by Michele Lang
I looked again at the metal thing, shaped rather like an enormous samovar, but studded with gears and oil-stained fabric belts. This was another hunk of metal, like the one I had seen melted by the gates to the temple of fire. Eva had told me once about these contraptions, but I had never seen a functional one up close. It was hideous.
My stomach turned with absolute revulsion. From what Eva had told me, from what Leyla had died to stop, I surmised that this thing was a soul-sucking machine. Not too elegant or precise a way to describe its function, but that was in fact its purpose.
It was designed to grind up and kill magic.
I rolled a ball of witchfire in my hands, until it was an electric blue ball of energy, and I hurled it.
And, oh, the shock to my throwing arm. As if the contraption was electrified and it electrocuted me from across the room.
Nausea overwhelmed me and I lost my balance, I staggered out of the stairwell, and shook my head to get the buzzing out of my ears.
Even lifting my arms cost me a terrible effort. I tried to recite the Bane of Concubines, but the invocation died in my throat.
It occurred to me through a haze of pain that Helena was screaming because she, too, was in terrible suffering. Not only witches felt the agony of this infernal machine.
And suddenly, too late, I understood.
This was the Soviet technology the Nazis had used to enslave The Book of Raziel. Anti-magic, my mother’s ghost had called it.
I didn’t know how this machine was able to generate the anti-magic. But I did know it acted against anything, anyone, magical within its range of power—about ten meters or so, I guessed. A machine like this could control only a large room. But how many such machines did the Soviets possess?
Helena fainted, her screams mercifully ceased. The bespectacled little man who had pinned her to the thing let her body drop to the floor with a thunk.
He turned to face me, and began to laugh. It was a sound as horrible and skin crawling as the Nazi wizard Staff’s laugh, long ago on a train platform in Vienna.
“Ah, the famed witch Magdalena Lazarus,” he said in very bad German. “Welcome to the jurisdiction of the Soviet Union. Where magic is strictly against the law.”
I slashed my witchfire against him, and blood spurted in a straight line on his cheek, like from a dueling wound. But that was the most I could do.
The man spat Russian curses and slapped a filthy-looking gray handkerchief to his face to stanch the bleeding.
The room turned brown and gray, as if I had been banished to the flat world of newspapers and newsreels. I fell to my knees, then onto my hands. From very, very far away I heard voices.
And that was the last I heard. I had run headlong into a trap. As I fell forward and slipped away, my last thought was of Raziel.
“Away,” I tried to whisper.
But I was already gone. Not to the astral plane, not to the second Heaven, not even to Gehenna.
But to nothing.
20
I awoke, to my surprise, in a bed. It was a metal cot, and it was locked inside a metal cage, but it was the honeymoon suite at the Gellért Hotel in Budapest compared to the cell where I recently had been imprisoned by the Nazi regime in Poland.
I guessed that I was inside the Institute itself, in its Baku Division at the polytechnic. Prisoner, test subject, I did not know. But I suspected that these distinctions would prove unimportant in the end.
I lay there, stretched out over the gray wool blanket, not able to do much more than breathe and worry.
Breathe: I was grateful to be alive after the terrible scene at the Empress. It had been a long time since my magic had proven so utterly insufficient to the task of fighting my enemies. The man with the spectacles could have chopped off my head and I could not have lifted a finger to stop him.
Worry: My last-minute idea to send Raziel away had, in retrospect, turned out to be a brilliant one. But though Raziel had no spellcasting magic, and as far as I knew was impervious to the anti-magic contraptions of the USSR, I feared that alone, without sure allies, he would not be able to get out of the country and to the West. A great deal of hostile territory stood between us and Albion, both angel and nation.
But I could do nothing about these worries. And the worrying itself exhausted me beyond all measure. So I surrendered, and breathed. And considered.
Ziyad sought the superweapon, ostensibly to free his people. Or so he had told Bathory on that long-ago evening at the Café Istanbul on a Tuesday in July 1939.
But I had made a bad mistake, assuming the truth of what Ziyad had said. At the time he had come in supplication to Bathory, I could tell he told the truth. But a gigantic war had erupted since then, and now the Soviets had allied themselves with the hated Nazis, had carved up Poland between them. Hitler and Stalin had made a pact of alliance, both of them buying time until one would inevitably betray the other.
And with this alliance in place, Asmodel could seek the Gem of Raziel with full Soviet cooperation. Both Asmodel and the Institute worked to destroy any magical resistance.
And that meant Ziyad and his people, those solemn girls in the carpet factory, were doomed. My magic was useless in this prison, and if Asmodel managed to get his hands on the gem now …
I could not bear to think of it. My thoughts turned from Ziyad and the innocent girls in the factory to my captors. What would the Soviets want out of me? They had neutralized my magic without much fanfare. I wasn’t sure if the “superweapon” Ziyad sought—the Heaven Sapphire itself—was a priority for the regime. Their plan was to neutralize magic, not to exploit it.…
But then I understood, and a chill flash-froze my blood. Of course. The Soviets were known for their fetish for science bent to ideological ends. They wanted magic reduced to only another kind of science so they could control it, destroy it. They first founded the Institute for Brain Research in Leningrad to dissect and crush the magic native to Mother Russia. Dissidents and magicals disappeared into the Institute, only to re-emerge, if ever, as imbeciles, their brains robbed of function. I had heard whispered tales among the vampires, even back in Budapest before the war.
Someone like me, born with magic of the blood, was no threat to the Soviet state, not with the anti-magic. But I was a worthy subject for study. And the Baku branch of the Institute clearly sought to outdo the central agency in Leningrad.
My heart thudded painfully as I imagined the kind of experiments they must have conducted in order to invent such a cruel machine as I had encountered at the Empress. How many witches, adepts, and magical creatures had been imprisoned and murdered by the Institute in the name of research, to provide the scientific development for that foul contraption?
I was an unusual case, I knew. I was born with my magic the same as any magical creature. And like the adepts I could hone my magic with lore, creed, and spell. I was the living embodiment of both kinds of magic, a rare specimen indeed.
The scientists here would dissect me, digging through my flesh and brain to expose the secret of my magic.
Unlike the Nazis in Kraków, these captors didn’t seek the hidden knowledge I possessed, knowledge that could affect the progress of the war. No, these Soviets were scientists. What these men were after was the secret of me.
The door to my cage swung open, but I could not even so much as open my eyes to look at my jailer. That is how powerful the anti-magic of the Institute had proven.
Light, probing fingers slid up and down my body, and I could not shrug away, demand they stop, scream, nothing. I was paralyzed.
The two hands paused over my breasts. I was disgusted, and my anger was as good as a shot of whiskey for steadying my nerves.
After what seemed like an eternity, the fingers slid off me. I heard the snap of a cigarette lighter, then smelled the thick, rich smoke of a cigarillo or pipe.
A man said something in Russian, and a contralto female voice translated into the German:
“Welcome to the Institute fo
r Brain Research, Baku Division, Azerbaijan Industrial Institute.”
I said nothing. I could not have, even had I wanted to.
“My name is Professor Pyotr Raskonikoff.”
The woman rolled and hocked the German like she had a small creature stuck in her chest. Apparently this professor was quite the distinguished fellow, given the embellishments the translator made upon his name.
“You will provide a gigantic contribution to the progression of the Soviet peoples,” he continued, waiting for the female translator to finish before he spoke again.
“First you must sleep, and the device’s frequency will be turned down. Especially for your benefit, Miss Lazarus! And then we will have a little talk.”
The tobacco smoke tickled my nose, but I could not even sneeze. I heard footsteps, then the squeaky door to the cage closing and locking once more.
“First you will sleep. We will assist you.”
A terrible screeching sound arose inside my brain, then …
Nothing.
Once again, they had shut me down. And the world.
* * *
The next time I awoke more gradually, with less pain. I guessed that they turned down the power level of the machine and I had slipped into an exhausted but near-normal sleep.
This time I could move. I sat up, and straightaway threw up into a trash can conveniently left next to my cot. After heaving for a while (my stomach was painfully empty even before getting sick) I managed to sit up on the cot and take stock of my surroundings.
Grim. Everything gray—gray blanket, gray bars, gray metal desk, gray telephone on the desk. And the small man with the spectacles sitting behind the desk: he, too, was gray.
“Professor,” I said, my voice rusty with disuse. My throat hurt.
His eyes narrowed, he pursed his lips, but the professor said nothing.
“You will make my fame,” he finally said, in halting German.
“How lovely for you,” I replied in Hungarian, the Budapest sarcasm dripping from my words.
He frowned at that, as if he had somehow deciphered the words, and picked up the telephone receiver at his elbow. He dialed the telephone, and after a short discussion in Russian a door at the far end of the room swung open and a woman appeared.
I assumed it was the translator from before. Plump and matronly, she looked more like a nursemaid than a Soviet secret police translator.
I didn’t dare try my witch’s sight, not after that disaster at the Empress. Instead, I studied the two of them, considered how to get out of this place alive if possible, dead if necessary.
Another chill shook me, and I almost started up with the heaves again. I wasn’t sure that I could die and return, not in this place. It was worse than warded, it was sterile of magic. Even the air, the metal, and the wool of my prison had been stripped of any spare energy I could use for divination, spell, or escape.
I could only leave here on my own two feet, and by human ingenuity. My native magic was banished.
I felt gray, too, gray and lifeless and bereft of myself. But then I looked at the professor’s stubby fingers, fumbling with his file folders, and I imagined those fingertips groping my breasts in front of the lady translator. Testing his strength by humiliating me, knowing that I could not fight back.
My fury conducted no magic in this terrible, gray place. I still had my fury, though, and I held it close, stoked it like my private little furnace.
My fury had uses other than magic.
“I have tried my best to remove the disease of magic from my subjects,” the learned little professor began, his translator stumbling to keep up with his words.
I stared at the barely congealed slash on his cheek, and I considered the methods by which he had tried to cut the living magic out of souls in this place.
“Physical surgery was the first and obvious option,” he continued. “But fire creatures, wood hobs, even vampires—they do not have a physical locus for their magic. My brain surgeries only killed them.”
I was shaking now. My courage stayed with me, warmed by my anger, but my body was exhausted.
“But you are an interesting case, fräulein.”
My heart leaped at the word. He didn’t know I was married. Had Ziyad or somebody else been tortured into informing this man about Raziel, the specifics that would expose him to capture? I could not dare to hope, but I couldn’t help but wonder.
I forced myself to listen to the man’s mad ravings instead, cloaked in the brain-numbing jargon of academia.
“You are a special case, yes indeed, Fräulein Lazarus. You have magic inherent from the moment of your birth, nein? You need not confirm or deny—we have a full dossier elucidating your kind and creed.”
He pushed his spectacles higher up on his round little nose and squinted to read the paperwork overflowing out of the manila folder he balanced between his palms like a holy book. “‘Lazarus creed … witches of the blood … Eldest daughter type, soul summoner.’”
It occurred to me that he probably knew more about the Lazarus creed than I did, and that the lost information was gathered up between the professor’s hands. Lost to me, like my mother was gone, to the next world. He looked over the tops of his spectacles at me, pursing his lips. “Don’t attempt a summoning now, please. I do not want you to cause damage to yourself.”
My stomach lurched again as I remembered the pain at the Empress, but I swallowed hard and steadied my nerves.
“In your case, I believe the frontal lobe is the locus of your abilities. We will test the hypothesis, measure the breadth and scope of your magical deformities. Test you also for subversive thinking, for your capacity to bear pain. And then…”
For the first time, the little professor’s lips twitched into a smile. “Then we will see how well I can remove the ability while leaving brain activity intact otherwise. Shall we succeed, Miss Lazarus? I am determined that we do. For I will receive the Lenin Star of Science for this finding.
“It will be a model for the populations of the Soviet nations,” he said awkwardly himself in the German, as if he had memorized the phrase. The translator sighed.
“Why are you telling me all of this?” I finally asked.
“So that you understand what a gift you are being given,” he replied, sounding genuinely surprised. “Your sacrifice will save many other magicals, who instead of destruction will enjoy re-engineering by the Soviet state. You will help to save your kind.”
He waved a vague hand at his translator. “Olga, you have been rude. Bring the subject some coffee and bread.”
Absurdly, she translated his command, and clomped away on her high heels through the door, leaving the professor and me alone.
I did not even try to struggle. The anti-magic hummed in my brain like a weird electricity, and I knew any attempt at magic would lead to terrible pain. Maybe even permanent damage.
So instead I studied my captor. Not so very long before this, the Gestapo chief in the Polish city of Kraków had taken me into custody, but there the comparisons ended.
The professor had no interest or intention of breaking my will or my spirit. He was indifferent to my spirit altogether, unlike Gestapo Chief Krueger, who was determined to understand my motives before destroying me.
This little professor didn’t seem to realize I was human. I was a subject, not an enemy. My only utility was as an interesting data point in his award-winning research.
This man had no inner life that I could discern. His mind was subsumed within the larger machine of the Soviet state. All he wanted was to burnish his prestige, earn a higher status, garner acclaim and reward.
He never looked up from his reports as we waited for Olga to return, and did not seem at all discomfited by the silence. Instead, he shuffled his papers like playing cards and made a few notations on a clipboard with a black pencil.
He looked up after this, and I caught his eye. He smiled, but not at me. Something contained in those papers had made this bureaucrat-sci
entist happy.
The door behind him swung open and Olga returned, balancing a tray with coffee in an urn, and some pasty white sweet rolls on a plate.
She served the professor first, laying the coffee and rolls before him, brisk and impersonal. He said something in Russian, and then Olga brought the tray to the edge of my cage.
“Thank you,” I whispered in German.
Olga looked at me then. I did not need the gift of second sight to see how terrified she was. Not of me, of course, but of her employer, the gray, quiet little man behind her, now slurping his coffee.
“Eat in good health,” she choked out in reply, and she slid the tray along the floor until I could reach it from behind the bars.
I briefly considered the food in front of me, wondered if they had drugged it. But Olga had served her boss from the same plate, and besides, at this point I was too hungry to second-guess the food at hand.
So I ate. The coffee was bitter and weak. The rolls undercooked and chewy. But I was grateful for every bite.
“It is time for the examination,” the professor said suddenly, almost as an afterthought. “Miss Lazarus, remove your clothes.”
I startled, then realized I had no choice but to obey. With a sigh I rose to my feet; the meal had strengthened me more than I would have guessed by looking at it.
I didn’t bother pleading or bargaining with this man. Better to choose my battles. I unbuttoned my blouse, pulled the tail of my shirt loose from the top of my skirt. Carefully, I folded up my shirt so it would not wrinkle worse than it already had.
Unlike Krueger, this professor was not animated by urgency. He had all the time in the world to test his hypotheses, refine them, test them again. I was caught in this man’s hell of perfection.
When I looked over at them, Olga was trembling. The big-boned matron’s eyes were brimming with tears.
My spirits sank. I’d been hoping this exam, while humiliating already, wouldn’t be painful. But judging from the matron’s reaction, a world of pain was about to be born in this room, delivered by the professor’s hands.