“That’s messed up,” Eleanor said.
“I’m on it,” said Cordelia. She was kneeling, holding the faceplate of Heinz, searching for something. There it was: the serial number.
Cordelia ran into the living room.
“Deal?!” shouted Eleanor. “Where are you going?!”
“You will come with us,” said Beckler, pointing his gun from down the hall.
“One moment,” said Will, who quickly dove to the floor and grabbed Heinz’s gun. Will rolled onto his stomach, propped himself on his elbows, and took aim. He fired several shots at the two Nazis.
The bullets just bounced off.
The two Nazis grinned.
Will got to his feet and tossed the gun on the floor.
“German engineering,” he muttered.
Beckler and Dingler moved toward Eleanor, when suddenly they stopped in their tracks, held still for a moment . . . and began to walk backward.
They moved in a herky-jerky motion, like characters being rewound on a DVD. They started to speak. It sounded like gibberish, like someone was playing a recording in reverse. When they reached the door, they stopped again. Frozen.
Will, Felix, and Eleanor exchanged a stunned look—and then Cordelia stepped out of the living room. She was pointing a high-tech universal remote at the Nazi cyborgs.
“Deal!” shouted Eleanor. “What are you doing?”
“I programmed the cyborg’s serial number into the remote,” said Cordelia. “I figured it might be able to control them somehow . . . and it worked!!”
Cordelia hit Reverse 4X on the remote.
The Nazis moved backward at four times their normal speed. They resembled an old Charlie Chaplin movie as they skittered out the front door, backing away from Kristoff House and speaking to each other in reverse chipmunk voices.
Outside, Volnheim and his Nazi brigade watched in disbelief.
“Beckler! Dingler! Have you lost your minds? Get back inside!”
But the two Nazis kept walking backward, oblivious to their leader. They reverse marched all the way through the assembled troops and across a field, disappearing into a forest hundreds of yards away.
“What just happened?” asked Volnheim, looking at his equally perplexed troops. “Anyone?”
The Walkers, Felix, and Will stepped out of the house. Everywhere they looked, there were Nazis. Standing in the four trucks, on top of the tank, lined up in formation . . . nearly one hundred of them. And they all looked exactly like Volnheim.
“Stop right there,” shouted the Generalleutnant. “What did you do to my men? You played with their minds. It’s witchcraft—”
Cordelia hit Pause.
Volnheim shut up immediately, and the entire Nazi cyborg army froze in place.
“That’s awesome, Deal!” said Eleanor.
“Dad spent a really long time researching this remote,” said Cordelia. “He got the best one.”
“But why does it work against those Nazi cy-bros?” asked Felix.
“Cyborgs,” corrected Eleanor.
“I put in the Nazi’s serial number, and he came up as being a brand Loewe AG television,” said Cordelia. “I don’t know how much time we have. Let’s grab as many of their weapons as we can and go back inside to figure out our next move.”
“Good idea,” said Felix.
The four of them began walking through the army of statue-like Nazi cyborgs and taking all their Luger pistols. Also their grenades and daggers. It was a difficult task to remove the weapons from the mechanically clenched metal hands of the soldiers. As Eleanor tried to pry a gun from one Nazi’s fingers, it fired!
Eleanor stared at the hole in the ground, inches from her foot.
She was frozen in fear. “I’m sorry!” she said, starting to cry.
“Don’t worry,” said Cordelia. “Hopefully we won’t have to use the guns. Let’s head back to the house.”
The four of them were a few feet from the front porch when a hand reached out and grabbed Eleanor’s shoulder.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Eleanor whirled around. One of the Nazis had come back to life. He was gripping her shoulder with one hand, holding a knife to her throat with the other.
“Deal!” cried Eleanor.
Cordelia saw motion out of the corner of her eye—all the soldiers were coming back to life. She dropped what she was doing and pulled out the universal remote.
She hit Pause.
It didn’t work this time. The Nazis were moving, looking for their missing guns and daggers.
Cordelia hit Pause again. And again.
But it was useless.
The Nazis were very much alive.
And that’s when she noticed the flashing Battery Low light.
“No way!”
The Nazis who still had their guns surrounded the kids.
“Drop the weapons,” said Volnheim, pushing through the group with a Luger pointed forward. Cordelia, Eleanor, Will, and Felix complied. The Nazis slowly took every single one of their weapons back from the children. Then Volnheim stood in front of Cordelia.
“Hand over the device.”
Cordelia gave him the universal remote. Volnheim took it, turned it over, and carefully examined it from all sides.
“What is this magic? Clever. Very clever.”
Volnheim tossed the remote high in the air, raised his gun, and fired, blowing it into several pieces. He turned back to Cordelia. “Are you the owners of this house?”
“Well, technically, my parents, but yeah.”
“It’s quite beautiful,” said Volnheim. “Our spies spotted it yesterday, just after the Great Time Disturbance.”
“Great Time Disturbance?” Cordelia asked.
“Yes. The Great Time Disturbance which caused Germany to suddenly be connected to ancient Rome.” Volnheim’s eyes narrowed. “Are you responsible for that as well?”
“No . . . ,” said Cordelia, but Volnheim didn’t buy it.
“You’re lying. It’s your house and you know all its secrets, which is why I’m keeping you alive. I want you to show me everything about this residence. Lead the way.”
The group exchanged worried glances as they led Volnheim, and only Volnheim, into the house. There he proceeded to pace and examine.
“Who ransacked this house? The Romans?”
Cordelia nodded.
“Typical Italians,” said Volnheim. “No elegance, no artistic sensibility. You do know that the entire Renaissance was a hoax?”
“No,” said Cordelia. “I wasn’t aware of that—”
“Yes,” said Volnheim. “The Sistine Chapel was actually painted by a German.”
“Interesting,” said Cordelia, who had decided it was a good idea to agree with anything said by the Nazi cyborg.
“Is there an attic?” asked Volnheim.
“Yeah . . . ,” Eleanor said.
“Wonderful!” Volnheim clapped his hands, making a metallic ringing noise. “Der Führer loves attics!”
“Uh . . . Der Führer?” Cordelia asked. “You don’t mean . . .”
“Of course,” said Volnheim. “My master and creator. Der Führer is the only one worthy of living in this house. Which is why he sent me to appraise it. You see, he has purchased a lakeside lot. Several acres. This will work quite well as his summer home.”
Felix whispered to Cordelia: “I don’t understand, who is this Führer?”
“Only the most reprehensible and evil dictator in world history,” said Cordelia. “Certainly one of the top five.”
“Silence!” shouted Volnheim. “How dare you speak that way about mein Führer!”
Volnheim suddenly stopped in the kitchen, looking down at Heinz and Franz. He frowned, brow tightening.
“I assume you are responsible for this?” he asked.
No one said a word. Volnheim clenched his jaw.
Then he led Felix, Will, and the Walkers back outside, addressing his army.
“I have found the home to be satisfactory. We will bring it to the Führer’s lakeside property. And these four—”
He looked at Cordelia, Eleanor, Will, and Felix.
“We shoot.”
The Nazi cyborgs let out a hearty cheer which sounded a little robotic, like someone yelling through a fan. Eleanor screamed. Will and Felix tried to shield the Walker sisters. Cordelia squeezed her eyes shut. The Nazis drew their guns. But before they could fire off a shot, a loud laugh stopped everyone in their tracks.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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In the past, Cordelia had felt a range of emotions when she heard the Wind Witch—terror, anger, resignation—but now, for the first time, she felt excitement. There was only one person who laughed that way, high and cackling.
She flew down from the sky with her wings flapping and her bald head glistening in the sun.
“Leave them alone!” she commanded. “The Walkers belong to me!”
Commander Volnheim was taken aback by the sight of her, but he wasn’t too surprised. He was a cyborg, after all.
“Stay out of this,” he ordered.
In response, the Wind Witch pointed one of her false hands at a Nazi truck and let fly a blast of concentrated air. The truck flew upward, flipping end over end, sending Nazis flying everywhere.
Volnheim screamed to his men: “Kill her!”
Nazis opened fire on the Wind Witch, using rifles and pistols and machine guns from the trucks. Volnheim ducked into the Tiger I tank; within moments, the turret began rotating, the cannon pointing upward.
The Wind Witch took off, climbing up, up, up, far away from where the bullets could reach her. She was lost in the clouds within seconds, able to see the entire panoramic view of Kristoff House and the trucks below. But she saw something else. Something fast, coming toward her with a flurry of deafening propeller noise.
And it had a star painted on its side.
Meanwhile, the Walkers, Will, and Felix ran back inside Kristoff House, racing for their lives as Nazi cyborgs streamed in. Cordelia led them into the attic. Eleanor was confused.
“I thought the Wind Witch was bad, so why is she helping us now?”
“I don’t know,” Cordelia said. “I need to learn more.” She thought of Eliza May Kristoff’s diary, which she had taken from the cave in the walls. It was still stuffed in her jeans. Maybe the answers were within, but now was not the time to check.
Back in the sky, the Wind Witch had met the other primary characters from Kristoff’s Assault of the Nazi Cyborgs: the Americans.
She was flying alongside an airplane, and behind it were two dozen others: an entire squadron of U.S. P-51 Mustangs with silver wings, crosshatched red tails, and big propellers spinning on their noses. The pilot of the lead plane stared at the Wind Witch through his cockpit window. She blew him a kiss, waved her arms, and started to move bits and pieces of the clouds, forming a white, puffy swastika shape. She pointed behind the pilot and down, emphatically. The pilot nodded and gave a thumbs up, then rolled into a big U-turn and led the other planes back the way they had come, toward the Nazis. Once she was sure she had made her point, the Wind Witch flew that way herself, streaking toward the ground like a bird about to grab its prey. She plummeted faster, faster, and she couldn’t resist—she opened her mouth to let out a gleeful scream.
Cordelia heard it from the attic. “Look!”
The Wind Witch dove straight for the Tiger I tank, extending her arms, gathering a cyclone of wind that surely would have turned everyone inside the vehicle into sparking spare parts—
But the tank fired.
It was the same intense blast that had busted a hole in the Colosseum wall: a twenty-two-pound armor-piercing ballistic shell. The Wind Witch was no match for it. At the last moment she redirected the air that was circling her to form a protective shield. This cushioned the blow, but only slightly. She was knocked backward in a tremendous explosion, flying away from the tank like a baseball cracked over the left field wall. Screaming in pain, she disappeared behind a hill, where she presumably hit the ground more than a mile away.
“They got her!” Cordelia yelled. “She was our last hope!”
A cluster of Nazi cyborgs climbed into the attic and drew their pistols, pointing them at the Walkers, Felix, and Will. Volnheim was in the lead.
“Turn around and face the wall.”
Terrified, realizing that this was the end, they faced the back wall of the attic. Cordelia took Eleanor’s trembling hand. Will and Felix fumbled for Cordelia’s other hand—and they both ended up holding it.
They all closed their eyes, waiting for the blazing round of gunfire—but they heard a tremendous KABOOOOM outside that didn’t sound like a gun.
It sounded like a bomb.
Eleanor was hit from behind with a blast of splintered wood and a Nazi Shahlhelm, which bonged off her head. She turned, dazed, and saw that the front of the attic had been blown off.
Nazi cyborgs were crawling on the ground, some blown to pieces, one headless, wires bursting from the hole in his neck, blindly searching for his missing head. The place where the front wall had been was a gaping hole; outside and below, a crater smoldered. The buzzing in Eleanor’s ears became a different kind of buzzing: a plane overhead.
“Americans!” she yelled.
Everyone looked. The Mustang P-51s, which were so classic in their design that they seemed like toys, soared away from Kristoff House—and then turned around in long, beautiful arcs that made the stars on their sides glint and wink.
“Verdammt,” Volnheim said. “They’re coming back. To the trucks.”
The fritzed-out cyborgs began to rush out of the attic and jump to the ground, pulling their damaged bodies back to the truck convoy, but it was too late. The planes released two more bombs.
The oblong shapes fell slowly. It was almost as if time stopped while they were in the air. One of the Nazis yelled “Take cover!” as cyborgs scurried this way and that, but they didn’t have anywhere to go before the bombs reached the ground, and then—
The army of Nazi cyborgs got turned into a big pile of spare parts.
Up in the attic, the kids had been huddling scared, but now, in the sudden quiet, they crept forward and surveyed the scene.
The field in front of Kristoff House was a junkyard of burning robotic heads. The bombs had largely disassembled the Nazi cyborgs, leaving arms and feet twitching and torsos spattered in black oil.
“We did it!” Felix yelled. “We’re safe!”
“Well, we didn’t do much of anything,” said Will. “The American planes did.”
“And the Wind Witch,” reminded Eleanor.
“Yes, that is strange,” said Cordelia.
“Where’s the tank headed?” Will asked. The Tiger I was crawling down the road, making a hasty retreat.
“Volnheim!” Felix said. “He’s leaving his men. Or his cyborgs. Coward. Even if the men are made of metal, that still makes him a coward.”
Cordelia and the group went downstairs and outside as six American planes touched down: five near the house, one far down the road to block the tank. Pilots stepped out of the planes and started to deactivate any Nazi cyborgs that were still moving, unscrewing power panels in their lower backs and pulling out their batteries. Then one of the pilots noticed the kids. The American pilot was Sergeant Jerrold “Jerry” Hargrove: square-jawed, with a three-day growth of beard, a shearling-lined flight cap, a brown bomber jacket, and killer aviator shades.
“Who the heck are you?” he asked.
Cordelia stared to answer him: “We—”
“Allow me to explain,” Will interrupted, stepping forward. He couldn’t let his friends botch this up. He was absolutely stunned at the quality of the American planes. He thought maybe if he sho
wed his leadership and courage, he’d get a chance to fly one.
“I’m Wing Commander Will Draper, sir,” he said with a salute. “Royal Flying Corps, Squadron Seventy.”
“Hold on,” Hargrove said. “The RFC hasn’t been around for years.”
“Right, bear with me, sir, it’s going to take some time to explain.” Will took a deep breath and laid it out—who the Walkers were, the fact that they were all trapped in novels by Denver Kristoff, the fact that those novels were coming together, and the manner by which Felix had joined the group. When Will finished, Hargrove scrunched his brow, turned, and called, “Lieutenant Laramer, sir? You gotta hear this.”
Lieutenant Laramer was a tall, rangy type. His shiny brass buttons meant he outranked Hargrove by quite a bit. He came over holding what looked like a water gun pointed at the back of Volnheim.
“Look who I found! The lead unit. You can tell from his Nazi stripes.” Lieutenant Laramer shook his head and chuckled. “Trying to outrun a plane in a tank. He ain’t the brightest ’borg in the bunch.” Laramer had the same cool-looking aviator shades as Hargrove. If Brendan were here he’d be trying to get his hands on those, thought Will. I miss the bugger.
Hargrove explained the implausible story to Laramer. Volnheim listened in; as crazy as the explanation was, it made sense to him: The Great Time Disturbance had, in fact, been two fictional worlds coming together. And the real world was the world these children were from. Volnheim’s robot mind began to spin with possibility.
Lieutenant Laramer shook his head: “You know, Draper . . . a guy tells me a story like that, usually I’d figure him for a crackpot . . . but do you know why I decided to strike against this Nazi force?”
“No, sir.”
“We were running recon,” said Lieutenant Laramer, “and a flying bald woman appeared in the air. Now I’ve seen plenty of nutty stuff in this war—after all, we’re fighting a bunch of robots designed by Hitler—but a flying bald woman? Anyway . . . she waved at me and made a signal in the clouds, pointing to the exact location of the Nazi cyborgs. This woman sounds a lot like your ‘Wind Witch.’”
House of Secrets: Battle of the Beasts Page 17