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of a cock sucked by a woman of the royal court. Clubs, a knife
strike, and Dmitri now tasted the acrid smoke rising from the English spy’s
pistol.
    The prince danced about flapping his arms and whining
some nonsense about “destroying the unkillable prey.” He stopped, stared
wide-eyed for a long moment, then babbled more about
cyanide and his own brilliance under the pressure of the deed.
    The politician watched the prince’s melodrama with dull
fascination, one hand on an elbow and the other stroking his chin like some
stage villain. The doctor and the lieutenant whispered, heads close, a plan for
burning clothes and disposing of the body forming between them.
    The spy held out his hand for the pistol.
    Dmitri Pavlovich Romanov, the only true patriot among
them, opened the chamber and dumped all but one bullet onto the man’s hand, not
once pulling his gaze away from Rasputin’s corpse. “Go home. Tell your superior
you did this job.” He waved the pistol at the body.
    The spy’s eyebrow arched with an almost audible crinkle,
even as his lips frowned.
    “If you interfere again in the affairs of my homeland, I
will kill you. Do you understand, Englishman? Now leave.” Dmitri pointed at the
door.
    International whining would start as soon as the Tsarina
realized her pet monk had vanished. The whore would blubber like the Hessian
spawn she was. Cries of “The boy! The boy!” would ring
through the cold halls of the Tsar’s winter palace as she pleaded and pawed
over the irrelevant Tsesarevich and his blood disease—the disease she brought
into Dmitri’s family.
    The disease Rasputin was supposed to control. Dmitri
bounced the pistol against his thigh, his grip so tight his fingers ached. No
woman incapable of giving the Empire an heir should be allowed the title
Tsarina.
    The spy backed away, his step muffled by the garish
weave of the prince’s imported rug. The others milled about, nattering about
alibis and consequences. Dmitri glanced at each, assessing, in turn, the level
of intervention necessary to assure the success of this plan. The politician
would need to be dealt with. The others, with the exception of the prince,
would show caution.
    Wild idiocy at this point would make the murder
worthless, and Russia could no longer afford idiocy.
    Dmitri kicked the body. His boot, crafted of fine
leather specifically for his Romanov foot by Moscow artisans, had saved his
toes on many a winter evening. Now it sank into Rasputin’s shoulder as if
Dmitri had struck clay.
    Clay—not meat. He frowned and
stepped back.
    He’d sensed Rasputin’s abilities the first time they
were within sight of each other. Dmitri had entered the grand ballroom behind
his cousin’s guard. Blinking away the morning sun, he’d been more focused on
some forgotten foolishness of the court’s women than on the possibility of
another like himself walking the halls of the Tsar’s palace.
    Yet there stood Rasputin behind the Tsarina, unwashed
and oily, grinning at Dmitri with a skull’s teeth. Rasputin,
another like himself. A fellow Oboroten —a Shifter. And one with the special touch, the same
as Dmitri. A man who could heal.
    The body at his feet did not move, yet Dmitri had heard
tales of other Shifters who had survived bullets to the skull. They’d gasp
awake, disoriented, but still dangerous. The probability could not be ignored.
    He tossed the prince’s tasteless rug over Rasputin. Blood
had seeped to the floorboards and the prince wheezed, pointing, his lips
twittering once again.
    Even with the brain splatter on Dmitri’s coat and the
marks on the wood under the carpet, the monk had not bled enough.
    Another reason to be concerned.
    The quicker Dmitri threw the body into the river, the
better. He didn’t want to smell the shit in the prince’s trousers when he
realized his ramblings about “the unkillable prey” held truth.
    ***
    One of Dmitri’s men stayed behind. A Shifter with a
special voice, he’d whisper