She ran after the dead boy, tripping on the half-frozen earth. Her husband ran stumbling out after her. There was a priest among the awed crowd on the street; the husband seized him and dragged him along. “Batyushka, do something!” he cried. “Make it go! Pray—”

“Upyr!”

The word—the dread word of legend and nightmare and fairy tale—was taken up from house to house, as understanding dawned. The word hissed its way down the street, up and back down, growing and growing until it became a moan, a scream.

“The dead boy. He is walking. The dead are walking. We are cursed. Cursed!”

Every instant the turmoil grew. Clay lamps were lit; torches made gold points of light under the sickly moon. Cries flew. People fainted, or wept, or called down God’s aid. Some opened their doors and ran out to see what the trouble was. Others barred their doors tight and set their families to praying.

Still the dead child walked on unsteady legs, up the hill of the kremlin.

“Son!” panted his mother, running at the thing’s side. She still did not dare touch him; the way he moved, ill-jointed, was not the way the living moved. But in his eyes—she was sure of it—lay something of her son. “My child, what horror is this? Has God sent you back to us? Have you come to give a warning?”

The dead child turned and said “Mother?” again, in a soft, high voice.

“I am here,” whispered the woman, putting out a hand. The skin of his face peeled away at her touch. Her husband shoved the priest forward. “Do something, for God’s sake.”

The priest, his lips quivering, stumbled forward, and raised a trembling hand. “Apparition I charge thee…”

The child looked up, his eyes dull. The crowd drew back, crossing themselves, watching…The child’s eyes wandered around the assembled faces.

“Mother?” the child whispered one last time. And lunged.

Not fast; injury and death had weakened the thing, made it clumsy on its half-grown limbs. But the woman put up no resistance. The vampire buried its face in her wrinkled throat.

She gave a gurgling cry of pain and of love, and clutched the thing to her, gasping in agony and crooning to the thing in the same breath. “I’m here,” she whispered again.

And then the little dead creature was painting itself with her blood, jerking its head back and forth in a mockery of infancy.

People were running, screaming.

Then a voice rang out from the street above, and Father Konstantin came down, walking fast, fierce, dignified, his gold hair silver in the moonlight.

“People of God,” he said. “I am here; fear no darkness.” His voice was like church-bells at dawn. His long robe snapped and flared behind him. He thrust his way past the husband, who had fallen to his knees, one hand helplessly outstretched.

Crisp as a man drawing a sword, he made the sign of the cross.

The child upyr hissed. Its face was black with blood.