“She’s never left a friend behind and she’s not about to.”
“You! Argh...” She ran her hands through her hair. “You know the hilarious thing? The original offer was nine children between the two of us, but I talked them out of it. Didn’t think you’d go for it.”
I opened my mouth, shut it. Opened it again, shut it again. After a second I’d recovered from being blindsided, but she was forging on, her words gaining momentum as she spoke. “Look. I’ve got faerie in my blood already. That's a selling point. I’ll age slower in this place; it’ll be easier for the children to survive. This is like the place I was trying to reach all my life. These people, they’re not human, but they’re who I was looking for all my life. I was trying to come here. Maybe not this region specifically, but close enough, what?”
“You’re certain?” I whispered. My throat was tight, and tears threatened. I held them back with sheer force of will.
“I am,” she snuffled, ran her sleeve along her face. “Besides. This war? This is different. The Nazis are a horror, plain and simple. The things they’ve done, the things they’re trying to do, it’s the end of the world if they win. Plain and simple. So many have given their lives or worse to stop them, so this? This is my sacrifice.”
I hugged her again, and she squeezed me back like a drowning woman clinging to a life preserver. “How are we going to manage without you?” I whispered.
“Free the god, you’ll get Mitternacht off your back. Get a good enough bargain out of him, he might be able to help with Tesla. Whatever they’ve got planned for him isn’t good, especially with Schwarze Ritter coming in for it. You have to win, or God knows what’ll happen.”
I took a shuddering breath, and tears slipped from beneath my lids. “All right. Your sacrifice won’t be in vain.”
“Sacrifice? Bah, they’ll treat me like royalty until it’s time to go. And look, you’re not from too far ahead, are you?”
I gnawed my lip, and decided ‘fuck it’. I could trust her.
“Two-thousand and one. A little past that.” I whispered.
“Did the Nazis win?”
“They lost like the little bitches they are.”
She burst into a surprised laugh. “Ha! Heh... all right. Let’s make sure that happens.”
“Keep this secret. Her name is Dire.”
“Yeah? Funny name, that. First or last?”
“Both. And she wasn’t a good person either. Still isn’t.”
“Oh. Well, are the Nazis worse than you?”
From the bit I'd seen? Probably. “Much.”
“That’s okay then.” She giggled. “Keep it that way, huh?”
I thought back to Timetripper, and my possibly horrible future self. “She’ll do her best.”
“Ah, before I forget... here.” She handed me two clenched handkerchiefs, one of them still soaked in gore. “The rune and his blood. Might be useful, what?”
“Maybe. See you in a few decades? Please?”
“All right. I’ll find you when I’m out, okay? We’ll catch up on old times.”
“It’s a date.” I squeezed her one last time, and let go. Glancing around, I found that the fae had crept in a few feet, and we were in a light circle of them. Beyond, Henri and Bryson had turned their backs, were discussing something in quiet tones. Giving us a moment, I thought. Rather civilized of them, compared to modern times at least. The sort of bystanders I was used to would have cell phones out and be streaming it up on Veetube within minutes.
“Well?” I glared at the closest fae. “You got your show. Scoot.” My voice was rough, but they seemed to get the message, stepping back and fading off to the flanks. The leader looked to us, motioned his spear forward with a wide sweep.
“Yes, yes, yes, we’re coming.” Dottie said, rubbing her eyes. “Let’s go, then.”
We fell back into motion, and the rest of the trip was silent.
After what could have been hours, we stood in front of a large, scarred plain. Smoke rose from craters in the ground, and sinkholes descended into yawning caverns below the ground.
“This’ll be a city on the other side,” Bryson said. “Berlin?”
“They don’t know the proper name for it,” Dottie said, casting about. “Ah! There.” The leader of the fae was already moving that way, horns swaying as he stepped carefully through the gray mud.
“I see why they hate us so,” Henri said, following across the devastated landscape. “If all cities do this to their home.”
“Oh, they’ve got more reasons than that,” Bryson said, following. “Some justified, some not. Which is a problem, since they’re both immortal and hold grudges until they die.”
“The two would seem to be mutually exclusive, wouldn’t they?” I asked.
“Not as such. Most immortals can be killed, it just takes a lot of work or a weakness specific to their method. Immortality simply means that time and old age won’t kill you.” He sighed. “And it’s a rare human that manages to achieve that.”
I thought back to my original meeting with him, in his Morgenstern persona. He’d been in exemplary shape, true. Peak human, if he was to be believed and that wasn’t arrogance. But for all that, he was still obviously older, and on the downhill slide. Whether or not he’d tried, he hadn’t managed to find immortality between here and then. Perhaps that provided a hint to his modern-day ruthlessness, back in the year two-thousand. I made a note to look into that further when I got back.
If I got back. No guarantees, here. The few things I’d managed to find out about time travel seemed to indicate that having a future self was no guarantee of present survival. Timelines were a thing, and paradox was something the universe had handled before.
“We’re here,” Dottie said, pointing at a shallow crater. As I watched, the fae leader pulled something from his vest and threw it in. Immediately, the darkness filled up with fog. Then, with a flicker of motion, he was next to us and holding Dottie’s arm. She flinched, then took hold of his hand, leaning into him. He nuzzled her neck, and she closed her eyes.
“You’re sure?” I asked, eyes flicking between the mist and the two of them. One good rush, a hip-throw like the sort Bunny had taught me...
“I am. Go.”
I hesitated, but we’d argued this already and I’d lost. She was a friend, and I had to respect her choice, even if I didn’t like it. To do any less would be to show her disrespect, and her judgement had been good so far.
“All right. How do we do this?”
“Just walk in. You’ll be right outside his house... lair... laboratory... I don’t know.”
“No way to tell before we walk in?” I asked.
Bryson shook his head. “You’re stalling. Come on.”
I took a breath, let it go, and reached out a hand. Dottie hesitated. “Not going to pull you in, come on. Just shake it goodbye.” She did.
“Sixty years, remember,” I whispered to her, and her lips curled up. Next to her the fae turned silvery eyes on me, fascinated by our interaction.
“Right. It’s a date.” She let go of my hand. “Off you go then. Chop chop.”
We turned from her before I could be tempted into doing something stupid, and walked into the crater of mist.
It wasn’t like our transition from the church to... wherever that place was. This time it was gradual, the cool air of the violet-skied weirdscape around us replaced by warmth of spring, the silence of the cratered land broken by bird calls, and crickets. The color seemed to seep out of reality around us, the vibrant hues exchanged for bleak dimness. It felt heavier, in a way that weighed upon my mind.
But at the same time, the lingering ache that had assailed my head cleared, and my thoughts snapped back into focus. I blinked a few times as the last wisps of mist chased after us. We stood upon a well-manicured lawn, with trees all around, and the dark windows of a large manor just to the north of us. North? Yes, that way was north. I knew it instinctively. It was good to have my internal compass ba
ck again. To my East a series of lights spread across a wide valley, suggesting buildings and streets over a wide area, with a river tossed in for good measure. Not enough lights to be a city, far more than a town.
“Berlin.” Bryson muttered.
“Why so few lights?” I whispered back.
“The British bomb them as often as they can. They only have a few lights, in nonessential areas.”
I nodded, my eyes on the manor. Behind me, Henri gave a soft sigh. “It is good to have my power back.”
“You lost it?”
“Monsieur Égalité’s reach evidently does not extend to faerie.”
“So you’ve got the distortion field. Alright. We can use that.” I didn’t see any guards, but that didn’t mean there were any.
“Come on, then.” Bryson crouched low, moved from shadow to shadow, without so much as a whisper. Damn, the man was good at this! I tried to follow, but every crackle of dry grass made me wince. It sounded like thunder in the still of the night, at least to me. But I made it to the side of the house just after him, with Henri right behind.
“Standard number five alarm system on the windows.” Bryson said, cracking open his valise.
“Is that going to be a problem?”
“Well I designed the damn thing, now didn’t I?” He fiddled with the window, tapped it with a glass rod. “There we go. Never design a system you can’t disable. Shush now...”
He slid it open, and we pulled ourselves in, one by one. The nightvision monocle went back up from its charging cradle onto my face, and I looked around the room. Oddly bare, most of it, with a workbench to one side. Engraving tools? Yes. A bin of rocks, several ingots of what looked like metal, and a few more of those runes.
I felt in my pocket. I still had the handkerchief-wrapped rune that Dottie had identified, the one that would make its master seem more trustworthy. Didn’t seem like a good time to use it.
Bryson pulled out something with dials, fiddled with it, nodded. He leaned in, pulled both Henri and myself close, and whispered “Three people on this floor. Breathing indicates sleeping. They’re in the same room.”
“Servants.” Henri muttered.
I nodded. “He won’t keep a god around them, I’d bet.”
“Near a trickster god? No.” Bryson glanced at the door. “If he has wards against entry we’ve tripped them and he’ll know we’re here. Speed is our ally.”
I looked at the device. An enhanced barometric pressure reader, measuring airflow and minute variances in local atmosphere. Radium-coated dials instead of a screen, as fit the technology of the time. Amazing he had that, he must have trained himself to analyze the dials at a glance. “Don’t suppose your reader detects gods?”
“Most of them don’t breathe unless they’re talking.”
I filed that away under ‘weird shit I never expected to know.’ “So where does one keep a thing like that?”
“Two solutions present themselves. Either an attic above, or a basement below.”
“Somewhere out of the way of servants, yes.” Henri nodded. “Should we split up?”
Bryson nodded. “Yes. Henri, check above. Doctor, check below. I’ll make my way to the servants and ensure they don’t wake up.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Not sure she likes that idea, even if it is wartime.”
He sighed. “Chloroform, Doctor. I’m no savage.”
I smiled in relief. “All right. Lead the way.”
He did, and he was far more quiet than I could ever be, gliding over the old wooden floor like a ghost in the night. I gave him a few minutes... less chance that my own stompy footsteps would be detected if he got to the servants and gassed them first. Finally I felt safe enough to go looking.
And looking. And looking. Of course an evil Nazi sorcerer would hide the entrance to his secret lair! With a low growl in my throat, I pulled out the sonic rifle, and started assembling it.
“What are you doing?” Bryson whispered, and I jumped.
“Ah! Er. You finished gassing the servants?”
“Yes.”
“Well, she was going to put holes in walls until the basement stairs turned up.”
“You don’t think the neighbors might hear?”
“She didn’t see any neighbors...” my protests faded. True, they were probably a ways off, but the sonic rifle was pretty loud. “...so, you’ve got a better idea?”
He sighed. “It’s in the main hall. One of the candlesticks turns, reveals a staircase. I just opened the damn thing. Henri's already back, and investigating. We were waiting on you.”
“You’re pretty good at this breaking and entering and secret lair finding thing.”
“I could tell you stories. Come on.” I followed him back to the main hall that I’d passed through six or seven times, past the large bookshelf that I’d wasted a few minutes pulling every volume from, while I was searching for secret levers. They lay on the floor in a sad little heap, proclaiming me to be the worst burglar ever. The fireplace had slid aside, and stairs yawned into the darkness.
Light flickered below, and I grabbed hold of Bryson’s shoulder. “It’s Henri with the torch,” he muttered, annoyed. I followed, pistol ready in case it wasn’t Henri with the torch. The gun wasn’t necessary, as Henri’s lean, bearded form loomed out of the shadows. An old wine cellar, by the looks of it. No windows anywhere, and the casks and racks made for a makeshift maze.
Bryson checked his pressure reader, and I saw his eyes narrow in the dim glow of the radium. “There’s quite a few people in here. Eighteen, twenty, perhaps more.”
“In one specific location?” I murmured.
“Spread out.” He grimaced. “This device is less reliable underground. Without enough of an atmosphere surrounding the structure, the readings lose precision.”
I glanced to Henri, he nodded back and pulled his own gun. “We’ll cover you.” I told Bryson. “You’re the stealthiest one here.”
“You’ll cover him.” Henri clarified. “I cannot see in the dark. I will watch the rear.”
And so we crept along, Bryson feeling his way along the stone walls, perhaps fifteen feet ahead. I kept my eyes on him through most of it, until we got up to the first door. It was a simple iron grille set in the wall, much like a jail cell. And judging by the two huddled, snoring forms inside that’s what it was. Not much room in there, barely enough for them to slump against the walls and sleep.
I studied them in the green filter of the nightvision, and frowned. They had numbers tattooed on their thin, wasted arms. What was going on here?
“Why are they tattooed with numbers?” I whispered to Bryson, and the man’s face twisted, turned as still and hard as stone.
“Come on. Let’s check the rest. Tell me if you can spot more tattoos.”
I followed. There was a dim light in this place, coming from the center of the room, but we kept to the edges. It was enough for him to feel his way around, and every twenty feet or so, we came to another cell. Often with two, three people in it. Men and women I thought, though most had shaven heads and malnourished frames, making it hard to tell. A few were children. This late at night, most of them were sleeping. A few sat awake, quietly weeping or muttering in a language I didn’t understand. The reek of feces and urine washed out of a few cells, and they had not a single amenity in their barren stone chambers. The more I saw the more I felt my jaw clench. No human deserved to be treated so! What had these people done?
Some of them had their arms hidden, but the ones who didn’t, every single one of them had a tattoo. My confusion grew as we circled, and I could almost feel the palpable waves of rage radiating from Bryson as he went. The man was practically quivering. “What’s wrong?” I whispered between cells, and he shook his head with a violent motion that almost twisted his top hat right off.
The sixth cell we came to held Timetripper. I stared at him for a moment, feeling that old surge of anger stir in my chest... a year he’d been hunting me, for my future crimes, and
this whole goddamn mess was his fault. But the anger died, when I saw the bruises and burns and bandages all up his arms. He hadn’t had an easy time of it, at all.
“Everything all right?” Bryson whispered.
I hesitated, then decided not to say anything. Timetripper couldn’t cause any trouble in here. “Yes.” We moved on, and I resolved to grab the chronological miscreant on our way out.
We came to a tunnel leading back, barred with a solid steel door. He checked the reader, shook his head. “Sealed. I can’t tell a thing from this.” A quick jiggle of the handle, and his scowl lengthened. “Locked, too. Damn solid, it’d take me a while to crack it.”
I nodded. “Her turn.” I unslung the rifle from my back.
“You fire that thing in here, you’re going to kill or cripple everyone in this cellar.”
“O ye of little faith. Give her a minute.” I cradled the rifle with one hand, pulled out my toolkit with the other. Squatting on the musty floor, I set to work recalibrating the thing.
Midway through, footsteps pattered to my left, and I froze. But it was only Henri, feeling his way along the wall, moving in a hurry. “Wings outside,” he whispered, “large ones.”
“Sturm Crows!” Bryson bit back a curse. “The master of the house is back. Not good.”
“I’ll go shut the passage.” Henri clicked his flashlight on, and hurried back.
“He’ll still know something’s amiss,” I said, thinking back to the pile of books, and other messes from my frantic searching. But Henri was gone already. I sighed. “Alright. Bryson, cover your ears.” He shouldn’t need to, but just in case...
VOIP! The sound echoed through the basement, and the door shivered, as the handle popped right out , the locking mechanism pattering down in a tinkling rain of bits.
“Is it done?” Bryson whispered.
I reached out and swung the door open. “Like a fine steak.” Candlelight glimmered in the tunnel beyond, wax candles the size of my arms, lining the passage. I wondered how the hell he kept all of them lit as we proceeded down, the flickering light twitching and writhing as our footsteps echoed on uncut stone. This was a natural cave, I realised.
DIRE : TIME (The Dire Saga Book 3) Page 21