by Amy Cross
A fine offer.
Perhaps somebody else would have taken her up on it.
She was clearly a survivor, but she would not survive me.
I leaned closer, but at that moment I heard a loud bang in the distance, and the light of an explosion briefly lit the room through a shattered window. In that flash, I saw Helene's terrified eyes staring back at me, and she screamed just as darkness returned.
Then came more bombs.
The ground shook beneath us, and now the room was lit by an ever-changing orange glow that was cast by explosions across the city. I could hear the distant roar of British planes flying overhead, but my gaze was fixed solely on Helene as she sobbed and pulled herself back into the corner. It was as if she was trying to squeeze herself into the tightest spot possible, in the desperate hope that I would not notice her at all.
“No!” she cried as I moved closer. “What are you? Please, no!”
She turned her face away, but in so doing she merely succeeded in exposing the side of her neck. It was in this moment that I finally lost all self control, and I lunged at her in a lusty, bloodied frenzy. Bombs continued to fall outside as I tore Helene's throat open, and she struggled for several more minutes as I slowly drained the blood from her body into mine. It was a nasty, messy scene, but it was also necessary. There was nothing unnatural about the strong feeding upon the weak.
Chapter Seven
Chloe
I could hear more voices outside.
Bombs were still falling in the distance, and the temperature had plummeted. I was so cold, I was actually starting to shiver, and as I stared up at the moonlit window I could actually hear my teeth starting to chatter.
“Hello?” I called out finally. “Is anyone there?”
The voices stopped.
“My name's Chloe Carter,” I continued, “and I'm trapped down here. Can somebody help me? I don't understand what's happening, but -”
Suddenly the voices started laughing. Big, deep belly laughs, as if they thought something was really funny.
“Do you understand me?” I shouted. “I'm British and I'm not supposed to be here!”
The laughter continued, and this time one of the voices started chuckling about something in German.
“I need help!” I yelled.
One of the voices shouted something, and the other voice continued to laugh. They sounded very excited about something, and a moment later I heard footsteps getting closer to the window.
“I need to get out of here!” I shouted. “I'm not -”
Before I could finish, I saw a hand at the window, and then something was pushed through. I watched as a small object dropped to the ground in front of me, and then to my horror the object twisted around and ran past my feet. I turned and watched as the creature scurried out between the bars, and I realized after a moment that it was a rat.
The voices were laughing again.
“That's not funny!” I shouted, turning to look back up at the window. “I'm not scared of rats, you know! I actually think they're kinda cute!”
I glanced around, just to make sure that the rat was nowhere nearby, and then I turned to the window again.
“I'm a British citizen!” I said firmly. “I demand to be put in touch with the embassy! Do you hear me? I demand that you respect my rights!”
Chapter Eight
Matthias
“Help!” a woman shouted in the street. “Help me!”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw that a shop was burning. The place had obviously taken a direct hit, and flames were roaring into the night sky. The air raid seemed to have ended, but fires had taken hold in several parts of the city and I could already hear the screams of people trapped nearby. I briefly considered going to help them, but of course I quickly realized that there was no point.
After all, why bother?
Human lives were insignificant. They were over in the blink of an eye. And no matter how many humans died, there were always more than enough to take their place. Their deaths, however, could be useful in other ways. That was why my brother and I had ended up in Paris. There was so much pain and suffering, and we could almost absorb it through the night air itself. For an immortal, it can feel very good to be around so much death; for an immortal, death is kind of a turn-on.
Turning, I continued my walk back toward the house. After emptying the girl of so much of her blood, I felt terribly bloated, and all I wanted was to sleep. Nightmares be damned, I was going to rest for at least twenty-four hours, and I told myself that perhaps all that warm blood would offer some comfort. Did it not make sense that a full, sated creature would sleep more soundly and more pleasantly than one who needed to be fed? That, at least, was the gamble I had resolved to take. Perhaps I wouldn't even need so much wine.
And then, as I turned the next corner and saw the house ahead, I was suddenly confronted by a panicking soldier.
“Halt!” he shouted in German, as he raised his gun and aimed directly at my face. “What are you doing out this late?”
I sighed. In retrospect, that was perhaps not the best response.
“What are you doing here?” he screamed.
“There were bombs,” I replied, coming out with a carefully rehearsed speech that I had used several times in the past. “I thought perhaps I could help.”
“You're not supposed to be out at night!”
“I know, and I'm sorry, but I wanted to see what I could do.”
“Others will do that!”
“I know. I'm sorry.”
I waited, but still the soldier had his gun pointed at my face. Usually, I'd have been waved on by now, but this particular soldier was clearly young and jumpy, and perhaps trying a little too hard to prove himself. I could sense the fear in his sweat, and I could see the indecision on his face, and I actually felt a little sorry for him. He was little more than a child, and even his uniform seemed too large for his small, lanky frame. He was another kid, caught up in a war for which he was ill-prepared and ill-suited.
“Might I be on my way now?” I asked, giving him a way out of the confrontation.
Instead of replying, he merely adjusted his grip on the gun. It was at that moment that I decided he must be an idiot. Even by human standards.
“There's a building burning back the way I just came,” I told him. “I think some people are trapped in there. Perhaps they could use your -”
“Don't tell me what to do!” he screamed, interrupting me.
“I wasn't trying to,” I replied. “I merely wanted you to understand the situation. There are people who might yet be saved.”
“You're not supposed to be out this late,” he said through gritted teeth, circling back around to the start of this pointless conversation.
“I know, and -”
“You're breaking curfew!”
I stared at him for a moment, as I began to realize that he was a stickler for the rules and regulations. Perhaps, I told myself, it was sheer fear that was making him act this way. For all their petty insignificance, some humans possessed an extraordinary talent for irritation.
“You're completely correct,” I told him, “but do you know what will happen if you shoot me?”
I waited, but of course he said nothing.
“If you shoot me,” I continued, “you'll blow away a chunk of my face. And then I will kill you. I will throttle you, and I will leave your corpse on the ground for your comrades to find. After that, with half a face, I will walk back to my home, and I will have to spend several months recuperating. My injuries will be fixed in time, but I will be significantly inconvenienced and you, meanwhile, will be dead and rotting in the ground. So, really, who benefits from such a course of events?”
“Shut up!” he sneered. “You're trying to distract me!”
“I'm trying to help you.”
“You're breaking curfew!!
“I know, and -”
Suddenly, before I could finish, I heard a loud whistling sound,
and I looked up just in time to see a bomb come crashing down and hit a nearby building. The explosion was huge, rocking the street and knocking the poor young soldier off his feet. I managed to grab hold of his gun as he fell, and then – as he struggled to get back to his feet – I grabbed the back of his head and slammed his face against the wall.
I felt and heard his nose break, and then I let go of him and watched as he slithered down to the ground. He left a nose-sized patch of blood on the bricks.
Above, the whir of planes could once again be heard. Evidently the British had sent a second wave to attack the city, and I was glad of that. The soldier, although unconscious, was still alive, and I felt no great need to kill him. Instead, I arranged his gun on the ground close to his right hand. After all, there was no need to embarrass him further. Then I stepped over him and resumed my walk home.
Another bomb exploded nearby, destroying a building, but I did not slow my pace even as the ground shook beneath my feet.
Chapter Nine
Chloe
I tried again to cry out, but I was already starting to feel weak. A moment later, I felt someone unfastening the chains around my wrists, and finally I slumped down into Matthias's arms. Grabbing my throat, still desperately trying to breathe, I felt the ragged edges of the deep cut that had been carved into my flesh. Blood was flowing over my hands as Matthias lowered me to the ground, but while my throat hurt, the greater pain came from the incessant ringing in my ears.
Nearby, Hugo was laughing hysterically, as if madness had finally shattered his mind.
“You're not going to be okay, Chloe!” Matthias told me, leaning closer. “No-one cares about you. You're going to die here.”
“No!” I shouted. “I have to -”
Suddenly a wave of icy water hit me, waking me from the dream and bringing me gasping back to the waking world. I opened my eyes and pulled back against the wall, and then I looked up at the metal bars and saw a soldier chuckling as he set a metal pail on the floor. My heart was racing, and it took a few seconds before I realized that I must have fallen asleep and started dreaming. Sheer exhaustion must have dragged me under for a little while.
A moment later, as I wiped strands of tangled, wet hair from across my face, I heard a voice laughing nearby.
“There's no point looking so pathetic,” the voice said after a few seconds. “You won't persuade me. You won't trick me into believing that your are powerless.”
Turning, I saw Klaus Zieghoff watching me from the other side of the bars.
“The last witch I caught was almost a year ago now,” he continued. “She was young, like you, but French. She refused to give up any of her secrets, and in the end I got tired of waiting, so do you want to know what I eventually did with her?”
Staring at him, I tried hard not to shiver. I didn't want that asshole to think that I was afraid of him.
“I dissected her,” he explained. “I thought that maybe something in her body would be of note. Something that made her a witch. An extra organ, perhaps, or something too magical for me to even imagine. Pixie dust. Imagine my surprise and disappointment, then, as I went through her guts and found absolutely nothing of the sort. Even to a trained eye such as mine, there was no way to see what part of her body made her so powerful. I even threw her remains to my dogs, to see if they might gain anything by eating her, but of course that didn't happen. And so the mystery goes on. What makes a witch a witch?”
I opened my mouth to reply to him, but no words came out. For a moment, I was struck by a terrible sense of fear. It was as if, deep down, my body and soul could tell that I was in the presence of pure evil.
“Perhaps you'll be more cooperative,” he added. “Tell me, Ms. Carter, what spell brought you here to us? And why? Or were you not in control of your powers on this particular occasion?”
I swallowed hard.
“Tell me, witch,” he continued, with an added sneer in that last word. “Your powers will be harnessed for the glory of the Third Reich, one way or another. Why not make it easy on yourself?”
“I'm not a witch,” I stammered.
“Yet you arrived before us in a kind of flash of light and smoke,” he replied, “just as we were performing a ritual designed to draw a witch to us. Are you telling me that this is a coincidence?”
“I'm not a witch,” I said again, as I slowly got to my feet. I was still trying so hard to keep from shivering. “I don't know exactly how I got here, or why, but I demand to be released.”
He smiled.
“You have to let me out of here!” I continued, taking a step forward. “What about the Geneva Convention?”
“I have never heard of such a thing. I have visited Geneva, but I know of no convention there.”
I was about to tell him that he had a duty to keep me safe, when I suddenly realized that maybe the Geneva Convention was only created after the Second World War. It was in that moment that I realized I knew so little about history, and I couldn't help wishing that I'd paid more attention at school. I mean, sure, I knew that the British had fought the Nazis, and I knew that America had been involved at some point, but beyond that my knowledge was seriously sketchy. Hadn't the Russians been involved? Or were they called Soviets back then? What about Asia and Africa?
“You're from the future,” Zieghoff said. “That part of your babbling nonsense, I believe. Tell me, what is it like there? How far has the glory of the empire spread?”
“What year is it now?” I asked, barely able to believe that I was saying those words.
“1942,” he replied. “Three years into the great struggle for glory.”
“Then you've got about three years to go until you're beaten,” I told him.
He chuckled.
“I'm serious,” I continued. “I've seen your mansion in the future. It's a ruin, a place that people go when they want to be reminded of pure evil. History views you and all your friends as monsters. The war ended in 1945 and you were -”
Stopping suddenly, I realized that maybe I was making a mistake. I'd seen enough films about time travel to understand that maybe it could be dangerous to give someone too much information about their own future. What if I told him things that allowed him to change the course of history? What if I'd already done that? Or was that kind of thing impossible? I'd seen so many films, with so many different rules, that I genuinely had no idea what might or might not happen. For a moment I felt paralyzed by fear, and my mind was racing as I wondered whether I'd already blundered into making some terrible changes.
“I was charged by the Fuhrer himself with the task of investigating certain possibilities,” Zieghoff said after a moment. “If you have seen the future, then that information could be very valuable to us. Perhaps I seem like a savage to you, Ms. Carter, but I assure you that I am not. And I have developed, over the years, some very persuasive means by which I can extract information. Trust me, I will force you to tell me what I want to know.”
I shook my head.
“You will see,” he added confidently.
“You already admitted you couldn't make your last witch talk,” I replied, although I immediately regretted the outburst. “I'm not a witch,” I continued. “Please, you have to understand, I'm just a normal person who somehow got caught up in a huge mess. I'm not part of whatever's happening, I'm just an innocent bystander, so you have to let me go. I know I'm British and that makes me your enemy, but I'm not even part of this war. I just want to get home.”
“Then go,” he said. “Make yourself disappear in another flash.”
He smiled at me.
“As I thought,” he added, “you can't. Your powers are not strong enough.”
“I don't have any powers,” I told him. “You have to believe me. I'm just me, I'm just Chloe Carter from Britain and I don't know how I ended up here. There's nothing witchy about me at all!”
“Your predecessor in this cell said much the same thing,” he replied. “For your sake, Ms. Carter, I very mu
ch hope that you are able to prove your use to me. Otherwise, I might have to try another dissection project. My previous failure has not deterred me. On the contrary, it has given me several new ideas to explore.”
He looked me up and down for a moment, and then he turned and walks away.
“Wait!” I shouted, rushing to the bars and trying to force the door open. “You can't leave me here! It's not fair!”
Zieghoff disappeared from sight, and a moment later the guard slammed the main door shut.
“You have to let me out of this place!” I screamed, with tears streaming down my face. “I'm not a witch!”
Chapter Ten
Matthias
I tried again to cry out, but I was already starting to feel weak. A moment later, I felt someone unfastening the chains around my wrists, and finally I slumped down into Matthias's arms. Grabbing my throat, still desperately trying to breathe, I felt the ragged edges of the deep cut that had been carved into my flesh. Blood was flowing over my hands as Matthias lowered me to the ground, but while my throat hurt, the greater pain came from the incessant ringing in my ears.
Nearby, Hugo was laughing hysterically, as if madness had finally shattered his mind.
“You're not going to be okay, Chloe!” Matthias told me, leaning closer. “No-one cares about you. You're going to die here.”
“No!” I shouted. “I have to -”
Suddenly my eyes flicked open, and in an instant I emerged from the dream and found myself slumped in a chair in front of the window. Morning had arrived, bringing a gray sky and light rain, but I felt distinctly out of sorts. I began to sit up, but I found that I lacked the necessary strength, so I remained slumped for a moment as I picked over the details of what had been an unusual, and very vivid, dream.
But had it been my dream?
The more I thought about it, the more I felt as if the dream had belonged to somebody else. I had often entered the dreams of others, of course, as a means of finding out more about them or even just as a way to pass the time. Now, however, it was as if my mind had inadvertently drifted into somebody else's dream, and – even more strangely – that dream had been about me. Which, of course, was clearly impossible, since I'd never experienced any of the events that had occurred in the dream.