Nine by Night: A Multi-Author Urban Fantasy Bundle of Kickass Heroines, Adventure, & Magic

by SM Reine

  “God knows that I have indeed wanted peace...”

  Ahead, the sounds of a larger party beckon.

  The man’s strident words pull at me, inexorable.

  “...We were forced to fight. In the face of such malice, I can do nothing but protect the interests of the Reich with such means as, thank God, are at our disposal...”

  Voices grow louder from the room off the corridor ahead. I hear laughter interspersed with the murmur of conversations, some of it tinny and off-kilter, drunk-sounding.

  A cluster of men walk towards me, wearing uniforms.

  “...They were bound to regard this action as a provocation emanating from the State that once had set the whole of Europe on fire and had been guilty of indescribable sufferings. But those days of using seers and Jews to fight the battles of men are now past. An error we regret, one we will not repeat...”

  Four men approach in that group. Soldiers. I recognize the color and shape of their uniforms and what they mean, their import, but here, the clothing feels mundane.

  They speak German, like the radio.

  “The Fuhrer’s speech is not finished,” a tow-headed boy of maybe seventeen says. He shoves a cap back on his head, rubbing his forehead. “We shouldn’t have left.”

  The man next to him throws an arm over his shoulder. “Aw, read the text in the papers. I need something stronger to drink...and there are nothing but dogs in that pen.” Drunk already, he grins, eyes bleary. “...At least that I could bark at without getting shot!” He laughs, slapping the tow-headed one in the back of the head. “Dogs! Ha!”

  A third looks over, a giant with dark hair and thick lips. His arm, when he raises his flask, is the size of my thigh.

  “My god...you didn’t have the view I did. Did you see Rolf's wife? Holy Christ.”

  “What an ass on her!” tow head says, smiling.

  “And she has that look—” the drunk one leers.

  “—Like you want to surprise her,” the giant says. “Yes, I saw. Lucky bastard.”

  The fourth one listens intently. Of them, his eyes shine clearest, a blue that looks like steel in a ferret-like face. His uniform is the least rumpled, the least sweat-stained. He also wears a slightly different insignia at his collar.

  “He should not have brought her here,” he says only, into the silence.

  Tow-head takes the flask from his giant friend. “He’s in love. It’s romantic, isn’t it?”

  The ferret-faced man’s German remains clipped. “It is no excuse for stupidity. Blauvelt was not subtle in his attentions. I would not want the assignments Rolf pulls after this meeting.” He mutters, softer, “...Especially with his pedigree.”

  “What?” the giant asks. “What did you say?”

  “Aww, who cares?” the drunk one says. “He’d cut our balls off if we breathed on her. Let’s go find our own tail...some that doesn’t have a Luger attached to it.”

  They walk through me and past me down the corridor from which I’ve come, as if I were a puff of smoke. I watch them leave out another door, but my feet compel me to continue in the other direction.

  The sounds of the party grow louder. I follow the clink of glasses, the low murmur of voices, but above this, the rise and fall of the emotional speech dominates. Occasionally the words are broken by wild applause, both by those in the room ahead of me and by a crowd far bigger that carries through the loudspeakers themselves.

  “...The training of our officers is excellent beyond comparison. The high standard of efficiency of our soldiers, the superiority of our equipment, the quality of our munitions and the indomitable courage of all ranks have combined to lead at such small sacrifice to a success of truly decisive historical importance. What need have we of homo fervens? Of Syrimne? Should we weaken our humanity further by dependence on foreigners and half-breeds...?”

  Another swell of thunderous clapping drowns out his words.

  I enter a room with ceilings two or three times the height of the corridor. A giant banner cascades down a fireplace of river-polished stones. I stare up at the black swastika riding the center of a white circle on a blood-red background.

  Away from the crowd gathered under metal speakers, men in uniform talk in small clusters, eating and drinking with women in party clothes that make them look like gaunt, long-necked birds. The ecstatic voice can be heard from speakers in the high walls, as if it lived in the ceiling, like a voiceover in a movie...or God. Even those talking amongst themselves split their attention, soaking up his words as one breathes in air.

  My attention is drawn to a group standing off by itself.

  An older man in a medal-covered uniform smiles, listening to a beautiful woman with dark hair and wide eyes, who looks embarrassed as she answers a question in a low voice. Her curved body is draped in a glittering blue dress and pressed into the side of a harder body next to hers. Her thick, dark hair is piled in elaborate curls on top of her head, studded with diamond-like pins that match her dangling earrings and the stones on her dark blue shoes.

  She clutches the hand of the man next to her, who is tall, who wears a German infantry uniform that is at least a few cuts above the rank and file. As I focus on the three of them, I hear their words.

  “...We will have these English scum routed in no time, do you not agree, Rolf?” The older man takes his eyes off the dark-haired woman, staring up at the tall man at her side. “What have you to report from the front of late?”

  The taller man takes a drink from a glass half-filled with ice and amber liquid.

  I can’t flinch exactly, nor feel real surprise, not in this place...but I stop walking when I see Revik’s profile. Except for the clothes and haircut, subtleties in his expression and posture, he looks exactly the same as when I last saw him, minus the bruises and with a bit more weight on his long frame.

  He glances at the woman, his light eyes as still as glass. He tugs her closer before he looks at the man across from them, who frowns.

  Revik’s voice is low, familiar in all but its tone, which is not quite insolent, but close to bored...younger somehow.

  “With all respect, Commander Blauvelt,” he says. “These British are stubborn. It will be months yet before they fall. And if the Americans become involved...”

  The man waves a hand, irritated.

  “...They will not.”

  “Fine,” Revik returns evenly in German. “But Churchill has been astute in cultivating a friendship with the American President. We would be fools to discount his charms entirely.” He smiles, shaking his glass towards the loudspeakers. “Especially when our Fuhrer does not.”

  Blauvelt frowns in disbelief.

  Revik gazes out over the room, his light eyes narrow.

  “...The American taste for isolationism may run out. Or the ability of their arms manufacturers to quell the outcry over the distress in Europe. If they were to feel themselves threatened by any of our incursions on the sea, or if we were to let our gaze go too far East...”

  He trails as the dark-haired woman tugs sharply on his hand. Her eyes hold a warning when they meet his. Shrugging, Revik leaves off, but I see the hardness that touches his mouth.

  Blauvelt notices none of this.

  He waves a gloved hand, having decided to dismiss the alternate view, rather than honor it with anger.

  “You are saying I must tremble in fear over a fat old man on a tiny island because of his cripple friend? Bah! They warned us about France’s mighty armies as well! And the legion of seers supposedly commanded by the English...” Blauvelt smiles at the dark-haired woman, who glances to Revik with worried eyes.

  “...Your husband would have us fear the gypsies next, Frau Schenck! What do you make of this poor display? Or are you merely wondering how he and I could be such tremendous bores in such enchanting company as yourself...and when you are wearing such a lovely gown?”

  Frau Schenck smiles, still clutching Revik’s hand. There is a moment where husband and wife look at one another, and I c
annot help but see the intensity that comes briefly to his light eyes, or how her expression softens.

  Blauvelt, watching them look at one another, frowns.

  ...and I blink against a gust of cold wind.

  I clutch my body, shivering as I look out over a bleak landscape of dark and torn earth, winding, muddy ruts cut through iced-over snow. The horizon seems to go on forever, broken only by heavy carts drawn by shaggy horses who stomp and paw at the icy ground, huddled with humans for warmth, their ribs sticking out even through their thick coats.

  A man lies in the snow not far from me, features blurred by a thin layer of water frozen on his face. His ice-filled hair sticks up like fine grass. Dark, rust-colored streaks stand out on his chest and one upraised hand, soaking the wool coat wrapped around his emaciated frame. His eyes are stuck in an expression of agony.

  I look to the endless plain of white and black, and see more bodies, a line that stretches to where land meets a heavy sky. Columns of smoke hang in that streak of gray. As if the sound comes back on, an explosion breaks the quiet some way in the distance.

  A soldier approaches, stepping around bodies.

  Behind him stand more wagons, and now I really see the men leaning against them to shield from the cold. Some are wrapped in heavy coats, rubbing hands together and blowing on fingers, faces wrapped in gray scarves...but most are not. One works over a body while I watch, trying to pry a wool coat off stiff arms, stomping and cracking ice and bone with his boot.

  The approaching soldier speaks from within a few feet.

  “Heil Hitler,” he says, raising his hand.

  I look back, flinching when I see how close he stands to me.

  Revik lowers his hand from the returning salute, wrapped in a winter coat, wearing a cap of the German Wehrmacht. Breath comes out of his lips in thick clouds. He has a beard, and his eyes reflect back the sky in darker tones. With one boot, he prods at a body frozen in the snow by where he stands.

  “They have found more, then?” he says in German.

  “What? Found what, sir?”

  “Glow eyes.” Revik’s own shift up. “Jews. Communists. Are they bringing them back alive, or just shooting them?” He half-smiles, his voice bitter. “...Because we could use the bullets.”

  I stare at him, more shocked by his eyes than his words.

  “Sir.” The soldier takes a breath. “Sir...we cannot remain here. Russian infantry traveling south from Rostov, moving fast. The panzers are stuck in the mud a few miles up—”

  “Pull them back,” Revik says. “Those in the town, too. I imagine their fun is spent...or their tolerance for the smell of burning flesh, at least.” The bitterness edges towards what lies under it now, something more raw, that edges into hatred.

  “Do as I say, Lieutenant,” he says, when the other hesitates. When the soldier turns to go, however, Revik’s voice stops him.

  “Any news on von Rundstedt?”

  I cannot tear my eyes from Revik’s face, lost in the unhappiness I see there.

  “Sir.” The man hesitates again. “The advance divisions were forced to turn back. Von Rundstedt has been, well...replaced, sir. For health reasons is the word of the office.” At Revik’s harder look, the soldier’s face reddens. “...We are to be led by General von Reichenau in the next attempt. You are in charge of the Eleventh until von Reichenau can evaluate our status.”

  Revik’s expression hardens more. Stomping snow off his boots, he turns, gazing out over the body-strewn field. The feeling in his eyes is gone by the time he completes the motion. He clasps black-gloved hands at his back.

  “And my recommendation to Berlin?” he says. “We could be helping them in the West...”

  “Denied, sir. Blauvelt felt—”

  “Blauvelt?” Revik’s eyes turn to ash. “Is our Fuhrer no longer deciding strategy on the Eastern Front? It is fallen to his swine, instead?”

  The other hesitates. Stepping closer, he lowers his voice.

  “Sir...when I spoke to his man, he had news, sir...a message. He claimed to know you, and recommended me to assist him in this...” The man’s voice trails as Revik’s eyes narrow.

  “Well?”

  The man takes a breath. “It’s about your wife, sir...”

  Revik’s face grows whiter than the snow flurrying around them in dry bursts. He is reading the man’s mind now, and no longer hears the words coming from his lips.

  The world fades around the wind-chapped face of the unnamed soldier speaking to him earnestly. Details remain with me briefly, the smell of rotting corpses and unwashed clothes, burnt flesh imprinted permanently behind his eyes, knowing that friends and even relatives burned in those ovens, that the humans are no longer simply doing it to one another...

  Then, all of it is gone.

  ...I blink, indoors, in a dated room that doesn’t feel dated here.

  A mirror hangs over the fireplace. Fresh flowers bloom yellow blossoms over a flower-patterned vase with wing-like handles. I gaze into reflective glass, see a room washed in dusty pinks and rosewood trim. Lamplight warms a stained-glass shade from a table beside a standing wardrobe. A thin carpet of eggshell blue lays over the hardwood floor.

  For a moment, the sounds of wet wood crackling distract me.

  Then I hear breathing...the heavy, half-expressed breaths of a rhythm I recognize. I look at the bed. Tufts of gray hair stand unevenly across a man’s bare shoulders and in patches along the sides of his thick back. He lets out a low grunt.

  The woman under him, I recognize. Her brunette hair lays in an artful fan on the bed, and she smiles at him. I feel a shiver of revulsion; it’s gone before I realize it’s not mine.

  The woman is tired. I feel her unhappiness like a shroud...

  The door slams open and I turn.

  The sound is loud, but I can only watch, unsurprised to see him, although he looks different to me now, older than he’s ever looked to me, his eyes nearly black as he stands in shadow by the door. My gaze drifts to his white, long-fingered hands, and I see them clutching the wooden handle of an ax.

  The woman has seen him too. Her voice is filled with terror, but not for herself. Her words come out in a near wail.

  “Rolf! Rolf, no! Darling, no!”

  He is walking to them in a straight line, his long legs moving with a quiet grace I recognize from a park on the other side of the world over seventy years in the future.

  “Rolf! They know what you are!”

  He doesn’t look at his wife, but at the stretch of skin and tufted hair.

  He swings the ax before he has completed his last stride, embedding it between the man’s shoulder blades. It sinks down to the thickest part of the blade.

  Revik slams the wooden stock forward, ripping it out with a thick, wet sound and Blauvelt screams and screams and screams...

  Revik’s wife screams with him.

  Unflinching, his face a mask of emptiness, Revik raises the blade and swings again...

  ...I am lost. I am lost.

  A farmhouse lays buried in snow, two forms huddled in ratty blankets, a man and a woman. The woman is pregnant, at least seven months, and she is asleep, though the man is not.

  Revik lays in the dark, watching the snow fall through the square window at one end of the hay loft, and his face looks almost dead to me now.

  His eyes sharpen with a sudden flash of light, and he raises his head.

  His skin is whiter, his weight less. His beard is shorter, and unevenly cut.

  He is listening. There is a resignation in his eyes as he looks down at his wife. She has lost weight also, and her dark hair is matted with dirt, limp on the straw by her hollow cheeks and eyes bruised with fatigue. When the doors burst open below, he hesitates, then shakes her gently awake. Hearing the sounds in the barn, she stiffens, clasping his arm.

  “We are caught,” he says quietly. “They know we are here.”

  Her eyes widen like a frightened animal. “No—”

  “You need a
doctor, Ellie.”

  She starts to argue, but he puts a finger to her lips. He is just sitting there when the SS Commander lifts his head above the lip of the hayloft, holding a Lugar. Before the man can speak, Revik sits up, raises his hands so they are visible.

  “Rolf Schenck?”

  Revik nods. “That is me.”

  “You are under arrest.”

  His wife, still half-lying beside him, bursts into tears.

  ...Darkness fills me, cold. I hear her last words to him. She thinks he let them be caught, and there is some truth to that, too.

  He did not do it for the reasons she thinks.

  He has no place to take her, not anymore.

  You want to die so much? I hope they torture you! I hope they beat you half to death...

  She bursts into tears, clutching at him, begging him.

  ...And then she is gone, too.

  There is nothing to push against, nothing with which to push. A faint whisper of voices speaks softly, a tinge of warmth that he will not let near enough to feel. The light is gone.

  It is gone.

  ...I wake in the dark.

  The mind-numbing disinterest remains.

  Anger lives here, as well, a wanting of...something. That something is death, but death itself feels unsatisfactory. His muscles hurt from disuse, and of all things he would like to use now, it is them.

  He amuses himself with their minds instead, if they are foolish enough to be alone with him. He flexes the only muscle he can, and ignores the voices that grow fainter and fainter as he learns new trails in the light.

  They know what he is.

  His marriage is void. He was never married.

  He gets the followers, too...those who believe him an angel beside them who think him a devil. He doesn’t discriminate; he hates them all. His wife gets her wish, too. They beat him when they’re bored, but it’s never enough...for them, or for him.

  He has forgotten the reason that brought him here, the thing that once seemed so important.