by Michele Lang
We kissed and kissed, as if we were saying farewell forever and for all of time. His fingers traced my lips, my neck, my jaw, and I let my hands wander over his arms, his chest. But we did not do more than this.
Both of us were virgins, though we had already seen and survived much. And unspoken between us ran a solemn agreement: we would not let tragedy dictate our burgeoning love’s expression.
I was young then, and innocent. If I could only now return to that final night before the war, I would have made love with my fallen angel until daybreak, given him every last thing I had to give. But I held back. May God forgive me, I held back.
Now it was too late. It was September. And war.
5
The next morning, Raziel and I returned to Budapest on the first available plane. The war had officially begun and I could do no more to stop it; I now had my marching orders and a larger cause with which I could align.
As the plane roared at three thousand kilometers, too loudly for Raziel and me to speak as mortals do, I considered his fate as well as Gisele’s. He had chosen mortality for the chance to fight on the side of the innocent. Did he yet regret his choice? I was afraid to learn the answer.
After a long and wearing journey, the plane dropped back to earth in Hungary, half shaking the brains out of my head. The astral travel of my dreams, and even the wanderings of my soul when I had twice died, did not cause as much distress as these desperate wartime journeys in the air.
Night settled as black as ink over Budapest. I was wild to see Gisele again, but we had no taxi waiting for us, let alone Janos, Bathory’s driver, in his big black Mercedes. Instead, Raziel and I walked to the tram line that would take us back inside the Ring Road, to the heart of the city I still, unwillingly, loved.
By now Budapest knew of the war; by now the innocence of everyone around me had already been taken. And yet, I gaped in disbelief when I saw the people promenading in the night on Andrássy Street and Váci Street in their summer suits and silk skirts, as if nothing had happened, as if the world was still the same as it had been the day before.
The signs outside the Pushkin Theater blared: “Newsreels of Polish Provocation!” But none of the fashionable strollers seemed to take the slightest notice. I couldn’t believe it.
“They don’t want to know,” Raziel said, his voice husky. He cleared his throat and we stood together at the corner of Andrássy and Dohány streets, only a few blocks from home. “They want to believe in their dream of a life, not the death that hunts them. It has been ever thus, Magduska. Do not blame them for clinging to their illusions.”
I tried to achieve Raziel’s long view, but couldn’t do it yet. The best I could do was to ignore them and focus on our reunion with Gisele.
We reached our apartment building just after midnight. I scanned the street and the building itself for demonic or vampiric intruders, and found none. Only the darkness of Asmodel in my kitchen, blotting out the light on the third floor.
I knocked on our front door, waited for the sound of Gisi’s scratchy little voice; that front door was thin as parchment paper. But she never answered.
I knocked again.
Nothing.
We stood together, Raziel and I, in front of the closed door. I turned to face him, slowly, as if in a nightmare. The single lightbulb down the hall flickered and sputtered out, leaving us in darkness.
With a curse under my breath, I called up a dim witchlight in a circle around us, and again searched for evidence of demonic tampering or vampiric hunting. Nothing.
“What do you see?” Raziel said. He crossed his arms across his chest and frowned, the most he would reveal of his own worry.
“Nothing, my dear. No vampires. No demons. No threshold trap. But no Gisele, either.”
“Is Asmodel—”
“Yes. He is still on my kitchen table, still safely contained in the paprika tin. But Gisele…”
Of course I feared the worst. I could all but see her round little body sprawled out across the rag rug in the parlor, her throat ripped out, her lifeblood pooled all around her; her soul stolen by sorcerers.…
What we found in reality was almost worse.
I turned on the electric lights, and they worked inside the apartment. No Gisi dead in the front room, no Gisi at all. A quick search revealed that her good dress was gone from her wardrobe, as was her valise.
The cylindrical paprika tin stood silent on the kitchen table, the bald lightbulb hanging above it all but imperceptibly swaying as if in a faint breeze. The lace tablecloth beneath it was scorched in a widening circle around the tin, much as I had imagined the circle of blood around Gisele’s missing body.
The paper tucked under the tin’s corner was smudged with char, and had half burned where it touched the nearly red-hot metal. I plucked it away and flicked the folded note open with a single movement.
Gisele’s careful, childish handwriting told a horrible tale:
My Beloved Magduska:
Please forgive me for what I must do. You have your fate, and I have mine. I tried not to listen to the old soul inside the tin. I tried, but he conjured my own terrors into life.
He told me everything. What will happen to you and Raziel, what will happen to me, even what will happen to himself. I know, he is the master of lies, but it was the truth that convinced me. The truth! I could not defend against the truth. They say that truth is beautiful, Magda, but I could not see the beauty in his visions. Terror and death have no beauty for me.
I am walking dead, my love. I must sell my life as dearly as I can, save as many innocents as a foolish girl like me can do. I have no choice. You know, my love, where I have gone and what I do. Poland.
The vampire’s kiss burns in me. The ancient one, the demon, tried to tell me he had to come with me to Poland. I could resist him in this. The safest place for the ancient one is here, and I sense you will return in time.
So I go, and leave the old prince of lies behind. I waited for you as long as I could, but once the radio was full of the news I could wait no more. If I don’t leave today, I will never get inside Poland in time.
I kiss your hands, my beloved sister. May we meet in the next world, before you return to this one once again to fight on the side of the angels, as you are fated to do.
Bless you and farewell,
Gisele
Her terrible visions had gotten the better of her at last. Gisele had snapped.
I dropped the paper, and it fluttered to the floor. “My God,” I whispered, “she’s gone into Poland. Alone. To warn the Jews of their fate and get them out somehow, on her own, in the middle of a shooting war.”
“Why did she do it? What did you tell her?” Raziel’s voice remained calm, but something in it made me look up sharply. His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides, and he stared at the tin with something closer to hatred than I had ever seen on his face.
I realized Raziel spoke to Asmodel, not to me. “Peace, my love,” I said quickly. But not quick enough: a low, horrible curdle of laughter bubbled up from inside the locked-up tin.
“You meant for her to go,” I said to Asmodel. My heart was now stone cold: I could feel nothing: no rage, no grief, no fear, just a numbness throughout my body; I felt as if I had died once more, and could now fight disembodied, unconnected to anything except my determination to claim my revenge.
“Of course I did!” the demon chortled. A low, slow column of paprika rose in a shimmering cloud. “I knew how to get her away from you, and I did. I just magnified her visions, played upon her despair. And you will go after her, won’t you? Into Poland. You will take me with you.”
I started shivering, I was so cold, despite the fact it was still summer in our stuffy, sealed-up apartment on the third floor; despite the heat radiating from the paprika tin that held the demon. Before I knew what I was doing I took three steps forward and grabbed the tin in both my hands. I dimly registered the fact that it was hot enough to burn my fingertips, but I couldn’t
stop myself.
I shook the tin hard, and Asmodel’s laughter cut off abruptly, as if he finally realized he had pushed me too far. “Asmodel,” I began, my voice shaking with fury. “Go to the next world, I unravel your soul for you thus. Asmodel, -Smodel—”
“Stop!” Raziel cried, and he shook me by the shoulders even as I shook the tin. “You cannot dispatch a spirit of the air that way, Magduska! You will only set him free!”
The pain from my fingertips and palms brought me back to my senses. I dropped the tin onto the table, where it lay on its side and rolled to and fro, gently rocking the infernal soul within.
“Peace, Magduska,” Raziel said, in imitation of my bossiness, and he laughed bitterly. He wrapped one of his powerful arms around my shoulders.
“What now?” Raziel said. He shifted from one foot to the other, nervous energy rolling off his body in waves.
The fact that he asked me, that the mighty Raziel didn’t know, filled me with confusion, and for a moment I lost my bearings altogether. He had no injured pride to salve, and as a result his honesty jarred me even more. It galled him, I was sure, not to know his way, but Raziel was strong enough not to pretend.
I spoke as if in trance. “We must go in after her, my love. Get her out again before it is too late.”
It was a long trip over the mountains of northern Hungary and across the Slovak plains to the Polish border. How could we get into Poland before it was too late?
I racked my brains for an answer, and came up empty. What did I know? Who? I had little money, but I was rich in contacts thanks to my dangerous work with my missing Count Bathory. I needed a Pole with good connections and an edge of desperation as sharp as my own. The Polish embassy was worse than useless; in any case, the diplomat I had seen there most likely had already fled to England by now.
My mind groped for a name, a friend of a friend, any vague hint of a connection I could grab on to. I was so convinced we had reached a dead end that when a name and face appeared in my mind, the knowledge shocked me into hard laughter that jolted me like a racking cough.
“Antonio,” I said. “Oh, by the Witch of Ein Dor, we may call upon Antonio.”
I opened my eyes and took in the sight of Raziel, who stood alone with me in the whirlwind.
“Who is this Antonio?” he asked, slowly, as if he had to drag each word out of his mouth.
“Bathory turned him vampire, not even six months ago. If he is still … alive … he will be wild to go back to Poland. His mother still lives in Warsaw.”
Raziel’s face blanked. “Bathory? But you told me how much he prides himself on his control.”
“That is true. I have never seen him surrender to his bloodlust. But Antonio begged and begged, and as a gesture of thanks for many favors, Bathory turned him vampire at last. The bloodlust has driven Antonio crazier than before; Bathory watched over him as best as he could. But now Bathory is gone. And Antonio’s mother lives in Poland.”
“But why do you think he can help us?”
“He is a pilot, and he has access to a plane. An old junk heap that he’s tried to convince me to fly in before. He’s crazy enough to do it, Raziel.”
If I only had time I would have bought a bottle of Eger bull’s blood wine, the vampire’s vintage with real bull’s blood in it, as a gift to my mad vampire, Antonio.
I knew in my bones this insane plan could work, and that I would not see Budapest again for a very long time, if ever. I had nothing left to lose in my native city. Everyone else I loved was already gone.
6
Bathory’s driver was no vampire; I am not sure what Janos was. But he was loyal, and he knew how to drive fast. After exchanging my pengös for Polish zlotys, we found Janos loitering at the Istanbul, and we were lucky to find him; the big, lethal-looking Mercedes shot across town to the Thirteenth District, Angel Fields, like a panther on the hunt.
By now, it was the early morning of September 2. I had high hopes Antonio was still lurking in his lair: if the vampire had not made it back to the safety of his retreat by morning’s light, then he was finished, staked or simply ripped apart by another magical creature.
Janos kept the car idling outside the abandoned warehouse that Antonio called home, while Raziel and I slipped inside the broken, unwarded front door.
The heat inside leapt like a wall of fire that sucked all the air out of my lungs, an all but physical presence pushing us back. I took a hot, dusty gulp of air and forced my way into the boiling darkness.
“Isn’t it dangerous to disturb a vampire in his lair?” Raziel asked.
I was so frantic to get out of Hungary to find Gisele that I had to force myself to slow down long enough to reply. “It’s so dangerous it’s stupid. But we don’t have time to come up with something sane.” The dark air was so thick, dust-filled, and hot I could barely see my own fingers.
I murmured under my breath the words of sending. I reached with my life force to summon the life inside the warehouse, so that I could sense at least the shape of my quarry and if he lived.
Antonio was here. He was perched way up near the ceiling, on top of a narrow metal catwalk that ran all the way along the walls, some ten meters off the ground.
“Up there,” I whispered, and pointed with my chin at the spot. “How do we get up there? Wish I could fly.”
Raziel’s hand reached for mine, and I realized with a start how stupid I sounded. As soon as I said it I wished I could take it back.
I bit my lip in consternation; Raziel squeezed my hand but said nothing in reply. It was dangerous for him to speak aloud now, and he knew it.
“There must be stairs,” I whispered, and I pulled him toward the wall, yelping quietly after bumping my shins on something in the murky dark.
I was right: looking around, I saw a rickety, broken staircase, the railings encrusted with a thick scab of rust. By now, my eyes had adjusted to the dimness, and I let go of Raziel’s hand so that I could grab the railing and test the stairs.
They bore my weight, however creaky they were, and we started climbing the stairs to the balcony. Rust fell from them, landing like clots of red snow on the cement floor far below. Halfway up, Raziel’s foot went through a slat completely corroded by rust, and I had to wrench him free to keep him from crashing down.
But the danger of the stairs was nothing compared to the risk of surprising a bloodlust vampire asleep in his lair. Turned vampires are all half crazy, at least when they are first claimed by a vampire born. And Antonio was crazy even before Bathory granted his fervent wish.
I whispered a spell of binding under my breath, the one that the ancient witch Lucretia de Merode had taught me a few months before in Amsterdam. A restraining mantle slid softly over Antonio’s skinny shoulders and as he slept it held him fast, a magical straitjacket.
I had done all I could. I crept forward, muttering little gypsy wards around us. I poked Antonio in the shoulder, hard, the way Gisele did to me when she wanted me to wake up.
He didn’t stir, so I poked him harder. “Wake up and face the sunshine, sleepyhead,” I said loudly.
My voice woke him where my prodding hadn’t. With a huge snarl, he was upon us in a furious blur, and glad I was that I had tethered him before he woke. He managed to get his hands on me but he was too well restrained to get his slashing fangs within reach of my neck.
Raziel pulled me away from the vampire’s grasp and together we tumbled backward and sprawled in a tangle on the catwalk. The rusty bolts holding the whole contraption together groaned in protest. Would the entire thing collapse?
“Good morning, my Antonio,” I said, my voice calm, even as my hands shook.
My salutations were met by an incoherent snarl and violent scrabbling against the bonds I had fashioned. I could not stop to make him more comfortable: no time. “Your beloved Poland is being attacked.”
His struggles abruptly ceased, and I suddenly understood: his father had been a drunkard baron from some decrepit estate in Ruthenia; b
ut his mother was an ersatz princess of Poland, and when his father died she had repaired, in relief, to Warsaw.
Antonio already knew.
“The German bastards,” he said, his voice choked by rage into an all but incomprehensible growl.
“Yes, we come to seek your help in coming to Poland’s defense. We need to get to Warsaw immediately: so do you. Do you see? It is fate that makes you vampire now: feast upon the German soldiers and set your mother country free.”
It was a patriotic nonsense I wove like a spell with my words. But Antonio was a romantic fool; he pretended to titles of nobility and magical powers he did not possess. He lived in a fantasy world of his own making, one that kept unpleasant realities at bay. He was a poor dreamer, who denied himself life. But here was a final chance for Antonio to redeem himself.
He huddled against the metal latticework at his back, squinted with a blurry, unfocused stare, and I realized he was not just vampire-tranced but also half drunk.
My blood ran cold in that dark and dusty furnace. “So how did you get the news?”
“My mother left a message for me at the hotel.” Antonio used to meet his pets at a seedy hotel that served the factory workers of Angel Fields. The place, a scene of many messy accidents, did not much care what happened during Antonio’s deadly assignations.
“Is your mother still—”
“In Warsaw. Yes.” His voice slurred over the words, and his eyes looked deeply into mine. He did not look insane, staring into me like that. He looked terrified.
Every moment we dithered here in Budapest, the Germans thrust deeper into the Polish countryside on the way to Warsaw. And Gisele following behind the German army, alone and undefended.
I could no longer restrain my impatience. “The Nazis are—”
“You told me. And I already knew it.” With a groan, Antonio strained against the bonds I had looped around him like a spider’s gossamer threads. “The plane is in the back. Let’s go.”