The Midnight Guardian

by Sarah-Jane Stratford

  “Trust an ancient Briton to look like an ideal German fräulein,” Otonia laughed.

  As a going-away gift, Eamon had drawn a new picture. The two of them together, tiny smiles playing around their lips, deep love in their eyes, even though they were gazing out rather than at each other. One might almost think there was something fascinating that was more worth their attention, but the way their eyelashes touched, their hair mingled, betrayed the real truth. When all was said and done, they were for each other only and always. Eamon drew his face from memory, a good memory for one who hadn’t seen that face in nearly 750 years. A beautiful face. More than beautiful—compelling, even mysterious. Brigit had memorized that face over centuries now, and still saw something new whenever she looked at it. She liked that.

  They each took a different route to get to the general’s house. When Brigit arrived, the only one of their group she spotted was Mors, who was chatting outside with two SS privates. They seemed to be manning the entrance to the party, which struck Brigit as at once extreme and laughable. They were not asking for identification, but they were consulting a guest list. To their credit, they looked abashed by the absurd duty. Trained to defend the Fatherland, and here they were acting like doormen at a first-night gala, with only an Alsatian to lend them an imposing air. Brigit wondered if they were being paid. She assumed Mors’s Major Werner was on the list at least; he was distracting the men so the other four could enter unmolested. Or perhaps he was genuinely interested in the dog who, far from being ferocious, was lapping at Mors’s hand as though the vampire had offered him bacon.

  It was a curious thing, Mors’s rapport with dogs. Part of his inimitable legend. The vampire mythology often had it that other creatures of the night, both real and imagined, ranged with the undead, but it wasn’t true. For one, none of the imagined creatures existed, for another, foxes and owls and other such nocturnal beasts kept a respectful distance from the vampires. They had their own quarry to hunt, and their own path. They knew the undead for what they were. Besides which there was an unwritten contract: Beasts do not keep other beasts as pets. As ever, Mors was different.

  He loved and respected dogs, and they him. His affection was for the unwanted mixed breed he could rescue either from a life of servitude or a painful death. Dogs thrived under his care, and lived many years longer than they should, ranging at his speed, loving the night. No one knew how he did it, surely he could not gift them power? Brigit had always wanted to ask, but kept her counsel.

  Still, every twenty years or so, the dog would die. The vampires wondered how Mors could bear it, bonding so closely to creatures to whom he would, too soon, have to bid good-bye. His swaggering insouciance made some think it didn’t touch him, but the love he showed his pets was real, so whatever happened in him when one turned and took its final separate path was for him alone.

  “Get in here!” Cleland’s directive, echoing in her skull, roused Brigit from her reverie and she ambled up the steps, quite unnoticed.

  Slipping into character, she hesitated at the door, looking around nervously as though for a female friend she was to meet. Her eyes accidentally met those of two young men ogling her appreciatively. She gulped hard and looked down, smoothing her skirt over her hips in a manner guaranteed to make them notice just how invitingly curvy those hips were. Turning from them, she feigned surprise at the smiling appearance of a square-faced colonel bearing two glasses of champagne.

  “Good evening. I saw you standing here alone and without a drink and thought these two afflictions must be immediately remedied.”

  “How kind of you! Thank you so much.”

  “You sound like a Heidelberg girl.”

  “Do I?” she answered, an artless girl playing at being mysterious.

  Heidelberg, hm? Well, that’s handy.

  The Roma claimed that a vampire’s mastery of many languages and fine arts was part of the evil magic of the demon. The tribunal was more of the opinion that once your mind was relieved of the minutiae and shackles of human life, it expanded to its full potential and allowed you, if you were so inclined, to dive headlong into education and erudition. There were vampires who were better read than the greatest human philosophers could ever hope to be, although the vampires were fully aware of their unfair advantage.

  The millennials happily pressed that advantage, speaking flawless German in accents that did not betray their roots. The colonel was nattering on and on about his one day in Heidelberg and the hills and the castle and the beautiful countryside. Brigit sipped her champagne and wondered if he was the sort to let a girl get a word in edgewise.

  “I’m a Bavaria man, myself. We’re a hearty lot, love music.”

  “Oh, so do I!”

  “Do you play and sing?”

  “No, neither. I just love to listen.”

  “A perfect audience.”

  He gave her a repugnant wink. A stout woman wearing something that looked like an evening dirndl waddled up and slipped her arm through his, smiling beadily at Brigit.

  “Grüss Gott. I am the colonel’s wife. Have we met? You look unfamiliar.”

  Good.

  “I am Brigitte, madame, and pleased to meet you. Your husband was just saying how much he loved music.”

  “Ah. Was he? How lovely.”

  The colonel flushed, and Brigit enjoyed the seed of discord she’d planted. Even a colonel can’t give his all to his country when he’s trying to prove to his wife that he’s as faithful as ever.

  Brigit wondered, however, if perhaps she was wrong about these priorities when a general cleared his throat to get the colonel’s attention. The general jerked his head toward a corridor and the colonel extracted his arm from his wife and barely looked at either unimportant woman as he marched after the general.

  Left alone, there was nothing to say. The colonel’s wife looked Brigit over, concentrating on her legs and breasts. Brigit smiled pleasantly, which made the woman shudder and, with a quick nod, a vestige of politesse, hurried back to the little clique of wives that Swefred and Cleland were attempting to amuse, with what Brigit noticed was only middling success. Thus far.

  Helping herself to a canapé, Brigit stopped to be amused by a spotty boy, perhaps seventeen, who was being far too familiar with a bosomy waitress. The uncomfortable waitress bustled to Brigit’s side and almost begged her for an order. The boy gave Brigit a supplicating look she couldn’t understand—surely he knew she would side with a pestered female?

  As she looked down her nose at him with haughty amusement, she caught a whiff of the stake in his modified crossbow. Nachtspeere. This almost-child following whatever direction his hot loins led was a Reich hunter. Brigit held his gaze longer, allowing him any opportunity for recognition. There was none, and she sensed he was carrying the stake out of nostalgia, because Berlin was clean. Furthermore, he was only in attendance as a courtesy to his fond supervisor. Brigit narrowed her eyes—the hunter’s skin mottled under her pitiless sneer. He looked down and slunk away.

  He does not know me. He has absolutely no sense of what I am.

  The boy tried to save face by joining in conversation with Mors and two other men. After what looked like several unfortunate sentences that were wearing patience thin, Mors turned and caught her eye.

  He knows none of us. They have not studied the legends, not to any use.

  The pleasing knowledge that the British millennials were such total strangers to the Nachtspeere was only a small compensation for the sudden lack of valuable targets. Brigit wandered the dining and drawing rooms, sipping at her drink and giving halfhearted sniffs here and there, as though prowling for food. The corridor down which her colonel had disappeared was dark and tempting. She affected fascination with the unnecessarily graphic hunting prints lining the walls and studied each one with great care, clearly not noticing she was drifting farther and farther away from the allotted festivity space.

  The door was left carelessly ajar, as though certain that no one who was not
invited to this far more private party would ever dream of crashing. There were twenty-four men gathered, with cocktails, and they seemed to hew to the old idea that the business of domination was to be discussed at parties.

  “If the Führer says Poland rightfully belongs to Germany, I shan’t argue. The countryside is marvelous. Shame about the people, though. Rotten workers.”

  “Exactly what the Führer says. So we shall remind them that they are in fact German, and they’ll start working again. They’ll work as if their lives depended on it.”

  “Which they will.”

  Good-natured laughter greeted that smiling comment, and drinks were refilled.

  “How we ever could have lost Poland in the first place is beyond me.”

  “Having so many Jews in Germany made us weak. We won’t make that mistake again. It will be good to have more breathing room.”

  “We’ll need it for all the children the Führer wants us to have.”

  A florid middle-aged officer popped open a champagne bottle and sent the cork sailing across the room. It landed at Brigit’s feet as surely as if it had been a guided missile. She glared at it, but when she looked up to meet the commingled hostility and curiosity facing her, she was the sweetest, loveliest, most artless young fräulein any of them had ever encountered. Her girlish blush and giggle was charming, musical even, and softened nearly every hard eye.

  “You must forgive me, gentlemen, I did not mean to intrude, I was only wondering where all the handsome men had disappeared to.”

  Deeply embarrassed, she blushed again and laid her hands over her pink cheeks, not daring to meet any of the pleased, laughing eyes. Some smiles were indulgent, others, taking note of her curls and curves, were something different. But the diversion, delightful though it was, still needed to be removed. An officer nodded to a younger man, assigning him to the duty. The man gave one brief, courteous nod in response and turned to Brigit.

  “Permit me to guide you back and get you a fresh champagne.”

  She giggled and took the proffered arm, allowing her thumb to brush his wrist so quickly, it was surely an accident. She sensed the shiver deep inside him, and was pleased.

  His name was Gerhard, and he smelled of ambition, which in itself was nothing unusual for young men in Berlin, but there was a particular air of determination in him, something that might be described as fangs. He was certainly looking at her as though he’d like to eat her. She suspected it was less because of her perceived tastiness than his push for greatness. A woman like her, such a visible prize, would be a boon to parade. Ambitious, unattractive men always gravitated toward the most beautiful women. And Gerhard was unattractive. Brigit wondered how much even his mother loved his sharp-boned face. He held his shoulders back in an unnatural stance that was probably meant to convey authority and a soldier’s power, but it was clear his main hope was for no one to see how scrawny and concave his chest was. His blond hair was dull and lank. His almost-white eyebrows rendered his face nearly featureless. They were thickest around his nose, and here they tilted up most unfortunately, giving him the look of a perplexed peach. His eyes were small, and there was so much eager acquisitiveness in them, no room was left for cheer or warmth. Gerhard bore the look of an efficient paper pusher, not a candidate for the inner circle, but his mind was quick and his manner ingratiating without being oily. His success with women was nil, but he knew exactly how to work a man to curry favor and had set himself well on the path to greatness, regretting only that it must be so tediously slow.

  Brigit could hardly believe her luck. He was in the Ministry for Weapons, Munitions, and Armament and must be privy to the sort of documents that could prove useful. Gerhard would be easy to work, she could tell. She would hardly have to expend any strength at all. He handed her a glass of champagne and she let her fingers touch his as she accepted it, with what could only be interpreted as greater intent.

  He left her at the threshold to the ballroom, where she was tickled to see Swefred, Cleland, and Meaghan all dancing with what looked like sure bets. Even better, Mors was talking to a captain, who had arrived late and was greeted by Gerhard. Gerhard smiled at Brigit.

  “I shall see you soon, then, Brigitte?”

  “I look forward to it.”

  There was no question of Mors accompanying the two men back to the circle of power. Brigit was proud that he looked smarter in his uniform than any other uniformed man there—and no one could miss it.

  It’s called panache, you fools. And you’ll never have it, even if you live two thousand years. You have to be born with it.

  Mors turned his head just enough to meet Brigit’s eye, and winked. Her grin was broad and she couldn’t resist whispering something only he could hear:

  “Knock them dead.”

  They compared their various successes back at the lair. Mors, of course, had gained acceptance and respect, and the men he’d talked to had laughed so hard at his jokes, they hadn’t noticed his evasion of their questions. Cleland had enchanted the restless wife of a junior propagandist. Swefred had befriended several important journalists. And Meaghan was being hotly pursued by a rising star in the Reich Chamber of Culture. Brigit laughed scornfully when she heard that.

  “Culture! They’ve chased out all their best artists and musicians, how much work could there be to justify an entire Chamber?”

  “He says they are very busy.” Meaghan sniffed defensively.

  “Probably hunting down more artists to send into exile.”

  “No, trying to factory-grow new ones to suit the enforced tastes,” Mors countered. “They probably keep a cauldron in the cellar—throw in some spices and phoom, instant artist. The ultimate alchemy: the creation of creativity. Ah, clever, clever Nazis. Give a stir, and marvelous: a musician! Dip the ladle and out comes a playwright! Dip again and there’s an actor, prepared to declaim in a stirring baritone whilst turning out his leg to its finest angle. He finishes with a flourish and oompah, oompah, oompah, the orchestra strikes up a rousing march. Ooh, they do like a good march, don’t they? What a delicious concoction. But there’s a catch, there’s always a catch. These avatars of efficiency forgot a crucial ingredient! Playwright! Actor! Musician! Painter! Curse the luck but don’t they need hearts? And souls, yes, in the last analysis, they need souls. This soufflé is doomed to collapse. And that, that is their great failing, isn’t it? Ooooh, yes, whatever that Speer fellow may have in mind, the greatest empires are remembered for their culture, and this piddling would-be empire is sadly bereft. Poor deluded things. I’d put them out of their misery now, if I were a kindhearted sort, but it’s such fun to watch. And we do need our entertainment in these strange times, don’t we?”

  Swefred stood, and put an arm around Meaghan.

  “Some more than others. The sun’s coming up. We’re going to bed. Carry on if you like, I’m sure you can go on in this vein for quite some time.”

  “Oh yes, I can play with myself for hours on end.”

  Swefred and Meaghan left the other three to their laughter.

  Brigit’s warm smile lingered in her eyes, even as she shook her head at Mors.

  “It’s not true, though. You know it isn’t. The Roman Empire was perhaps the most powerful the world has ever seen. And they had buildings and sculpture, yes, but nothing like the Greeks. Their plays, their poetry, it was all derivative. No one cares.”

  “They had fine music.”

  “No one remembers it.”

  “I do.”

  “But that means nothing. You don’t count. It’s history’s count that matters, and by history’s count, what made the Romans great was their ability to reach a hand far around the globe … and squeeze.”

  Mors was silent for half a moment.

  “I do like you when you’re figurative.”

  She turned away from him and he reached out and took her wrist.

  “They won’t get the chance. Even if we weren’t here, think of how powerful our blessed England is.”
/>   A swell of pride rallied Brigit and she grinned at him.

  “But we are here. England may save her strength.”

  Cleland spoke then.

  “We did well tonight. We made good ground, for them to lie in.”

  Before Brigit tucked herself up in bed, she pressed her hand tight to the drawing of herself and Eamon, willing it to vibrate warm under her fingers.

  Oh, my Eamon. I will play this game like a champion. And I will be home with you. Very soon.

  For the first time since Otonia had announced the plan, Brigit went to sleep with a smile on her face.

  Chapter 6

  London. December 1938.

  Even after a third reading, the letter still trembled in his hand. Eamon didn’t know why he was so upset. This was the plan, after all, and it was all going forward exactly as expected, so what difference did it make? This Gerhard certainly sounded like a live one, the perfect dupe for Brigit’s abilities, and with such excellent connections, the path to success looked golden. And, of course, Brigit would have many ways of working with such a man, ways of making him sure he’d touched her when he hadn’t. So there was no reason for Eamon to feel jealous. But he couldn’t help it. She would be smiling at Gerhard, talking to him, listening. For purposes of destruction, but still, he would get her attention. And he, Eamon, was not there to be the arms she came home to every day before dawn. If he were at least there, he could be a receptacle for all her frustrated energy. He could bathe her clean with his eyes and his tongue. He could pull her into him so that she would melt. He could keep her safe, and cool.

  He tucked the letter into his breast pocket, hoping to stow his vexation as well. Otonia had reminded him that Brigit’s control was excellent, that she would manage it all beautifully and he would do well to focus his worry and attention where it could do more good. “Besides, Mors is there. He saved her the first time and could do so again, if it came to it. But I do not believe it will.”

  Yes, Mors was there. But despite his longer association with Brigit, he did not have that level of connection to her. Eamon, more than two centuries her junior, had been tied to her even before his making. In all these centuries, they’d grown wholly attuned to each other, and he could sense what she was feeling from miles away. If there was trouble, he could be there faster than Mors ever could, despite that vampire’s legendary speed. Mors and Brigit were friends, close in a way a human brother and sister could be close, but when Eamon, still as his human self, had looked into Brigit’s eyes, he’d seen life there. Hers, and his. Their lives were in each other’s guardianship, as surely as was their happiness. And here he was, safe and comfortable and useless in London.