by David Mack
Almost.
Perhaps I will not kill him in his sleep. At least, not tonight.
* * *
If asked to catalog the world’s most underappreciated gifts, Kein Engel would have rated the Kehlsteinhaus very near the top of his list. The chalet boasted walls of hand-cut stone, floors polished to perfection, and breathtaking views of the Bavarian Alps. Designed by Martin Bormann as a gift for the Führer on his fiftieth birthday, it sat empty the majority of the time. To the best of Kein’s knowledge, Hitler had visited the chalet fewer than six times in the past three years, and then for usually no longer than half an hour.
What a waste.
Summer had turned the valley below lush with shades of green, and a zephyr caressed Kein’s face. He gave the last of the ’34 Duhart-Milon-Rothschild in his glass a swirl before he downed the claret in one tilt. Though he was resigned to the necessity of chemical relief whenever he yoked multiple demons for extended durations, he saw no reason to debase his palate with inferior vintages. Fine wines were his drug of choice; opiates and rotgut he left to the weak, the dabblers, and the philistines.
He set his empty glass on one of the outdoor patio’s tables. It disappointed him that there was no need to kindle a blaze in the chalet’s central hearth. The red marble of the main dining room’s fireplace was a thing of beauty—a gift, he had heard, from Benito Mussolini.
Kein settled instead for conjuring twin plumes of hellfire in his upturned palms. Flames twisted harmlessly above his flesh while he trained his mind upon their diabolical dance and projected his will through them. “Exaudi. Exaudi. Exaudi.”
He concentrated upon his adepts’ names and faces. Siegmar. Briet.
Familiar visages flickered inside the flames. In Kein’s left hand, Siegmar; in his right, Briet. He greeted them with a nod. “Ave, friends.”
Briet bowed her head a few degrees. “Ave, Master.”
Siegmar mimicked Kein’s own subtle dip of his chin. “Master.”
“I bring bad tidings. Our enemy has come to Europe, and is on the attack.”
Briet asked, “How much do we know of their actions?”
“Enough to concern me. Their first victim was Hans Boerman, the karcist I trained to lead our new coven in Amsterdam. Since then we’ve lost several more.”
Siegmar’s composure crumbled. “What? When did this happen?”
“Boerman died the same night he was to consecrate the Amsterdam coven. The Ghent coven was killed a week later. Over the last month, we’ve lost contact with covens in eastern Europe and France’s zone libre. All of which suggests our foes are picking up their pace.”
Briet echoed Siegmar’s concern. “Why are we hearing of this only now?”
“Before tonight I wasn’t certain what had happened. Herr Boerman seemed to have perished in a house fire: unusual and tragic, but not unheard of. As for Ghent, its members lacked experience. Their deaths could have been caused by a mistake during an experiment; they would not have been the first amateurs to die as a consequence of ineptitude.” He exhaled frustration. “But the swift eradication of multiple chapters? That is no coincidence. My old friend Adair is at large on the Continent, and he has brought the last of his adepts with him.”
Slow nods from his disciples.
Briet swept a lock of hair from her face. “I have a spy within the Maquis. I can use him to help me set a trap for whoever is attacking our covens in Free France.”
Kein arched an eyebrow. “Defending the Paris coven is your chief concern.”
“We can strike without showing our throat.”
“Very well. Proceed, but be careful. Adair would not send his last remaining adepts into battle unless he was sure they were fully trained.”
Siegmar cleared his throat. “We might have a related issue on the Eastern Front. I’ve heard reports of a ‘miracle worker’ in the Jewish ghettos. An outlander who asks questions about Adair’s missing Kabbalists.”
“This could present an opportunity. Identify this ‘miracle man’ and make certain he finds his way into our control. I trust you know how to make that happen.”
“I do, but I’ll need some time. I’m still in Kovno.”
“That’s not done yet?”
“The Einsatzgruppen finished the executions but aren’t done plundering the bodies.”
“How long will that take?”
An arrogant shrug. “I don’t know. I’ve never seen a hundred cretins try to rob three thousand corpses before. I’ll be on a train as soon as I’m able.”
“See that you are.” Kein felt the future taking shape at last. “Our enemy has come calling at last. Let us give them a welcome they will never forget.”
* * *
Everything had gone according to plan, right until the moment it all went to hell.
The front of the coven house outside Toulouse had been too exposed, too naked of cover for Niko’s liking, so he had come at it through the woods behind. Nothing about the house had suggested it was any better defended than the ones he had toppled farther north in the zone libre.
Then his fireball had rebounded off the house’s rear door, engulfed his shield, and knocked him on his ass. Now he was on his back, stunned and confused, as machine guns filled the air with a deafening chatter and ripped divots across the lawn.
Niko rolled over, pushed himself off the ground, and sprang toward the trees, harried by gunfire every step of the way. Merde!
Inside the house, German voices cried “Alarm!” as bullets ripped the bark from trees on either side of Niko. He zigzagged through the woods as searchlights snapped on behind him. Their beams slashed from side to side, throwing shadows in all directions.
Footsteps and orders barked in German hounded Niko as he stumbled in retreat. Pops of semiautomatic rifle fire filled the woods, and a wild shot lanced through Niko’s left triceps. He clutched at the wound to stanch the bleeding as he ran.
More shots zinged past his head. He was half a minute’s run from the clearing where his ride was waiting for him, assuming the Maquis hadn’t fled at the first sound of gunfire. Recalling how much open ground lay between the truck and the tree line, Niko feared he wouldn’t make it into the vehicle alive, not with the Germans so close behind him.
He looked for the Nazi troops. It was too dark for him to target them directly. Have to settle for slowing them down.
He swept his hand in a broad arc and invoked HARATHOR’s gift of “tanglefoot,” animating tree roots and undergrowth into troublesome snares for anyone passing over them. He was instantly rewarded by a break in the gunfire, followed by strings of German profanity from the shadows. That should do. He went on running.
As he neared the clearing, he was intercepted by Ferrand and another Maquis, named Michel. They had entererd the woods with pistols drawn. “What happened?”
“A trap,” Niko said, still on the move. “Get back to the truck!”
Michel and Ferrand fell in behind Niko. As the trio emerged from the woods, harsh snaps from behind announced the Germans’ escape from the cursed roots. Then a light flooded in from dead ahead, blinding the three of them.
Camille shouted, “Move! They’re right on you!”
Niko squinted to see that Camille had moved their truck forward to the edge of the tree line, to effect a faster retreat. Now she stood on the running board and balanced their one working submachine gun atop the frame of the open door. “Get in the back!” she cried, just before she fired three quick shots over their heads into the woods. “Hurry!”
Ferrand pulled her off the running board and yanked the weapon from her hands. “Get in the back.” He pivoted and tossed the SMG to Michel. “Two more bursts, then you drive.” To Niko and Camille he barked, “In the back! Now!”
Niko, his sister, and her husband scrambled to the rear of the truck and clambered inside its cargo area. Outside, two more stutters from the SMG were answered by crisp reports from the Germans’ rifles; then the truck’s engine rumbled to life. It groaned in
protest as Michel shifted it into gear and accelerated. Its chassis and panels banged and rattled as they sped down a rocky dirt road that was the only passage to or from the clearing.
After his sister tied a handkerchief around the wound in his arm, Niko lit a cigarette to calm his jangled nerves. He took a drag, then passed it to Camille. “Good thing you moved the truck. We wouldn’t have made it if we’d had to cross the clearing.”
He saw his sister’s smile in the cigarette’s cherry glow as she inhaled. “No big deal.”
“The hell it isn’t,” Ferrand said, his tone sharp. “I told you to hang back.”
“I heard gunshots.”
“All the more reason you should’ve stayed put. I told you to retreat if we came out under fire—not charge in to save the day. Do that again, and I’ll beat the lesson into you next time.”
Niko bristled. The last person he’d ever heard threaten Camille that way was their father, Marlon Le Beau—the first man Niko had ever wanted to kill. “Shut up, Ferrand. She saved our lives back there. You ought to be thanking her, you fucking ingrate.”
Ferrand grabbed Niko’s jacket collar with one hand and stuck a knife to his throat with the other. “Don’t forget who’s in charge here.” He put just enough pressure behind the edge to drive his point home. “And don’t you ever tell me how to talk to my wife.”
Just like Papa would have done. Marlon Le Beau was dead and buried, but Ferrand made Niko feel as if that sorry excuse for a man had been resurrected in all his hateful, booze-drenched squalor. Niko seethed but said nothing. He knew at least two ways to kill his brother-in-law with magick that would be silent, traceless, and not leave a mark or spill a drop of blood. And if he wanted to slip from Ferrand’s grasp and vanish, he could do so on a whim.
Instead, he satisfied himself with staring the man down until Camille talked Ferrand into putting away his knife and letting the matter drop.
That was for the best, for the moment at least. There was nothing to be gained from answering the threats of the small and petty, not when far more pressing dilemmas obtained.
For starters, how did the Germans ambush me tonight? Who told them I was coming?
Niko considered Ferrand, then Michel. Neither of them nor any of their compatriots had anything to gain by walking into a trap. But who else might they have told? And how could he get those names from them without arousing their suspicions?
One problem at a time, he told himself.
He reached up and tested the wound from Ferrand’s blade with his fingertips. As much as he wanted to keep his mind on his mission, all he could think about was whether Ferrand had ever put a knife to Camille’s throat. The thought of it filled his mind with visions of revenge. He doesn’t know pain. Not the way a demon could teach it to him.…
He closed his eyes and calmed his thoughts. Those are the demons pushing forward, he realized. It was getting harder to separate their goading from his own inner voice, especially when he was forced to go more than a day without a stiff drink.
Camille passed him the half-burned cigarette. Niko took a gratifying pull, then exhaled through his nostrils while he reminded himself what Master Adair had always said when his apprentices got on one another’s nerves: Save your hexes for the Nazis.
It was good advice, and Niko planned to heed it.
Just as long as Ferrand never raised his hand to Camille again.
* * *
Reading a map written in Polish was hard; trying to read it in the dark was enough to set Stefan to cursing. Around him sprawled the outskirts of Kraków, the city’s residential Dębniki district. He knew he was close to his destination, but the hours he’d spent wandering pitch-dark streets left him fearful he had missed a turn or was going in the wrong direction.
Stefan paused to orient himself. He heard the rumble of vehicles and machinery in the distance; the core of the town lay ahead to the northeast. A bank of clouds parted to reveal the waxing moon, a thumbnail’s edge of light in a heaven full of darkness.
This is the way. I just need to keep going.
Soon he found himself in front of a two-story house set back from the road. The half acre of property around it was well tended and populated with oak and linden trees. There were no lights on inside—at least, none that he could see. The Nazi-occupied city had for months forced residents to paper over their windows, to hide the city from Russian bombing raids.
Piercing the night with the eyes of SŌZAY, Stefan saw the house glowing with magickal wards. It was without a doubt a Thule coven lair. He took off his ruck and tool roll and entrusted them to his demonic beast of burden. For what would come next, he knew he would want to move quickly and have his hands empty.
Blue flames wreathed his fists as he strode to the front door.
The talents of TERAGOR unraveled the wards of binding on the door and swung it open to grant Stefan entrance. He whispered two words of ancient Enochian to banish the demon that had been set as a sentinel on the other side. Then he stood in the entryway, unchallenged.
By the azure light of the fire in his hands, he saw that furnishings were sparse in the foyer, but sumptuous appointments packed the front room to his left and the dining room to his right. Ahead of him, beside a steep staircase, a hallway barely wide enough to let two skinny people slip past each other led to a handful of rear rooms.
There were discreet ways for Stefan to search the house and obtain the information he needed. But after weeks in lonely transit, he was in no mood for subtlety.
His magickal senses felt the presence of three people in the house, plus a handful of minor spirits attached to one of those persons. That would be the coven master, he deduced.
He shattered the silence with a bellowed command: “Wake up, scum!”
Sounds of confusion filled the brief hang-fire between Stefan’s challenge and the dabblers’ response. The coven master and two of his adepts raced out of three upstairs bedrooms, each in pajamas. They nearly collided at the top of the stairs, and one of the adepts fumbled his wand and watched it fall to the ground floor, hopelessly out of reach.
The coven master aimed his wand at Stefan—who flung the man against the ceiling hard enough to break half his bones. On the stairs, the adept who still had his wand prepared to take his best shot. Stefan threw a jet of blue fire and set him ablaze. It took a few seconds for the adept to stop screaming and tumble dead down the stairs to land at Stefan’s feet. By then the last adept, alone on the landing at the top of the stairs, had pissed himself.
Stefan let the coven master—far too lofty a title for such an amateur, he thought—drop from the ceiling. The man tumbled down the stairs and landed, gasping, atop his dead apprentice. Stefan drew a knife and released the man from his suffering with a slash of his throat.
That left the urine-soaked youth at the top of the stairs.
“Come here,” Stefan commanded him.
The youth descended the stairs in trembling steps.
He stood in front of Stefan, quaking.
Stefan set a demon’s hand around the young man’s throat to make sure he understood the consequences of lying. “I seek a group of Kabbalah masters. They would have come from Warsaw. Have you seen them?”
Frantic nods. “They were here.”
“Did their leader have a large book bound with iron?”
Terror put a tremor in the dabbler’s voice. “I don’t know. I never saw one.”
“Where are they now?”
“Gone, months ago.”
Stefan hid his frustration at having missed the Kabbalists. “To where?”
“No idea.” Fresh urine soaked the youth’s leg. “Maybe the Jews in the ghetto know.”
“Perhaps. Where is Kraków’s ghetto?”
“In the Podgórze district. Trust me—you will know it when you see it.”
“I trust you. I also have no further use for you.”
A turn of Stefan’s wrist cued SATOR to snap the dabbler’s neck. The vertebrae splintered with
a series of cracks. Released, the body slumped to the floor.
With a mental command, Stefan dispatched SAPAX, a spirit known to be good at finding things. Search the house. Bring me a list of this coven’s members and their addresses, and any supplies of the Art that don’t need to be made by the operator.
AS YOU COMMAND, the demon replied, commencing its task.
Stefan visited the house’s cellar. As he’d suspected, it had served as the coven’s conjuring laboratory. One of its walls bore the house’s sigil of protection. He used his white-handled knife to mar the sigil, neutralizing its power to protect the house.
He walked upstairs, then out of the house and down to the road. Less than a minute later, SAPAX returned with the list and a haul of oils, unguents, and other supplies that would help Stefan keep his roster of yoked spirits intact for weeks to come. His hellbeast of burden GAIDAROS gathered up the plunder, which vanished into its custody.
In his imagination, Stefan pictured the coven house being reduced to a pile of rubble. Then he sent SATOR to turn his vision into reality while he continued his journey.
Behind him a demon razed the house, but Stefan knew that a far greater horror lay ahead of him—in the form of yet another Nazi-created Jewish ghetto.
13
JULY
The bodies of the slain littered the conjuring room. Under pools of blood and ash lay remnants of magick circles. Candles, wands, swords, and daggers rested in heaps. Grimoires smoldered down to their spines, filling the windowless space with smoke.
It felt wrong to take pride in such carnage, yet Cade reveled in the victory. Hellfire danced on the ends of his fingers. Lightning crackled around his wand. His mind and body coursed with Hell’s most destructive energies. Only a sense of decency and a modicum of shame reminded him this was no time for celebration.
Adair drifted from one body to the next, checking for pulses. He paused over two of the fallen to slash their throats with his athamé. On the far side of the room, Anja used a dead man’s pant leg to clean the blood from her dagger.