Moscow, Russia

1777

THE NIGHT THUNDERED and the entirety of Moscow was enshrouded in a dark and violent storm. At the heart of the city stood an edifice several meters high, with its long windows and rotting black wooden walls. The Romanov tower, an aged building more than two centuries old, retained its sinister and magnificent beauty in spite of its exterior’s visible degradation. Standing firmly in the middle of the storm, it produced an air of power and domination in the city, and as well manifested the authority of the royal Romanov family.

As though under a mysterious spell, everyone in the city, including those in the tower, was sunk in a profound sleep. One of the servants, however, a girl of nineteen years, was wide awake, standing in the middle of a long and slightly narrow room at the tower’s zenith.

Polina Novitskaya, the girl, had just gotten up from the floor. She weakly stood and tightly clutched her pendant in which Alexei’s picture was kept and protected. Blood was now sliding down from one side of her neck; she felt for the two small deep punctures just below the left side of her chin, and, upon feeling them, a terrific thought dawned on her.

Soon, she thought, the other vampires will come for her. Even she could already whiff the metallic smell of her blood; it would only take a few minutes before the entire city of vampires is put in a state of hysteria.

The room was dark, but not completely black. A faint yellowish light was coming from the array of sconces on either side of the room’s high walls, barely illuminating the room. There were candles on the sides of the red carpet too, but that did not do anything.

“Polina,” a young, pious and enchanting voice called out to her from the farthest end of the long room. “My beloved Polina.”

She looked straight ahead and searched for his face. But she could not; the room was too dark, and he was too far from the scarce illumination emanating from the walls and carpet. Polina could only see an obscure silhouette of him. He stood, tall, slender, and unmoving, against the full body-sized window, with the moonlight casting a shadow before him. Behind him also was a low altar, overflowing with flowers which she believed were red roses.

“Come here, now,” he called a second time.

But Polina was not ready. She nervously stood still in dead silence, shaking, trying to search and gather all the life and strength that was still left in her. A crippling sense of both fear and guilt weighed upon her heart in those moments; she thought of the doom that awaited her at the end, of all the sacrifices that she made, and of an impending lifetime of grief that she would have to endure after that night.

Just when she gained the resolve to take a step forward, a much different and much gentler voice ringed in her ears.

“Polina! Don’t do this! You won’t make it!” The voice—a voice of a different man—repeated in her head. Polina faltered and her knees weakened. “Nothing can stop him anymore. Polina, it’s useless, please, run out of there now,” it pleaded.

Suddenly she began to hear screeching sounds, as well as heavy rapid footsteps, from beneath the floor. Like a wave of zombies the vampires frantically ascended the stairs and knocked violently on the wooden door behind her. The knocks boomed; they resembled the sounds of fast exploding bombs. With their voices muffled by the thick wooden walls, the vampires snarled and screamed in a manner terrifying beyond Polina’s imaginations, for the voices sounded like the damned struggling to crawl out of hell.

“They’re coming, they’re here!” The girl thought with terror upon realizing that the tower—no, the city, had now woken.

The candles and the sconces shut off, and the windows blasted open. The strong winds viciously shook the curtains along with their torrents; the furniture vibrated. A spell was casted upon the entire tower so that all the inanimate objects erratically flew across all directions, temporarily hampering the other vampires in pursuit of the girl. The large eerie paintings on the wall, of late members of the royal family and of peculiar people that Polina did not recognize, shook as well.

All at once an unforgiving thunder struck land just beside the Romanov tower, filling the room with a sharp, deafening noise.

Then and there at the end of the long room, with the curtains gone and the bright silver light freely coming from the windows, Polina saw him, his figure as clear as day.

His face was cold and infernal. He glared at her with utmost interest, but with sardonic serenity and triumph at the same time, as if he knew she had now inevitably fallen into his trap. Human and absurdly beautiful though he appeared, his eyes were as dead as a corpse’s.

Waiting to receive his bride, he was wearing a black tie and was holding firmly a bouquet of bright red roses. It was an ironic picture, of flowers seething with color and life, clutched in the colorless hands of death. In an attempt to distract herself she looked at the roses, but before she could return to his eyes it was dark again.

The voices were becoming more desperate. More strange sounds could be heard and Polina could no longer distinguish them. Then, the thunder began striking again continually, filling the room with silver light, on and off.

He slowly raised his hand, as though welcoming her, inviting her to come closer.

“They will break into the room soon. Come forward now, my love, because there is no time,” he said and then, wearing a malignant smile, added: “Polina, walk ahead, and you will never regret it.”

A deadly chill washed over her soul, completely stripping her off of any more will to rebel. An immense hatred, but despair, too, possessed her in that very moment; the love that she had for him—if it had been really love—evaporated.

She slowly walked forward, now impervious to the chaos around her, hearing everything and nothing at once, the winds striking her hair and the fabrics of her gown.

Gentle tears slid down Polina’s cheeks. She sobbed softly, but fixed her gaze on him. She held her pendant with both hands, very tightly, holding Alexei against her chest.

When she reached him, she stopped a meter before him, trying not to meet his stare.

Polina took the red roses first, and then his hand. She shuddered at the coldness of his hand, and she shuddered too at the fact that, by accepting it, she had now completely abandoned her morality.

“We are forever.” He spoke with finality.

With a triumphant air, he twisted his lips in order that it formed a sweet, almost ironically innocuous smile, and then he carefully pulled her closer to him.

Polina Novitskaya capitulated, her body crashing onto his as her knees totally lost all control. He caught her, embraced her, and pressed his mouth on the right side of her neck. In those milliseconds, Polina voicelessly said a prayer, hoping for some miracle of deliverance from spiritual perdition, and if not from spiritual perdition, at least from complete forfeiture of her humanity.

For some reason, everything became dead still. The voices, the storm, the knocking—they all had stopped.

Polina waited.

But just before she could feel his pangs pierce through her, the door at the other end of the room broke loudly open.

That night, one more soul was sold to the devil.