Rasputin's Bastards

RESURRECTION

The Empire of New Pokrovskoye danced in frenetic celebration for hours, reeling and pumping at the old songs — marvelling at the beauty of this land. They had arrived in this place, this grand consensus at last. Had it once been a fishing village? Well hadn’t Rome once been a swamp — London an old provincial outpost of that — New York City, a clutch of tribes conquered by London? New Pokrovskoye was no more a fishing village now than any of those places were a picture of their humble beginnings.

New Pokrovskoye was a beginning of a new empire that would erase the rest more thoroughly than before. The sky was a great pink canvas, bejewelled by strange constellations now visible through Babushka’s stretching mantle. It stretched as she expanded — over the sea, across the lands, and south along the jagged coastline. Easy to imagine her overtaking the world in this way. She had everything she needed to do so, surely.

Almost everything she needed. There was still rage in her belly — for while she inhabited ten thousand minds, and was prodigious at that — there were six billion others in the world that she could not touch. Six billion whose dreams were their own and whose minds were closed.

It must be driving her mad, thought Fyodor Kolyokov as he let the blinds close and turned back to Heather; mad to be denied the key to those minds, while its vessel lay so near.

“Now?” said the girl, and Kolyokov smiled. “Now,” he said.