A little after four-thirty on the morning of December 30th, 1916, British SIS Lt. Oswald Rayner leaned against the railing of the “Great” Petrovsky Bridge with a pocket watch in hand, waiting for a man to die. Five other men stood with him, arranged in a semicircle around a thrash of darkening bloodstains, as if their bodies could veil the evidence of their crime.
Four minutes had passed since they’d dropped Grigori Rasputin into the Little Nevka River through a hole in the ice, far on the outskirts of St. Petersberg. They’d bound the monk in cloth and ropes, aiming to let him drown beneath the frozen surface. By the railing, he’d fought back one last time, squirming like a maggot and screaming into the blood-sopped cloth before they dropped him. Then they’d all stood around, peeling off bloody gloves and shaking hands, expecting a flood of prestige in the eyes of the gods.
Prince Yusupov had smiled at Lt. Rayner—they were old occult friends, reunited. Grand Duke Pavlovich had dangled his lantern over the flaking green paint of the wooden railing, grinning at the dark stain of the Nevka’s gurgling waters. Retired politician Purishkevich had hugged Captain Sukhotin, thanking him for his service. Dr. Lazovert had cheerily informed the conspirators that he would flee the country—an admission met with a titter.
Almost two whole minutes had passed before their congratulations faltered. Then the dread had crawled in through their cold nostrils, their burning lungs, to nest beside their ill-tempered hearts.
Lt. Rayner had advised patience. He’d insisted that they wait until the count of five, but the silence was already full of recriminations. Glances in flickering lamplight were being exchanged like shouts. Blame was coming. The Tsarina would seek their heads.
The lone British officer loathed these men and their tempers. All five would’ve eagerly killed Rasputin for the sake of the secular Russian Empire, but they hadn’t made any moves until the gods had offered a task to do the deed—and Rayner had offered London’s money to dispose of the Cat in Rasputin’s belly. Now they were acting like none of them wanted this blood.
A cold breeze picked up, and the spans of the bridge groaned with sympathy for their sorrows. Five seconds of forced patience remained. Four, three, two, one. “Five minutes!” Rayner snapped the watch cover closed. “Feel anything?”
Prince Yusopov lowered his brows. “Nothing.”
Captain Sukhotin and Purishkevich muttered their agreement in Russian. Dr. Lazovert looked down at the bloodstains, then at Rayner, as if blaming him. Grand Duke Pavlovich pulled his lantern back over the railing and raised it towards the British officer.
“No new prestige.” Yusupov covered his mouth with pale, shivering fingers. “No reward.”
“You said this was task!” Grand Duke Pavlovich yelled in bad English.
“Shut it!” Rayner barked. “He should’ve drowned.”
“He isn’t dead,” Yusupov muttered. “Unholy monk.”
“It’s the Cat o’ Nine Lives—nine,” Rayner said quickly. “Count them off, goddamnit. There was the cyanide—one death!”
“Yes,” Dr. Lazovert replied. He’d shaved the block of poison with a knife, sprinkling it over cakes and into cups of wine.
Yusupov nodded hurriedly. “There was the evisceration.”
Rayner raised a second finger. “Guseva’s attempt before the war?”
“Belly stab,” the Prince noted. “She tried to cut out the Cat on Iliodor’s orders but hooked his innards.”
Rayner waved aside the explanations. “That’s two. How many shots to the back?”
“Three!” Purishkevich said.
Rayner nodded and held out five fingers. “Five—” Another finger on Rayner’s second hand lifted. “—and I shot him in the head after he fell. Last bullet. That makes six.”
“I brained him,” Yusupov said.
“Seven,” Rayner counted.
“No, eight,” Yusupov argued. “Once when he went for you, once in the blanket. Both times, skull cracked open.”
“Eight then, yes?” Rayner asked, showing the group eight fingers.
“Yes,” Dr. Lazovert agreed cautiously.
Rayner dropped his hands. “And drowning in the river makes nine.”
“He should be dead,” Yusupov muttered.
“We should’ve brought more bullets.” Rayner spat into the icy water. “Fucking monk!”
Purishkevich, nominally the head of this conspiracy, said something to Yusupov sharply.
Prince Yusupov replied in a hushed, rapid tone.
Rayner couldn’t understand their words, but he knew roughly what was happening. This was a marriage of convenience. The remains of the London cult wanted revenge, and Rasputin was hated in both secular and occult circles. Now that they’d thrown their quarry into the water and somehow left him alive, Purishkevich would want both an explanation and a scapegoat. Their alliance would dissolve.
“Listen up!” Rayner yelled at the bickering noblemen.
“What?” Yusupov asked irritably.
“We’ve failed, but we aren’t doomed. The police won’t hold me during the war. Yusupov, you and Pavlovich have too much power. Push for house arrest, and I’ll do the same through diplomatic channels. Tell Purishkevich that he’ll be left out of any accounts of the murder attempt. The monk didn’t know him, and Buchanan will supply an alibi if he needs one. Sukhotin—flee with Lazovert. Or find another way out. We can’t cover you.”
“Fuck,” Dr. Lazovert said simply. Sukhotin nodded in agreement.
“This is your plan?” Yusupov asked dumbly.
Rayner stuck his cold-numbed hands in his coat pockets. “Do you want to run up and down the river looking for a half-frozen man?”
Prince Yusupov glanced away, towards the far end of the bridge. There were few streetlights out here, and none over the spans of the bridge itself. If it weren’t for a single electric lamp on the far shore of Krestovsky Island, casting an orange glow across the skeletal boughs of leafless trees, he would’ve seen nothing but the moonless dark of a frozen night. “No,” he finally replied. He was young and healthy but as pale as a drowned corpse. Even in a heavy coat, he huddled inwards, seeking a fire that simply wasn’t in him anymore.
Rayner clapped his old friend on the shoulder to rouse him. “Good. Then let’s get out of here, and hope Rasputin dies from exposure.”
“Gods willing,” Yusupov said, “and may the Cat o’ Nine Lives be lost in the snow.” He started passing instructions to Purishkevich in Russian.
Once the conspirators knew their roles, they walked back to their automobile, passing the sleeping sentry in his guard box at the foot of the bridge. Lt. Rayner had paid to cover that man in silence and darkness for nothing. At best, their only reward was trouble. At worst, the London cult would be blamed for attempting to steal the Cat from the Russian Orthodox cult. No matter how Lt. Rayner measured it, this was a gods-damned mess.
Grigori Rasputin could feel the Cat burning deep in his stomach. He’d filled his lungs with water, but the heat and energy of the artifact sustained him while he loosened his bindings at the bottom of the river. There was a rendezvous point to the west, just outside of St. Petersburg, where a low-level Bolshevik cultist would be waiting.
Rasputin had planned days in advance to leap into the river and escape if Yusupov attempted to assassinate him. It was bad luck that a London cultist had organized Yusupov’s conspiracy, and they’d spent the better part of the evening wasting Rasputin’s lives. It was better luck yet that they’d thrown him into the river without finishing him off. As always, ignorance was Rasputin’s ally.
The ropes were poorly tied. The assassins had relied on the blanket wrapping to drown him. A foolish mistake. He worked the bindings off his wrists, then untied the knot around his ankles. He’d been under for at least six or seven minutes, but the gods were generous, and the Cat o’ Nine Lives was treating the drowning like a single fatal injury. The water was just below freezing, but so long as the Cat sustained him, hypothermia couldn’t take hold.
Still, there was a risk of being swept out to sea. Staying near the bottom, he crawled along the slimy clay riverbed, slowly following the current until the Nevka began to curve towards the mouth of the river and the Finnish Gulf.
In the dark below the ice, he was blind, but the angle of the banks were recognizably shallow here—maybe two hundred meters downstream from the bridge.
He crawled up the muddy slope to the gap where the ice met the shore. This ought to be the spot. Using both arms and legs, he punched the ice with his shoulders—once, twice, thrice. The bullet wounds in his back twinged, but he ignored the lances of pain. All were irrelevant deaths, dismissed by the Cat and doubly dismissed by the willpower of a strong man.
The ice groaned, lifted, and split over him in a shower of water. When he broke air, he didn’t open his mouth or move his lungs. He needed to remain drowned until he could reach a fire. He staggered up out of the river, looking around beneath the clouded sky of a bleak miserable night. There, by a stand of silver birch, someone was tending to coals.
“Ey!” hollered the stranger by the fire.
Rasputin strode out of the water. He waved back and slopped his way up to the top of the bank. He could feel fresh, hot blood dribbling from the gunshot wound in his forehead. The pain was quickly numbing again, but he paused twice to wipe the blood away from his eyes.
“Come, sit!” The stranger spoke with an accent, not Russian but Georgian. Perhaps he was one of the old Bolshevik bank robbers. He was seated on an ash log dragged up by the fire, and he had a Mosin carbine slung over his heavily padded shoulder. The thickness of his fur jacket and many layers made him look absurd, but he’d been prepared to wait here all night without walls to capture the warmth of the coals.
Rasputin stumbled over to the fire, raised a hand to indicate a moment, then turned to disgorge steaming water onto the frozen earth. Stomach, lungs, sinuses—everything ran hot with water, and Rasputin made a noise halfway between vomiting and a snarl of pain. Regardless of the Cat’s power—or maybe because of it—he was being scraped to the bottom of his lungs, through his belly, and behind his eyes.
“Ah, the Cat?” the Bolshevik cultist asked.
Rasputin finished emptying as quickly as he’d started, and took in a deep, dry breath, interrupted by a gasp. Without the Cat, the jaws of winter were sinking into his wet skin like a pack of vicious dogs. “Cold, Christ!” he shouted. “Dry clothes?”
“Wait,” the Bolshevik said, “sit before the fire.”
Rasputin kneeled by the coals and began to shiver almost immediately. He was wearing nothing but galoshes and soaking wet underwear, and the Cat wouldn’t protect him another time. “Why wait?” he asked, crossing his arms over himself.
The Bolshevik stared at him in the dim orange light for half a minute.
Rasputin burst into shivers, and his jaw clattered loudly. “What are you staring at? I’ll freeze here.” Teeth clicked together, nearly biting his tongue.
The Bolshevik frowned. “I see. You’ve already died nine times.”
Rasputin nodded, quivering violently. His skin was rapidly numbing. He needed winter clothes now, or he’d have to waste a wish to save himself from hypothermia. He already regretted bringing most of his banked prestige with him—it’d stopped him from reasonably dodging during the assassination attempt. If he’d showed up in the temple having spent everything, they would’ve dragged him off the grounds and murdered him on the spot.
“There’s a very large task on your head,” the Bolshevik said. “You’re worth a great deal of prestige if you die before the Gregorian New Year.”
“It was a stupid risk, I know,” Rasputin said defensively. “Do you have clothes for me?”
“No,” the Bolshevik said flatly, hooking his gloved hand onto the strap of his carbine.
Rasputin felt a shock roll up his spine, and it wasn’t the cold.
“You risked a lot going to Moika Palace,” the Bolshevik continued. “My spies told me this evening that a London cultist was on the grounds.”
“I wish to be warm and dry.” Rasputin’s underwear, hair, and beard dried up as if the water had been drawn inwards and soaked up. Except for the dirt caked on his galoshes, there was no evidence he’d been in the river only a minute ago.
The Bolshevik clucked disapprovingly. “That was expensive.”
“You can’t kill me.” Rasputin rose to his feet. “I’m your banker.” If he died, a sizable portion of the cult’s prestige would die with him.
“You’re a mortal man now, and a liability. How much are you carrying?”
“All of it.”
“Don’t lie. You left most of it with the Tsarina, with instructions to hand it off to the Grand Inquisitor if you died. I’m asking if you spent any tonight besides warming yourself.”
“Not yet.” This snake still had venom.
The Bolshevik stood as well and unshouldered his carbine. “You can only swallow the Cat once, Rasputin, and you nearly gave it up to London along with the largest reward of the decade. They would’ve thrown the Cat in the ocean.”
“They didn’t, though. I’m still alive.”
“Only because they’re second-generation amateurs. Let me guess. They thought it gave you nine lives, but it saved you from nine deaths?”
Rasputin was growing frustrated with the implied threats and blatant insults. “I’m invaluable to the cause!” he yelled. “I have the Tsarina’s ear. Give me a month or two away from the threats, away from our enemies. I’ll bring the throne to its knees—”
“And have Alexandra sucking your cock. Yes, I know. You’ve given this speech before in front of a different gun.” The Bolshevik checked the safety on his Mosin, then pressed the stock to his puffy shoulder. “Don’t run and I’ll make it a clean kill.”
Rasputin looked around, tried to take in his environment in a moment. He hadn’t come armed, and there wasn’t anything loose to work with. Any heavy branches must’ve been cleared away to make the fire. His eyes settled on the Bolshevik. “I’m not a dog to be put down.”
“I respect you, Rasputin, but you’re worth more dead than alive.”
Rasputin edged back a little. “What about the prestige I’m carrying?”
“The reward for completing the task on your life is twice as much. I’ll recover the Cat too.” He lifted the gun. “It’s the gods’ will—”
Rasputin shouted over him. “I wish to snap the pin spring.”
The Bolshevik pulled the trigger. There wasn’t even a click. “I wish—”
Rasputin jumped the coals and charged, but the Bolshevik gave up on fixing his gun and thrust at Rasputin’s belly like he had a bayonet. The Mosin carbine barrel punched Rasputin in the scar where the prostitute had gutted him—an immediate, vast explosion of pain, searing up and down his body like he’d swallowed a bonfire. For an instant, he couldn’t breathe, but adrenaline moved him still. He seized the barrel and twisted off to the side before falling onto his ass. The Bolshevik was pulled off balance but managed to dig in his heels and didn’t fall or release the Mosin. For a single wild moment, they both yanked at the rifle like dogs fighting over a stick.
“I wish the spring was fixed!” the Bolshevik yelled. He reared up with one leg and kicked down, punching Rasputin’s arm off the weapon and into his chest, knocking the monk flat onto his back. He raised the rifle, finger on the trigger—nothing happened again. “Fuck!”
The wish was too specific. Barrel down, the Bolshevik struggled with the bolt-action to clear the chamber and recock the firing pin.
“The bullet fires,” Rasputin wheezed.
The gun went off in the Bolshevik’s hands and shot the dirt. He dropped the carbine by reflex. “Fuck you!”
Rasputin rolled onto his belly, struggling to rise. The Mosin’s barrel had punched the Cat against his spine, and it felt like he was about to vomit up that entire chunk of solid stone. He could hardly breathe through the waves of pain still squeezing on his lungs, and his legs responded poorly, quivering as he tried to pull his knees under him.
The Bolshevik hadn’t come with the kind of prestige he’d need to force the gods to work in his favor, but he knew an advantage when he saw one. Without even reaching for the gun, he took one step forward and kicked Rasputin in the head.
The world turned black for an instant.
Rasputin awoke in a universe of agony, stomach on the ice-cold ground. “Don’t!” he wailed, his last word in his very last moment on this Earth.
The boot returned, striking Rasputin where Yusupov had cracked his skull, and the pain was gone. Freed from his worldly struggles, the monk turned to face eternity.
“Fuck you!” The Bolshevik kicked Rasputin twice more, straight in the temple. The monk’s head whipped on his limp neck, but he didn’t react. The Bolshevik stumbled back, breathing heavily, staring. He watched the man’s mouth for puffs of cloudy breath.
Nothing. Rasputin wasn’t breathing.
“Fuck you,” the Bolshevik repeated. “You made this messy.”
Rasputin’s body coughed violently, then retched. The Bolshevik almost kicked him again before he recognized what was happening. He grabbed a handful of Rasputin’s greasy hair and held up the head while the dead body convulsed like a dead limb shocked with electricity.
After a few seconds, there was a wet noise like a boot pulled out of sucking mud, and the corpse threw up the Cat o’ Nine Lives. It dropped onto the frozen ground, a polished black stone sculpture of a cat curled up to sleep, about as large as a walnut and perfectly clean—even after spending the last fifteen years in Rasputin’s stomach.
The Bolshevik dropped the soulless meat, then picked up the Cat. It was warm but surprisingly dry and odorless, so he shoved it right in his pocket. The monk was definitely dead. Wasn’t there supposed to be a reward?
The gods answered his silent question with a sudden wave of lightness and euphoria, drowning every momentary frustration in an ocean of wonders and promises. He was flooded with prestige. He felt rich. Righteous. Eternal.
Murder was a hard thing, but the gods rewarded their servants for a task well done. The Bolshevik grabbed Rasputin’s corpse by the ankles and dragged it back down to the water. It’d been a long night, but both the Cat and a windfall of prestige were in Joseph Dzhugashvili’s hands.
Author’s Note:
Welcome to Baron & Zombie! Today, I’ll launch this first chapter and five more, each about an hour apart.
Then I’ll post 10 more chapters over the first two weeks, and afterwards, twice per week on Wednesdays and Saturdays until the book is complete!
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