake breeze that told her TM camp was not far away. She felt a falling sensation in the middle of her gut — and for an instant, she thought she heard a voice:

“What the fuck are they?” it said.

“What the fuck are they?”

Holden Gibson counted ten boats coming to greet his yacht and bring it back to the Koldun’s home. Two of those boats were narrow wooden sailboats painted red and green, big enough to hold a cabin but only just. They belonged to Nikolay Trolynka, and were piloted by his sons Oleg and Makar. Three of them were long canoes, fitted with outboard motors and run by the Stol sisters. There was a cabin cruiser — less than half the size of Holden Gibson’s yacht — painted red and green, same as Trolynka’s boats but belonging to his second cousin Orlovsky — the most dangerous man in New Pokrovskoye.

Darya Orlovsky, his daughter, stood at the bow, holding an unlit storm lantern ahead of her as though lighting the flotilla’s way as it headed into the sunrise, her long purple gown trailing her narrow shoulders and hips in the onrushing ocean breeze. The remaining three boats were licensed fishing boats owned by the Koldun himself, their nets gathered high at their sterns and set out like strands of gold in peacocks’ plumage, in the light of the rising sun.

There were more boats in the Koldun’s harbour that might have come to greet the children for the rejoining, but these ten were deemed to be the finest and fastest — and only the finest would be appropriate for so historic an occasion as this.

The boats slowed as they approached the yacht, and for a moment, it seemed as though sound was swept from the sea. The motors died, and the wind slowed, and even the cries of the birds overhead stilled.

Holden Gibson gasped deeply as he suddenly found his feet firm on the deck of his yacht. He clutched the lapels of his untucked shirt as though he were trying to tear them away, or maybe reassure himself of their reality. He drew a breath in quiet wonder at the sight.

He stood like that for an instant more — until the silence was broken, by a man’s shout: “No! Not again! I’m sorry! Oh — thank God it’s you.” It was followed again by the scampering of feet across deck, another shout, and a woman’s surprised yelp. This last was followed by a muffled thump.

Gibson blinked, and turned away from the flotilla — this crowd of boats whose pilots and passengers he seemed to know by name. Holden Gibson was a large man, but he moved with a child’s lightness as he turned to see about the noise.

Words and ideas and memories cascaded through him as he stepped back inside, and climbed the steps to the bridge. He blinked slowly, as he stood before the tableau. He was on the bridge of his boat. His pilot was nowhere to be seen. The girl — Heather! Yes, dear little Heather — was sprawled face-down, her Rasta locks fanning across the deck like the head of a discarded mop.

Standing over her was a tall, black-haired monster; a faceless thing that would kill without remorse.

“Nah,” said Holden, as he put the new memory in its place with more recent recollections. “You’re not a thing. You’re the fuckin’ Russkie.”

Holden let go of his shirttails, leaving sweaty handprints on them. The Russian, Alexei, was looking at him — or if not exactly at him, then in his general direction.

Holden knew he should know what was going on here with the thousand-yard stare — there was a kind of familiarity to it — but he couldn’t quite put it together. He was thinking about some time in a farmhouse — a long time ago, when he was very, very young and very bad things had happened to him. It was very far away.

He had lost part of himself back then, and for some reason . . . For some reason, it made him think about this Russian.

The murderous sense of déjà vu slipped away again before he could put it all in order.

The Russian stepped toward him now — and for an instant, Holden thought he was coming for him; there was a faraway look in his eye that Holden had seen in men bent on killing. That, Holden was sure, was what the Russian meant to do right now. Kill Holden Gibson. He’d never been more certain of anything in his life. Desperately, Holden balled his fist, raised it, and as the Russian got into range —

— Holden swung at the air.

He was looking forward now: at Heather, who moaned and stirred on the deck; and the slate grey sky, over a dark sea that was suddenly quiet with the approach of the Koldun.

Holden whirled around. The Russian was climbing down the steps that led to the lounge. He seemed unperturbed. As though he had walked through Holden.

Fascinated, Holden followed the Russian.

The Russian ducked under the top of the doorway and stepped into the lounge. Holden followed, and peered around. It looked like nobody had moved — nobody but Heather, who’d had the misfortune to make her way to the bridge — since he’d come there. The kids were even there. Including that talking baby that they all worshipped like their fucking father.

Someone had propped him upright on his pillow like a little Buddha statue. He was the only one with his eyes open, and he looked back over his shoulder as the Russian came up behind him. The baby grinned as the Russian picked him up. Together, the two hustled back through a narrow path between the chairs.

The other kids stood, and filed along behind them. Nobody seemed to take any note of Holden Gibson, and that was fine by him. He waited until they’d all stepped out the back. He cleared his throat.

“All right, crew,” he said, in his most commanding voice. “Now’s our chance!” And all at once, the entire crew’s eyes snapped open, and each stood.

“
Now’s our chance
!” Holden reeled back. The crew reeled back. “What the fuck?”

“
What the fuck
?”

He stared at them. They were repeating his every word — in a creepy kind of unison. He lifted his hand.

Two dozen hands raised.

He raised his middle finger.

The crew returned the gesture. Holden suppressed a chuckle.

Well fuck
, Holden thought, looking out the glass door at the assembly of children, watching the flotilla arrive to collect them.
I’m the same as you little freaks!