by Michele Lang
The dizziness came back. “So two have died on my account.”
“Stop it,” he warned. “Do not take the demoness’s actions onto your shoulders.”
“I should have killed them all when I had my chance. Sacred oath be damned.”
“That would have hurt you more fundamentally than even this, Magdalena. You say to yourself what Asmodel would say. Stop doing his work for him.” He crossed his arms and pressed his lips together. That, and the way he said my full name, was the worst rebuke he had ever given me.
Gentle, fierce soul.
“I’m sorry,” I finally forced out. “You are right, I am wrong. You know how proud I am, how much I hate to admit my errors. But I’ll shut up now and let you tell me what you want to tell me. How you want to tell it.”
Raziel reached forward and gathered me into his arms, and I cried. The demonesses had won. My sister was dead, and so was my magic. Everything I had fought and clawed to win I now had lost.
And my man understood my grief without my having to explain. He grieved with me, I will confess; this supremely strong man wept with me. The old ways, my old loves, and my most beloved family were all gone. Across the veil to where I could never reach them again, not without calling a séance, disturbing their souls, and disquieting them in their graves.
And I could no longer even disturb my mother, the ghosts, or the Witch of Ein Dor, either. Because my magic, too, was dead.
I cried for what seemed like an eternity. And then I became too exhausted to cry anymore. I squeezed Raziel close one last time, then collapsed against the pillow.
“Tell the rest of it, my love,” I said. “And I promise I’ll be a lamb.”
Raziel blew his nose in his handkerchief before going on. “Churchill himself attended her funeral, Magduska. He wept, though he didn’t know your sister very well. And he spoke of the evil hidden inside of goodness, the shadow at noon. He saw her off with honor, my love.”
I was too worn out to protest that evil wasn’t hidden inside my sister, and that even the great Churchill’s eulogy must have been inadequate. My little mouse had proven so much greater than her end. But Raziel already knew all of that.
I heard the squeaky clattering of a nurse’s shoes on the linoleum floor outside my hospital room, and I tensed. But the clacking continued away down the hall.
“How did you manage to get back here?”
“Churchill sent me.”
My poor cut-open brain tried to wrestle with this information and failed. “Did you sneak back in at the border? Did your brothers bribe the border guards?”
“No, I arrived in a plane, with Knox and a vanguard of diplomats.”
“Here?”
“Why, yes, at Baku. Knox went on to Moscow from here, though.”
My mind reeled with the horror of it. “So Stalin has captured you all. Are you here to take me with you to Siberia?”
He laughed at that. “My poor sleeping beauty, the Russians have been attacked by Hitler’s army. Stalin is now the great ally of Winston Churchill, and even the French.”
“Attacked?” I closed my eyes and groaned … the intense brain wrestling I was doing gave me a terrific, stroke-level headache. “Why would Hitler do such a daft, insane thing?”
Raziel didn’t bother replying to that—we both knew such insanity was that dreadful man’s specialty. The fact he was willingly possessed by the horrible demon Asmodel, who unceasingly raped him from the inside, did not do wonders for the Führer’s calm rationality.
“He could not wait anymore,” Raziel said quietly. “He wants the oil of the Caucasus, and more to the point, he wants the Gem of Raziel. Stalin’s people had told their counterparts in the Reich that we had located the gem, and the news drove Asmodel especially over the edge. After thousands of years of torment, he lost his patience in the final moment.”
“But I thought Hitler would attack the West first. That his alliance with the Soviets would hold long enough for him to crush France at least, avenge the Great War.”
“No, no western front. Hitler lusted for the oil of the Caucasus, Asmodel for the gem. They could not resist an attack on the East any longer.”
“But doesn’t Asmodel know that you got the gem safely to England? By the Maker, he doesn’t, does he?”
Raziel smiled and said nothing. But the sharpness in Raziel’s eyes told me I was right.
“How could Asmodel not know something like that?” I asked.
“The demoness was focused on Gisele, not me. I hadn’t even quite made it to Chartwell when she attacked.”
Exhausted, I lay back against the pillow with the ammonia bleach-smell, and I closed my eyes in weariness. “So what do we do now? I am empty, Raziel, and I’m not quite sure why I ended up here, still alive after all. Tell me what to do. I promise I’ll do anything you say.”
What he said shocked me so much that I rued my promise only a moment after making it. “We gather an army like we did at Wolf’s Lair. And we finish off Hitler for once and for all.”
“But I can’t do a thing,” I protested.
He laughed again, more like his old laugh, this time without the sharp edge of bitterness in it. “I thought you were going to do what I said? Stubborn! You’ve changed less than you think you have, my love.”
“But the professor. The … operation.”
Raziel reached for my hands and stroked the backs of my knuckles. “The professor believes he has gelded your magic, ended it. I chose to let him believe that.”
I couldn’t bear to tell my beloved that despite his supreme trust in me, I believed it, too, believed it fervently. I based that belief on everything I sensed and knew about my own magic. The colors had drained out of the world; the energy of the world coursed along, I was sure, as it had done before the professor maimed me. But I could no longer sense the currents of energy surrounding every human soul. I could only see with my eyes, only hear with my ears.
I swallowed back my misery. I would not despair in Raziel’s presence, not after all that he had been through, all he held back from me now. “But I am like a horse with a blanket wrapped around his eyes. How can I do anything at all without magic, if I can no longer see the magic in the world?”
“We don’t have time for me to show you, my love.”
“But how can I possibly summon an army from a hospital bed? With my magic removed?”
Raziel smiled. The bitterness had come back. “I will do the summoning this time. My brothers will come. And their brothers will come. And do not forget, my love. We still possess the gem.”
I caught myself goggling at him, and with difficulty kept my mouth from hanging open in amazement. How my beloved had changed. The first time I had spoken to Raziel, he warned me against fighting my fate, against using the inheritance of my Book to change the future. Now he intended himself to use the gem that had spawned the Book to smash Hitler and his army.
But Raziel had warned me, back in the old days, for a good reason. The dangers of using the Book, much less the gem itself, were very, very real. “Are you sure?” was all I asked. Who was I to warn Raziel? I was just a maimed girl, he was an angel of the Lord, fallen or manifest or whatever he was.
But he was also my husband. I couldn’t bear to lose him, not after losing everything else. But I couldn’t hold him back in any way, I couldn’t stop Raziel if I tried. He was a force of nature, a whirlwind, a terrible storm.
“I’ve already called Uzziel and my brothers,” he said. “We have no time left.”
25
My sister was dead; only my own grim determination could heal me. And I did it. I got away, with Raziel’s determination. I am sure the professor intended to keep me for demonstration purposes—he had confided as much to me once night fell, after Raziel had gone. But I knew the very next day, once Raziel had come back for me, that I would remain the professor’s pet no longer.
And within the day it was true. Raziel returned, with a phalanx of mountain angels and a blustering Russi
an official who had a row of medals across his chest and a murderous eye. He did not care for science but for killing the great Soviet motherland’s enemies. And Raziel, not to mention the great Churchill, had convinced this man’s superiors that I was somehow needed in the fight against the perfidious Nazis.
So the professor was thwarted, by the Soviet system he labored within. Somehow, Raziel and I had outflanked him in the power hierarchy. It was a great miracle.
The professor remonstrated to the official, even screamed in Russian at him, but it was no use. His experiment was cut short. And the holy vision of the Lenin Star faded from his eyes as they led me away.
I did not need the gift of prophecy to see Siberia in the professor’s immediate future. It gave me great comfort, and it helped me to bear the ordeal of getting out of that hospital bed. I could barely walk, and wore only my hospital gown and shabby, worn-out slippers. Raziel grabbed me by one elbow, the Russian official grabbed me by the other. The angels surrounded us, before and after, and we left the hospital like a unit of partisans guarding a prisoner.
So I marched down the endless white hallway, knees knocking, knowing I smelled sick and stinky and not caring very much. All I cared about was that no matter what happened next, I was not going to die in this hospital, under the professor’s ministrations.
The official led the way into the rear seat of a cavernous Ford automobile. I collapsed inside, Raziel slid in after me, and before he had even slammed the door the driver peeled away from the curb and into the heart of Baku. The angels followed behind, crammed into the flat bed of an open lorry.
Raziel took off his coat and spread it over me. “You’re shivering,” he said.
I hadn’t realized until he spoke how very cold I was. It was January now, and a dusting of snow coated the streets of Baku. It made an unfamiliar place look even more strange and foreign—I had imagined Baku as a tropical, balmy place. How wrong I was, about so many things.
“What next?” It was easier than I had imagined, to surrender to Raziel’s good sense.
He looked at me and blinked in surprise, then wrapped one of his arms around my shoulders. “First thing, we get you some warm clothes and a bath. And a decent meal. You’re all skin and bones.”
I had no appetite whatsoever … all I could imagine eating was Gisele’s noodles with sugar and sour cream. But I was too tired to explain.
We rolled up to a grand marble palace. “What is this, some kind of hotel?” I wondered aloud.
“No, it is what it seems to be. An oil baron’s great mansion. It belongs to the government now, and it has been lent to Churchill’s people. They wish to impress.”
I shot a nervous glance at the Soviet official next to me. Surely if they could find somebody who spoke Hungarian, they would have. The Soviets, from everything I knew, were more efficient than the Hungarian government, and wilier, too.
Raziel caught me staring at the official, as fear rolled off me like a fog. “I don’t care what he overhears,” Raziel said. “It doesn’t matter. All that matters now is killing Hitler. The French are invading Germany even as we speak.”
I could not follow Raziel, squinted at his words like a foreigner. My poor mind could not digest these many incomprehensible changes to the world. As if the professor had removed all of reality along with my magic.
“Maybe this is all just some kind of purgatorial dream,” I muttered under my breath.
“You are no Catholic, my love,” he replied. “And you still walk in this world. We have to strike fast now. If we can’t stop Hitler from taking the oil fields, he will win the war. Everybody can see it.”
I nodded, but was too tired to form the words to say anything more. My mind melted into a furious static, and I closed my eyes against it.
Raziel’s fingers caressed my face. “We are almost there. I’ll take you inside.”
He scooped me up and carried me out of the car and into the palace, and I was so far gone I didn’t even protest. I just closed my eyes and rested my head against his broad chest, and he lifted me up a grand, curving staircase to the baths upstairs.
There were ladies there, servants of some kind, protesting in Russian. But we swept past them to a bathroom tiled entirely in mosaics, even the ceiling. He drew a bath in the enormous clawed tub, even as he still cradled me in his arms.
I cracked my eyes wider open to study the mosaics, as the tub nearly overflowed with hot, sudsy water. “Even Heaven doesn’t have a bathtub like this,” I said.
Raziel kissed my shoulder and unwrapped me from the bloodstained gown. He popped my naked self into the water, and after the shock of the heat against my skin I instantly relaxed, so much so I almost slipped under the water, the tub was so huge.
Raziel scrubbed me clean everywhere, and I mean everywhere, even the places that only he knew. He left the top of my shorn and mangled head alone. But the rest of me was clean, and felt nearly good as new. Another miracle.
I wanted to soak and soak, but Raziel wouldn’t let me. “We don’t have the time,” he finally insisted, and with a sigh I stood up on my own, and with shaky legs I looked around.
What had happened to the oil baron who had built all of this finery? Shot, or exiled. Or perhaps he had managed to work his own magic, become part of the regime that had destroyed his world.
“The Soviets are as bad as the Nazis,” I said with no small trepidation, looking at the twinkling glass trapped in the ceiling.
“My love, the czars were no angels,” Raziel replied, and before we could get lost in the maze of politics he grabbed me out of the tub and wrapped me in gigantic fluffy towels.
I sighed with sheer physical pleasure. “When I left Budapest last summer, I thought everything was crystal clear. Get the Book, stop the war. It was a hopeless quest, but a noble one.”
Raziel rubbed down my limbs until they glowed, pink and clean. He reached for a cotton robe hanging from a hook on the back of the door and wrapped it around and around—it, like everything else in the room, was almost grotesquely oversized.
“But now…” I trailed off.
“Trust me,” Raziel said. “Don’t try to untangle the web. Just trust me.”
With a sigh, I did. I didn’t have the strength for intrigue or politics anymore. Ideology and moral clarity were for the young. And at twenty-one, I no longer felt young.
For you see, Raziel had rescued me on my birthday. He had given me the greatest gift anyone has ever given me. The gift of my life. My parents gave it to me the first time, and I had done my best to throw it away, again and again and again. But now that I had almost lost it for good, Raziel gave it back to me, one last time.
I intended not to lose it again until I reached a ripe old age. Unless someone took it away from me.
“Happy birthday, my love,” Raziel said. He took me by the hand and led me to the bed. It was past ten o’clock in the morning, but the heavy brocaded curtains hid any glimmer of the sun.
“We have until three P.M.” Raziel whispered. “Uzziel is coming for us then.”
It wasn’t a long time, but I have found that time is not a linear chain of events, nor a single thread. It is a great wood, with meadows and caves and steep cliffs where you don’t expect them to be. And when you find a little clearing in that wood, it makes sense to linger there, as long as you can, perhaps forever in your heart.
Three P.M. both arrived in an instant and never came at all. Part of me is still wrapped up in that giant bed, with the man I adore, the man who pulled me out of death for good. And there I will stay with him always.
26
But three o’clock came in this world. Alas, it always does, every day, however lost in the woods of time one wishes to get.
Raziel bundled me in a ridiculous amount of warm wool clothing, covered me in an absurdly huge mink coat, put a Russian fur hat on my head, and carried me downstairs to the waiting car. I was sweating before we got over the threshold.
He gently tucked me into the back of the li
mousine, nodded once at the driver, and the sleek black machine darted through the broad Baku streets, down to the main Bulvar by the Caspian Sea. The smell of oil was even sharper in the cold air, down by the water.
“Where are we going?” I managed to ask. Now that we were well on our way, I understood all the bundling. Even wrapped against the weather, even though the car was warm and dry, I shivered and shivered. My strength had gotten all used up.
“We are going to meet with my brothers,” Raziel replied. And though that was all he said, I shivered even harder. Because without my magic to protect me, I was afraid of what these fallen angels would do, what revenge they might wreak on me for being the sister of those who had stolen their wings away.
Now, I still believed the angels had themselves to answer to when it came to their wings. The women who had seduced them hadn’t held machine guns to their heads, they could have said “no” and flown away, back into the higher emanations of the Lord.
But they didn’t. They chose not to use the word “no” the way the eldest Lazarii witches did. They succumbed to the luscious, addictive word “yes” instead. Yes, yes, yes … once you get used to saying it, it tastes as good as chocolate and is as hard to resist. But that isn’t the chocolate’s fault, is it?
And it wasn’t the women’s fault, much less mine, that these angels had chosen to fall, to say a holy “yes” to the things of this world. So in my mind I furiously defended myself against their accusing eyes, their hardened hearts.
When I glanced at Raziel, he was smiling at me. “You are the same girl who I loved from afar, who all but drove me crazy when I found her in Vienna,” he said. “You don’t need to outwit these men. You don’t need to frighten them. And you don’t need to charm them, either. They will love you, for my sake at first. And then once they know you…”
His voice trailed off as we pulled up to a small house built on the edge of the beach, outside the city limits. “One of these men lives here outside Baku, and he has built this place for our kind to gather.”