Compendium Character Sheet: Nikita

Character Sheet: Nikita

Nik was a character who, despite his reticence, I knew immediately. Deeply. Intimately. In so many ways, he's the character I know best. 

The whole Russia crew were latecomers to the series, in the sense that, unlike Val, and Vlad, and Fulk, and Anna, and Liam, and Lily, I hadn't been contemplating them for years. But I HAD been struggling with finding a firm beginning point for this series. Their connection to Moscow, and Moscow's obtuse connection to Rome, ended up being a tipping point. And then I "met" this group of characters, and I was in love, and I knew they had to be our start. They had to be a part of this misfit family. 

At his core, if you trim away the weight of his personal experiences, Nikita is a naturally quiet, thoughtful, anxious individual. Someone who tends to overanalyze, and who has a bit of a guilty streak - call it self-consciousness, or self-doubt, but he's someone who, regardless of circumstances has trouble seeing his own value. 

When you do look at his circumstances, all these traits are amplified, to a near extreme degree. He feels massively guilty, both for what he's done in a professional capacity, and the ways that - he sees - he's failed his friends and family. He loves deeply, but fearfully, and steels himself always against rejection. He's the "you'd be better off without me" type, even if those around him only want him to look after himself and love them back. 

When the series begins, we meet Nikita walking into the Kremlin to address his superior. Nikita is, at this point, a Chekist: a (pretty antiquated) term used to refer to the Soviet Secret Police. (Antiquated, but used willfully, because something about the sound of the word itself sparks fear in a way that I like playing with on the page.) The secret police were Stalin's thugs; there's no nice way of putting it. These were officers with orders to search for traitors to the state, and they had free rein to do more or less whatever they wanted. And what they wanted, as they pulled up floorboards, and took hidden grain and vodka, and raped girls, and sent Russians to the gulag and the silver mines for crimes such as "facial malfunctions" (smiling out of turn), was to exercise the power given to them; all of mankind's worst impulses made manifest under the reign of unspeakably cruelty. 

It's become a personal challenge, in my writing, to flesh out characters who, at first blush, seem unlikely. Even unlovable. Nikita was to be my biggest challenge yet.

But, though Nik is a Chekist, he's also, secretly, a White: one of those Russians loyal to the murdered royal family. A generation after the Whites failed to save the Romanovs, and were killed, sent to the mines, or escaped to America, we meet Nik and his men, all of them secret Whites, no matter how hopeless, carrying on the traditions of their parents, hating the masters they do unspeakable things for. 

The guilt this has spawned in Nikita is something he's going to struggle with for the rest of his supernaturally long life. Because Nik is now a vampire, made immortal with the blood and heart of the vampire Rasputin. 

Spoilers for White Wolf ahead:

The scene where Nik is turned was the first one I mapped out in the planning stages of the novel. It was this vivid, visceral mental image of the blood on the snow, of the fire, of the ravens; and of Sasha, finally understanding what he was. I could see Rasputin so clearly, holding Nik, killing him slowly. And I knew that Sasha would be the catalyst for his turning; the one to actually complete the cycle and save him. And that Sasha would then carry the worry that Nik resented him - a guilty burden of his own - into the next century. 

Clearly, I'm pretty attached to the guy.

The quick rundown is:

Nikita is a vampire, turned at age 27, in 1942. His sire - vampire maker - was remarkably strong, and passed on not only his physical strength, but his psychic ability to compel also. With a look and force of will, Nikita can get almost anyone to comply to his wishes - a trick he hates employing, and which makes him feel vile. His physical issues, while not lethal, dogged his heels into immortality as well; he's still liable to swoon if he denies himself food, which he does often, much to Sasha's annoyance. 

Sasha is the single most important person in his life, and their relationship is going to be front and center in book four, Golden Eagle. 

Nik tends to hold his own happiness away at arm's length, but this time, finally, his little family isn't going to let him get away with that anymore.