by David Mack
She was speechless as she watched the man slump dead to the floor, his demonic blades fading along with the light in his eyes.
Cade was at her side. “Are you all right?”
It took her a second to respond. “The split lightning—?”
“A trick I picked up from Honorius. He has a bunch of ’em.” He touched her shoulder and looked into her eyes with genuine concern. “You sure you’re okay?”
She nodded. “Yes.” Her next words came only with effort. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” he said with a smile, then turned toward the stairs as Adair clomped down the last flight. “All set upstairs?”
“They’re all dead, if that’s what you mean.” He nodded for Cade to head up. “Go light the fires. I want to see this place up in flames when we walk out the door.”
An obedient nod. “It’s as good as cooked.” The young man charged upstairs, taking the steps two at a time. Anja watched him leave, and for the first time realized she had developed a genuine respect for him—and maybe also a measure of fear.
Adair studied her. “What’s that look on your face mean?”
“Cade. He’s still gaining power.”
The master stroked his ragged gray beard. “I noticed.”
“He’s more powerful than any of the other ‘special ones’ you trained.”
“Aye … but only because he’s survived longer than they did.”
* * *
Trains arrived day and night. Each disgorged prisoners by the hundreds—some of them Jews, some Poles, plus a few prisoners of war. All were processed with efficiency by the Nazis who manned the concentration camp outside Oświęcim—or, as the Germans had renamed it since annexing Poland into their ever-expanding reich, Auschwitz.
The camp was vast, larger than any other Stefan had seen in his travels. It comprised hundreds of barracks arranged in ranks and columns, all surrounded by walls punctuated at regular intervals by guard towers. It was subdivided into ten areas separated by electrified fences crowned with barbed wire and patrolled by SS troops with dogs. Its population numbered over a hundred thousand, by Stefan’s estimate, and more prisoners arrived each day. The weak were culled; the strong were consigned to forced labor.
Huddled in the forest that surrounded the camp, Stefan could only bear witness and grieve. As at Chełmno, Auschwitz was defended not just by troops but by hidden glyphs designed to prevent spirits—and living beings, such as himself, who held them in yoke—from trespassing. It was a cruel irony. If he divested himself of his powers and defenses, he might be able to enter the camp, but doing so would be tantamount to suicide.
Stefan wanted more than anything to charge out of the darkness, to storm the gates of Auschwitz, to lay siege to a target he knew he couldn’t defeat.
For months he had savaged Kein’s network of Thule covens in eastern Europe. Kein’s disciple Siegmar had established new covens to replace the ones Stefan had slain, but none had lasted more than a few weeks before Stefan reduced them and their adepts to ash. He had adopted the enemy’s tactics since Babi Yar, and he refused to apologize for it.
Here he knew that without demons he wouldn’t make it over the wall, or even within a dozen meters of it, before the Nazis mowed him down with their machine guns. Still he fantasized about halting the incoming trains. He’d free the prisoners and lead them like a modern-day Moses to some land of freedom, far from here, far from any place he or they had ever known. He didn’t know where that place could be in a world that permitted atrocities such as he’d seen, but he had to believe one could be found. He had to believe.
But all he could do was watch from a distance.
After hearing Siegmar’s taunt at Babi Yar, Stefan had given up any hope of finding the Kabbalists alive. After dismissing the lies that had lured him to Kiev, and poring over reams of Nazi records, he had concluded that, in all likelihood, the Kabbalists had all died here.
Which meant that if Kein hadn’t yet found the Iron Codex, it was also here.
Dusk melted into darkness as a new trainload of prisoners rolled through the main gate. Stefan cloaked himself with invisibility and let ASARADEL’s wings bear him aloft, high above the camp. Below, a familiar scene transpired. The Germans shouted the prisoners out of the railcars and lined them up for evaluation. The few deemed suitable for labor were assigned to barracks. Hundreds of others were marched away, toward the northwest corner of the camp.
Over the past few days, Stefan had observed those sent to the barracks. Tonight he summoned the courage to follow the condemned.
Most of those culled from the ranks were elderly or infirm, or children too young to care for themselves. Flanked by armed troops, they trudged north on the camp’s westernmost path. They were marched inside a large building, from which they emerged minutes later naked and weeping. Shivering in the winter cold, they were led out of the camp.
Just beyond the camp’s northwest corner, the prisoners were corraled inside a large red-brick farmhouse. Once the prisoners were inside, the Germans bolted the doors from the outside. A Nazi officer shouted to men stationed on the farmhouse’s roof; they emptied canisters down its chimneys before capping them with metal plates. Then the Germans on the roof climbed down and departed with their brothers-in-arms, the prisoners inside the little red house forgotten.
Mystified and filled with dread, Stefan bade ASARADEL to set him down beside the brick house. Frosted grass crunched under his feet as he padded around the rear of the house. All of its windows were boarded over or bricked in. A smell like that of mothballs filled the air.
His foot struck something.
An empty metal canister. He picked it up and perused its label.
It was marked as Zyklon, a highly toxic pesticide.
The lawn around the house was littered with emptied canisters just like the one he held. He turned toward the house. Looked up at its capped chimneys.
Overcome by the horror of his discovery, he doubled over and emptied his stomach. When his body had nothing left to give, it racked itself with dry heaves until he coughed and dropped to his knees, where he wept until his well of grief ran dry.
When he had no more tears, he found himself alone with his fury.
He adjusted his glasses. Stood tall. I do not care what glyphs guard this camp. No barrier is impenetrable. Nothing will keep me out. Nothing.
ASARADEL carried Stefan high above the camp. He noted the Germans’ movements. They pushed carts loaded to overflowing with clothing and personal property stolen from murdered prisoners, from the big building where they had stripped the condemned, and from the rail yard near the main entrance at the south end of the camp. The pilfered wealth was funneled inside one massive warehouse in the camp’s northwest sector, near the processing center.
It was time, Stefan decided, to see for himself all that the Nazis had stolen.
Ever since being thwarted at Chełmno, he had prepared for this moment. Breaching the defenses here would draw the attention and potential reprisal of Kein, but if the Iron Codex was here as Stefan suspected, the reward would more than justify the danger.
Stefan commanded ASARADEL to dive toward the warehouse’s entrance and invoked the power of VARAXAS to overpower the glyphs of warding that shielded the camp from scrying or intrusion by karcists with yoked spirits.
Penetrating the sphere of protection stung Stefan like a thousand hornets, but the pain passed quickly and then he was on the ground—still invisible, alive, and unharmed.
He followed the Nazis inside the warehouse. It was worse than anything he had imagined. There were piles taller than he was, composed of naught but confiscated eyeglasses. Mountains of clothing. Purses, jewelry, knickknacks of every kind. At one table, a husky German weighed rough-edged ingots of gold that Stefan belatedly recognized as tooth fillings. When he imagined how they had been acquired, his stomach almost betrayed him with another urge to vomit.
No time, he reminded himself. Kein and his ilk know I am here. I must be s
wift. He spared a moment to calm his racing heart, then set to work. SAPAX, search the warehouse. If the Iron Codex is here, lead me to it by the swiftest route and without delay or deception.
AS YOU WILL.
The demon could not touch the Iron Codex because of the book’s wards, but if the grimoire was here, SAPAX could guide Stefan to it.
A cold, fetid breeze moved through the warehouse. The Nazis paid it no mind. Toiling in a place such as this, Stefan reasoned, they must take the reek of the damned for granted.
Every passing moment felt like an invitation to disaster. Stefan knew the spirit could search the warehouse faster than any mortal ever could, but how long would—
IT IS HERE, the demon said in Stefan’s thoughts. LET ME GUIDE YOU.
It was like moving in a dream. Stefan allowed the demon to steer him through the horrific canyons of plunder. In the heart of the warehouse, they stopped.
There, in a stack of old books, was the unmistakable binding of the Iron Codex. A quick check with the Sight confirmed that its sigils and wards were intact; no one had tried to open it without permission. Stefan plucked it from the pile and hugged it to his chest.
It was time to go, but there was one more question to which he needed an answer. SAPAX, if anything that belonged to my love Evert Siever lies in this house of rapine, bring it to me.
The spirit went forth, its progress swifter than thought, its presence little more than a cold whisper on the neck of the unassuming. It returned in seconds and appeared before him, a silhouette watery like a mirage. Its ram-horned head was bowed, and its clawed hands were outstretched and bearing a leather billfold into which Evert’s initials had been seared. Stefan took it from the spirit and inspected its contents. It held no money, no identity documents, but Stefan knew where to look for what mattered. He pulled loose its interior lining and found a small photograph hidden underneath. A faded gray snapshot of him and Evert, their cheeks pressed together as they beamed with delight on a bridge in Amsterdam many years earlier.
The wallet fell to the floor as Stefan kissed the faded photo. Tears rolled from his eyes; his beloved had met an unjust end in this accursed place, at the hands of monsters.
Stefan’s heart flooded with darkness. He wanted to repay agony with agony, sorrow with sorrow. But this was not the time, not the place. He wasn’t ready. But soon he would be. Then those who took Evert from him would suffer, they would rue the day they had robbed him of love, and they would know what it meant to feel true fear before they died.
Colors of alarm from SAPAX warned Stefan his enemy was near. It was time to withdraw and regroup. It made him sick to leave behind so many innocent souls as he retreated to safety, but he consoled himself with a promise: When the time was right, he would return to this place.
And when he did, he would bring the host of Hell with him.
22
APRIL
It had seemed a simple task to Cade: Now that Stefan had recovered the Iron Codex, all he had to do was get it into Adair’s hands before the enemy realized that stealing the grimoire was why Stefan had been sent to Europe in the first place. But, as with most things that seemed rudimentary, the return of the Codex had proved damnably hard.
A number of factors complicated the matter, Adair had explained.
The first was that the Codex was protected by a variety of sigils and wards. Most were designed to prevent persons from opening or using the book unless they knew its shibboleths. A few were intended to protect the book from damage of all kinds, including fire, water, and cutting or tearing. But one glyph was proving to be the real wrench in the gears: the one that prevented demons from making contact with the book.
That defensive measure meant that Stefan was unable to entrust the tome to his demonic porter, because the spirit couldn’t touch it to take on the burden. It also precluded the possibility of having a spirit carry the book to Adair. Had there been a working mirror portal large enough, Stefan could have come home carrying the book himself, but an exhaustive search of eastern Europe confirmed what Adair had already known: Kein had tracked down and destroyed all the man-sized enchanted mirrors in that region of Europe.
That had left only the hand mirrors, but they were far too small for the massive grimoire to fit through. At best they could accommodate something the size of a pack of cigarettes, or maybe the magazine of an automatic pistol, but nothing larger.
And so the Midnight Front had found itself at an impasse.
It was too dangerous for Stefan to linger in enemy territory with the Codex, but it was even more dangerous for him to try to travel with it. As a consequence he had spent weeks in hiding, surrounded by ever-growing circles of magickal defense and wards against scrying and divination. Meanwhile, Adair had sequestered himself inside Eilean Donan’s library, where he had plumbed all his dustiest books of magick in the hope of finding a solution.
Six days later Adair had emerged with a plan scribbled on sheets of foolscap that he passed through a hand mirror to Stefan, who had perused them and pronounced the plan “mad.” In the absence of a better idea, however, he had consented to give it his best effort.
Now Stefan stood alone on his side of the mirror, with the Iron Codex in his hands. Cade and Anja stood on either side of Adair in the castle’s conjuring room, watching Stefan through the master’s hand mirror, waiting to see what would happen next.
“If this works,” Stefan said, “I should be able to pass the book to you. If this fails, I suspect you will bear witness to my most horrible and painful demise.”
“I knew I should’ve brought the camera,” Cade said.
“Enough jabber,” the master said. “Get on with it.”
The Dutchman pressed his hands on either side of the Codex—and it shrank, as if he were compressing it like soft dough. When he had squashed it down to the size of a deck of playing cards, he pushed it through the mirror. “Hold it with both hands, Master.”
Adair pulled it through with just his thumb and forefinger, then studied it with a queer look. “But it’s light as a feather.”
“That will change.” Stefan snapped his fingers, and instantly the book was its full size again. It fell from the master’s hand and landed with a loud thump on his foot. Adair fumbled the hand mirror, but Cade caught it as the master hollered curses and hopped on his good foot.
Stefan shrugged. “I told him to use both hands.”
Cade suppressed the urge to laugh, since he knew it would only draw the master’s ire. Instead he told Stefan, “Nice work. What spirit did you yoke for it?”
“TAQLATH,” Stefan said. “From the Arabic text.”
“Good choice.” Cade picked up a flask of whisky he had brought along for Stefan. It barely fit through the mirror to him. “To take the edge off.”
“Too kind.” A distant sound turned Stefan’s head. His next words were whispered. “I must go. Good luck with the Codex. Velarium!”
His image vanished from the mirror. Cade saw that Adair had himself under control, so he handed the master the mirror. “One mission accomplished. Was it worth it?”
“I should bloody well say so. If Kein had got this—”
“I know: fire and brimstone, French and English living together, total chaos. Let me ask you: If the Codex is so important, why’d you risk loaning it out in the first place?”
The query drew a withering glare from the master. “Because I’m not a fortune-teller, am I? When I let the mystics take the book, I didn’t know they’d get caught up in the bloody war.”
His answer perplexed Anja. “How long ago did you loan them the Codex?”
“Fifteen years, give or take.”
Cade thought he’d misheard. “Fifteen years?”
“Magickal research takes time. Done wrong, it can cost lives. So you do it slow.” Adair picked up the Codex from the floor—and grunted from the effort. “Though if I’d known what was coming, I might’ve asked the scholars to come do their work here.”
Cade led A
dair and Anja upstairs. “So now that we have it back, what do we do with it?”
“Pray to God we never need to use it.”
* * *
For months Briet had watched from the shadows, noting the brown-skinned man’s every action. Twice he had come close to uncovering the location of her coven in Paris. To protect her adepts and preserve the coven’s secrecy, Briet had been forced to move their lair twice in the past six months. Now that their final, permanent lair was nearly finished, she was determined never to move it again. If he finds us now, I’ll just have to kill him—whether Kein approves or not.
YOU ARE SWORN TO OBEY YOUR MASTER.
KUSHIEL’s brazen mental intrusion rankled her. Be silent or know my wrath.
Tracking her foe this evening had taken Briet all over the city. It amused her that the City of Light sported so many dark corners, and that the enemy karcist—who was called Niko by his associates and accomplices—seemed to be familiar with all of them.
This evening his wanderings had taken him from Montmartre to the tony boulevards of the Élysée, the storied lanes of the Marais, and a row of brownstones on Rue Cassini in Montparnasse. All his stops had been at places he had visited before. Most were rear entrances to buildings that looked abandoned, doors that led to basements and underground lairs the Resistance had established in the Catacombs, Paris’s labyrinth of ossuary tunnels.
When Niko ventured into such places, Briet preferred to keep her distance and monitor him through the eyes of Trixim, her black rat familiar. It took extra effort to filter her perceptions through the gifts of DESMOS, but it was worth it to be spared the stink of rivers of human excrement when Niko detoured through the city’s sewers.
Tracking him was tedious work. It ate up night after night of Briet’s time, filling her with resentment. I would much rather spend my evenings entwined with Victor and Sandrine than—
Niko emerged from his latest meeting—most of which had been devoted to the mundane details of smuggling and sabotage by the Resistance—and breezed out of the alley, then down a side street, apparently unaware that Trixim dogged his every step.