They went back to the estate two nights later.
Mira had argued, briefly, for waiting—gather more intel, watch Lebedev’s patterns, map the security cameras more thoroughly. But Aleksandr had shaken his head.
“Kalugin does not invest.. slow,” he’d said. “If Lebedev knows I am awake, he will accelerate. We need… time. And… leverage.”
In the days between, the city kept turning.
Mira went through the motions: meetings, emails, a public hearing where a city official with perfect hair and dead eyes assured everyone that “heritage values will be taken into account” in the proposed redevelopment of the Morozov estate.
She stood up in the back and said, “What about the crypt? What about the people buried there?”
The official had smiled blandly. “Appropriate measures will be taken to relocate any remains with dignity.”
Aleksandr, sitting in the last row with Dima, had gone very, very still.
After, in the corridor, he’d said, “They will dig.”
“Yes,” Dima had said. “Which gives us a deadline.”
Now, as they approached the estate again under cover of darkness, that deadline hummed in Mira’s veins.
They came by a different route this time, circling in from a side street where the streetlight had been out for months. The gate’s chain hung limply where she’d cut it before. Someone had wrapped a bit of wire through it, a half-hearted attempt at re-securing the entrance.
She snipped that too.
“Dima says Lebedev’s cameras are mostly watching the main approaches,” she whispered as they slipped through. “The front gate. The path to the house. The obvious cemetery routes.”
“And the not-obvious?” Aleksandr asked.
“Harder to say,” she admitted. “But we know where some of them *aren’t.*”
They moved quickly down the overgrown path, skirting a patch of ground where the earth sloped suspiciously. The night was colder than before, a knife under the skin. Breath puffed white.
In the shadow of the house, they paused.
Light bled faintly from a few upper windows—cheap, blue-white beams that didn’t match the warm spill of modern lamps. Flashlights, maybe. Security sweeps. Or kids.
Mira’s shoulders tensed.
“You said… tunnels,” she whispered. “From the crypt.”
Aleksandr nodded. “Yes. But the entrance… is not in the crypt itself. It is… lower. In the old gravekeeper’s cottage. On the hill.”
She frowned. “The cottage burned in the 70s.”
“The… shape… remains,” he said. “The earth remembers… doors.”
She believed him, irrationally.
They skirted the house, keeping close to the wall, until the trees thickened again. The graveyard rose ahead, crosses and headstones pale teeth against the dark.
Mira had always found cemeteries… peaceful. Places where the city’s noise dimmed, where time felt layered rather than linear.
Tonight, it bristled.
“We’re being watched,” she said.
“Yes,” Aleksandr agreed calmly. “But not… closely. Not from here.”
“How can you tell?” she asked.
He tilted his head. “The cameras… make a sound. Very small. Like… an insect. They are not… pointed this way.”
“That’s… unnerving,” she said.
“Useful,” he countered.
The crypt loomed, a low, rectangular hump of stone and grass. They passed it, heading instead for a clump of overgrown lilacs and wild rosebushes near the edge of the cemetery.
“There,” Aleksandr said, pointing.
At first, she saw nothing but weeds. Then the line of something man-made resolved: the moss-covered remnants of a low stone wall, the half-buried outline of a foundation.
The gravekeeper’s cottage.
Kneeling, he brushed aside leaves and dirt until his fingers found a metal ring, corroded but intact. He pulled.
A square of earth and rotted wood lifted, revealing a dark hole.
“Charming,” Mira muttered.
“After you,” Aleksandr said.
“You first,” she shot back. “You know the way.”
He gave a small, conceding incline of his head and swung down, vanishing into the dark with disconcerting ease.
Mira took a breath, clicked on her flashlight, and followed.
The air inside the shaft was colder, stiller. A narrow ladder leaned against one side, some of its rungs rotten. She tested each with her weight, cursing softly when one snapped, showering her with dirt.
Below, Aleksandr’s hand shot up, fingers brushing her boot, steadying.
“I have you,” he said.
She climbed down the last few steps and dropped the final half-meter, landing beside him in a crouch.
The space they’d entered was barely tall enough for her to stand upright; Aleksandr had to stoop. The floor was packed earth. The walls were stone, damp seeping through in cold patches.
A tunnel sloped away, shored up with old beams. Thick roots veered around it, like muscles around bone.
“This leads to the ice house?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said. “And other places. But we do not… need the others. Today.”
She raised the flashlight, illuminating a faint path worn into the floor—old footprints, hardened. Her skin prickled.
“Anyone else used this… recently?” she asked.
He inhaled deeply, nostrils flaring.
“Damp,” he said. “Mold. Earth. No… humans. Not for many years.”
She exhaled. “Good.”
They walked.
The tunnel narrowed in places, forcing them to move single file. In others, it opened into small chambers where old barrels lay collapsed, their iron hoops rusted. Once, Mira’s boot squished in something soft; she jerked back, shining the light down.
Mushrooms. Pale, fan-shaped clusters feeding on old wood.
“How far?” she whispered.
“Not far,” he said. “You will hear… the river. Faintly.”
The faint roar of water did come, eventually, a constant, low vibration, like a giant’s breath.
The air grew colder.
They emerged into a larger chamber cut into the earth, its ceiling domed and lined with brick. The temperature dropped a full five degrees; Mira’s breath burst white in front of her.
“This was the… ice house,” Aleksandr said.
In the beam of her flashlight, Mira saw faint grooves in the floor where heavy blocks had once been dragged. Hooks still jutted from the walls in places, rusted.
In the far corner, almost lost in shadow, a heavy iron door sagged on its hinges, half-buried in a mound of earth and debris.
“There,” Aleksandr said.
They crossed the chamber. The cold bit through Mira’s gloves.
Up close, the door looked even more decrepit. Its surface was mottled with corrosion, flaking. An old padlock, fused with rust, still clung to a loop.
“Step back,” Aleksandr said quietly.
She did.
He wrapped his fingers around the lock and pulled.
Metal shrieked protest, then snapped. The padlock fell to the floor with a dull thud.
“Subtle,” she said.
“We are underground,” he replied. “The dead will not complain.”
He heaved on the door. It moved a few centimeters, then jammed.
Mira dug into her bag, pulled out her crowbar—a relatively new acquisition that she was already fond of—and wedged it under the edge.
“On three,” she said.
“Two,” he corrected.
They pushed together.
The door grudgingly gave, scraping along the floor. A gap yawned, exhaling air so cold it felt like a slap.
The smell that came with it was… strange.
Not rot. Not dust. Something between paper and old leather and… time.
They squeezed through.
The ice house vault was smaller than she’d imagined.
Narrow shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling, most sagging under the weight of what remained: metal boxes, wrapped bundles, a few crumbling wooden chests. Everything was rimed with a fine layer of frost, sparkling in the flashlight’s beam.
Aleksandr stepped in and stopped dead.
“This is…” His voice went oddly rough. “Real.”
“You doubted?” she asked softly.
“I doubted… memory,” he said. “Not… Elizaveta.”
He reached out, fingers hovering over a particular box as if afraid to touch.
The box was metal, its surface engraved with a faint pattern of vines. An old lock—complex, multi-levered—secured it.
“You remember… which is which?” Mira asked.
He nodded once. “This held… documents. The… worst… and the best.”
She swallowed. “Worst for who?”
“For men who thought they would never answer to anyone,” he said.
She exhaled. “My favorite kind.”
He ran his fingertips along the lock, then frowned.
“There was a… key,” he said. “Hidden in the crypt. I do not have it.”
“Keys,” Mira said, hefting her crowbar, “are for people who aren’t on a deadline.”
He stepped back, lips quirking despite himself. “Destroying a lock that defeated half the police in 1920 would have offended my maker’s sense of… poetry.”
“He’s not here,” she said gently. “We are. And we don’t have time for verse.”
She wedged the crowbar under the hasp and leaned her weight into it. The metal groaned, then gave with a screech that set her teeth on edge.
Inside, paper.
Bundles and bundles of it, tied with string. Some were crisp, edges browned but intact. Others had been damaged by moisture at some point, their corners a little warped.
Mira’s fingers itched.
“May I?” she asked, voice almost reverent.
Aleksandr nodded, stepping aside.
She lifted the top bundle carefully, as if it might crumble.
Old handwriting looped across the pages in black ink. Names. Numbers. Dates. Seals. She recognized some: police officials, members of the old city council, businessmen whose descendants now sat on boards of modern corporations.
Her historian’s brain whirled.
“Dima is going to… have a heart attack,” she breathed.
“He will sue someone during it,” Aleksandr murmured.
She flipped through quickly, not reading in depth, just scanning for impact.
There were receipts of bribes. Lists of informants. Backroom agreements between early revolutionaries and certain nobles to spare their families in exchange for funds. Evidence of betrayals. Cover-ups.
“This could…” She swallowed. “This could blow up half the current political establishment.”
“And get us killed,” he said quietly.
“Yes,” she said.
They stared at the papers between them, one eye each on opportunity, one on the drop.
“We can’t take all of it,” she said. “Not yet. Too conspicuous. Too hard to… hide.”
“Then we take… enough,” he said. “A… sample. To show… what we hold. To trade. To threaten.”
She nodded. “Leverage.”
She pulled a few choice bundles, choosing names she recognized from current scandals, from whispered rumors.
“We’ll stash these somewhere safe,” she said. “Scan them. Make… copies. Insurance.”
“And the rest?” he asked.
“For now, we leave,” she said. “If we move everything, Lebedev—or whoever follows him—will know. If we leave it, they may not realize what they *almost* had.”
His mouth twisted. “We play… with fire,” he said.
“It’s your family tradition,” she said.
He huffed a short laugh.
As they worked, the cold bit deeper. Frost formed in tiny crystals along Mira’s hairline where her breath had condensed.
“Your hands,” Aleksandr said suddenly. “They are… shaking.”
“I’m fine,” she said through chattering teeth. “Just… not built for Siberian vault conditions.”
He set his own bundle down and took her hands between his.
They were so much colder than his that for a second, her skin burned with the contrast.
“You are… very warm,” he murmured.
“You’re… not,” she replied.
He rubbed her fingers briskly, friction and the strange cool of his palms working together.
“When we would hunt in winter,” he said quietly, “sometimes our… donors… would get too cold. We would… warm their hands like this. So they did not… shiver too much when we fed. It… frightened the others.”
Her breath hitched.
“Your… donors,” she said. “You make it sound… almost… kind.”
“It was… selfish,” he said. “Cold blood… is less pleasant. And… guilt… tastes… bad.”
She swallowed. “What does guilt taste like?”
“Like… metal,” he said. “And… old pennies. It sits… on the tongue. Hard to swallow.”
“Maybe that’s good,” she said.
“Perhaps,” he said.
He released her hands slowly. They tingled as warmth crept back.
“Better?” he asked.
“Yes,” she said, a little hoarse.
They packed the selected bundles into Mira’s waterproof bag, padding them with old cloth from a rotted crate. Aleksandr closed the box again, straightening the loosening lock as best he could.
“Will they… know this was opened?” she asked.
“If they find this place at all,” he said, “they will see… everything. But perhaps not… immediately. And by then, we should have… moved some pieces.”
She nodded.
As they turned to leave, Mira’s flashlight caught on something half-hidden behind another stack: a small wooden box, simpler than the others.
“What’s that?” she asked.
Aleksandr’s gaze followed the beam. He went very still.
“That,” he said, “is… hers.”
“Hers?” Mira asked.
“Elizaveta’s,” he said softly.
Her heart jumped. “Are you sure?”
He stepped over, brushed frost from the lid with trembling fingers.
“She… carved this herself,” he said. “After Paris. She said she wanted… something of her own… here. Not just his boxes. She had… terrible taste in carving. That is how I know.”
He traced a slightly crooked flower etched into the wood.
“Open it,” Mira whispered.
His hand hesitated on the latch.
“If there is… nothing,” he said, “then she is… gone. Truly.”
“Or…” Mira said, “this is… the thing she wanted someone to find. One day. When it mattered.”
He exhaled, a sound that might have been a laugh or a sob.
“You have a gift,” he said, “for making… unbearable… things… into… arguments I cannot ignore.”
He flipped the latch.
Inside, on a bed of soft, discolored cloth, lay a few items.
A locket. A folded piece of paper, edges frayed. A small glass vial half-filled with some dark, dried substance. And, at the very bottom, a ring: simple gold, heavy, with the Morozov crest engraved.
Aleksandr picked up the locket with reverent fingers and opened it.
Inside, two tiny portraits stared back: one of a man with sharp features and deep-set eyes; one of a woman with dark hair and a stubborn chin.
His maker. And Elizaveta. Painted small and precise.
His fingers trembled.
“She… kept them here,” he murmured. “Safe. Close.”
Mira’s throat tightened.
The folded paper crackled as she picked it up.
“May I?” she asked.
He nodded, eyes still on the locket.
She unfolded it carefully.
The handwriting was Elizaveta’s—tight, controlled, slanting slightly forward. The paper had yellowed, but the ink held.
Aleksa, it began.
Her chest constricted.
She read silently, lips moving.
> Aleksa, > > > If you are reading this, then either I have kept my promise and opened your tomb myself, or someone I trusted enough to give this key has done so in my stead. > > > In either case, you are awake, and I am… not there. I will not waste ink on apologies I would rather make in person. Instead, I will give you what I could not before you slept: information. > > > The world will not be kind to us. You knew that already. What you did not know is what I have learned from those who think they are hunters. > > > We are not alone. > > > There are others like us, Aleksa. Not just scattered, unlucky accidents, but… lines. Families. Nests. Some older than ours. Some newer. They have their own rules. Their own… councils. > > > They watched us. Quietly. They called my maker “provincial” and “reckless” behind his back. They do not like new blood that does not ask their permission. > > > When the revolution came, they did not weep for us. Some of them… helped it. It pruned their rivals. It gave them… new ways to hide. > > > I made… a bargain. For you. > > > If our line fell, if I could not keep you safe in the waking world, they would… leave you. They would let you sleep. They would not crack your stone to see what you knew. > > > In exchange, when you woke, you would be… theirs to observe. For a time. They are very fond of… observing. > > > I do not like this bargain. But I like the alternative less. > > > You will meet them, one day. If you stay alive long enough. When you do, remember: they are not gods. They are… parasites who have survived longer. That is all. > > > Trust no one completely. Not even the one who brings you this letter. Especially not any man who smiles too easily. > > > Except, perhaps, Lev. If he is there, tell him I was wrong about the hat in Vienna. > > > And Aleksa—do not punish yourself for sleeping. Someone had to remember the world before this one. Someone had to carry our house in their bones. > > > Wake well. > > > —E.
Mira read it twice, just to be sure.
When she looked up, Aleksandr was watching her, eyes burning.
“She made a bargain,” he said.
“Yes,” Mira said softly.
“An… accord,” he murmured. “With… others.”
“Other vampires,” she said. The word still felt strange in her mouth, even now.
He nodded once.
“She always said… we were not the only ones,” he said. “But she did not… trust me… with names. Now I see why.”
Mira scanned the last lines again, the warning about men who smile too easily. Her skin prickled.
“Do you think Lebedev…” she began.
“Is one of them?” Aleksandr finished. “No. He… smells… wrong. Too… mortal. But… he may work for… someone… who is not.”
“Kalugin?” she asked.
He frowned. “I… do not know.”
She tucked the letter back into the box, hands shaking a little. “We have to go,” she said. “We can’t risk being down here too long. If they’re watching the cemetery and notice… disturbances…”
He closed the locket, set it gently on the cloth, and, after a brief hesitation, picked up the ring.
“My maker’s,” he said quietly. “He wore it when he… turned me. He took it off when he went to the east. She… kept it.”
He slipped it onto his finger. It fit as if it had never been off.
“Now,” he said, “we go.”
They left the box as they had found it, closed, hidden.
The tunnel seemed shorter on the way back, or perhaps the weight of what they carried made time compress. The air felt heavier, the cold clinging.
As they neared the shaft that led back up to the gravekeeper’s cottage, Aleksandr stopped abruptly, one hand shooting out to steady Mira against the wall.
She froze. “What?”
He held up a finger. Listened.
Mira strained her own ears.
At first, she heard only their breathing and the faint rush of the river farther off. Then, gradually, she picked out another sound: the soft crunch of footsteps on dead leaves. Above. Near the cottage. Several sets.
She swore silently.
“They are… here,” he whispered.
“Lebedev?” she mouthed.
“Perhaps,” he said. “Or… boys with too much… curiosity.”
Voices filtered down faintly, distorted by earth.
“…told you, there’s something weird about this hill…”
“…my uncle works for Kalugin, he says they’ve got special security out…”
“…what, like FSB? Or…”
“…shut up, they’ll hear…”
She recognized one of the voices. The anxious, eager edge.
Kostya.
She closed her eyes briefly. “Teenagers,” she breathed.
“Wonderful,” Aleksandr muttered.
One of the boys—Kostya—spoke again, closer now. “Look, there’s a weird patch here. Like something used to be. Help me move this.”
Metal scraped against stone. Earth shifted.
Mira’s stomach dropped. They were right over the hatch.
“If they open it,” she whispered, “they’ll see…”
“…us,” Aleksandr finished. “Yes.”
Her mind raced. Options.
“We go back,” she said. “Deeper. Find another exit.”
He shook his head. “The next… exit… is near the river. Under the embankment. Too far. If they have… any watchers there…”
“They’ll see us,” she said.
“Here,” he said, glancing up at the shaft, “we have… idiots… between us and the professionals. That is… something.”
Above, the scraping sound intensified. A grunted curse. Then a triumphant, “Got it!”
Light knifed down through the gap as someone pried the hatch up.
“Shit,” Mira whispered.
Aleksandr’s eyes flashed.
“We make… a choice,” he said swiftly. “We reveal ourselves. Or we… discourage… them.”
“You mean… scare them away,” she said.
“I mean… scare them,” he corrected. “Whether they run… is their choice.”
She hesitated. “I don’t like scaring kids.”
“Neither do I,” he said. “But I like the idea of Kalugin finding this path… less.”
She looked up at the rectangle of light, the silhouetted head of a boy leaning in, curiosity burning.
Kostya.
“Mira?” he called, tentative. “Are you… down there?”
Her heart stopped.
Aleksandr’s eyes shot to hers.
“He knows your name,” he said.
She grimaced. “I yelled at him last month when he tried to tag the estate wall.”
He huffed. “Of course.”
She stepped forward into the shaft of light just enough that Kostya could see the edge of her face.
“Kostya,” she said, voice firm but low. “You need to close that. Now.”
His eyes widened. “I knew it,” he breathed. “You’re… doing something. I told them. They didn’t believe me.”
Behind him, one of his friends laughed nervously. “Maybe she’s burying a body.”
“Not helping, Misha,” Kostya hissed.
“You *are* burying a body,” Misha went on. “Yours, if your mother finds out you’re here.”
Mira swallowed a wild, hysterical bubble of laughter.
“Kostya,” she repeated. “This is dangerous. You have to close it and go home. Now. Forget you saw this.”
He hesitated, peering past her into the gloom.
His gaze snagged on Aleksandr, a pale shape a step behind her, eyes catching the light in an unsettling way.
Kostya inhaled sharply. “Holy—”
Aleksandr moved.
He stepped just into the edge of the light, letting it carve his features in sharp relief. He did not smile. He did not bare his teeth. He simply… *was*.
Centuries of predator sank into that one stance, that one look.
“Kostya,” he said softly, old Russian coiling around the boy’s name. “Listen to her.”
The boy froze like a rabbit in a beam.
Mira could smell his fear, acrid on the cold air.
“You… you’re…” Kostya stammered. “You’re…”
“Very old and very annoyed,” Aleksandr said mildly. “And I do not like… being seen… before I am ready.”
Something in his tone—the combination of dry amusement and unarguable authority—cut through Kostya’s bravado faster than any overt threat would have.
Kostya’s throat bobbed. “Are you… gonna… eat us?”
Mira almost choked.
Aleksandr sighed. “Children’s imaginations,” he murmured.
He took a step closer to Mira, placing himself slightly more between her and the shaft.
“If I wanted to… harm you,” he said, voice even, “you would already be… harmed. I am… not interested… in such… unripe… trouble.”
Misha made a small, outraged sound. “Hey!”
“As for you,” Aleksandr continued, ignoring him, “you would be… foolish… to speak of this… to any man who smells of… money and… cigarettes. Or wears suits that cost more than your… grandmother’s pension.”
Kostya blinked, mind working.
“You mean… Kalugin’s people,” he said.
Aleksandr smiled tintly. “Do not say his name… down here. It sours… the earth.”
Mira felt a shiver graze her spine.
Kostya swallowed. “Why should we… listen to you?”
“Because,” Aleksandr said quietly, “I know… what happens… to boys… who get between men like that.” His gaze was very suddenly, very old. “And I would prefer… you did not… learn it… the hard way.”
The weight of those years pressed down. Even Misha, who had been snickering moments before, shut up.
Kostya licked his lips. “What do we… do?”
“You go home,” Mira said. “You tell your mothers you were… studying. You stay away from this hill for a while. You do not… brag. You do not… investigate. You let… boring adults… handle this. For once.”
Kostya hesitated, torn between curiosity and the bone-deep sense that he was, suddenly, very out of his depth.
“Will you… stop them?” he asked. “From… tearing it down?”
Mira’s chest ached.
“I’m going to try,” she said. “Hard.”
He nodded once. “Okay.” He glanced at Aleksandr. “You… gonna help her?”
Aleksandr’s eyes softened a fraction. “It appears… I am already doing so.”
Kostya’s mouth twisted. “My grandfather… used to tell stories. About… the Morozovs.” He squinted. “You look like… the pictures.”
“I am… flattered,” Aleksandr said. “Now… leave.”
Kostya swallowed, then nodded. “Okay.” He looked at Mira. “Be careful, okay?”
She smiled, surprised. “You too.”
The hatch scraped as he lowered it. Darkness snapped back.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
“You handled that well,” Mira said finally, exhaling.
“I did not… hypnotize him,” Aleksandr said.
“I noticed,” she said.
“I *could* have,” he added. “Made him forget. Or… lie. It is… not difficult.”
“You didn’t,” she said.
He shrugged one shoulder. “Children should… keep their fear. It… keeps them from… doing… stupid things. Oblivion… does not.”
She considered that. “You really think… fear is better than ignorance?”
“In this case,” he said. “Yes.”
She wasn’t sure if she agreed. But she couldn’t argue with the urgency in his tone.
“Come,” he said. “We have what we came for. And now… we have… witnesses. That will… accelerate… everything.”
They climbed.
Above, the cemetery stretched under the stars, looking as it always had. But somewhere, three boys hurried home with wide eyes and pounding hearts.
And below, in the earth, the ice house waited with its freezing secrets.
***