'Exactly. We are certainly quite easy to kill. Sunlight. Fire.' He nodded down towards my wooden dagger, which had fallen to the floor. 'A stake through the heart. Decapitation. They're all ways that I've seen it happen. Maybe there are others too. I can't say I'm an expert.'

'You mean you don't know?' I asked. I was surprised, but also attempting to goad him.

'Why should I know? You're not a doctor, are you? You don't know every detail of how your body works, nor do I of mine. We're not going to carry out experiments to find out new ways of killing ourselves.' He smirked suddenly, as if he'd just thought of something very funny. If he had, he did not share it.

'Why not?' I asked. 'You're easy enough to replace.'

Iuda raised an inquisitive eyebrow. 'Easy?'

'Like your friend here,' I said, indicating the soldier who had by now, relaxed by my utter defeat, completely forgotten to restrain me. 'Just a quick bite and it's one less human and one more vampire.'

Iuda chuckled. 'If only it were that easy, but unfortunately we remain a very exclusive group.'

'You have a long list of membership rules, I suppose, to keep out the riff-raff.'

'We have but one criterion. The individual in question must want to become one of us. One would imagine that most organizations offering such a relaxed admission would be inundated with applications, but we are not. For us, self-selection is the ideal approach. You, for example, would not wish to join us, would you?'

'No,' I said, needing no special effort to inject absolute conviction into my voice.

'And so we would not have you. In fact, this gentleman is the only recruit we've had since we arrived in your deeply pious country. Not that we have the opportunity to ask on every occasion.'

'And what happened to him?'

'He ran into Varfolomei. That, by the way, is why he has a particular dislike for you. We're all upset that you murdered Matfei and Ioann, but he regards Varfolomei as something of a father figure. Anyway, there he was, fleeing from – deserting if you will – the field at Borodino and whom should he meet but Varfolomei? They have a little chat and he decides that yes, a life of immortality would be preferable to being a ryadovoy in the Russian army, to be sent to his death at the whim of cowardly officers such as yourself.'

'And so just by wanting to be a vampire, he became one?'

'No, no. There's a mechanism. First Varfolomei drank some of his blood, just enough so that he would die, but not straight away. He then willingly – and it has to be willingly, I'm told – drank some of Varfolomei's blood. It's traditional to drink from a cut to the chest, but I don't think that matters.'

'So you understand that much of how your body works,' I commented. 'How you're created, but not how you are killed.'

He smiled. 'We have an advantage over you in that we can remember the moment, and therefore the process, of our own conception. It makes it so much easier for us the first time we come to do it ourselves, rather than all that messy fumbling about that humans go through.'

'So how many vampire offspring have you produced in your time, Iuda?'

'None,' he replied and then quickly added with a smile, 'that I know of. And I would know. What I have just described could not very well happen by accident. Some of us are different, but I am very like you humans. I like the chase and I like the kill, but I don't want to be concerned with any long-term consequences.' He thought for a moment. 'It's much the same as you feel when you're with that young lady – Dominique. You love the physical experience of her body, but you'd be appalled if your congress with her ever produced a child.' He looked into my face enquiringly and then raised his eyebrows. 'Or maybe not.'

He turned away and the eyes of the other two vampires in the room followed him. I took my chance. I raced across the room towards the window, brushing aside the relaxed arm of Varfolomei's 'offspring' and playing hopscotch over the pitiful corpses which were lined up across the floor. My best guess was that by now it was dawn outside. I grabbed hold of one of the curtains and wrenched at it, pulling it away from its fixings high above me at the top of the window. Andrei took a step towards me as I tugged, but he was too late. The curtain rail gave way and the curtain came tumbling down over my head, blocking my sight completely, but revealing the window behind it.

I quickly wrestled the heavy material off me, the darkness of its covering giving way to the still dim, lamp-lit room. Around me stood the three vampires – two of them utterly impassive at the futility of my action, Iuda with the trace of a mocking smile on his lips. I turned back to the window to see that, behind the curtains, it had been boarded up with the floorboards that had been taken from downstairs. Through the occasional chink I could see that outside it was just daylight, but not enough of it could get inside to do any harm to my captors.

In happier times, parties held in a house such as this would have carried on long into the night and on to the following morning. Sometimes the zealous host would ensure that the windows were shuttered and the clocks stopped so that no guests would realize that dawn had broken and spoil the atmosphere by considering that it might be time to depart. My hosts – the new, undead occupants of this house – had a similar desire to obscure the light of the new day, but with very different motivation.

With a flick of his head, Iuda indicated to the soldier that I should be held fast once again. The soldier pushed me back against the wall and pressed his hand firmly against me.

'So,' I said, feeling the depressing reaction to my failed action sweeping over me, 'I suppose you're going to kill me now.'

There followed a brief conversation between Iuda and Andrei in their own language. I think that Iuda wanted me to die there and then, but Andrei disagreed. He mentioned Pyetr a number of times. It was odd that they referred to him as Pyetr even amongst themselves. Did they not know his real name, or were they taking caution to the extreme – making sure that no one could ever find out who they were and use that knowledge to track them down? From their discussion, I presumed that they were waiting for Pyetr to arrive. Any delay was a moment more for me to enjoy life, and any moment was time for me to think how I might escape.

'It's going to be a bit cramped for the three of you all sleeping in that one coffin, isn't it?' I said.

Iuda looked away from his conversation with Andrei to answer me. My attempt to escape seemed to have knocked his earlier good humour out of him. He was now quite dismissive in his mood.

'We don't need coffins to sleep in, any more than you need beds. How do you suppose we spent all those days out there on the Smolensk road?'

It was a good question. 'How did you?' I asked.

'We'd just dig a hole and bury ourselves in it. All we need is to keep the sun off. It doesn't need to be very deep.'

Before I could reply, we heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. The door to the landing opened and in walked Pyetr. He was quickly followed, to my consternation, by Dmitry.

Pyetr and Iuda began talking furtively in their own language. Dmitry spoke directly to me.

'You shouldn't have killed them, Aleksei. I know we couldn't help Ioann, but Matfei and Varfolomei – that was just murder.'

'I suppose you told them about Matfei and Varfolomei,' I said.

'I told them you followed Matfei. They knew he was dead. It didn't take much to work it out.'

'How did Pyetr get here?' I asked. 'It's light outside, isn't it?'

'We came underground. The sewers run right under this street. With a bit of work you can get into any of the cellars. It's dark as night down there.'