Return of the Demi-Gods

by Rex Baron

Up ahead, half hidden by the dense growth of trees, lay the ruin of a fortress more ancient than the name by which the place was called.

  “Here is Der Schloss von Schatten,” Kurt said, pointing to a black ruined silhouette of jagged stone. “It is called the Castle of Shadows because its real name lies so distant in the past no one alive has knowledge of it.”

  Helen pulled her thin evening coat tightly around her, to try and ward off the chill that ran through her body.

  “It's ghastly,” she said.

  As the auto turned down an overgrown path approaching the remains of the ruin, Helen was surprised to see couples walking in the darkness toward the jagged wall on the hill. Young girls walked along silently, each grasping the hand of her companion, or just a step or two behind him, staring at the ground, lost in a distant reverie. All of the boys were dressed in soldier's uniforms, some brown, some black or olive drab, but each accented with leather straps and shining boots.

  Helen could not help but smile to herself as she surveyed the uniform worn by her own companion in the car.

  “So this is where the soldiers take their girls. Really Kurt, don't you think you're a little old to go necking with the teenagers.”

  He did not answer her casual remark, but instead placed his hand firmly on her knee to stop the nervous little tapping she had set up with the heel of her shoe against the seat. She avoided his eyes and returned her glance to the procession of youths filing soberly up the hill.

  Suddenly, she was struck with a sense of foreboding. There was something not quite right about what she saw. This was not a procession of young lovers. There was no laughter, no nuzzling and whispering of tender lies and secrets. Their faces were drawn and detached. Some of the girls wiped tears from their eyes, and even those who held the hands of their soldier companions appeared to do so with reluctance, as if they were coerced and subtly dragged to some mournful fate up there behind the crumbling black wall.

  “What is this about?” she asked sternly.

  Kurt's lips twisted into a smile, like metal wire curling under heat. “You'll see,” he answered.

  The car negotiated the steep rise and came to a stop alongside the ruined wall. On the other side, deep cavernous cellars lay open, exposed to the moonlight like the open wounds of a cadaver. Beneath the skin of black earth a skeletal network of catacombs stretched out in all directions, the subterranean remains of an ancient warrior beast, born of stone and clay, christened with the blood of countless, now silent, phantom soldiers.

  “This place is a fright,” Helen said emphatically. “I certainly hope this isn't your idea of a romantic little spot.”

  Kurt helped her out of the car without answering. Taking her by the hand, he led her down a gentle slope into the mouth of a dark overgrown tunnel. Helen pulled back on her arm, seized with the sudden suspicion that he might have brought her here for some deep-seated revenge for her past rejection of him. A look of fear passed over her and she turned Kurt's face toward the dim glow from the moon to gauge his expression.

  “Once again, I must tell you that I can read your thoughts. I have no desire to harm you, only to have you understand how one is chosen, and the significance of the link to the other worlds I have told you about.”

  “Chosen for what?” Helen said, her body still rigid with resistance. “I'm afraid I don't know what you mean.”

  “I have brought you here to show you,” he said.

  Silently, he led her into a black opening leading into the catacombs. Helen seized his arm, unable to make out even his shape next to her in the formless void. Her fingers digging into him were the tactile language of urgency and trust that he required before imparting the secrets of this ancient tomb.

  Helen placed her feet carefully and slowly, pulling Kurt close to her to keep her balance. With every step her hold on his arm became more confident and sure until, after a time, the clutching fingers had given over to the calm, gentle touch of blind trust. She felt his arm under her bloodless hand, firm and steady, unmoved by the horror of the blackness and the swirling tangible memories of countless deaths that reverberated all around them. His was the stalwart arm of the shapeless ferryman, leading her into the underworld, like Charon guiding the Souls of the dead across the river Styx into Hades.

  Ahead of them a faint glow radiated from the edge of a large stone. As they approached, Helen saw that the tunnel veered off to one side and opened into a large underground cavern, dimly lit by flaming torches and a single electric bulb kept alive by a small whirring generator.

  Her mouth dropped open in amazement and she rubbed her eyes, coaxing her pupils to adjust to the light and the sight of what lay before her.

  Scattered throughout the cavernous space, young couples, in varying states of undress, lay in the embraces of love. Under their warm heaving bodies lay the stone replicas of fallen kings and warriors, the graves of the knights Templar.

  “What is this place?” Helen gasped, disengaging her arm from Kurt's.

  “Actually, it's a mausoleum for the knights of the crusades during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. What it was originally is anyone's guess.”

  “It now seems to be used for less noble purposes. It's a brothel,” Helen said in amazement.

  “No,” Kurt answered abruptly. “These are not simple-minded young lovers you see before you, stealing away into the night for a moment of forbidden love. In fact, this lovemaking is fully sanctioned by the New Order as a sacred act that will be lauded and praised by generations yet to come. These are the progenitors, from which the new race of super humans shall rise, linking the perfect blend of warrior ferocity and Christian devotion of ancient days with the shining demigods of the future. They are joined together by the communion of flesh celebrated here tonight.”

  “You can't be serious, “ Helen said coolly.

  “Oh but I am,” he answered. “I once told you there would be a world built on the knowledge of the ancient wisdoms, a world fashioned from magic, designed on the fragments gleaned from mythology. This is how that world begins, in consciously bridging the ages, infusing the spirit and purity of the past into the new unborn future.”

  Helen watched breathlessly as a beautiful blonde woman arched her back and cried out at the climax of her physical sacrifice. She held her soldier lover to her and wept in gratitude that the moment had been fulfilled.

  Kurt led Helen across the slippery shale of paving stone fragments to the other side of the chamber. He was seemingly mindless of the copulating couples hidden discreetly behind the fallen rubble and the sarcophagi of the warrior saints. He pointed out the details of the stone carvings, dating them for her, like a dispassionate tour guide, stepping over the living bodies almost without notice.

  Helen was reminded of their meeting at the opera house, when he had first companioned her, pointing out the oddities of the building and extemporizing about Herr Wagner, whether she cared to hear it or not. She had hardly listened to him that night. She had not taken him seriously, but now it was different. His fluid time had carried them both to a place where his words seemed the only truths, his explanations the foundation for the new law.

  He explained to her that these young people had been recruited to come to this place and make love as a nationalistic act of patriotism. It was the duty of the bravest and best soldiers to father many offspring. Each must choose an appropriately healthy and sound young woman and then come to this place, the Castle of Shadows, to ensure that the unborn child be infused with the Soul of a long departed warrior. This could only be done, he continued, by having the baby conceived on the very graves of those departed warriors, whose restless Souls still stalked this place... the warriors who waited for the unused vessel of a newborn child to contain their fiery self, so they might have the opportunity, once again, to fight for the glory of the Fatherland.

  “The Soul of a warrior is never at peace,” Kurt said. “It longs to reincarnate itself as yet another leader. It is no surprise then that Napoleon believ
ed the Soul of Alexander the Great to be inside him, just as our Fuhrer is the sacred vessel for Bonaparte. It is an endless procession for a Soul of such greatness. The vessels, the men who contain such a Soul, are born and pass on, but the spirit of the warrior is eternal.”

  Kurt had positioned himself in front of Helen, pinning her against the wall with his body and his words. He brought his mouth close to her and watched her from the distance of a breath before touching her. His lips dropped to her throat and he pushed his body still closer, nearly lifting her from the ground under the weight of its pressure. His lips moved skillfully toward her mouth and pressed into hers, silencing the words that she had intended.

  She pushed him away firmly and fought for breath.

  “Is this where the surrender you spoke of is meant to take place?” she said, her words coming in short gasps.

  He did not answer but used his body to speak his intentions.

  Helen pushed him hard, away from her, breaking the seal that held them.

  “I'm not one of your sound little women, herded here to fuck for the Fatherland. If that's why you brought me here, you can take me home.”

  Kurt took her by her shoulders and pressed her back against the cold damp stone of the tomb wall.

  “At this moment I don't give a damn about the Fatherland,” he said, digging his fingers into the soft flesh of her arms. He brought his mouth to hers and held her for a lost moment. “I knew when I first saw you that it was ordained for us. I saw in your mind that you could understand the new world and had the strength to survive the future.”

  Helen tried to remind herself that Kurt had met her under the influence of Claxton's enchantment philter, and was therefore mistaken in his impression, but it made little difference. With every kiss her resistance melted away. It was inescapable, she told herself. He was the new man, her redeemer, an opportunity for salvation not to be overlooked, like the handbag on the table so many years ago, containing the embroidered handkerchief and her new identity, or the tennis game, whereby poor little Lexi offered herself up for sacrifice.

  She could not say that she loved him, and yet, he had not asked for love. She felt his hands gently tugging at the straps of her slip, sliding the soft fabric down the length of her body. His hands were firm and insistent, a warrior's hands, taking siege of the spoils of battle.

  She too was a warrior in her way. After all she had killed in the battle for her own survival, not perhaps in the seemingly high-minded way of which he spoke, not for her country or the ideal of some distant future, but rather for the present, to be what a burning voice inside her told her she must be.

  She remembered once being told that one should only be in the company of those with whom you would gladly die. What better place to surrender to him, she thought, than here in the tomb of warriors, surrounded by sacrificial acts of love, in the company of those who would walk with open eyes into the flames of eternity.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Helen and Claxton’s apartment, Munich

  Claxton shuffled into the drawing room in his bed slippers and strained his eyes against the light from the hallway to get a glimpse of the clock over the mantle. It was three-fourteen. He tightened the rope belt of his dressing gown around his waist and made his way to the table set out before the fire. He pulled the bottle of champagne from the lukewarm water of the ice bucket and popped the cork, stirring the nocturnal calm of the room’s furnishings with a revolver-like report of violence.

  “There comes a time when one just doesn't wait anymore,” he said aloud.

  He poured himself a glass of wine and stood back surveying the folly of the florid little table and its sentimental offerings of flowers and virgin candles. It had been planned as a small private tribute in celebration of Helen's success with the presentation of her statue. He had hurried to get it all arranged, stopping off at the florist on the way back from the gallery, rushing to prepare the rack of lamb, in full knowledge that the Chancellor's speeches seldom lasted more than an hour.

  At eight-thirty, Helen had failed to return home. By ten he had begun to feel a fool. He remembered visiting Helen in her bungalow in California as she awaited a rendezvous with Paulo Cordoba. He knew full well that the young man was off with another lover, but he enjoyed toying with Helen's lustful frustrations. He had laughed at the foolishness of her desire. And yet, her longing for the matinee idol was the very thing that he was able to twist to his own advantage, making her his protégé and finally his ersatz wife.

  He laughed bitterly to the empty room. What little advantage he had now over the situation. He downed the glass of champagne and poured another.

  Slumped into the formless sofa, he glowered at the simple-minded charm of the table's presentation, a setting suitable for newly weds, or pimple-faced adolescent lovers.

  What could he have been thinking, he asked himself as a trickle of warm wine escaped the opening of his lips and bled down onto the front of his nightshirt? Helen would certainly have mocked such a show of boyish sentiment on his part. The single true emotion upon which their relationship was founded was ambition. It was a simple fact, of which he needed to remind himself, in his loving weakness.

  She had done right to stand him up, to reject his burnt offering of lamb and new potatoes. She was, after all, a goddess in her way, requiring his reverence and devotion, but like a goddess, more often than not, turning a deaf ear and indifference to his pitiful supplications.

  Claxton knew she was with someone. He felt it in his solar plexus. He felt a sharp pain below his stomach whenever she lied to him or disappeared for hours or days on end without an inkling of an explanation. He did not know how he knew that she was in the arms of a stranger, but he knew. Perhaps it was the telepathy that came built into those initiated into the Kraft.

  In spite of all his powers and wizardry, Claxton sat collapsed in his despair, waiting in the dark, muttering with a glass of wine in his hand. He noticed that the glass was once again empty and filled it, splashing the oily-smelling warm liquid generously as he poured.

  He had made every attempt to break into her emotions, to make her feel some small personal thing for him that was something other than hatred. He had tried to be winning in his ways, amusing with his money and always, without fail, elegantly brutal with his tongue. His caustic wit and his cynicism were the things that seemed to amuse her and hold her attention, and yet, he realized that he was not physically what she, or any other woman of her exceptional beauty, would long for as a lover.

  He had held his breath as his fifty-fifth birthday came and went without notice. He dreaded his reflection in the morning mirror, before the addition of pomade and cologne and all the toiletries, expensive cravats, kidskin gloves and other accoutrements that securely placed him in the category of natty gentleman, quite apart from the beefy, athletic, younger men with their libidos flapping around them like filthy shirttails.

  He had taken his refuge in being the gentleman of the old school, relying on his wardrobe and the sharpness of his wit to gain esteem, always insinuating, never allowing the mundanity of directness, keeping to the shadowy realms, safe in the aura of the mystery they provided.

  He was no longer the box-office draw that he was when they were together in California. He had given it all up for her. He had few regrets, but his influence over her was dwindling. When she had allowed him to touch her, it was always as a reward for knowledge given, a payment for a new incantation or some imparting of the ancient wisdom, which she saw as nothing more than a means to some timely necessity or a clever bit of information to be stored away until the proper situation presented itself.

  She was growing more powerful than he had ever imagined, in many ways surpassing his own abilities. He still threatened her with destruction if she went against his wishes, assuring her that legions of faceless agents of retribution were within the sound of his summoning. But in truth, his philters and charms, bound in an attempt to woo her or cause her pain, had fallen short and wer
e as impotent as the lovemaking with which she mocked him.

  He could not allow her to know that she had caused him even the slightest humiliation. He lurched up out of the lazy comfort of the sofa and attacked the carefully arranged place settings of the tabletop, sweeping the plates and silver into his arms. He bundled the flowers and the candles, the shameful remains of his sentiment, into the tablecloth and dragged it into the kitchen. After the long hours of waiting, the entire pivot of his intention had shifted in a single instant, and he hurriedly returned the unused dishes to the cupboards and the silver to the drawers, fearing that at any moment she might appear, to witness the degradation his love for her had brought him.

  He returned to the drawing room and dragged the gilt-edged gaming table away from its intimate spot in front of the fireplace, back to where it purposelessly belonged. He quickly surveyed the carpet for any telltale traces of his stillborn love.

  “Ironic is the word,” he said aloud. “As most fools struggle to hide their love of another from their wife, I struggle to make certain that my wife never knows that it is she alone I adore.”

  A feeble hand gesture of oration fanned the still air around him. He heard his own laughter crack the silence of the room and he listened as the tenor of it gave way to a startlingly different sound. It was the sound of his own voice, broken with pain, as the laughter turned to lamentable tears of grief.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Vogelstrasse’s studio, Munich

  Lexi slammed the chisel with the mallet, sending chips of stone flying around her. She had worked all morning, trying to get the corrugated waves in the hair of the gargantuan warrior to look like something other than a head full of snakes.

  She was tired of these heroic gods of mythology, built as bulky and square-edged as a house. She longed to sculpt something with the smooth streamlined curves of a seagoing vessel, but Helen would not hear of it. She knew that the Fuhrer liked massive statues, ridiculously overdeveloped demigods with powerful muscular bodies that suggested a perpetual air of sexuality. This was the ideal of the new Fatherland, inflated and semi-erect, she thought to herself.