The Midnight Front--A Dark Arts Novel

by David Mack

  “Fucking hell, lad. Don’t keep me in suspense.”

  Off a cue from Cade, Anja said, “The Zwinger grounds, in the Altstadt.”

  “Why there?”

  “It’s a large enclosed area,” Cade said, “and off-limits to the public after dark. We can scribe our last ring of glyphs on its outer walls. After we get Kein inside, we seal the gate.”

  “If we contain the duel inside the Zwinger,” Anja added, “we will reduce the risk of civilians seeing the battle or coming to harm.”

  Their proposal troubled Adair. “Breaching the Zwinger might be harder than you think. And we could reduce civilian risk by confronting him on the Augustusbrücke.”

  Cade shook his head. “We considered that. The bridge is guarded at night, probably to prevent sabotage. Even if we could burn a few nodes into it, the really effective ones can’t be set over running water, and we’d be in full of view of at least half the city.” He pointed at the Zwinger on the wall map. “This is the best option. A contained killing field. Limited collateral damage. And enough room to set nodes to make sure Kein never walks out alive.”

  Still uncertain, Adair looked to Anja. “I presume you have a plan for how to get near the Zwinger to set the last circle of the trap?”

  A devious smirk. “Of course.”

  That was good enough for Adair. “Then it’s settled.” He lit a cigarette in celebration. “Three weeks from tonight, we lure Kein to the Zwinger. And we kill him.”

  58

  FEBRUARY

  Voices rose to meet him in the ether, arriving before his destination came into view. That was typical during astral projection; thoughts and ideas often carried beyond the physical plane, impelled by their own creative force into the spaces between dimensions.

  There was no confusing the voices; each had its own inimitable character.

  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s arch tenor faltered beneath the twin burdens of age and illness: “You asked for a second front in Europe. That’s what we’ve given you.”

  “After how many millions of Russian soldiers died?” It was vintage Premier Josef Stalin: gruff and curt. “We press our attack from the east while you dawdle in Italy.”

  “Perhaps you’ve forgotten this war is global.” Prime Minister Winston Churchill—as imperious as he was ponderous, with a growl of a voice. “America has waged our war against Japan in the Pacific all but single-handed, since nearly the beginning.”

  “I have pledged Russia’s support for the Pacific war—”

  “Only after the war ends in Europe,” Roosevelt interrupted.

  The scene came into focus as his consciousness migrated out of the astral plane, back into the material world and its assault on the senses. Though his mind was only a projection into the room deep within Livadia Palace, outside Yalta, he savored its mingling smokes: the acrid bite of American tobacco from Roosevelt’s cigarette; the pungent perfume of Churchill’s cigar; and the rich aroma of burning oak from the crackling blaze in the fireplace.

  Stalin sipped from a glass of clear liquid that was most likely vodka, then palmed droplets from his bushy mustache. “If you want our help in the Pacific, don’t—” He startled a bit as he noted their meeting had been intruded upon.

  Roosevelt and Churchill pivoted away from the comfort of the fire. The American president smiled, and the prime minister got up to greet their guest. “Master Macrae, welcome! Premier Stalin, I don’t know that you’ve met our resident sorcerer. Allow me to present Adair Macrae.” Stalin stood, joined Churchill, and extended his hand.

  “Forgive me, Premier Stalin. I’d shake your hand if I could, but I’m not actually there.” To illustrate his point, he let his astrally projected hand pass through one of the room’s sumptuously padded and upholstered sitting chairs. “I’m more of a waking dream, or a living ghost, if you prefer.”

  Churchill took the news with steady composure. “Marvelous, sir!” He beckoned the shade to join him and the other leaders. “Tell us, old friend: What news?”

  “Good tidings, I think. Four days from now, at ten P.M., in the Altstadt section of Dresden, my adepts and I will draw the Nazis’ top karcist into a trap. If all goes to plan, the magickal defenses that have thwarted your efforts against Hitler will be gone. With luck, the war in Europe can be over by spring.”

  His news kindled new life into Roosevelt’s tired eyes. “You’re sure?”

  “Quite sure. After we take down Kein Engel, the spirits he set to guard Hitler will become the Führer’s worst nightmares. He’ll be dead, mad, or both in a matter of months.”

  Stalin bared a shark’s grin. “Good. Very good. The German high command already tried to oust Hitler once. Once he’s gone, they’ll crumble into factions.”

  “This calls for a toast,” Roosevelt said. He lifted his glass, and Churchill followed suit. “To the death of Kein, the fall of Hitler and his Reich, and the end of this war.”

  “Hear, hear,” said the prime minister, and the three heads of state drank.

  It seemed an opportune time to depart. “Good luck with the rest of the war, gentlemen. I shall look forward to celebrating Kein’s demise with you in five days’ time.”

  “Indeed,” Churchill said. “Godspeed, Master Macrae.”

  “And to you, Prime Minister.”

  * * *

  The astral projection faded from the room, and a pensive silence fell upon the Allied leaders. They settled into their chairs. Stalin swilled his vodka, Roosevelt sipped from a tumbler of bourbon, and Churchill tipped back a lowball of gin. Deeply troubled by all he had heard, Roosevelt broke the verbal stalemate. “How do we like his chances?”

  Churchill’s doubts were evident. “Against a monster like Kein? Abysmal.”

  “He and his adepts will have the advantage of surprise,” Roosevelt offered.

  Stalin said, “We should not gamble the war’s outcome on one man’s promises.”

  The prime minister asked accusatorily, “Meaning what?”

  “We should remove the element of chance,” Stalin replied.

  Bolder now, Roosevelt nodded. “I agree. Historically, mages have always been wild cards. In a modern world like ours, they constitute a threat, one that could disrupt the balance of powers. I should not enjoy trusting my fate to their whims or mercies.”

  “My point exactly,” Stalin said. “If this Master Macrae is correct, then we know exactly where all of the last living sorcerers will be in four days’ time. We could rid the human race of their kind in one blow. We might never have another chance to do the world such a service.”

  “You mean bomb Dresden,” Churchill said. He harrumphed. “It would serve the Germans right, after what they’ve done to London. But Adair has been a friend to us—”

  “Not a friend,” Stalin interjected. “An asset. And an unpredictable one. Will you still call him friend when he and his kind turn against us? When they put their devils and demons above duty and country?”

  “He has a point,” Roosevelt said. “But I don’t like the idea of bombing a city with few if any valid military targets. Especially not on the scale that would be required here.”

  Churchill gnawed the end of his cigar. “Now is not the time to get squeamish. We didn’t push for total war, Hitler and the Axis did. At any rate, your Pacific forces are already bombing Tokyo without discretion. I see no reason Dresden should be spared.”

  The American president shook his head, and he feared his sagging features betrayed the ravages of his long illness. “It could be seen as a war crime.”

  Stalin dismissed Roosevelt’s sincere concerns with a callous wave. “Let history call it what it wants. What matters is striking while we have the chance. If your armies will not do what must be done, mine will.”

  “Then we’re agreed,” Churchill declared. “Come the night of the thirteenth … we bomb Dresden until nothing remains but rubble and ashes.”

  * * *

  Night fell on Dresden. It was only a few days past the
new moon, but even that sliver of reflected light was long gone, having made its transit in daytime. It had chased the sun over the western horizon hours earlier, leaving the city as dark as the core of a fist.

  Adair stood in the center of the Zwinger grounds, surveying its perimeter with the Sight. The palace’s double-spired cathedral stood to the north; to the northeast stood the open main gate, beneath a majestic double arch supporting a dome painted the green of oxidized copper and topped with a golden crown. Hundreds of well-groomed topiary trees, their bare branches frosted and drooping, bordered the snow-covered lawns between the grounds’ pedestrian paths. Gas-fed lamps that lined the walkways stood cold and dark.

  Nothing moved. Not even the freezing winter air, which smelled clean but for a faint tang of woodsmoke curling from the palace’s chimneys.

  About a dozen meters away on either side behind him, Cade and Anja watched the other corners of the Zwinger, their own senses magickally keen, alert for any sign of Kein.

  Anja masked her anxiety with impatience. “Are you sure he’s coming?”

  “Aye,” Adair said. “I had a demon bring my portal glass from the villa. There’s no way Kein could have missed that. He’ll come tonight, for sure.”

  “Or perhaps he is already here,” said a voice that chilled Adair’s blood.

  He spun to see his nemesis standing between him, Cade, and Anja.

  Kein’s sense of style remained unimpeachable. His hair was trimmed and his shave was as close to perfect as the marriage of steel and flesh allowed. His open trench coat and Burberry scarf fluttered in the wind, revealing his three-piece suit and polished shoes. “Hello, Adair.”

  Anja tensed. “Where is your ginger bitch?”

  “You mean Briet? I have not seen her in months.” Kein acknowledged Cade with a half nod. “I had assumed you killed her. Now I know she deserted me.” A casual shrug. “No matter. I will deal with her soon enough. After we finish here.”

  It was time to erase Kein’s smug look. “Infirmitas!” Adair channeled the vitality-draining talent of ARAMAEL to trigger his trap and humble his nemesis for the first time since—

  The bastard shook his head. “Oh, Adair. My old friend … did you really think I had blundered into your net? That I was just prey for your snare?” He flicked his hand, a backhand swat through open air—and a freight train of force bashed into Adair and laid him out on the frozen ground. Kein prowled toward him.

  Cade and Anja unleashed fire and lightning at the dark master, who deflected it all without seeming to pay it any mind. He kept his eyes on Adair, who struggled to his feet and scrambled to draw his wand. At a gesture from Adair, Cade and Anja ceased fire but kept their attention on Kein.

  “I love this plan of yours,” Kein said, waving his hand at all of Dresden. “It is based on my devil’s trap, yes? If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, I should be touched by your scheme, despite its intent. But did you really think you could craft something of this magnitude and not attract my notice?”

  Horror spilled the words from Adair: “You knew?”

  “Of course I knew. For months have I watched you. I sabotaged every seal you made, sometimes mere hours after you made them.” Kein shot a look at Cade. “I got the idea from you. After I learned how you unmade my trap in Normandy, I vowed to master this new trick. And then you handed me the perfect opportunity. You built a killing jar with my name on it”—he spread his arms wide—“and I turned it into a lens that serves only me.”

  His implicit promise of slaughter was answered by air-raid sirens.

  Cade looked up as the warnings resounded through the city. “The fuck? Is it a drill?”

  The faint drone of distant aircraft widened Anja’s eyes. “It is no drill.”

  Adair turned toward the sound of bombers but couldn’t see them—just a moonless black sky. He wheeled toward Kein. “What’ve you done?”

  “It is not me, old friend. Thank your precious Allies for this. You see, after you—terribly sorry; after I, posing as you—told Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin about your plan to ambush me here, they reacted most predictably: by deciding to kill us all. In so doing they will bring my masterpiece to fruition—by inaugurating the greatest burnt offering in the history of the Art.”

  “You’re mad!”

  “Mad?” Kein shook his head. “No, my friend. Prescient. I knew your leaders would raze this city, just as I knew you”—a look at Cade—“would bring me the sacrifice I needed.”

  Panic flooded Adair’s thoughts. His careful scheme had imploded; he’d played straight into Kein’s hands. He drew his white-handled knife and lunged at Kein, who caught Adair’s wrists. As they grappled, Adair bellowed at Cade and Anja, “Run!”

  For once, bless them, they obeyed.

  Anja transformed into a hawk and launched herself into the dark. Cade sprinted toward the main gate then vanished into thin air, perhaps by invisibility, maybe by shifting into a gaseous or spectral form. Outside the Zwinger, the outskirts of the city flared gold and crimson as falling bombs filled the night with hellish thunder and searing flames.

  Kein kneed Adair in the groin. Adair doubled over, and met Kein’s knee again with his chin. He landed on his back, spread-eagled on the cold ground.

  His adversary smirked. “You think running will save them? I am bonded to a demon, old friend.” In a sickly green pulse, there were three of him.

  They all said in unison, “And my name is LEGION.”

  * * *

  Three bodies, one mind—a power Kein had taken decades to master. Now he was hurling fire and forked lightning at Adair across the Zwinger grounds; soaring through the dark as an owl, in pursuit of the Russian woman; and hurling spectral missiles as he chased the young American nikraim through the Zwinger’s main gate into the streets of the Altstadt.

  Gray armies of nameless demons poured from every shadow of Dresden—some under Kein’s command, the rest answering to his foes. Endless ranks of the Fallen crashed against one another in waves, breaking around their summoners like a sea swallowing islands.

  Adair punched forward with ORCUS’s disemboweling claws, only to have Kein block his attack with his shield. Kein retaliated with lightning that sent the grizzled Scotsman diving for cover while it ripped a steaming scar into the snow-covered lawn.

  Half a mile away, the talons of Kein’s owl form dug into the back of Anja’s borrowed hawk body and dragged her flailing toward the rooftops. In the northwest, explosions marched across the city, silhouetting buildings as they fell.

  In the narrow streets of the Altstadt, Cade ceased his retreat, spun about, and hurled a green fireball at Kein, who deflected it. The burning orb crashed through a window of a nearby building, whose interior was consumed by a blast of emerald flames. Kein answered the youth’s clumsy strike with GŌGOTHIEL’s fist. The impact batted Cade through the air and slammed him against a brick wall.

  Inside the Zwinger, Kein harried Adair by vomiting flames into his face, forcing the hobbled old mage to his knees as the blaze bent around his unseen shield. Kein swallowed the rest of his firestorm, then taunted his rival. “You should have stayed out of this war, old friend.”

  “And let you murder humanity’s future? Not fucking likely.”

  Owl and hawk crashed together on a rooftop, tumbled over eaves in a flurry of claws and feathers. A hair shy of the pavement, Kein and Anja rematerialized, crouched and facing each other. “Walk away, girl. You have done it before. Do it now.”

  “Never.” A ghostly whip took shape in her hand. She snapped its barbed tip inches from his head, mussing his hair and kissing his face with violence. The whip struck a steel lamppost behind Kein and broke it in half with a shriek of sheared iron.

  The streets of the Altstadt shook under Kein’s feet as if the city were in the center of an earthquake. Across the cityscape behind Cade, columns of fire climbed into a sky whose thin blanket of clouds turned red reflecting the inferno’s light.

  Cade manifested a bur
ning broadsword in his right hand, a short sword glistening with poison in his left, and charged. Kein tasked a hellhound to meet him. With superhuman agility, Cade sidestepped the monster’s ravenous jaws, severed its forelimbs, and stabbed it in the heart. Then, with both blades, he scissored off its snarling head.

  Adair deflected a surge of Kein’s lightning, cutting a red-hot wound across the palace’s inner walls; then he hurled blue fire from his palm. Kein swatted away the flames, igniting a stand of bare-limbed trees—only to be nicked on the back of his head by the scythe of AZAZEL.

  Kein smirked at Adair. “You almost had me, old man.”

  “I’m not done yet.”

  “Yes—you are.”

  In the Zwinger, he skewered Adair with SAVNOK’s fetid spear.

  In an alley of Friedrichstadt he cracked a reptilian whip at the girl.

  In the Altstadt he throttled Cade with tendrils of smoke.

  Thunder and flames advanced across the city, toppling buildings and erasing entire streets beneath storms of fire. Crowds of fleeing civilians erupted into flames as incendiary charges detonated in their midst.

  Kein gloated over Adair, who twisted on the end of his demonic spear. “The rabble and their love of Science brought you to this.”

  The dark master laughed at Anja, who clawed at the pair of hissing asps coiled around her throat. “You came all this way for revenge, only to die a failure. How tragic.”

  Adair melted into mist and escaped the backward teeth of the spearhead.

  Anja freed herself of the reptilian whipcord by incinerating it with her hands.

  Cade severed Kein’s smoky coils usin swords ablaze with Infernal light.

  Overhead, arcs of tracer fire lit up black bellies of cloud, scouring the heavens for the Allied aircraft that were turning Dresden into a crucible. Trailing tongues of flame, a bomber plunged from the sky and slammed into a cathedral’s spire, toppling it in flaming shards onto the panicked masses below.

  Cade charged at Kein, swinging his blades with uncanny skill. Kein summoned a pair of falchions and parried the hotheaded young karcist’s whirlwind attack, filling the air between them with showers of sparks and a song of clashing steel.