Midnight in Berlin

by JL Merrow

  I realized I’d taken a step back. “No argument from me on that score,” I said, trying not to back off any farther. Changing the subject was looking like a good bet. “So, you guys all live here?”

  Schreiber nodded. “You will stay here also.”

  I wasn’t any too keen on the way he put that. “Uh, listen, that’s really nice of you, but I got a room that’s paid up to the end of the week and a job to go back to.”

  “You may return to collect your belongings. Sven and Tobias will go with you.”

  Gee, thanks. My two favorite psychos. I wondered if they’d get to put me on a fucking leash. Something told me they’d enjoy that. “And my job?”

  There was a sort of barking sound, which I figured out after a moment was Schreiber laughing. “You think you are fit to go among humans? Have you forgotten already how the transformation took you? Until you can control yourself, you will remain under the supervision of one of us.” He turned away then, like that was the end of the introductory pep talk. Werewolf 101, all done and dusted.

  Damn, I needed a drink.

  Chapter Three

  I didn’t get a drink. The whole house was as dry as a Mormon wedding. Schreiber told me alcohol dulls the senses, makes it harder to keep control. I felt like telling Schreiber he could shove his control up his pasty, Ossie ass.

  I didn’t get to do that, either, as fortunately—or unfortunately—my better judgment kicked in before I could do anything that’d likely get me carved up and eaten by the rest of the pack.

  What I did get to do was to go to Charlottenburg to pack up my shit. Me and the two mean sons of bitches. We took the Porsche. Seemed it wasn’t Christoph’s; it was some kind of communal ride. It’d explain why he didn’t give a shit about the upholstery that night over a century ago. Hey, maybe if I asked real nice, they’d let me have a turn driving it.

  Then again, maybe not.

  At least the drive back into town gave me a chance to look around the neighborhood in daylight. Turned out there wasn’t one—if your definition of neighborhood includes actual neighbors. I’d been wasting my time trying to run for help last night. I knew some areas around the Wannsee were densely populated, but this wasn’t one of them. Maybe there were other old houses like Schreiber’s, hidden in the forest, but I didn’t see so much as a driveway.

  Made me wonder just what the hell else might be hidden among the trees around here. Right now I was willing to believe anything, up to and including talking pigs and bears making porridge.

  We wound through the forest tracks without passing another living soul. Within minutes, we were on the A115, speeding up toward Charlottenburg as straight and fast as an arrow to the heart. I directed Sven through the familiar streets—apparently werewolves thought GPS was for sissies—and the closer we got to the hostel, the more unreal this whole situation seemed.

  Maybe…maybe it hadn’t really happened. Maybe Christoph or one of these assholes had slipped me some hallucinogen and just planted suggestions in my mind. I swallowed, clutching feverishly at that shred of hope I wasn’t totally fucked. If that was the case, all I’d have to do would be to get away from Sven and Tobias. That had to be easier in the city than in a remote house in the forest, right? I could bide my time—and then run like hell.

  My heart was pounding so damn hard I was scared they’d hear it. I sat back in my seat and tried to force myself to calm down. Patience. That was what I needed right now. “Next left,” I told Sven, hoping he hadn’t noticed how croaky my voice had gotten.

  ”Your room is here?” Sven asked as we pulled up outside the hostel on Bahnhofstrasse, with its peeling paint and boarded-up windows. “How did you ever afford the rent?” He’s a funny guy.

  Both of them came with me to get my stuff. As we walked in the door, the stink of humanity—washed, unwashed, male, female—hit my nose like a juggernaut loaded with freshly slaughtered meat. I swallowed a despairing groan as my skin started to prickle. It was real. It was all real. If there was one thing I was sure of right now, it was that my reaction wasn’t normal. Not for a human, anyhow. Shit, was I getting hairy? I wanted to ask the guys if I still looked human, but my mouth was dry and my tongue was too thick to form the words. Had the place always smelled like this? Like some great nest of people—like a herd of fucking cattle, all with a neat little brand on their asses saying Eat me. Suddenly my mouth wasn’t dry anymore. It wasn’t an improvement. My teeth were lengthening, and the ends of my fingers tingled from the claws that wanted out.

  “Leon!” Tobias barked in my ear. “Hold on to yourself!” They were holding me up between them, and I was glad of it. I couldn’t seem to think human and walk at the same time.

  “Hey, Leon!” The voice cut through the grey mist in front of my eyes. Nasal. Loud. American.

  Objects snapped back into focus. Colors I hadn’t even noticed as they disappeared washed back across my field of vision; even the sour green walls of the hostel seeming garish. My mouth felt something like it usually did once more. “Hey, Jon,” I managed. “Y’okay?”

  “Shit, man, better than you! Dude, you look like hell. And what’s with the entourage?”

  Jon must have been, what, twenty-four, twenty-five? I wondered how the hell he’d managed to survive a quarter century with a mouth like that on him and no brain behind it. He was one of your corn-fed, blue-eyed all-American boys, all blond hair and muscles, screwing his way around Europe before going back to work for his daddy and marry his high-school sweetheart. I’d never gotten around to asking him why he’d come to Berlin in particular, but I figured the beer probably had a lot to do with it. “They’re friends, okay?” I managed not to choke on the word friends. “I’m gonna be staying with them awhile.”

  Jon looked between the two of them, looming on either side of me like an honor guard. Tobias still had a death grip on my arm. Sven was standing just a little too close for someone I wasn’t fucking, looking like he’d just eaten his own grandmother and was hunting for dessert. Jon’s eyes widened. “Shit, man, you in some kind of trouble?”

  “Trust me, Jon. You don’t wanna know.” Damn, I was going to have bruises from where Tobias was holding on to me.

  Jon gave me a long look, then held up his hands. I wondered if he just figured I must be into BDSM and Sven and Tobias had made me their bitch. The image that conjured up nearly made me toss my cookies on the scratched linoleum floor. “Okay, man,” Jon said, looking like he was trying as hard as I was to wipe that picture from his brain. “Cool. I’ll see you, like, whenever.” He half turned, then looked back. “Hey, you want me to get a message to anyone for you?”

  Yes. Call my mom, call the goddamn CIA. Tell them I’ve been kidnapped by a bunch of monsters and turned into one of their own. “Uh, no. Thanks. Hey, but if you’re still looking for work, there’ll be a job going at Corvino’s. Just tell them I’ll be out of town for a while, and I said you could cover.” It wasn’t much. But maybe it’d persuade Jon to stick around awhile. I figured if the shit hit the fan, it wasn’t going to hurt to know where I could find a friendly face—especially one belonging to a guy who owed me.

  We went up to my room. While I grabbed my backpack and started shoving stuff in, Sven and Tobias sprawled on the faded quilt, looking like a couple of off-duty bodyguards. Tobias even lit up a cigarette and passed another to Sven. He didn’t offer me one. I thought maybe I should tell them about the hostel’s no-smoking rules, but then I figured what the hell, it wasn’t like I lived here anymore.

  I darted glances at them as I packed up my stuff, which would have taken all of about thirty seconds if I hadn’t been distracted. It was kind of ironic—any other time I’d have been glad to have a couple guys like that sitting on my bed. Maybe neither of them was going to win any beauty contests—not like Christoph—but they were both tall and well-muscled. The sort of build you get from hard, physical work outdoors, with tans to match. I guessed all those muscles would come in equally handy for beating the crap out of any reluct
ant recruits who tried to make a break for it. I shivered and hoped like hell they hadn’t noticed.

  Tobias was taller, maybe six-three, six-four. His mid-brown hair had thinned to the point he’d have been better off shaving it, if only someone had the guts to suggest it to him—I sure as hell wasn’t planning on volunteering anytime soon. I figured he had a few years to go before he hit thirty, even so. Sven was better looking, if you like them mean, with a blond buzz cut and a jaw you could crack rocks on.

  Right now neither of them was giving me a hard-on. My hands shook a little as I grabbed the last dirty T-shirt off the floor and crammed it into the top of the backpack. Shit, I didn’t want to be doing this. Once I walked out of there and left an empty room, there’d be nothing to stop Schreiber and his goons making damn sure Leon Jacobson was never heard from again. And here I was, making nice and helping them wipe away every last trace of me.

  I’d always wondered, you know. About guys who dug their own graves just because some asshole with a gun told them to. I mean, hell, if the bastard’s going to shoot you anyway, why go out of your way to make his life any easier? But now I knew—when you’re in that situation, you’ll do anything. Because there’s this little demon called hope that keeps whispering in your ear that if you make nice with the gun-toting asshole, if you drag things out as long as you can, then maybe, just maybe, he’ll change his mind and you’ll come out of it alive.

  So I picked up that shovel and I dug that grave, making sure the edges were straight and square, and when the bastards told me it was time to go, I said, “Sure thing!” and I jumped right into that fucking pit.

  Okay, so it was actually a Porsche, not a pit. Didn’t feel any less like a funeral, though. We drove back to the house in silence, leaving civilization far behind us once again. Hell, I was silent, anyhow. Sven and Tobias exchanged a few words it didn’t seem worth the effort of listening in on.

  “Where’s Christoph?” I asked as we walked in the door.

  Sven and Tobias looked at each other. They were both wearing the kind of smile I really didn’t like. “Nowhere you need to worry about him,” Sven said.

  “Like I’m worried about that bastard?” I managed. I was getting seriously freaked out by the lack of a straight answer, but I figured I’d better change the subject. Otherwise they might start thinking I gave a damn. “What happens now?”

  “Now? We eat.”

  Finally, a plan I could approve of.

  I’d been expecting lunch, but the meal we all trooped into the kitchen for turned out to be dinner. It seemed I’d slept most of the day, which made me wonder if whoever had patched up my shoulder had slipped me some sedatives while they were at it. Somehow it didn’t surprise me that Schreiber might know his way around a date-rape drug or two. I was kind of rattled I hadn’t even noticed how low the sun was in the sky, though. I guessed my brain was still scrambled from whatever they’d doped me with—or from all the crazy stuff that’d happened.

  Dinner was a casual affair, almost relaxed. If you weren’t me, that was. The food was good, at least—not your traditional Abendbrot of maybe one piece of rye bread and a slice of salami. We all got served man-size bowls of goulash, heavy on the meat, light on the spices, and ate sitting around the kitchen table like one big, happy family. “Pass the beans, John-Boy,” I said, trying to lighten the mood.

  Nobody laughed. My fellow freaks talked in low voices about boring, normal shit, like football and the economy, and the place they all seemed to work at—I figured out eventually it was some kind of scrap yard. I got talking to one of the nameless guys, who turned out to be called Michael. “So, you got a family?” I asked him.

  He looked at me with his eyes glazed like Silke had put ganja in the goulash. “The pack is our only family now.” All the emotion of a goddamn GPS. At the next brainwashed werewolf, turn left, I thought. And run like the hounds of hell are after you—because let’s face it, they probably are. I decided I’d liked the guy better before I’d gotten to know him.

  “I guess that makes us all brothers, now, huh?” I said, trying to keep it light. “Even Christoph,” I added, because it was freaking me the hell out that he’d just disappeared like that. Not that I gave a damn about that asshole who’d bit me, oh no, but if punished was a euphemism for buried in an unmarked grave, I figured I’d like to know about it. Preferably before I risked setting a toe out of line, rather than find out when they took me on a one-way walk through the woods.

  Michael’s eyes flickered over to Schreiber in a way I didn’t much like. “In every family, there must be discipline. Order. The welfare of the pack is more important than any one member.”

  “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, huh?” I gave him the live-long-and-prosper salute, but he didn’t return it, just looked at me like I was a total dork. I guess the Trekkies never made it this far east. “So where is Christoph, anyhow?” I asked. Just to change the subject, you know? Plus I thought maybe this guy might give me a straight answer.

  Michael eyeballed Schreiber again before he answered. “He is being confined.”

  That was…interesting. Also, anticlimactic. Hell, it was starting to sound like a rest cure for the bastard. It pissed me off I’d gotten all worked up over nothing. “Yeah? How long for? What’s a fuck up like last night worth? A week in the slammer? Two? Shit, why not just give the asshole a pat on the head and a doggie treat?” My chair gave an ear-jangling scrape as I stood, breathing hard.

  “Leon!” That was Schreiber. Since when were we on first-name terms, anyhow?

  “What?” I said, my voice wavering a bit. The silence weirded me out. Everyone was staring at me. Even Silke at the sink was frozen like she’d been painted by Vermeer. Hey, I’ve been to art galleries. Mostly when it’s been raining and I’ve run out of cash, but it still counts, okay? Sometimes I even look at the pictures.

  Schreiber stood too. Suddenly I was struggling to remember just what the hell I’d thought was worth making a scene over. Our eyes locked, and then somehow I was sitting down, even though I couldn’t recall making any decision to.

  I was pissed as hell. I was also suddenly really interested in getting the last scraps of goulash off of my plate. Schreiber gave a grunt as he sat. The conversation all started up again, even quieter this time. Michael edged his chair away from mine like a Jehovah’s Witness who’d just found out he’d been socializing with a Satanist. I wasn’t bothered. I’d figured we were never going to be BFFs anyhow.

  Time to try someone new. I nodded across the table at Ulf, who was on to his third helping of goulash even though I couldn’t recall having been offered seconds. “So how come you’re not in school?”

  He grinned, shrugged bony shoulders and swallowed half a cow in one easy motion. “I’m eighteen. Old enough to work.”

  “What about your mom and dad? Where do they fit in, in all this?”

  A flicker of sadness. “I haven’t seen them for two years. When I was bitten, it was thought better…” Ulf shrugged again. “I have two younger sisters.”

  I leaned forward, lowering my voice a little. “Who bit you?” Was he another of Christoph’s victims?

  It was like he’d invented a whole new sign language: say it with shrugs. “I don’t know. I was walking home from my friend’s house one night, and it happened. It was my grandmother who recognized what had happened to me.”

  “Yeah? Your little sisters wear red cloaks by any chance? You know, with hoods?” I added, in case he didn’t get the reference.

  “Funny.” He grinned anyhow. “In the original German tale, it was a red hat and not a hooded cloak,” he added. Ordinarily I’d have put him down for some kind of smart-ass, but there was one hell of a lot of sincerity in those baby-blue eyes as he leaned forward across the table. “People often think Peter Stübbe was the first German werewolf, but the story of Rotkäppchen shows that we have existed for much longer.”

  Jeez, how old was he? “Kid, I hate to break it to you, but Little R
ed Riding Hood is a fairy tale. You know, stories for the kiddies to keep them out of trouble while they waited for someone to invent the TV?”

  Ulf wasn’t bothered. “The story is based on folk memories.” He gestured with his fork. “It reveals an older truth.”

  Color me unconvinced. “Schreiber tell you that?” I asked, after a quick glance to make sure no one was listening in.

  “Of course. You should ask him about our history. He knows a lot.”

  “Let me guess, he wrote the book?” Wrote, as in made shit up, I figured.

  Ulf laughed. “I don’t think we’d want a book like that published, do you?” He wiped his plate clean with a hunk of bread, which he shoved in his mouth while giving the empty pot of goulash a disappointed look. I’d forgotten Silke was even in the room, so I started a little when she handed him an apple, all furtive like she was worried it might turn out to be a capital offence. Ulf nodded his thanks. Was there something going on with those two?

  A chair scraped as Schreiber stood. “Michael, Tobias—my office.” They nodded and followed him out of the room.

  I guessed we were dismissed. I took the opportunity to head upstairs and change into my own clothes. Damn if I knew why—after all, I had a strong feeling I wasn’t going to be going out on the town anytime soon. But it felt good to get my own shit on again. When they put you in jail, Guantanamo Bay, whatever—hell, even when you join the army—the first thing they do is take away your clothes. If they’re really going for it, they cut your hair. Strip a guy of all individuality, and he’ll be easier to control.

  I guess I just wanted whatever edge I could get in this situation. With that in mind, I took a few minutes to explore the floor I was on. There were three other bedrooms, one of which I figured must be Ulf’s, by the posters on the walls, a mix of American rock bands and some homegrown stuff. If those hadn’t clinched it for me, the Water is Life poster certainly would have done it. The other two rooms were tiny and didn’t look occupied. There was a small bathroom, not big enough for a tub, which looked like it had been converted from a closet around a decade ago. The facilities were modern enough, if kind of cheap, but take a wrong turn out of the shower and you’d end up with a foot in the toilet, it was so goddamn tiny.