by David Mack
Rendered invisible by SITHIROS, Briet masked her steps with silence and got ahead of Niko, then darted into an alley. After he passed by she emerged, scooped up Trixim, tucked the rat inside her trench coat, and followed Niko at a discreet distance.
It was dangerous to get too close to him. She had learned to sniff out the presence of demons not yoked to her control, so it was possible Niko had, as well. Kein had stressed to her how important it was that she not lead Niko to the Paris coven’s lair, or reveal to him that he was being tracked, because he was their only lead to Adair and his other adepts.
Each week it seemed another Thule coven was slaughtered, yet Kein counseled patience. Briet was sick of waiting. She wanted to strike.
THE MASTER HAS A PLAN FOR THAT ONE.
Kein keeps his plans to himself—as you should do with your thoughts.
Being clearheaded enough to not give herself away while tailing a trained spy and karcist like Niko meant staying sober more often than she liked. Life was easier when she could blunt her demons’ edges with wine or liquor. On nights such as this, she had to wage two battles at once: one in the material world, against a foe whose attention she couldn’t afford, and the other inside her own mind, versus enemies whose attention she couldn’t escape.
Niko did all he could to force Briet to reveal her presence: doubling back, detouring into dead ends, and resorting to invisibility charms that required her to employ the Sight to track him as he passed over the Pont Royal into Saint-Germain on his way north.
She followed him to Montmartre, expecting him to disappear inside his warded apartment building, whose walls and foundation Trixim had been unable to breach. Instead, he stopped at the Café Étoiles, knocked in a stuttered pattern on its window, and slipped inside as someone shut the papered-over front door behind him.
Briet approached the restaurant. She worried its occupants might have posted a lookout to keep watch over Rue des Cloys, but when she reached its façade she saw no one at the window. She edged closer. Voices carried from inside.
Through the brick walls and dusty glass, she felt the resistance of Niko’s warding glyphs. When she tried to peer inside using the clairvoyance of VERAKOS, all she heard was the roar of the Inferno and the clanging of bells. The café, like the rest of the building, was warded against scrying and intrusion. That meant she couldn’t send Trixim inside as her proxy, and she couldn’t cross its threshold while she held yoked spirits.
More primitive methods are in order, then.
She drew her Luger semiautomatic, fired four shots through the café’s window, and reveled in the music of shattering glass and panicked cries from beyond its drawn curtains. Then she strolled around the nearest corner and waited, secure in the protection of her invisibility.
The café’s front door swung open. Three men raced out: Niko and two Frenchmen—one a pudgy gent of middling years, the other a hulking specimen of Gallic peasant stock. The big man toted a shotgun, while Niko and the older fellow brandished revolvers. They searched for their harasser only to find the street deserted and silent. They lowered their weapons, apparently satisfied the threat had passed.
Briet was disappointed. Exposing a handful of Maquis did not interest her. Then she noted the woman who emerged from the café and went straight to Niko: a young, pretty thing who shared his Mediterranean ancestry—tawny brown skin, sable hair, dark eyes. Who was she to Niko? A lover? A wife? The look in the woman’s eyes suggested the two shared a bond of affection. But of what nature?
The huge Frenchman pulled the woman away from Niko, and Briet had her answer. Such casual thuggery, and the woman’s acquiescence, was a scenario she recognized from her own youth in Reykjavík: only a husband would dare to treat a woman that way, like property, as if she were no better than a piece of cattle. Just as familiar to Briet was the rage in Niko’s eyes as he stood by, powerless to intervene.
She’s his sister.
Armed with new information, Briet hurried south out of Montmartre. After she put a few blocks between herself and the Café Étoiles, she filled her open palm with the fire of PYRGOS and invoked her master’s attention. “Exaudi. Exaudi. Exaudi.”
Kein’s eyes shone through the flames. “Ave, my dear. What news?”
“Niko has a sister, here in Paris.”
“Interesting. Is she dear to him?”
“Quite.”
“Good.” Behind the fire, a diabolical smirk. “You’ve done well, Briet. Now it’s time to force our enemies into the open—and finish them, once and for all.”
23
MAY
All had been quiet in Montmartre when Niko left his sister’s building to make his nightly rounds of check-ins, strategy meetings, and surveillance. There had been no sign of anyone following him, no indication that anything was amiss. It was as if the Nazis had gone on holiday.
Nine minutes after four o’clock in the morning, he turned left onto Rue des Cloys and stopped in midstride, petrified by the scene unfolding less than two blocks ahead of him. A company of Wehrmacht and a platoon of Waffen-SS crowded the street outside the Café Étoiles. A troop transport modified to hold prisoners idled in front of Camille’s building. Exhaust fumes lingered and mixed with cigarette smoke exhaled by the Germans watching over the street.
How did they find us? Did someone talk? Is there—
A pair of SS men dragged Camille from the building. She was barefoot, clad only in her nightgown, her hair a mess. She cursed and spat at the Germans, who laughed at her. Next came Ferrand, his hands bound behind him, one soldier on each side dragging him forward while a third kept a pistol jammed between Ferrand’s shoulder blades.
A German sentry looked in Niko’s direction. Niko turned himself to vapor and rode the wind, unseen and unheard. A gust carried him closer to the commotion outside the café.
An SS officer caressed Camille’s face. He met her scowl with perverse curiosity. “Jude? Afrikanischer?” He lifted her negligee and thrust his hand between her legs. “Mischlingshure!”
Ferrand broke free of his handlers. His hands were tied behind his back, but he slammed his forehead into the SS officer’s face, crushing the man’s nose. The Obersturmführer crumpled to the ground. Roaring with anger, Ferrand lifted his foot to stomp the German’s head.
A gunshot echoed as Ferrand’s head shattered, painting the street and the fallen SS man with blood and brains. Camille fell atop her husband’s corpse and screamed in anguish, while the Obersturmführer shouted at his men for soiling his uniform. For a minute it seemed everyone in the street was yelling at someone, until a woman’s voice cut through it all, barking orders with clarity and fury: it was Briet.
She who’d cut Michel’s throat at the Gare de Lyon, she who Niko had come to suspect was protecting the Paris chapter of the Thule Society. She was here, and the SS officer’s reaction to her upbraiding made it clear she was in charge. On her orders, the Nazis threw Camille in the rear of the truck with the other prisoners. The Germans piled into their vehicles and drove off, leaving Ferrand’s half-headed body lying in the street.
Sick with guilt, Niko cast off his charm and solidified next to his slain brother-in-law. He fell to his knees beside the man, overwrought. He’d disliked Ferrand; they had not been friends. But Ferrand had been Niko’s ally, his host, and his kin. Now the man was dead, gunned down like an animal and left to rot. And Niko was certain it was because Briet had come looking for him. She must have tracked me here. Now she has Camille, and I need to get her back.
He had no way of following the convoy that had taken his sister, but that was of no consequence. He already knew where they would take her.
She was on her way to the Drancy prison camp.
* * *
“Mon Dieu! You must be joking! We cannot just leave her in Drancy!”
Adair crossed his arms and, through the conjuring room’s enchanted mirror, fixed his hotheaded adept with a glum scowl. “What would you have us do, Niko? Storm the gates with wands blazing?
Drancy’s locked up tighter than a nervous virgin. Those walls might as well be guarded by SATAN itself.”
His admonition fell upon unreceptive ears. “We don’t need magick to get her out. A bribe could do it. Demons used to fetch lost treasures. Why can’t we do that? Pay off the guards?”
“First,” Adair said, vexed at having to explain what Niko should damned well already have known, “any treasure worth finding was dredged up long before I was born. Most of the world’s wealth is locked away in vaults under the Vatican, the banks of Switzerland, or Fort fucking Knox. And you’d best believe they’re all guarded by magick more than strong enough to rip the bones from your back if you so much as look at ’em.
“Second, even if you dig up some lost fortune and put it in the hands of the guards at Drancy, how do you know they’d keep their word? I bet you they’re all scared shiteless of Kein and his ginger witch. Even the ones who don’t know what she is probably know she’s not one to be fucked with. And if she went to all that trouble to ward Drancy, don’t you think she’d be smart enough to put charms of protection on its fucking guards? I know I would.”
Niko seemed possessed by a spirit of denial. “Merde! I cannot just give up! She is all that remains of my family! I will not stand by and let the Nazis dispose of her like garbage!”
Cade chimed in from the stairs behind Adair, “He’s right.”
Adair glowered at Cade and at Anja, who stood by Cade’s side. The master knew they had been eavesdropping from upstairs, but their interruption came as a surprise. “Et tu, lad?”
A look of disbelief. “You want Niko to sacrifice his only kin, but you expect me to feel like the bad guy? Try again.” He and Anja left the stairs to stand with Adair in front of the mirror. “With our help, he could be in and out before the Nazis know what hit them. Bring in Stefan and we’ll mop the floor with these chumps.”
“Oh, it’s that easy, is it?” It was hard for Adair not to get upset, and easy for him to forget that in spite of their talents for magick, they were all young and foolish. “Has it occurred to you that maybe—just fucking maybe—that’s exactly what the enemy wants? That maybe the reason Niko’s sister got grabbed was to goad us into doing something stupid?”
Niko’s face creased with anger. “Possible? Mais oui. But just as possible—she was taken because she was a Maquis. Because she was a leader in the Resistance. Or because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or had skin the wrong color!”
It was like debating a bull whose mind was already set upon the charge. Still, it was Adair’s role to teach and counsel, then hope his adepts listened. “Lad, I’ve made up my mind. I can’t risk you, the Resistance, and the entire fucking war effort, all to save one woman, no matter who she might be to you. The answer’s no.”
Seething, Niko resorted to grumbling. “Va te faire enculer!” Then he snapped, “Velarium!” Instantly, his image vanished from the mirror, leaving Adair looking at the reflection of his careworn features and of Cade’s and Anja’s frowns of disapproval.
“Don’t you two start. I’m in no fucking mood.”
A strange silent accord manifested between Cade and Anja. Then, without a word she turned away and climbed the stairs, leaving Adair alone with Cade. For the first time since Adair had met him, the young man regarded him with disappointment. “You talk a good game. I’ll give you that much. When you want us to charge into the belly of the beast, you talk about duty, and honor, and loyalty. But when one of us needs something—”
“Are you under the delusion that I owe you something? Any of you? Without me, you’d all be nothing. Just bits of bone in the meal, getting ground up by the gears of war. But I sought you out, took you in, taught you secrets only a handful of human beings have ever seen. I filled your hands with power, and this is how you thank me?”
His attempt to change the subject didn’t fool Cade. “You didn’t give me anything I couldn’t have taken for myself. All you did was show me that it was there to be seized.” He stepped closer, unafraid of confronting his master nose-to-nose. “What’s the point of having power if we’re too fucking scared to use it?”
“The point is to use it wisely.”
“Saving innocent lives isn’t a wise use of power?”
“What I’m trying to tell you is that power like ours shouldn’t be used carelessly, not with so much at stake. It’s not that I don’t feel pity for the souls this war chews up. And trust me, there are millions of them. It’s that I don’t have the luxury of feeling sorry for them. And if I might speak frankly? Neither do you.”
Cade was adamant. “But this is his sister we’re talking about! This has to be the exception to the rule.”
“No, it doesn’t. Because I absolutely guarantee you that this—” He pointed at the mirror. “Is a fucking trap.”
24
JUNE
Through the window of Kein’s study came a breath of summer, but from the flames in his black marble fireplace surged Briet’s torrent of invective. “It’s been over a month and they haven’t even tried to contact the girl, never mind rescue her!”
“As I feared. Adair is no fool. And his apprentices are young, but they are also loyal.”
His reproach stoked Briet’s determination. “You didn’t see Niko and his sister. He loves her. I don’t care how much loyalty Adair commands—he can’t trump family.”
“We don’t know that.” Kein carried his glass of wine to the nearest window to escape the heat of his fireplace, and admired the rolling landscape of Wewelsburg. “All we know is that Adair seems unlikely to let his people risk themselves to rescue this woman.”
Briet considered that. “Maybe we set the bar too high. If the defenses on the complex hadn’t been so robust—”
“I doubt it would have made a difference.” He took a sip of his 1865 Beaune Grèves Vigne de l’Enfant Jésus, one of the most transcendent Pinot Noirs ever bottled. Though most of mankind’s so-called progress disappointed Kein, wine continued to impress him. “If strong defenses were enough to deter these people, they would never have sacked our Stuttgart coven. No, I think the problem is that we have not set a high enough price on their failure to act.”
As ever, Briet was quick to take his meaning. “They can tolerate her being imprisoned. But if she were facing imminent execution.…”
“Precisely, my dear. But what will make this trap work is not her death, but ensuring that this Niko fellow knows of it in advance. If he is as devoted to her as you say, he will either persuade Adair to lead a rescue mission, or defy his master to stage one himself.”
A nod of understanding. “How much lead time should we give them?”
“Today is what? The fifteenth?” He envisioned a few possible scenarios. “A prisoner train is scheduled to leave Drancy in a few days. Have one of the guards sell the news to a member of the Resistance. It should reach Niko quickly enough.”
“What then?”
He enjoyed another swallow of Pinot Noir. “Then? Put his sister on the train—and make certain you are on board when he comes to her rescue.”
* * *
It was after dark, there wasn’t a soul for a kilometer in any direction, and Stefan was well hidden inside an abandoned farmhouse nestled in the trees south of the River Wisła—but still he feared someone would hear Niko’s shouts through the enchanted mirror: “I do not have time to be calm! We must act, before it is too late!”
Stefan employed his most soothing timbre. “Yet you must be calm.” He pushed past the aching of his empty stomach. “Tell me what has happened.”
Niko pulled a hand over his stubbled face while he struggled for composure; he regarded Stefan with bloodshot eyes. “One of my spies in the Drancy complex sent me a message. The Nazis are transferring a thousand prisoners out of Drancy, on tonight’s train. Camille, my sister—she is on that list!”
“Have you told Adair?”
“Of course I did! But he says the same as when the Germans took her: she is not worth savin
g.” Grief wrinkled his features. “He knows what she means to me. She is all I have. But still he orders me to give her up!” He thrust his finger at Stefan, who half expected the digit to poke out of his own mirror. “Mark my words: I will not abandon her. Not now. Not ever.”
“Yes. You must save her. But the enemy is prepared. This will be most dangerous.” Stefan racked his imagination for some way he and his friend could overcome the odds against them. “What of Anja? Or Cade? They would be of great help.”
“There is no way to reach them without going through Adair.” Niko lifted his mirror over his shoulder, giving Stefan a view of the emaciated prisoners being forced onto a train. Just as Niko had described, the Nazis were herding droves—men, women, and children—into the railcars at gunpoint. The sight made Stefan sick as he recalled all the trains like it he had seen at Poland’s concentration camps.
Niko angled his mirror toward himself. “Over a thousand souls, mon frère. All going to some place called Auschwitz. You have heard of it?”
The very name made Stefan want to retch. He felt his face blanch. “I have.” His eyes burned with tears as he remembered the red farmhouse. A deep breath steeled his nerves and cleared his vision. He met Niko’s anxious gaze with one of grim resolve. “Tell me your plan.”
“A group of Maquis will help me stop the train. I—” He took a moment to choose the precise word. “—coerced the train’s route from a German officer, who then suffered an accident. My friends will sabotage the tracks a few miles outside Fleury, then keep the Germans busy while I open the railcars and free the prisoners.”
The last detail surprised Stefan. “All of them?”
“Oui. What kind of a man would I be if I save my sister but let a thousand others die?” A humble shrug. “It also will create chaos to cover our escape.”
Stefan appreciated Niko’s ethics as well as his tactics. “Most clever.”
“Once she is off the train and in our truck, we will take her to a man who knows how to smuggle people into Spain.”