Man with the Iron Heart

by Mat Nastos

  The being once known as Reinhard Heydrich, the Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, turned toward the sound of Himmler’s voice. The veins beneath his skin seemed to shift and crawl even when the man stopped moving, giving Heydrich’s green-tinged flesh the appearance of a maggot infestation just below the dermis.

  Ecstatic with the results of the Austrians’ experiment, Himmler congratulated the men, spewing forth whatever half-hearted platitudes he could vocalize while standing before the culmination of the Edda Society’s dreams. Bonding with the ancient Jotnar so completely was something the secretive group had been trying to achieve for decades. To have it within his reach was nearly beyond Himmler’s ability to grasp.

  Moving to stand in front of Heydrich’s transformed body, Himmler asked the man how it felt to be one with the Jotnar themselves. To be like unto a God.

  The question seemed to flow off Heydrich’s armored chest without notice. Engrossed Heydrich seemed with his own reflection in every mirrored surface. It was clear he marveled at what had been done to him and to the sights and sounds of wonder he now encountered through the enhanced eyes of the Old Ones.

  When the repeated question received the same absolute lack of notice, Himmler demanded the scientists tell him what was wrong.

  Finding his tongue first, it was Wittgenstein who answered the Reichsführer’s query. “The merging has affected his mind,” he said. “The arcane radiation Herr Heydrich was exposed to may have damaged him beyond repair. We’re not even sure how much of the man is left rattling about the shell we see before us.”

  “Nonsense,” snapped Himmler, dismissing the concern of his two underlings with a wave of his hand. Obviously Reinhard’s recent brush with assassination and near-death, coupled with the experience of being more fully bonded to one of the Jotnar had derailed the man a bit. If anything, the influx of otherworldly power may have driven Heydrich a touch mad – it was all expected and well within the desires of the Edda Society. Of course, such a break with reality would never have happened had a superior intellect such as his own been united with a Great Old One. Only the truly remarkable could experience such wonder without falling victim to it. “Reinhard will be fine once he has time to rest, and to adjust to his newfound power.”

  A look of unconvinced scorn laser-beamed itself from Wittgenstein to his lover. The Nazi could tell they both thought him a fool. They believed Heydrich was gone and something more ancient than time itself – and far more evil than they perceived the Third Reich to be – had filled the abyss in the shattered husk of his body.

  Himmler would show them how wrong they were.

  Grasping the fleshy part of Heydrich’s exposed right forearm, one of the few places on his body not fused with the cabalistic devices of the Austrians, Himmler spun his friend to face him.

  “Snap out of it, dear Reinhard. The Fatherland has need of its shining son!”

  Wittgenstein and the others stepped back, fearing Heydrich would attack his long-time friend as cracked, yellow teeth bared themselves in a tight snarl that peered out from between the demon’s thin, broken lips. But the moment passed as quickly as it had come.

  “Reinhard? Speak to me,” said Himmler with the tone of a parent scolding a misbehaving child.

  Heydrich’s human eye continued to remain unfocused, lolling off to one side in a fashion that disconcerted Himmler’s sense of right, while the visceral light of the covered left orb locked onto the Nazi leader’s face with enough force to cause the man to take a shaky step backwards.

  “This body feels strange. The sights. The sounds. The hardness of this world assaults me. I am unused to being confined to mortal flesh.” Heydrich’s voice ranged from the roaring of the ocean tide to the whistle of the north wind. It was music and it was the screams of an infant’s nightmares in the black hours of the evening. “I hunger.” The last words were more an order than anything else ‒ a demand for nourishment.

  Himmler slammed his hands together and called for a feast to be brought forth. In moments, the room was filled with enough piping-hot fare to feed a dozen men or more. Roasted turkey, hams, breads pulled from local bakeries, pastries, and wine were all piled atop a hastily-erected banquet table. The rich smells of cooked meat and gourmet cheeses made mouths salivate.

  Hands with more in common to a beast’s claws than the appendages of men tore ravenously into the victuals. Heydrich ripped handfuls of pork and fowl, shoving gobs into his awaiting maw with enough force to choke a lion. The reaction to the food was nearly instantaneous. Heydrich began retching uncontrollably, spraying the walls and floor of the castle hall with particles of food, spittle, and bile.

  It did nothing for Heydrich. The food failed to satisfy the rapacious craving that engulfed him. He slammed his fist into the table, splitting it into kindling fit to burn. “I need more!” His screech shook even the normally-unshakable Himmler to the core. Through the thick glass of his spectacles, Himmler’s brown eyes latched onto Wittgenstein’s in terror.

  Without waiting for the question to be asked, Wittgenstein answered it. “No amount of mundane food will quench the void within Herr Heydrich.”

  “We sacrificed all of Lidice… the essences of more than two hundred men… and it was barely enough to satiate him,” whispered Frank. Even now the scientist did his best to avoid locking eyes with Heydrich since the man – if that is what he could still be called – had reawakened.

  “The hunger will never leave him. It will gnaw at the base of his soul… whatever there is left of it, for all his days,” added Wittgenstein in a calm, rational tone that appeared to terrify Frank nearly as much as the sight of Heydrich did. “It powers the open connection between the worlds. It bridges the Yawning Void to Jotunheim and requires constant nourishment to remain in place.”

  The concern in the voices of the scientists struck Himmler as particularly humorous. Leave it to homosexuals to be over-emotional when it came to such things. “Do not worry yourself, dear Ludwig,” reassured Himmler, clicking his heels together in his enthusiasm. “We’ll bring him another town soon enough. It is early and there are plenty of Jews to go around still, yes?”

  It was time for the two most powerful men in all of Czechoslovakia to take the stage.

  “Come, esteemed Reinhard,” said Himmler with a Cheshire smile. “The world awaits you!”

  The forced roar of the awaiting crowd surrounded the men as they stepped out onto the waiting balcony beyond.

  CHAPTER 12

  INNOCENCE LOST

  All hope Ian MacAndrew had of fulfilling his promise to Rela Fafek disappeared in the wall of flames that confronted him and Grimm as they arrived in the outlying ghetto she and her family had been forced to make their home. Tears tugged at the corners of the hardened man’s eyes, brought there by more than just the blistering orange light and mind-numbing heat that ripped through the buildings before him.

  The litter of bodies covering nearly every inch of the soot-covered streets told the tale with crystal clarity. Any of the citizens who’d dared to flee their burning homes were greeted by the cruel bullets of the Nazi executioners who had set the fires.

  “Those bastards,” was all MacAndrew could say after a cursory search found the charred, tortured remains of the once-beautiful Rela and her family. The corpse of the raven-haired woman lay in a corner near the heart of the blaze, the body of a small child still clutched tightly to the blackened skin of her chest. “Women… children… the elderly. They killed them all. Why?”

  Hot wind stirred along the road, pulling up ashes into a gang of tiny fire whorls. The lane was littered with the waist-high tornadoes of soot and fireflies. The wisps seemed to brighten whenever they passed the fallen corpse of a villager, pausing as if to pull their departing souls up into the flames cascading through the sky.

  “It is the nature of the Nazis to feed on the weak. It succors them. They are animals and savages masq
uerading as men. Only a fool would expect them to behave in any other fashion.”

  The death surrounding the pair on every side did not seem to affect Grimm as it did the Scotsman. The pale giant would have seen firsthand what the evil of the National Socialist Party could do to the innocents who stumbled into its path. A noise from nearby caused the ghostly hair framing Grimm’s features to snap about. Eyes of ice, un-melting in the unrelenting heat of the inferno, darted back and forth, searching for the source. “Listen.”

  Somewhere just out of sight, voices were raised in misplaced merriment. The sound of men laughing and singing in guttural German slammed into the inflamed soul of Ian MacAndrew. Every syllable winging its way along burned-out and burning streets heightened the rage and the despair building within him. Fingers, thick and calloused, formed an unbroken ring about the leather-wrapped handle of the soldier’s submachine gun. Determination blazed in once-friendly eyes, fueling the man to take two jerking steps toward the approaching sound of enemy soldiers.

  “MacAndrew…” Grimm called out to the Scot, trying to stop his forward movement with the force of his tone. “There is no time for revenge. The woman is dead. Grieve for her once the All-Father’s work is done.”

  It took every ounce of will MacAndrew possessed to keep from drawing his gun on the giant who tried to halt his righteous fury. “To hell with your All-Father! Stand with me or get out of my way, Grimm.”

  The Scotsman didn’t wait to see if Grimm followed, charging ahead to the end of the despoiled block. He waited, silently kneeling in what few shadows remained on the street. The sound of the revelry grew closer, edging up nearer and nearer to MacAndrew’s hiding place. Laughing rang in his ears and it was all he could do to hold himself back, knowing the approaching soldiers would have a numerical advantage over him. Breath halted as MacAndrew feared it would give away his position. Finally, as footfalls struck within a few feet, all MacAndrew could hear was the pounding of his rapidly-hammering heart. By the time the first Waffen-SS warrior rounded the corner, nearly stumbling onto the half-concealed man in the process, a plan had already formed in MacAndrew’s mind.

  Kill them all.

  The barrel of the Owen-gun smashed into the youthful, blue-eyed Nazi soldier as he attempted to raise a dark brown bottle of ale to his lips. MacAndrew jerked the trigger on his weapon and unleashed a flurry of bullets directly into the shocked Nazi’s skull, killing him instantly. Teeth, blood, bone, and brain matter showered down over MacAndrew. For a split second the trailing line of six black-uniformed members of the German army froze, the killing taking them completely by surprise. With the locals already taken care of, the men had no reason to expect an ambush, let alone one as fierce as what faced them.

  A flash of machine gun fire from the gun still lodged in the wet mess of the dead soldier’s head took the next two in line, blasting into their chests and tossing them to the heat-cracked ground, twitching and in spasm .

  Another squeeze of the trigger resulted in the hard clack of the Owen’s slide jamming… gore filling its insides and mucking up any chance of a quick correction. His eyes went wide in response to a quartet of rifles arcing toward him with death loading their sights. Cursing the men’s parentage, MacAndrew threw himself backwards in an attempt to dodge the hellstorm about to be released in his direction. If luck was with him, he’d survive their attack long enough to take another one or two before they ended him.

  If only that damned giant had seen fit to help, perhaps Rela could have had her vengeance.

  A single burst of gunfire barked out, far less than MacAndrew had expected, accompanied quickly by the sounds of moist bodies clubbing to the ground. Confused, the Scotsman peeked out from beneath the corpse he’d fallen beneath.

  Three headless corpses spread out in a semi-circle around the feet of Donner Grimm, a glowing Balmung held shoulder-height at the completion of the swing that created them. Somehow the final soldier – a tall blond man in his late teens or early twenties with a bear skull emblem on his chest the likes of which MacAndrew had never seen before – had ducked beneath the attack.

  Some preternatural sense had saved the private – Eicke, according to the patch on his uniform – from the decapitation that killed his fellows. When the man spied the glowing blade that had been gifted by Odin himself, the perfectly-coiffed soldier growled. Eicke spun, planting a vicious back-kick into Grimm’s ribs, the giant’s body crashing down into the stone wall of a nearby demolished home with enough force to shatter bricks and blast the wind from his barrel-chest.

  MacAndrew bellowed, scrambling to his feet and waving his arms wildly in an attempt to distract the only foe he’d seen actually give Grimm trouble. Wrapped around the waist of the still-dazed Grimm, Megingjord called out in a song sounding of a young girl screaming a warning.

  Eicke’s uniform came away, torn from collar to belt by hands clutched into gripping claws.

  “I will eat your liver!” Eicke shrieked uncontrollably. “Masters, take my sacrifice!”

  A prayer, formed by an unholy combination of the foulest, most vile modulations to have ever been spoken by man, oozed from the young SS trooper’s mouth. The tones called to something out of time and space, something that oxidized Eicke’s skin, turning it incandescent and fading quickly to a black darker than the cold abyss of space itself. Bones cracked and popped as they elongated and reformed into something far less than human, and far greater. Thick wire-hair slid from every pore of the man’s body and blunt human teeth protracted into the vicious fangs of a great carnivore.

  The worst part for MacAndrew was that of human eyes, once clear and blue, shot through with blood, staring back at him from a face best-described only as being most inhuman. Nothing that alien should have the eyes of a man.

  “Get back, Celt… that one is mine!” The passion in Grimm’s shout blindsided MacAndrew. The transformation from man to beast seemed to raise the German’s temper in a manner MacAndrew had only seen during their attack on Reinhard Heydrich. Something about the Chimeric monster struck a rather violent nerve in the giant.

  Leaping to his feet, Grimm launched himself at the altered soldier. Hands strong enough to rend iron locked about Eicke’s growing girth and began to squeeze, eliciting a howl from the bestial man. Titanic strength engineered by beings from beyond the realms of humanity collided with the force of an earthquake. No words were exchanged, only blows and bites. Blood flew and it seemed to MacAndrew that the Earth itself would yield before either of the monsters would.

  The beast that was Eicke growled and spat, claws slashing at Grimm in a desperate, frenzied attack. But it was murder that shone from the giant’s eyes, rage that fueled the roar that broke from Grimm and seemed to shatter the heavens.

  Balmung’s luminous blade plunged into the bloody snout of the Eicke-thing, slicing its jaw from the muscles binding it to the heavy bones of the skull beneath. A twist of Grimm’s wrist shredded its face, carving a pound of flesh from it and removing a glaring orb in the process.

  Eicke squealed, those abominable clawed-hands going to what was left of his face as he flopped to the cobblestone. A wet gurgle drained from his throat. Grimm followed the corpse down to his own knees, panting from exertion.

  Once his feet, locked in position by fear, returned control to his brain, MacAndrew moved over to the monster’s body, hoping to make sense of the events that had just played out. The form lurched, sending MacAndrew sprawling.

  “What?!”

  The veteran’s eyes went wide, watching as the coarse, black hair disappeared into mercurial flesh. Within ten seconds, the half-bestial form of the monster Grimm had de-faced transformed back into the nude corpse of Private Eicke. No sign, beyond those of the violence inflected upon it, remained of the German having been anything other than a normal man.

  “What in Saint Andrew’s name was he?”

  “The boy was touched by the Jotnar. Given st
rength by their words of power and the taste for human flesh.”

  Grimm’s response did little to quench the Scotsman’s thirst for answers, but the soldier pinched off his curiosity. There would be time enough for questions once Heydrich and Himmler had been dealt with. Then, MacAndrew would take time to mourn lost friends and demand answers from the enigmatic Grimm.

  “You were right, Grimm, we need to find Heydrich and end this. Standing here will not bring Rela back,” said MacAndrew, his rage and fury replaced by a weariness he hadn’t been familiar with since his days in the trenches of the Great War.

  A giant hand touched his chest, stopping the Scot from moving away. MacAndrew stared up at Grimm in confusion.

  “Come, little Celt,” said Grimm with a warmth MacAndrew hadn’t seen come from the big man before. The German had scavenged a pair of shovels, one of which was offered to the Scotsman with respect. “Let us bury your friends. The All-Father’s vengeance can wait.”

  Six identical graves were dug in the only patch of ground unspoiled by the callous hands of the Nazis. It took less time than MacAndrew had guessed, thanks in no small part to the untiring muscles of Donner Grimm. Standing over the open crypts, his eyes filled with anguish and heartbreak as his companion lowered the half-dozen charred husks that were all that remained of Rela Fafek, her mother, father, and three siblings. The sight of the infant still clutched in the blackened arms of the woman he had promised safety nearly broke the hardened Scotsman. It was all becoming too much for him… the mindless destruction. The wanton killing. It had to stop. And Ian MacAndrew knew it was his place in life to do it. Here, at least in Prague, the Nazis would be stopped, and it would be by the hands of one Scotsman, born and bred in the sceptered isles of the United Kingdom.