The Shadow War

by Lindsay Smith

  Daniel’s hands trembled in hers. “I—I don’t know. You’re right. It does sound mad. But I’ve seen a great many things that don’t make sense recently.” He tilted his head. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because . . .” She took a deep breath. “I’ve seen the terrible things happening at Wewelsburg. You know what kind of man Dr. Kreutzer is. The things I’ve seen him planning . . . Please, Daniel. You can’t go there.” Her fingers dug against his. “You can’t.”

  He felt a hot iron spike of anger. “You said you were all right with this. You said it was worth it, to destroy SS officers—”

  “Well, I was wrong, all right? Kreutzer is doing terrible things—You can’t open that bridge, Daniel—”

  “How do you know that what you’re seeing is real? Are you sure you aren’t just imagining it?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “But how?” he asked. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

  She was silent a moment too long. “Because the visions never been wrong before.”

  A heavy shadow hung over his shoulder, a truth he didn’t want to face. If he turned, if he looked at it, he could never be the same. “Rebeka . . .”

  A tear slid down her cheek.

  “Ari never sent you a warning, did he?”

  The words came from somewhere outside of him, marching toward the answer he already knew. He felt the thick mud of the ghetto streets beneath his feet. He smelled the cramped tenement buildings and heard the hungry cries of other children through cracker-thin walls. He saw Rebeka running for him through the alleys, fist clenched around her book bag, her eyes wide with bottomless fear.

  He would have given anything, in that moment, for her not to answer. He wished he didn’t have to know. But he did, and it was like stepping onto the train all over again: that certainty, that doom.

  Rebeka dropped his hand. “I saw them planning it. My vision—it was like I was in the room with them, watching from behind a mirror. Kreutzer and the camp officers, they were discussing how to persuade us all onto the transports, what was waiting for us at Chełmno . . . I panicked. I knew we had to leave right away.”

  There it was, the poison in his lungs, the cold dirt swallowing him up. She’d lied. She’d lied to him, but far worse—she’d left the rest behind.

  Their parents. Ari. All their friends. They could have saved them—their path to escape had been so embarrassingly simple. Rebeka seemed to know just the route to take. The empty guard post, the hole in the fence, the unguarded alley in the judenrein city of Łódź beyond the ghetto fence. But she’d told him—she’d said—

  “You were the first person I came across. I could see the empty guard post, but I didn’t know how long we’d have that opening—if we’d tried to find them—”

  “You killed them.” His heart was scrabbling in his ribs like a trapped animal. “You could have saved them, but you left them to die!”

  “No.” Her tears had clawed angry streaks down her face. “I saved you.”

  What use was he? She could have saved Mama, with her laughter like wind chimes and her quick fingers on the piano and the rare holiday prayers that turned to melodies all on their own. Papa, whose butcher’s hands never once turned harsh, never once turned to violence like Daniel’s had now done; his eyes so soft and heart so full, he tried to rescue every sad stray animal that came across their path. And Ari—Ari, who was so in love with Tamar Adler on the next block, who talked of weddings and of beautiful little children he’d raise to someday be as strong and brave as his parents were.

  She could have saved any of them. But she’d chosen him, with his short temper and brooding music and now his violent appetite—his helpless, flailing rage. She’d chosen the boy who used his hands so cruelly now instead of for the music he once loved.

  Absurdly, a laugh bubbled up in his chest. Laughing at himself, his pitiful life, his traitorous sister. And now that he’d started, he couldn’t stop laughing, at the cruelty of the whole world and all its gifts. She’d rescued him, but couldn’t save the rest. So what use was his sister who saw things? Every outcome for them ended in pain.

  “Daniel, please—”

  He pulled away from her, and all at once, his laughter was gone. “You shouldn’t have saved me.”

  Daniel stood, the world tilting around him. The jar of broth tipped over and spilled across the wood planks. He had to get out of here. Out of this church, this town full of hateful Germans, these woods that had swallowed him up with their shadows and whispers that promised if he could just kill the next Nazi, his debt would be paid. As if there could ever be enough. No, he had to get out of here, this life, this too-tight skin he’d been wearing. Rage had eaten up his insides like one of Liam’s shadow beasts, and now there was nothing of him left.

  He’d promised himself he would die avenging their family. But now—knowing she’d left them to die while he lived—

  It changed nothing. Soon enough, he could join them. The sooner, the better.

  “Please, Daniel.” Rebeka tried to block his path toward the rickety stairwell. “Please, just listen to me—”

  He ducked under her arm and continued down the stairs. “You’re free now.” Froth built up inside him, but he couldn’t direct his rage at her. No, he had to conserve it. “Go live the life you deserve.”

  “Daniel, wait—”

  The sound of several car engines below them drowned her out. They both froze, listening as the vehicles stopped at the front of the Kino. Car doors slammed. Boots ground against stone.

  “You have to go,” Daniel said.

  She shook her head, tears still spilling, darkening the blouse of the too-large dress Helene had given her.

  “Find Simone and Phillip. Stay with them. They’ll keep you safe,” he said.

  “I’m not leaving without you.”

  “Yes. You are.”

  Then he bolted down the stairs two at a time.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  REBEKA

  The Nazis were crawling all over the Kino like roaches. Rebeka had scrambled up into the rafters with the carillon bells after Daniel stormed off, watching through the slatted tower windows, praying the soldiers weren’t headed into the theater below.

  They were.

  Vainly, she tried to remember how long it had taken to climb up and down the tower’s steps, how hidden the stairwell was from the main sanctuary, how quickly Daniel might have escaped, and where he could have gone.

  Tunnels. Phillip had said something about tunnels underneath the town square. She touched a hand to her cheek, to the faint warmth that spread there as she remembered their conversation earlier that morning while everyone slept. She’d found him in the side chapel, hands folded before him like he might have been in prayer, but his gaze listless, wandering. With a nod from him, she sat down, and they were both too weary to let nervousness keep them from talking. A relief. Rebeka’s mouth never seemed able to convey the too-big feelings in her heart and too-big thoughts in her brain, and Phillip, it seemed, was the same way.

  Like her, he wanted to find the dawn in this endless night. He wanted to be a force for good. It was easy to believe in the dawn when they were surrounded by bright glass, unburnt candles, when their warm hands were so close. But it wouldn’t help her now, not when the cruel darkness lurked just under her dangling feet. Not when she had no idea where Daniel had gone, if he was safe, if he was plotting, even now, to do something monumentally stupid and careless—

  Footsteps thudded closer and closer as someone climbed the tower stairs. Rebeka pulled her legs up onto the rafter. She should be completely concealed from below. If the skirt of her dress would stay tucked under her thighs, the pockets flush against her torso—

  The door flung open. Maybe two or three men, from the sound of it. Her heart pounded heavy as the bell’s iron clapper; she was amazed they couldn�
�t hear it ringing out halfway across the village. This wasn’t like all the times she’d lain in wait while Daniel was off on one of his stupid missions, leaving her to wring her hands and sweat, or at worst, leaving her with a gun and ample warning time. All she had were the crumbs she’d scraped together for the meal and the old horse blanket they’d eaten on, which she’d stashed away in the tower cupboard before scrambling up here. And their family mezuzah in her pocket, a prayer tucked inside. It dug into her hipbone, bony where it had once been soft.

  The men beneath her circled around the bell, but were oddly silent. It wasn’t comforting. It figured that now, when she could use the visions most, none came. No, her curse was only good for ruining things. Like the fleeting, quivering chance she’d had to pull Daniel back from the brink.

  Rebeka bit the inside of her cheek to stop the rush of tears. There was no going back. She’d made her choice—it hadn’t even been a choice, just a matter of happenstance that Daniel had been the one she found just after the vision struck. Maybe if she’d saved Ari, they’d be at a café in London now, preparing for their Yom Kippur fast under the last of a summer sun, the Royal Air Force buzzing overhead on its way south. Maybe if she’d saved Papa, they could have lived off the land until the war ended one way or another. If she’d saved Mama, they could have melted into the anonymous cities of southern Europe, donned new lives, worn new faces.

  Or they all could have died. And she’d have saved no one at all.

  There was no changing it. There was no forgiveness. No atonement. Only this moment, right here, the rotted rafter pressing into her gut. Her breath a flood she was trying desperately to hold back. The wooden box in her pocket hot as an ember with everything she’d done, all the mistakes she could never correct.

  Pain lanced through her head, between her eyes. She stopped just short of sucking in her breath, shocked at the suddenness of an impending vision. Her heartbeat nailed her in place while, below her, the soldiers shuffled around, poking into the various corners of the tower.

  The soldiers—

  Rebeka’s vision warped and took flight, startled like a moth shaken from a curtain. She saw the bell tower from beneath her—looked up toward the rafter where she hid—

  Both the soldiers looked up. And then she was the soldiers, seeing through their eyes. Hearing the dull drone of insect wings beating, thousands and thousands of them, as they caught sight of her body spread across the rafter, the skirts of her dress dangling down.

  She slammed back into herself, with a suddenness that nearly knocked her over, and she jolted forward, gasping for air. It had been so much more intense than her previous visions—as though she weren’t merely watching, but actually there, occupying that new space outside her own body. She twisted to the side. Had the soldiers really spotted her? If she needed to run, if she was caught—

  Both soldiers stared right at her. But they weren’t soldiers, not really. They were emptiness and shadow, their eyes and mouths hollow. Dark smoke wafted around them, seeping from their flesh.

  Bile rose in her throat. They looked similar to the soldiers in Siegen who’d been consumed by shadow. But no, these men were in between that and normal men. Like the shadow had gotten its talons hooked in them, but they weren’t fully gone yet. Like their transformation had just begun.

  And they were looking at her. Motionless.

  Expectant.

  Her tongue was woolly and thick. With a flicker of vision, she saw: from the soldiers’ eyes. From her own. From that dark and frightful place, far away, where all her visions led—the place of ink and shadows. When she experienced her visions, she’d always watched them as if from the other side of a dark mirror. A shadow world all her own.

  Perhaps like Liam, she was bound to it, too; but unlike him, she’d never had a choice.

  Rebeka stretched her fingers, cramped from her death grip on the wood beam. In her mind, she extended the soldiers’ fingers. And below her, they eased their grip on their rifle butts.

  Her heart leapt in her throat. Controlling the shadow and its movements—this, too, was new.

  They stared at her, and she stared back. Pulse hastening, she imagined them pulling the rifle straps up and over their heads, then setting them down on the wooden tower floor. They did so, no resistance, no complaints, no urgency—just a straightforward, careful execution of her command. Glittering onyx eyes looked back up at her. Still waiting.

  Still under her command.

  With trembling arms, she pulled herself upright on the rafter. Her body felt miles and miles away from here, as if it belonged to someone else entirely. She felt the possibilities now, the boundless potential like a simmering river, its current just waiting to be directed.

  Was this what Liam felt? Was this the energy he tugged at and knitted into his own? She didn’t feel like an outsider twisting it around, subject to its corruption and hate. She was the current. She was that energy—

  And in the distance, the current rippled. An undertow, pulling her another way. And just as quickly, the spell broke, as if the connection between Rebeka and the creatures had been snipped to a thread, only a single fiber still remaining. The calmness Rebeka felt receded, and in its place surged fear.

  Rebeka tried to steady herself.

  “Go.” She waved her hands at the soldiers, scrabbling to recover that calmness, that oneness she’d felt moments before. “You never saw me. Get out—”

  The undertow pulled harder now. Angry, churning. Someone else was trying to wrest control from her.

  The soldiers’ expressions changed. They narrowed their eyes—started reaching for the rafter. She couldn’t sense one of them at all now, and her hold on the other was slipping, fraying, about to break.

  No, she screamed, silent, and dove back into the darkness, like falling backward into deep waters.

  The second soldier’s vision snapped into hers. With monstrous arms, she made him snatch his rifle back up from where he’d dropped it. Aimed it at his companion, just as a hand wrapped around her ankle. Tugged at her.

  Br-r-rap.

  The bullets struck the first soldier in the back, and he dropped immediately to the tower floor. There was a rush of shadow, buzzing and roaring like a gale, then nothing but blood spreading across the planks.

  Rebeka was shaking all over now. But she forced herself to look at the remaining soldier, the one holding the smoking gun.

  Seeing through his eyes, she brought the gun’s barrel under his chin.

  She was ready for it, but still yelped as the bullet spray wrenched away his jaw, his brain, his hair, smearing it across the tower walls. She felt it, a dull pain, but there nonetheless.

  Rebeka gritted her teeth. She would not empathize with these Nazi monsters. Whether they were under the influence of the dark energy or not, they deserved all of their pain and more. She only wished . . .

  The corners of her eyes burned. She only wished she’d understood how to control them sooner. Whatever—however—this was.

  She eased down from the rafter and stepped over the first soldier’s body. She had to find Daniel, before the other soldiers—and there were surely others—found him first. And Phillip and Simone—even Liam, the only person who might have the slightest clue how this all worked. And if the Nazis were here, then Helene was in danger, too. All of her Resistance contacts.

  Oh, God. Rebeka sank against the stone wall, throwing a hand out to catch herself just in time. What had they done? How many more innocents were going to die because they’d killed a few monsters in Siegen?

  Rebeka’s head was buzzing so hard she barely felt the tidal wave until it was all around her, black vines choking her, tangling around her limbs. A wall of hatred and fury, crushing her under its weight.

  She fell forward, and fell, and fell. She crashed into what felt like mud, thick and slurping as she tried to scramble to her feet. The bell towe
r had disintegrated around her. Nothing surrounded her but black trees against a rusty night sky.

  This is not yours.

  A figure stepped out of the trees before her, darkness pouring off of him like sheets of rain. If he’d been human, it had been some time ago; his skin was marbled, veined with black. Rebeka stared up at him, hands fisting in the glop beneath her. When she reached out for the currents of energy, they quivered, caught between her and the figure.

  You don’t belong here. The figure stepped closer. Rebeka rocked back, mud thickening around her. His words swelled all around her like blood vessels ready to burst. THIS IS NOT YOURS.

  Rebeka closed her eyes. She’d been here before: the dark woods that smelled of smoke and blood. It hadn’t made sense then, how much it felt like home. It still didn’t now. But now she also felt—what? An opening? An escape?

  No. She felt at peace.

  The shadows swirled around her, slicing through the air, and the figure staggered back, throwing a hand over his head. Intruder, the whispers chattered. Intruder. Yet she felt certain that only one of them didn’t belong here. And it wasn’t her.

  WHO ARE YOU? the man howled. HOW CAN YOU CONTROL THEM? He was pushing back against her attack, but there was something ragged in his words, something that spiked into her veins.

  No one. She was no one at all.

  The shadows snapped into her then with that same sense of oneness she’d felt in the bell tower. She pulled out of the mud effortlessly. The trees parted around her, their pulsing breaths relaxing as she passed. Rot and metallic tang hung heavy in the air, but she no longer feared them. She breathed in; breathed out. She would survive. She always survived.

  And then: another figure, blocking her path.

  It pressed against her thoughts as she looked up, around. She’d found herself in the center of ruins, once built from massive slabs of granite that jutted at strange angles. The figure was giant, but it wasn’t threatening her; it was only watching, peering around in her head, the same as the other shadows had done.