Midnight in Berlin

by JL Merrow

  The house was quiet when I reached it. I breathed a little easier. I tiptoed up the stairs, all two damn flights of them, and grabbed my backpack, jamming my clothes and stuff back inside. Then I crept back down again. Still quiet, thank God.

  Then Sven stepped out of the kitchen, Ulf looking hangdog behind him.

  Shit.

  I panicked and swung the backpack around into Sven’s face, following it up with a desperate kick to the groin. Shit, shit, shit. If I let him get up now, I’d be dead. I saw Ulf’s face, pale and frightened in the doorway. I wanted to scream at him to fucking do something, but it came out as a growl, and I realized I’d started to freak out again. Literally.

  Sven was struggling to stand, his face red and meaner than hell. Then it started to distort.

  It was pure instinct that saved me. As the change took me over, I threw myself on him, lunging for his throat. I took a savage bite. Blood welled up, hot and thick, the coppery scent of it overpowering. I didn’t know whether to drink deep or throw up… As the thought hit, I backed away, horrified. I could feel myself changing back again, becoming human. Like my body was trying to disclaim all responsibility. Nope, not me, wasn’t even there. “Oh, God…” Had I killed him? I looked at Ulf. “We need to call an ambulance—”

  “Just get out of here!” Ulf’s eyes were wide. “When Schreiber finds out about this…”

  I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and nearly puked when I saw the red streak I’d left. Go. Yes. I grabbed for my backpack, managing to pick it up on the second attempt. Then I lurched back down the hall and nearly fell out the back door.

  The fresh air outside, the sunshine—it didn’t seem real. How could the damn birds still be singing after what had just happened? At least it cleared my head some. If Sven was back, so was the Porsche. I staggered back, trying to ignore the twitching figure on the floor. Things were…bubbling. Not good. Really, not good. Focus. I swallowed. “Ulf. Get the car keys off him and meet us out front.”

  “I can’t…” He was kneeling by Sven, bare-chested, trying to stanch the bleeding with his wadded-up T-shirt.

  “What the hell do you think’s going to happen to anyone who’s still here when Schreiber gets back?” I swallowed again, took a deep breath. “Get the damn keys.”

  I turned away. He’d do it. If he didn’t—hell, I’d worry about that when it came to it. I needed to get Christoph and Silke.

  I needed to get out of that damn slaughterhouse.

  The day must have been getting warmer. Sweat poured off me as I ran down the path to the old house. Christoph and Silke were waiting on the stoop. She gasped when she saw me in my blood-soaked shirt. He didn’t.

  “Who?” he asked stepping forward, his face tense. His gait was awkward as hell, his legs still cramped up from the cage.

  “Sven.” I turned away to wipe my forehead with the hem of my shirt, realizing too late that was bloody too. “Means we got a ride.”

  “Come on, then.” He didn’t wait for me, just grabbed Silke by the arm and jogged down the path, his face set in hard lines like moving was still hurting him. I guess I must have been shaken by the fight, because right then I was just glad someone was taking charge. I stumbled after them.

  By the time I’d caught up, Christoph was in the house telling Ulf he had to come with us. And okay, that pissed me off a little. Just who the hell did he think he was, Oskar fucking Schindler? I still wasn’t sure whose side Teenwolf was on. He sure as hell hadn’t been a lot of use when I was fighting for my life against Schreiber’s chief enforcer.

  Who was still writhing around on the floor there. I swallowed and looked away. “Let’s just get the hell out of here, okay? You got the keys?”

  Ulf handed them over a little more slowly than I would have liked.

  “Okay. Come on—and if you change your mind, Ulf, we’ll drop you off somewhere,” I promised. Hell, I’d have promised him a Playstation if it would get us all on our way out of there before any more shit hit the fan.

  We all went out front and piled into the Porsche. I got the damn thing in gear and headed down the driveway—and just before we got out on the road, Ulf opened the door and jumped ship.

  My foot wavered over the brake as Ulf rolled on the dirt, staggered to his feet and ran back to the house. Back to Sven.

  “Keep driving,” Christoph growled at me. I drove on.

  Chapter Seven

  “You should not have done this,” Christoph said softly as we sped up the A115 toward the center of Berlin. No destination, exactly; I just had a vague idea it’d be good to be around people right now. Human people. The kind who don’t, as a rule, tear your throat out as soon as look as you…

  I swallowed and tried not to think about throats and blood and bodies thrashing on the floor. I could have done without Christoph fucking with my mind as I tried to keep my eye on the road, work out where the hell I was going and not freak out over the idea that Ulf had probably patched up Sven. The whole goddamn pack was most likely searching for the Porsche right now.

  If Sven was still alive. If I hadn’t killed him. Shit.

  “You think I should have left you to rot in that fucking cage? Enjoying it that much, were you?” Where the hell could we go? All I’d wanted to do was to get out of that place fast, but driving until we ran out of gas—which I figured, looking at the gauge, would be in under thirty miles from here—was looking less and less like a plan and more and more like suicide.

  “He will hunt us down.”

  “You’re a regular glass-half-full guy, aren’t you?” I muttered. Damn it—did he think I didn’t know that already? “Have you got any money?”

  Christoph barked a laugh. “Where do you imagine I was keeping it?”

  Okay, maybe he had a point. “Silke?”

  “No.” Just a whisper.

  Shit. “Me either.” That asshole Schreiber never did give me back my damn wallet. “Okay, ideas for where we could go?”

  Silence. Dammit. I swung the Porsche round a corner, trying to think. “Okay. There’s this guy I know who owes me.”

  “Where?” Again, Christoph had a point. Schreiber and the gang were probably heading off to the hostel right now.

  “There’s a bar I used to work at. Before all this shit. I told Jon there’d be a job going.”

  “Jon?”

  “He’s a friend.” Okay, maybe that was overstating it. “He owes me.” If he was even still in the city… Damn, had it really only been yesterday I’d last seen him? It felt more like a month ago.

  “Which bar?”

  “Corvino’s. You know it?”

  Christoph nodded. “Will he be there now?”

  I looked at my watch. “It’s Monday, right? If he took my job, he ought to be.” And if Jon wasn’t there, maybe Timmi who did the glasses would be good for a few euros. Hell, at this point, I was willing to consider robbing the joint.

  We left the Porsche illegally parked down a side street, with Christoph in it. It seemed kind of wrong to leave him on his own, but jeez, the guy was covered in his own blood. Taking him with us would have attracted all kinds of attention, not to mention freaking the hell out of Jon. Anyhow, I figured he’d scare off any traffic cops easy, the poor bastard. I had to change my shirt, but I decided my pants would pass—there were a couple spots of blood on them, but as long as you didn’t know, you’d just think I was a messy eater or something. Of course, that wasn’t too far from the truth… I gagged and tried really hard not to think about Sven’s throat anymore. There was a half-drunk bottle of water in the car which I used to clean up a little, at least enough that people wouldn’t take one look at me and call the cops.

  I wondered again whether Sven was alive or dead. Then I wondered which of those two options I actually preferred.

  It’s not murder if the other guy would’ve done the same or worse to you.

  Right?

  Silke and I walked the rest of the way, down the Kantstrasse. Taking Silke with me ought to keep Christoph
from getting any ideas about heading off and leaving me stranded. I hoped. She was wide-eyed and trembling and she flinched every time someone got within three feet of us, but that was okay. It helped me remember not to eat people. I was holding it together, but barely.

  Corvino’s was hidden behind a whole bunch of greenery on Savignyplatz, not far from the Erotica Museum and Berlin Zoo. You can probably guess which place I’d bothered to check out when I was on a break. The guy who ran Corvino’s called it a “Bar Américain”, although far as I could tell, I’d been the only American thing in the place. It was a cozy little nook, with mellow décor and warm lighting. Before they brought in the smoking laws, it used to get so you could hardly see your hand in front of your face—or so the guy told me. He said it like he mourned the passing of the good old days, but I was just as happy not to die of lung cancer before I hit thirty. Also, I preferred to be able to see the man I was hitting on. Although come to think of it, that approach hadn’t done me a whole lot of good lately.

  It was midafternoon when we got there, and the place was dead. Just a half-dozen tourists sitting on the chrome barstools, drinking cocktails real slow because ambiance comes cheaper than alcohol. Jon was behind the bar, and he gave me a big old happy wave when he saw me. “Dude! You know, you freaked the shit out of me last time I saw you. How are you, man?”

  “I’m good,” I lied. The warm rush of familiarity had faded almost as soon as it’d hit me, and now it was making me jumpy, being in a place this small with all these strangers. I realized I could differentiate between the scents of the people in there. Just like you can tell a hamburger from a bowl of chili with your eyes shut.

  My stomach rumbled. I told it to shut the fuck up before my teeth heard it and started getting ideas.

  “Man, I hope you’re not after your job back,” Jon said with a smile, his scent turning nervous.

  “No.” It came out sounding rough. Growly. “Need help, though. Can we talk outside?”

  Jon’s eyes shifted, resting on Silke awhile before turning back to me. “Hey, I’d like to help you out, but you know I can’t leave the bar.”

  I had to swallow a mouthful of saliva before I could talk to him again. “Okay. Here’s the edited highlights: I’m in shit, and I need money. And a place to stay, but I figure you’re still at the hostel, right?”

  “What kind of shit?” Jon glanced at Silke again, but she kept on eyeballing the floor. Maybe she was itching to clean it or something. “And hey, no offence, but since when did you start hanging around with girls?”

  “Silke’s just a, uh— Damn it, Jon, are you going to help us out or not?”

  A couple more customers walked in the door, making straight for the bar. The guy was kind of lean, but the woman looked good enough to eat… Damn. I needed to get out of there. “Jon, is Timmi out back? Yeah? Just yell at him to cover for you, and get outside, okay? I’ll be waiting.”

  I didn’t wait for an answer. I figured if I gave him any more time, he’d come up with an excuse. I just grabbed Silke by the hand and dragged her outside. We stood there, blinking in the sun for about a century until Jon came out, his jacket slung over his shoulder. “I’ve got five minutes, and that’s all. So you’d better talk fast.”

  “Okay, here’s the short version.” I talked fast, but I thought even faster. “I got mixed up in some serious shit—safer if you don’t know what sort, believe me. Now these guys are after me. I need money for gas and food until I can get far enough away from here to stop running.”

  “What about your, uh, friend?” Jon gestured at Silke.

  Damn it, would he ever let that go? “Silke’s in trouble too. With the same guys. Now can you help me or not?”

  “Silke?” He pronounced it “silky” and smiled at her. “Cool name.” His scent altered subtly.

  Silke huddled closer to me, and Jon’s face fell. Then it darkened, and he took a step forward. “What happened to her?” he demanded like I’d been personally responsible.

  Way to get your priorities screwed. “Nothing compared to what’s going to happen if we don’t get out of here, okay? So are you going to help us or not?”

  Jon gave Silke another sad, angry look, then shook himself. “I can give you, uh…” He rummaged in his pants pockets, bringing out a crumpled twenty euro note and a handful of change. “Sorry, dude, but that’s all I got.” He held it out toward me.

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Twenty euros? Just how far do you think that’s going to get us?” We’d come all this way, dragged him out of the bar, for twenty fucking euros? What the hell were we going to do now? I hadn’t realized just how much I’d been relying on Jon being able to bail us out of this mess. I snatched the money anyhow, seeing as it was twenty euros more than I’d had before.

  Jon gave a sort of apologetic shrug. “Hey, it’ll buy a meal for the two of you.” His eyes narrowed as he gave Silke a look that said she’d damn well better be the one getting extra fries before the money ran out.

  “There’s three of us,” I corrected him moodily. But on the plus side, one of us would be putting the other two seriously off their food. “And we need gas too.”

  Jon chewed his bottom lip, frowning like he was constipated or something. “Look, I’ll tell you what. If you can hole up for a couple of days, I’ll ring my dad and get him to send me some cash, okay?”

  I could have kissed him, but I guessed that would have weirded all three of us out, not to mention any passersby. Then I realized the flaw in the plan, and my spirits rode the crest of that roller coaster and plunged back into the depths. “Hole up where? They know about the hostel—I can’t go there.” Hell, maybe it wasn’t even safe for Jon to go back there. “It’s those guys you saw me with—but there’s more of them, and they’re trouble with a capital S, H, I… You get the picture.”

  He chewed on his lip for a while longer. “Are they going to be after me for being a friend of yours?”

  It was one hell of a time for him to suddenly grow a brain cell. “I don’t know,” I muttered, feeling guilty for bringing him into this. “Maybe. I guess they might want to talk to you.”

  Jon nodded slowly. “For an easy-going guy, you’re bad news, you know that? Okay. Before I got here, I was in Florence, staying in a hostel in an old villa a little way out of town. It was pretty cool, you know? Still had fountains in the grounds—”

  “Is there a point to this?” I interrupted. All this talk of Schreiber’s pack looking for us was starting to make me feel nervous about standing around in the open.

  “Oh, yeah. I met this Turkish dude whose uncle owns a hostel in Kreuzberg. I figure he’d let us stay for a while.”

  I sensed a catch. “If you knew about this place, how was it you ended up in Bahnhofstrasse?”

  Jon’s gaze shifted past my left shoulder. “Uh, he said it’s pretty basic. But I figure it won’t matter for a night or two.”

  If it was basic compared to Bahnhofstrasse, that probably meant bare floorboards and hot-and-cold-running rats. I shivered. Still, what was it they said about ports in a storm? “Okay. Can you take us there now?”

  Jon cast a regretful eye back at Corvino’s and nodded. I guess neither of us would be welcome there again after he’d skipped out halfway through a shift. Ah, what the hell. The tips were lousy anyhow.

  “Listen, I’d better warn you about the guy we’re with,” I began as we walked briskly back to the Porsche. I’d have kept a look out for werewolves, but Silke was doing just fine, jumping at every passerby. “He’s kind of a mess.”

  “Uh, how? You mean he does drugs or something?”

  “No.” Although come to think of it, he might want to start after what had happened to him. “It’s his face. It got kind of mangled.”

  Jon chewed his lip some more as he loped along, like it was the on switch for his brain or something. “This is all part of the shit you’re in?”

  If I said yes, would he refuse to help us? “Not exactly. This happened before.” Hell, it wa
sn’t even a lie.

  “Oh. Okay, that’s cool.”

  We rounded the corner to the side street where we’d left Christoph and the Porsche. I relaxed a little when I saw they were still there. “Jon, can you give us directions to this place, or do I need to Google it?” I asked, remembering I’d gotten my cell phone back with my backpack.

  “I figure I can find it— Whoa!” Jon had just gotten his first look at the new, improved Christoph.

  I opened up the passenger door of the Porsche. “Christoph, this is Jon. He knows someplace we can stay tonight, and he’s going to get us some money tomorrow.”

  Christoph nodded.

  Jon seemed to jump out of suspended animation. He held out a hand, a bit jerkily. “Nice to meet you.” Christoph shook it briefly, staring at him. “Uh, maybe you should sit in back so I can give Leon here directions?”

  Maybe Christoph had chewed off his own tongue while he was waiting for us. He didn’t say a word, just got out the car. As the sun hit his face, he tensed, or maybe it was just his joints had stiffened up again. “I’ll drive.”

  What the fuck? “I’m driving,” I said firmly.

  He gave me a full-on stare. “It’s my car.”

  “So? You’re a mess.” Damn. “You’re injured, okay?”

  Jon stepped up, making cool it gestures. “Dude, does it matter? If he wants to drive, let him drive, okay? He looks like he can handle it.”

  By the time I’d finished getting distracted by the voice of fucking reason there, Christoph had slid into the driver’s seat. I got in back and folded my arms. Silke smiled at me. Damn. Even she wasn’t scared of me anymore.

  With Christoph driving, Jon got his good side. I wondered if it bothered Christoph that his scars were on full view to the public through the window. Then I wondered if it bothered the public. But if the freak show caused any accidents, I missed them. We drove at the usual snail-crawl city pace, stop-starting east toward Checkpoint Charlie. As we got into Kreuzberg, the number of kebab stands quadrupled and half the women sprouted headscarves. I figured we couldn’t have much farther to go.