by Michele Lang
He rose and stretched like a cat, walked for the door without looking back at me. “There is no way Asmodel will accept your challenge. He will simply have you arrested by the Gestapo and you will disappear.”
“No. I am not the kind of ghost that fades away, dear Count Bathory.”
My former employer stared at me through the smoke, and finally I fidgeted under his gaze when I realized I had won our battle of wills. He enjoyed his meaningless triumph over me. “You were supposed to be my prized possession, little chicken. What a presumptuous fool I am.”
We rushed to Café Istanbul, Bathory, Janos, the gazellelike driver, and I. The place, all but empty, buzzed with the tension of impending war. Bathory swept upstairs to his balcony seat, settled in his chair in the corner. I took my accustomed seat at his right hand, and the driver joined Imre, the vampire’s enforcer, at his place downstairs at the bar.
Without hesitation, the waiter swept up with the usual: a bottle of seltzer, two espressos, and a plate of rumballs. He arranged our refreshments with his usual flourish, and under his breath he murmured:
“A pleasure to see you again, sir. But be aware the Arrow Cross has been looking for you.”
I suppressed a gasp: The Arrow Cross was the Nazi Party of Hungary, a pack of vicious, degenerate fascists at least as awful as the German variety.
“Of a certainty. They know where they can find me, eh?” He patted the waiter’s hand, shifted his attentions to the rumballs.
When the waiter went away, Bathory removed his pen and stationery from the leather folio he had carried in under his slender arm. “Ah, how does one challenge a demon to a duel? What are the proper formalities?”
“He is a Biblical demon of old, if that helps you any. I think if you just write it in German that will be sufficient.”
Bathory nibbled at his quill pen, and then he laughed, a huge roar that overwhelmed his wiry frame. “You are mad, little chicken.”
“No, just desperate.”
“I never said madness was any disadvantage. Sometimes madness will sustain you in battle, where good mental hygiene will only lead to despair.” He sipped his espresso, patted at his whiskers with a linen napkin. “May I order you a full meal, my dear child? You look positively skeletal.”
“No thank you, Count Bathory.” I was beyond eating now.
He shrugged and reached for a rumball. “I have many a time thanked the Maker that as a vampire I may enjoy the fruit and vine of man.” He studied me with a long, cool look. “Apparently you may not do the same.”
I shrugged. “I don’t care. As long as I complete my mission, nothing else matters.”
“You’re lying.” But then Bathory reached for his papers and troubled me no more.
I watched the customers clustered at the tables below us, and listened to the scratching of Bathory’s pen. A group of men walked in the front door together, and the people standing at the bar drew back. Imre made a hasty exit behind them, and the bartender wiping the bar with a rag paused, pointed up at the balcony, at me.
The Arrow Cross.
They marched in lockstep across the mosaic floor and to the enormous curving stairway leading to the balcony. They were not in uniform, but they did not need to be: they moved with a single mind, a sole intent.
Bathory did not look up until the half-dozen men stood directly in front of us and their leader rapped rudely on the marble table.
The vampire took his sweet time, folded his missive into the thick envelope and addressed it before giving the small mob his full attention. “Good evening, gentlemen. How may I help you?”
“You come with us, you and your—girl here.” He sneered at me, and I could all but hear his thoughts: your dirty Jewess, your filthy little Hebrew witch. I narrowed my eyes, whispered his true name under my breath.
He gasped and took a half step back, and his minions looked at him in surprise. I blinked hard, whispered his name louder, and he fell to his knees.
“You do not belong to the Horthy administration,” Bathory continued, as if the Arrow Cross thug weren’t suffocating to death at his feet. “You have no authority to order Hungarian citizens around in this brutish manner.”
I released him, and the wretched man huddled on the floor, gasping for air, his eyes streaming with tears.
“Please, sir, get off the ground and stand up. Your pants will get all dusty on that filthy floor—I will tell the night manager to sweep.”
The Arrow Cross man rose slowly, looked daggers at me. I smiled, leaned back in my chair, and took a sip of espresso, though I couldn’t taste it. “You’ve come for me really, haven’t you? Well, you can’t have me.”
The Arrow Cross bastard crossed his arms, and I savored his fear, enjoyed it as once I had the espresso. He tried to ignore me, but I smiled again, and watched him twitch as he waited for me to whisper his name.
One of the men standing behind him, fat and sweaty, fished out a dirty handkerchief from his back pocket and mopped his face with it. With the remaining shreds of his menace, the Arrow Cross sergeant snapped each word like a cur. “Count Bathory, we come in the name of the Chief Vampire of Berlin. You are hereby summoned to the MittelEuropa Tribune of Nosferatii.”
Bathory laughed again, a bray like a trumpet. “Oh, that’s rich, my dear friend. Since when does the Chief Vampire have need of human minions to deliver his missives to his underlings?”
“Since he became a member of the National Socialist Party and swore fealty to the glorious Adolf Hitler, that’s when. He summons you in the name of the Reich.”
Bathory said nothing. My poor count. “In fact, I have a letter for him here. Quite a coincidence. I suppose I will simply deliver it to him in person.”
He rose, kissed my hand. “My lovely little chicken, I fly for Berlin. It is hardly past midnight, so I will reach my master before daybreak.”
“But, Count Bathory . . .”
“Do not worry about me. I will deliver your letter, and will take care of myself thereafter. You, clearly, have no more need of my protection.” And he nodded at our mortal friend from the Arrow Cross, who had become quite the model of courtesy since I had almost choked his life out.
“Farewell, Magda Lazarus.” He looked long and significantly at me. “Go in peace.”
We both knew peace was not my destiny. I stood up, kissed his cheek. “Deliver that message for me, and I will be forever in your debt.”
He bowed formally, kissed my hand again. “In that case, I go to Berlin gladly.”
I remained standing as Bathory swept down the stairs and to the front door of the Café Istanbul, his mortal handlers following ineffectually in his wake. Regardless of the count’s concerns, I knew Asmodel would certainly accept my challenge: the demon knew I had failed, and my very vulnerability would ensure his presence. Tempting a demon was not so difficult as tempting an angel, and I had managed that without wanting to.
The count disappeared, I feared forever. “Farewell, dear count,” I whispered to his departing shadow.
29
We sat together in an apartment on Dohány Street, me, my little sister, and an angel of the Almighty who refused to go away and return to Heaven. Eva was gone. As she had never returned from Amsterdam, we all feared the worst, but we did not have the luxury of worrying about her now.
“Do you think Asmodel will actually answer the challenge?” I asked. The three of us sat over steaming hot crepes stuffed with poppy seed jam, Gisi’s specialty, a veritable feast. But the crepes sat untouched on their plates.
Raziel played with a fork, balancing it on his fingers as if the implement were a wonder. “Asmodel will come. I know he will.”
A sick feeling settled in my stomach. I pushed my plate of crepes away. “You don’t think we can beat him, do you.”
“I think you are our best chance.”
“Why not you, Raziel? Can’t an angel trump a demon every time? Isn’t the Lord supreme over the Satan. His adversary?”
“Of cours
e, of course, the Lord Almighty reigns over all,” he said quickly, his voice warm and low. “But he reigns over the Satan too, and the Satan works His will. We must accept that it may not be destined for us to prevail.” And he frowned fiercely down upon his plate; his eyes contradicted every word he had said.
“Poor angel,” Gisele said. “Eat your crepes, you’ll feel better. And look! I boiled you some eggs, too. Here, you peel off the shells like this. And then you shake the salt on, from the shaker, like so . . .”
What a feast Gisele had laid out for us. She had cooked every last bit of food she had. Poor Gisi. She didn’t think we were coming back, either.
“We need our strength,” she said, an edge of steel creeping into her voice.
Our strength? We needed it? “Oh, no, Gisi. You are not coming with us tonight. You stay here and wait for us.”
“No, I will come. If only to see what happens, to be a witness. And if I die, so be it. Magda, all of us are going to die someday. This way is better than . . . the other.”
I argued long and hard, but the girl who had been my sweet little mouse would not bend. She stayed gentle, but my Gisele would not budge.
“We don’t have to do this, you know,” I said, because someone at the table had to speak the Satan’s case. “We could still run away.
“Survival is a victory,” I continued. “We should do like Eva, leave, warn the others what is going to happen so that they can run too.” Our food sat cold and unappetizing on our plates.
I looked at Raziel. “You told me once that I should accept the will of God. And yet, here you sit.”
He shrugged, and placed his fork with exaggerated gentleness on the table alongside his plate. “Something happened in Berlin while you were imprisoned in the amulet, Magduska. Something so terrible that I could not see it from the second Heaven. We must battle against whatever it was that the Staff and Asmodel did.”
The demon’s name visibly pained him. I patted his hand as Gisele gave me a long, rather shocked-looking stare. “Could a demon like Asmodel use the Book, all restored?” I asked. “And give Hitler invincible power?”
“A demon can’t, just like an angel can’t. But a human being . . .”
“But Hitler has no magic,” I protested, my voice a near whisper.
“Even if not, one of his wizards may well have enough magic to do it for him.” Raziel hesitated, took a sip of Gisele’s rich, perfect coffee. The hideous yellow flowered curtains in the alcove fluttered in the morning breeze at the open window. Somehow, the angel looked perfectly at home in our splintery and pockmarked kitchen.
With a sigh, I made a show of nibbling at the by-now cold crepes. I could not taste them, I could not taste anything since I had sort-of returned from the land of the dead. “So we stay and fight. It is decided.”
I took a look around the little apartment, as if it were the last time. Gisele rose to wash her dishes, sniffling all the while, and I spoke to her back as she scrubbed. “Gisele, I spoke to Bathory about what you did.”
Her back stiffened, but she didn’t say a word. I pressed on in my hardheaded, blundering style. “I just wanted you to know, sweetheart, you did what you had to do. No matter what happens now, there is no shame in surviving to fight another day, no matter how you do it.”
She would not look at me. “Eat your eggs, please, Raziel,” Gisele murmured. But I knew he needed eggs as little as did I.
Instead, he rose from the table, carrying his plate of eggs, and he came to where Gisele stood at the kitchen sink. She wiped her hand on a dish towel, then dabbed at her eyes, lips trembling. Raziel took her chubby little hand in his, her finger still scabbed over where she had sacrificed her blood to bring me back to life.
It was absurd, ridiculous, but I knew it to the bone: Asmodel would answer my summons. That night, at midnight.
And only one of us would walk away.
At dusk, the three of us walked in silence along the Danube. On the surface of my mind, I fretted about Bathory, in Berlin at his peril, and Eva, gone missing altogether. But underneath, in the depths of my spirit, a silent calm overspread everything I saw or touched.
Fantastical blazes of color striped the sky over the iron gray river and the lights of the old city began to sparkle far away on the hills of Buda. Night settled over the face of Budapest, and I whispered my good-bye.
One time, or three, I considered speaking aloud and breaking the spell of silence in which the three of us walked. But Lucretia de Merode had taught her wayward pupil well; I left Raziel and Gisele to the labyrinths of their own thoughts.
We paused by the enormous parliament building facing the Danube, and I stole a secret glance at Raziel’s face. His heavy-lidded eyes looked across the gray river, to the sparkling far shore. The delicious summer breeze played over his thick black hair, and a half smile hovered on his lips.
30
At midnight, we stood in the middle of Heroes’ Square. The huge, empty space echoed outward from where we stood, silently at the center, keeping watch.
I could stand the silence no longer. “Do you think . . .”
“Asmodel will come,” Raziel said. He reached out, slowly stroked the side of my face with his fingers. “Magda . . .”
“Don’t say it, my dear,” I replied. “I couldn’t bear it.”
Gisele rubbed her arms with her palms, shivered though the late August heat had not broken in the night. “Is he hideous, Magda? The demon?”
“I only ever saw him inside the body of Adolf Hitler. From what I saw, he is hideous enough.” My pulse pounded behind my eyes, and I squinted into the darkness.
Raziel looked into the sky, his face composed and peaceful as always. I loved him, but I could not say it now, not in front of Gisele. And not in the shadow of death. “You’re not the slightest bit afraid, are you?” I asked.
“I am here for the right reasons. I have nothing to fear.”
I remembered what Capa had to say on the subject of goodness, and felt sick to my stomach.
High above our heads, a statue of the Angel Gabriel presided over our earthly travails from a lofty pedestal, while the non-Christian, forest-god worshiping prince Árpád stood at the base of the pillar, keeping watch over his thousand-year-old kingdom. The Millennium Monument was designed to provoke awe, to commemorate, but all I could think of, as I stared up at Gabriel trapped on high, was that long ago my beloved father had taught me how to ride my bicycle here, in a time when I was safe from harm.
Exactly at midnight, the bells of St. Stephen’s Basilica began to peal in the darkness, as they usually did only at midnight on New Year’s Eve.
“He comes,” Raziel said, his voice mingling with the bells.
Black polished leather caught the dim reflection of starlight. First his boots, then his legs, then the full figure of the Great Führer materialized, standing all alone before us in the center of Heroes’ Square.
I squinted and searched the sky, and inky black, hidden by night, the form of Adolf Hitler was framed by a moving tapestry of scaly, silent demons filling the sky from Earth to Heaven. We were, to put it mildly, outnumbered.
I said a little prayer under my breath, and braced for a blast of fire, a slash of fang, something supernaturally awful. Gisele trembled but held her ground. Raziel stood perfectly still, steadfast.
I contemplated Hitler’s stern, unyielding face, uncertain. I expected Asmodel, a slavering, demonic monster, not this neat, energetic little general. I searched him with my witch’s sight.
“You seek my true aspect,” he said, in German of course, a small, knowing smile stretching his thin, chapped lips. “But what is truth, little Lazarus.”
He smiled again, flickered for a moment into his demonic form before replacing the mask of Adolf Hitler, and he shrugged his shoulders almost apologetically. “You have seen what a page of the Book can do. My late lamented wizard Staff revived the entire Book, before you destroyed him. It is over.”
“No, it isn’t.” I spoke
a little too quickly.
His smile widened still further, and I could see the tips of his yellowed teeth under his funny Charlie Chaplin mustache. “We have more than enough to accomplish my objective. With the Soviets on our side, Poland is finished. Stalin knows his Red Slave Army is outnumbered by my demonic host, even now. I have told him so, demonstrated it if you will. All is in readiness.”
“So what need do you have of me?”
Asmodel planted Hitler’s hands on his hips; his laughter was a knife slashing into the sky. His fingers twitched inside their black leather gloves as they yanked a dusty little book from inside the breast pocket of his buff-colored general’s jacket, with its black braid and shiny black belt at his waist.
I saw the cover of the little book clutched in his hands, and the strength drained out of me into the cold, unyielding earth.
“You know what I have here.” He played with the Book, opened it, riffled the pages, studying my face for my reaction. His smile got wider and wider, as if his face was going to split open and spill his brains out onto his boots.
My rickety heart had all but stopped; my fingers went numb. “How did you get my book?” My voice sounded dry and far away to my own ears, like I was again, and forevermore, speaking from beyond the grave. “How is it that a bound, modern book is in fact my book? The Book of Raziel.”
Because I had no doubt. He did not need to further taunt me with it, prove what I already knew to a certainty. The Book of Raziel. It called to me, and my fingers ached to touch it. But the Book was no longer mine; it was lost to me.
“You did me quite a good turn, fraulein. Rabdos was a cunning, clever sorcerer, but disloyal. You eliminated him for me before he became too troublesome. And with such brilliant timing. He restored the Book from the shards he had, breath by breath, sold his own oversold soul to retrieve it. And he bent it to my service in Berlin, before he came to Budapest to steal the Book’s power for himself by using the amulet.”