The next evening, Anatoliy woke to the feeling of a rough tongue being applied to his face and felt a tail beating him on the shoulder. His eyes opened, and he rolled away, thankfully catching himself before he fell out of the bed. The dog that he had just met proceeded to prance over the pillows towards him as if Anatoliy’s movement had been an invitation.
“No. No! Get… get down!” he exclaimed as the dog playfully licked him again. “You apparently weren’t listening when I told you about the rules.”
The dog looked at him expectantly and Anatoliy got up, grumbling. “I’ll let you outside.”
He stumbled through the house, still a little disoriented from the day’s rest. He would have to eat tonight, despite the dog’s apparent determination to interfere. He opened the back door into a tiny courtyard, and the dog shot outside, sniffing at every pile of snow or almost covered fallen leaf.
“Take care of your business,” Anatoliy said warningly, “or I shall leave you in the garden all night.”
The dog barked pertly and then went off behind a particularly tall clump of snow. Anatoliy looked at the night sky, closing the door behind him to keep a little of the heat in the room. There was some light cloud cover, but it looked like the weather was going to be clear and cold overnight. It was usually good for hunting in those conditions. People were anxious to get inside, away from the knife-like wind; they were a little more careless about their surroundings when there was some light, but the clouds would allow for a few extra shadows to melt into.
The dog would seem to be the only issue at this point in time, but that would be ameliorated by leaving him indoors, of course. One mess or two wouldn’t make that much of a difference in the long run. He could let him out to find a dinner on his own after he was done hunting and then lock the door securely behind him.
With those thoughts firmly in mind, Anatoliy whistled to the dog. It came back quite willingly, still limping on one foot, but not as severely as the night before. “Indoors,” he said, opening the door for the dog to get back inside. The dog obliged, sniffing once at the hem of Anatoliy’s pants.
Anatoliy spent the requisite amount of time getting ready for the evening’s activities, dressing more to fit in with the evening population than for any sort of personal comfort. The dog followed him around the room, almost driving him distracted with its inability to sit still for any length of time.
When he judged it to be a good time to leave, he walked to the front door, fully determined to lock the dog inside. However, the dog slipped out between his feet when the door opened and sat down politely a few feet away.
“Crazy animal,” he said as he walked through the streets, sensing more than hearing the dog following him at a leisurely pace.
He walked into a tavern and was relieved to see that the dog did not follow him inside. It instead scooted down an alleyway much like the one he had appeared in the night before. He adjusted his attention to what was going on inside and ordered a vodka, listening for information that could give him a hint as to where the hunting would be best.
“So, they came into her room this morning and blood was everywhere. Everywhere,” the old man said emphatically.
“That is what you say, Boris,” a younger man said, scoffing.
“I speak only the truth,” Boris said, spitting into the fire. “She was cold and stiff, blood everywhere. It was the Count’s youngest daughter.”
“Ah, the pretty one. And so young,” said the serving-maid as she put the full glass in front of Anatoliy.
The younger man shook his head. “There are no such things as vampires.”
“You live in a city, surrounded by walls,” Boris replied. “You don’t know the terrors of the night. But it seems that the terrors of the countryside have found their way into even the walled courtyards of the nobility.”
The maid crossed herself as she took a step back. “Boris, you are scaring our custom!”
“They should be warned,” Boris retorted, as he drank and grumpily turned to face the fire.
The younger man turned to Anatoliy, eyes glittering with drink. “And what say you, friend? Do we have monsters roaming our streets?”
Anatoliy laughed coldly. “I think most men are more than capable of being monstrous without throwing superstition into the mix.”
“That’s the sound of an enlightened man!” the young man exclaimed, sloshing some of his drink onto the table. Boris growled but said nothing more.
Anatoliy got up from the table to avoid any further conversation and took his glass farther away from the fire. The conversation disturbed him slightly. Anatoliy wasn’t fool enough to assume he was the only vampire in the city. Cities were good hunting grounds and were full of careless people, unlocked doors, and “enlightened” men who didn’t believe in vampires. And if Anatoliy saw someone as a target, surely another could as well, especially now that Piotr was no longer in nominal control of the city and the surrounding environs. Anatoliy was here only on sufferance, after a long arduous questioning by the Russian Tribunal related to Piotr’s demise. He was just barely acquitted, and that was because none of the Tribunes liked Piotr, his inflated opinion of himself, or the way that he had high-handedly ruled his demesne.
“If another of us is in the city and behaving in this manner, they will surely blame me for it.” Anatoliy let his glass thud against the table. “And my one witness would be a brown dog.”
He sighed, dropped a few rubles on the table, and managed to keep from storming out. As soon as his feet hit the pavement, a tiny yip alerted him to the dog’s presence. “So you want to be friends, eh?”
The dog wagged his tail enthusiastically and started walking with Anatoliy. The vampire shook his head and proceeded on his way. It wasn’t going to be safe to hunt here. He would have to settle for animals or drunks — and drunks were in short supply this winter due to the frigid conditions. “You have to let me hunt,” Anatoliy explained, “or you will be on the menu.”
The dog whined, but didn’t seem inclined to stop him this evening. He seemed more interested in nosing about the streets, occasionally finding a bit of dropped food.
For his part, Anatoliy lucked into a drunk man in an alley who had stumbled next to a stable where the stableboy was fast asleep. He drank his fill and shoved the man into the hay just inside the structure. He wouldn’t freeze to death in there, (not that it was really his business to care about some idiot mortal) and the stableboy was probably used to drunks not finding their horses at night.
When Anatoliy came out of the alley, the dog was waiting for him still. It’s little head was cocked to the side, as if to say, “Well and good, but this is getting me nowhere closer to a warm fire and bed.”
“Come on, dog,” he said.
The dog increased his speed as they headed towards the house and, again, beat Anatoliy inside. He went about making up a fire for the dog and threw some rags down in a basket. “Again, no sleeping in the bed with me. You are on your own for food. No messes in the house. No barking.”
The dog yipped in seeming agreement and then curled up next to the fire, gnawing some random bone that it had found while outdoors. Anatoliy watched the dog until it fell asleep, before seeking out his own bed.
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