“Who are you?” the colonel asked in German. When the man did not reply, he asked again in English.
“You . . . you can’t be here. You hear me? Let me go,” the man said when his eyes focused enough to see who stood before him. “This is an act of war.”
Americans. Always condemning the world for what they did freely. No time. The colonel unsnapped the holster at his belt and drew his sidearm. He pressed the cold metal against the man’s forehead.
“The book,” he said. “Where is it?”
That instinctual American bravado shriveled. The man’s eyes immediately dropped, but not just out of fear. No, he was looking under one of the pews.
And there it was. The colonel knelt and picked it up. The cover was smooth under his touch, worn down by decades of reverence. The item long-sought, at last.
His first thought was that his daughter had a ballet performance at the end of the week. He had been prepared to write to her, to beg forgiveness for being away, but now he did not have to. Even if he had to run from the train station to the theater, he would be there.
“Thank you,” he said to the shaking American. He placed the book in Krauss’s hungry hands. So much work, finally at an end. “Thank you.”
“Destroy it.” It was Ehle. The man’s persistence was laudable, if not his loyalty. “Look at that up there. If we do not close it, nothing matters. Destroy the book, close the breach, and make certain another madman does not open it again.”
“The book is a matter of national security for the Soviet Union,” the colonel said. “We must keep ourselves safe from the ambitions of evil men. That,” he said, pointing upward, “is German handiwork, not Russian.”
“Have you seen into the breach?” Ehle said, that ruin of a voice stretched to its limit. “This is not about countries. This is not about war. This is about existence. Destroy that book, or there will not be a world left for the politicians to carve up.”
The colonel thought about his daughter. What sort of world would be left her, when her forebears were gone? What sort of world were they building for those who would come after? The question made him uneasy, not because he had no answer, but because he did.
And yet.
And yet the needs of the current world often outweighed the needs of the next.
“Shoot them,” he said in Russian.
But before the order could be carried out, the front wall of the church exploded.
Standing where the doors had been only a moment before was the form of a woman.
SIXTY-ONE
It sounded like the world was breaking apart. Jim held on to the little girl as the noise grew, telling her not to be afraid, all the while wondering if terror was exactly the right response. Then they heard it (whatever it was) hit the church, blasting through old stone and brick, showering them with a jagged hail.
He risked a look.
Karen. It was Karen!
But not Karen. Wreathed in heat that distorted the world around her, eyes lit up like magnesium flares, she looked more like a creature of myth than the wry girl he had picked up at Tempelhof. Something was wrong, terribly wrong.
There was movement to his left. Some of the Soviets guarding Arthur and Alec were running toward the front of the church. Toward Karen.
Jim only had a moment to make his choice. He wanted to go to Karen, but something told him she had little need for his rescue, not from Soviet soldiers anyway. So instead he ducked back behind the wall and took the little girl by the shoulders. “Wait for me here,” he said slowly, certain to get the unfamiliar German words correct. “I have to help my friends.”
She nodded, chin quivering, and though he was loath to leave her, he was up and over the wall before he could stop to question his plan.
He landed in the soft grass of a decrepit cemetery. Between him and the Soviets a field of weathered white stone marked the lives and deaths of generations of Berliners. Three men remained with the prisoners. The first man had made the mistake of taking off his helmet and so he had nothing to protect him from the hunk of broken tombstone Jim crashed into the back of his skull. The others were looking away, toward the chaos at the front of the church, so didn’t turn back around before Jim wrested the first man’s gun free. One of them got a shot off, but it went wide and disappeared into the dark as Jim hit both men in the chest.
“Jim? Is that you?” The rough Scottish burr was music to his ears.
“Yeah,” he said, panting. He dropped down to the ground by Arthur first. “Sir, I . . . I can’t even begin to explain. They did something to me before they sent me back. Magic, I think. I . . . I am so sorry.”
The CIA Berlin chief was looking at him like someone might a cornered animal, uncertain if it was about to bite.
“Sir, I—”
Arthur stopped him with a shake of his head. “I always said magic couldn’t be trusted,” he said. “But no one listens until it’s too late. Now, untie me.”
Jim got Arthur loose and was working on Alec’s bonds when the big, scarred Soviet soldier appeared. He shouted at them in Russian, harsh, angry words that needed no translation. The man had a machine gun cradled in his arms. Jim’s rifle was just out of reach, so instead he threw himself at the man.
But the Russian was too quick, too strong. He turned Jim’s rush aside and cracked him on the back of the head with the barrel of his gun. The world swam in flashes and darkness, but Jim did not go down. He swung wildly, his fist connecting with the scarred man’s ear. The Soviet grunted and staggered. Jim pressed forward, reaching for the gun.
And found it. The butt of it, at least, right between his eyes.
Almost, Jim thought as his legs melted under him. I almost did it.
The scarred face was over him now. Then the muzzle of the machine gun.
There was the crack of a gunshot, almost inaudible with the noise from the church, but it did not come from the Soviet’s gun. Instead the man stumbled back like he’d been pushed. Another shot and he fell against the side of the church, eyes wide.
A moment later Emile stepped forward, his pistol leveled. He was alone and bloodied. His clothes were torn, like he had passed through a thicket of thorns, and his brow was wet with sweat.
“Où diable sommes-nous?” he said. “What the hell is this place?”
“Emile,” Jim said, watching his gun, “Karen is in trouble. I don’t know what’s going on, but she just went inside the church and—”
“She went in there?” Emile asked as he helped Alec to his feet and shook his head. “Then she is braver than I.” He turned to Jim. “You seem different than when last we met, James.”
“They did something to me,” Jim said quickly. “No time to explain. We have to—”
Alec’s big hand rested on his shoulder. If not for the weight of it, Jim would have jumped at the touch. “We heard you, lad,” Alec said, nodding. “Lead the way.”
SIXTY-TWO
It was intoxicating.
Like lightning in her blood that made adrenaline seem tiresome.
Like standing on a cliff edge, knowing you could step off and fly.
No, like knowing you could step off and force the ground to rise up and catch you.
Or that you could tear the whole cliff down with a thought.
And the closer she got, the stronger the feeling became. Something was waiting for her, calling to her. Offering power. Not the paltry children’s games she had been taught, memorizing timeworn incantations in old languages. True power.
Soldiers shouted and fired their guns, the latter no more effective than the former. Why had she been afraid of men and their toys before? What could armies do against her now? They pretended at war, feinted at destruction; they knew nothing of ruin. Nothing of unmaking.
She would show them.
When she reached the church, she knew she was getting close
. Her bones hummed. More men, more bullets to bat aside. The church was closed shut. So she tore the doors from their hinges, then the hinges from the wall, and the wall from its moorings.
At last.
The breach swelled at the sight of her, further ripping open the paper-thin veil to the world beyond. No, not another world: no world. Nothing. Not even emptiness. Nonexistence. The inevitable destination, the origin and the apex, the beginning and end of all roads.
This was why she had come. This was why she had been born.
To end.
Bullets buzzed around her like insects. She shooed them away and dismissed the men and their guns; they were not needed here.
The breach grew.
She felt its breath on her skin.
Then agony. Like being torn apart.
The breach cracked wide, like a lunatic smile.
She roared in pain. Something was slashing at her, cutting away at her. Magic. Foul magic. One man was on his feet. A squat man with a pig’s face and a weasel’s eyes. And something in his hand.
A ledger.
The book.
What a fool, using a spell against her, like a child trying to race a champion.
With a thought, the book leapt into her grasp, and the sweaty, pig-faced man gaped at her with openmouthed surprise. But she was not done with him. With another thought, he was off his feet, dangling madly in the air, and then flying headfirst into the wall.
No. She stopped him just before impact. She could break him, easily. But there was another option.
He screamed as she threw him into the breach. And then he was gone; truly gone, as though he had never been. She could not remember her anger, or the pain of his spell, or how the book had reached her hand. He had never been.
Good. No more distractions.
* * *
• • •
Ehle watched Karen enter the church with a soul-rending dread. Her magic fed the breach like nothing had before, and it grew, spreading across the high church ceiling like the voices of a choir. She was mad with it; he had never seen magic like this, magic without words or spells, magic of thought, of pure will.
The sort of magic that could end everything.
Krauss tried to use the book against her and for a sickening moment, Ehle thought it might work. Worse, he hoped that it would. But she was too strong, buoyed by the breach, beyond all limitations. It was like standing on the shore and trying to hold back the waves.
Waves that were going to wash the world clean.
He started to get to his feet and then saw it: Voelker’s pistol, only a few feet away.
* * *
• • •
Jim froze as he entered. Inside the church, madness reigned. The room was full of the dead: civilian and soldier, German and Soviet. The few tattered survivors huddled near the pulpit and cowered before Karen. Some terrible power irradiated the air around her. The glow lit up her face. And above her, something else waited like a thunderhead.
“Karen!” His voice seemed to die in the room, swallowed up by things a whole lot bigger than he was. But he had to tell her. Before it was too late. “Karen!”
She turned.
* * *
• • •
Jim. She vaguely remembered him, enough to be surprised to see him.
Had she not killed him yet?
“Karen!” he called. There were others with him, but he broke free of their ranks and ran toward her down the center aisle. “You’re alive!”
She ought to thank him. He had forced her hand, forced her to commit to this path. A bullet is powerful persuasion. As he neared, she could see that the wild magic in his eyes was gone. The madman who’d attacked her was gone, replaced by . . . whom? The self-assured spy she met at Tempelhof? No, that man had died in the tunnel with Dennis. This was someone new: not mad, but not whole either.
“Karen, I’m so sorry,” he said. He fell to his knees, just under the swelling breach. “I . . . that wasn’t me. I would never . . . I’m sorry. I just had to tell you.”
This didn’t matter. Jim was in the way, but easily removed. She raised a hand, prepared the magic that was aching to be released. He just stared at her with blank eyes. He didn’t understand; none of them could.
Good-bye, Jim.
* * *
• • •
Ehle’s arm felt encased in concrete as he lifted the pistol. Karen was facing away from him, distracted for the moment. The tear between this world and whatever dark place lay beyond had given her untold power, but Ehle doubted it would be enough to stop a bullet this close, not when she did not see it coming. Just a bit more pressure against the trigger and he could stop it.
The end of the journey.
Just one more step.
Just one more life.
Just one more ghost.
Above them, the ceiling beams of the church groaned and then split, and then were gone, as the breach suddenly gaped wipe, devouring the air above Auttenberg.
* * *
• • •
Why had she raised her hand? The movement was vestigial; a remnant of juvenile magic that required coaxed incantations. Was that all it was? Then finish it, she thought. He’s waiting for it; he needs it. Absolution for his crime. Send him beyond, through the widening gap. Obliterate his sins.
What was this voice? It didn’t sound like her.
Because she was different now: fully realized. They had been stopping her all this time, keeping her in her place, stunting her. Her locus had been a leash, her spells chains. Because they were afraid. Afraid of real magic. Of losing their grip on power. Afraid of her. And now they could no longer hide that fear.
But Jim wasn’t afraid. He should be.
Magic ignited on her fingers.
Yes, he should be.
* * *
• • •
In another moment, it would be too late. Everything sacrificed, for nothing. Better that he had faced the Soviet firing squad than to have strived for ten years to reach this place only to falter now.
Pull the damn trigger!
Liesel . . . she would be about Karen’s age now, if she was still alive. What did she think of her papa? Did she remember him fondly? Or curse him for never coming back from the war? She believed him dead; a better fiction.
End this now, or that sacrifice was in vain.
But perhaps it should be.
For what did it profit a man to gain the world at the cost of his soul?
He lowered the gun.
And it was torn from his hand.
“You idiot,” Haupt’s assistant said, pushing him aside. “She’s going to kill us all!”
George raised the pistol.
* * *
• • •
What was happening to her? The power . . . she coveted it like she did her own life, but it was doing something, changing something. Deadening something inside of her.
The sneering Soviet with the coin.
The men shooting at her in the streets.
The soldiers inside the church.
Oh, God. How many people had she killed? And with each one, the magic grew hungrier. It was in her now. Magic, like a cancer: her, but not her. Bent only to destroy.
No . . . she could not let it.
“. . . going to kill us all!”
George’s voice. Behind her. She began to turn.
Then the gunshot.
SIXTY-THREE
The bullet hit Jim square in the chest. He didn’t feel pain at first, just shock. When he saw Ehle with the gun, he’d tried to reach Karen, push her out of the way, but he’d been too slow. Maybe this was better. Maybe this was the only way to make amends.
He looked down. Blood was blossoming across his shirt.
Then the pain hit him and his legs
gave out.
* * *
• • •
No, no, no.
Jim . . .
The idiot had stepped in front of the gun. She’d been in no danger from George, not with this much magic at her command; she could have caught the bullet in midair or burned it to ash or sent it flying back the way it had come.
But Jim had to be a hero.
He collapsed to the wooden floor. His red-stained hand reached for her, then went still.
What a fool. A beautiful, dying fool.
Because of George.
George stood over Jim’s body, gaping at what he had done, the gun limp in his hand. Karen’s magic snapped out and wrapped around him, lifting him off his feet. The pistol vaporized. Power gathered in her, roiled up from her marrow like her fury. Jim’s dark blood pooling around her feet sizzled with it.
Yes, George. Time for you to see. Time for you to pay.
She sent a shock of pain through him. It gnarled his body and compelled him to his knees. A whisper of guilt brushed at her as he cried out, but it was hard to hear over the roar of magic in her ears. She narrowed her eyes; he screamed again.
Then she saw his hand, still burned around one finger.
Back at the OMRD, after she’d beaten him in their bout, she’d let the magic go on a little too long. She could have just shocked him, distracted him, but instead she’d used her magic to hurt him. He’d made her so angry, then and so many times before, that it had felt good. Justified. He would have done the same.
But that wasn’t who she was; or at least, it wasn’t who she wanted to be. It wasn’t what she wanted magic to be.
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