Midnight in Berlin

by JL Merrow

  I wasn’t sure what to do with the borrowed clothes, so I just left them in a heap out on the landing. I figured I could take them downstairs later. I checked out my shoulder while I had my shirt off, taking off the bandages and giving it a damn good look in the bathroom mirror. It weirded me out a little to see the wound had almost healed—there was scar tissue there already. I chucked the bandages in the bin, finding it hard to believe it had been less than twenty-four hours since I’d gotten bitten. It seemed like maybe there were some advantages to being a werewolf after all.

  That didn’t mean I was okay with what that bastard had done to me. I wondered where the hell he was. “Confined” could mean a lot of things. Maybe it just meant he’d been grounded for a week or two—but then why the hell was everyone being so goddamn evasive when I asked about him? It gave me a bad feeling about the whole situation I was in. And you know what? I hadn’t been feeling any too good about it already. The way I saw it, if there was something they didn’t want me to know, then the sooner I found out about it the better.

  I took a quick shower while I was there, seeing as I didn’t have to worry about keeping the wound dry anymore. Then I headed on downstairs and pretended to watch a badly dubbed episode of NCIS with the guys while my mind worked on other things.

  Chapter Four

  My cell—sorry, room—was starting to look almost homey by the time I’d scattered half my stuff around, digging to the bottom of my backpack. The item I was looking for didn’t get a whole lot of use in my everyday life.

  My alarm clock. A little fold-up travel one my mom gave me when I left home. I guess she was still hoping I’d get a proper job one day and need to be up at seven along with all the other drones. Sorry, Mom, but don’t hold your breath. Still, it’d saved me missing a train or two.

  Tonight, it was going to wake me up when all the other wolves were tucked up in bed, dreaming of kittens and bunny rabbits or whatever the hell they dreamed about ripping the throats out of. There was something I was planning on checking out. The door under the stairs. I’d noticed it both times I’d come upstairs, and thought at first it must be some kind of closet. Then I thought, this was an old house, and what do old houses often have? They have cellars. Where better to keep your troublesome family members, right?

  So I was guessing I’d found where Christoph was hanging out these days.

  I know what you’re thinking. You’re wondering why I even gave a crap whether he was alive or dead, right? I mean, shit, after what he did to me? And when you put it like that… Damn, I don’t know. Put it down to me never liking it when people hold out on me. Put it down to me wanting to find the bastard and give him hell for what he’d done. Put it down to me being nosier than a bishop in a brothel, if you like—just not to me actually caring about Christoph, okay? That guy had one chance with me, and he’d blown it, big time. Hell, about as big-time as you could get.

  “I’m sorry,” he’d said, his freaky eyes wide with regret…

  Words are cheap.

  I set the alarm for three a.m. and shoved it under my pillow. Then I climbed into bed fully dressed, to save time later.

  Thirty seconds later I cursed under my breath, got up and stripped. It’d be just my goddamn luck if Schreiber decided to poke his head in and kiss me good night, and I didn’t want him finding me all dressed up with someplace to go. Actually, that got me thinking. What was stopping me just getting the hell out of Werewolf Central while everyone was asleep? I stood there by the bed with my shirt off, trying to imagine how it’d go. I could steal the Porsche—if Schreiber wasn’t sleeping with the keys, which wouldn’t surprise me—and drive anywhere I wanted. Out of the country. Hell, I could head straight for Berlin Tegel and get on an airplane back to the USA if I wanted.

  And do what? Show my mom and dad my new party trick? I sat down on the bed. Shit. Was I trapped here, then, with a bunch of freaks? Was this going to be my life? No, damn it. Maybe I needed to stick around here for a while yet, but no way were they keeping me a prisoner. I’d learn what I needed from them, and then I’d go.

  And first of all, I was going to find out just what the situation was with Christoph.

  I pushed off my jeans and left them lying on the floor, then slid under the thin comforter. I had to fold the pillow over to get comfortable—I guess they hadn’t designed it with alarm clocks in mind—but eventually I fell asleep.

  I was running through the forest again. Christoph was after me—was nearly upon me. The back of my neck prickled, and I heard him snarl. I was naked, my cock hard and ready. The only reason I was running was because I knew he’d catch me.

  I didn’t look behind, but still I could see him, long legs pumping, teeth bared. He’d picked up that dueling scar I’d always thought he should have from somewhere, and his hair was streaming wild behind him. He was bigger than me, stronger, faster. Maybe I should stop running, maybe I should just give it up. My ass clenched in anticipation. I could almost feel him already, feel him take me, possess me… Somewhere in the distance, a siren started up. I knew I had to let him catch me before the police came, but my legs wouldn’t stop running. My body wasn’t my own—I couldn’t stop. I started to panic…

  And then the siren sounded again, louder. I cursed and fumbled under my pillow until I’d turned off the damn alarm clock. Way to wake the whole damn house, Leon.

  I lay there in the dark, hardly breathing, until I was certain no one else had stirred. You hear all kinds of sounds at night in a house this big and old. Floorboards creaking. Mice skittering in the rafters. Through the open window, the soft hoot of an owl and the rustle of the trees.

  No big pissed-off werewolves, though. I figured I was safe. I grabbed my jeans from off the floor and pulled them on over my half-hard dick, then felt around in the dark until I found my T-shirt. When I’d slipped into my sneakers, I padded to the door and turned the handle. It stuck. For a nightmare instant, I thought I was locked in, but then it turned with a loud click that froze me to the spot while I listened for the outcry.

  After a week or three I breathed again, and pulled the door open. Thank God, it didn’t creak. Now all I had to worry about was two flights of stairs.

  It took me around a year and a half to get down that staircase, testing each stair before I put my weight on it in case it gave me away, walking as close to the rail as I could get because I figured the stairs would creak less that way. Hell, for all I knew, Schreiber had the whole damn place wired with alarms. By the time I reached the bottom, my heart was pounding and my hand was slipping on the rail. I wiped my palms on my jeans and headed around to the door.

  There were two bolts on the cellar door, top and bottom, which, if I’d thought about it, should have clued me in earlier that this wasn’t just a closet. I’d had a lot on my plate, okay? I hadn’t had a real lot of time to go around surveying the fucking door hardware. The bolts didn’t look strong enough to keep a big guy like Christoph locked in, but maybe it was just a symbol? Like these open prisons you get, where everyone’s on their honor not to break for the border? I could see Christoph being a my-word-is-my-bond kind of guy.

  If that was the case, I was going to damn well kill him for making me come looking for him like this. But then again, maybe it just meant he wasn’t up to walking out of there on his own after whatever the hell they’d done to him?

  I shivered and told myself to get a grip. Wasting time pussyfooting around here was only going to get me caught.

  The light hanging over the door was one of those twenty-watt bulbs that only made the place seem darker when I flicked it on. The air inside smelled damp but faintly antiseptic and was colder than the rest of the house. I took a deep breath and went on down those stairs. The wood creaked under my feet, so I guessed I wouldn’t be surprising Christoph or whoever was down here. I just hoped like hell the sound was too quiet to carry upstairs.

  When I got to the bottom, all I could see was shadow. I figured there had to be another light around here somewhere, so
I felt around on the wall for a switch. The bricks felt damp and crumbly. When something skittered away under my fingers, my heart jumped halfway back up the stairs. By the time I finally found the switch, I was ready to beat Christoph to a bloody pulp for putting me through all this. I flicked the light on, blinked, and looked straight at row upon row of metal shelves.

  Each holding about a ton of tinned goods.

  I’d walked into the fucking pantry.

  Chapter Five

  It was my nose and my stomach that woke me up next morning. Food. I opened my eyes, and there was Silke, her face whiter than the plate she was carrying. Meat. Bread. I managed not to grow fangs and fur as I ripped it out of her hands. She showed her appreciation by flinching only a little. I didn’t get to apologize to her as she left the room when I was around halfway through my breakfast, which was around thirty seconds after I’d started. Thirty seconds later, I noticed she’d left a mug of coffee. It was good and not too hot, so I downed it quickly, then pulled on my pants to go get some more.

  Whoa. Looked like I was late for roll call. Everyone else was sitting around the table like they hadn’t moved from last night. I pulled out a chair, the scrape setting my teeth on edge. Or fangs, maybe? I ducked my head so no one would notice when I checked them with my tongue. Nope, still human tooth shaped. I guessed I should be grateful for small mercies. “So, what’s on for today?” I asked.

  Schreiber just stared at me, not saying a word.

  “What is this, telepathy for beginners?” I had a feeling I was about to flunk the course.

  “You will learn to control the change,” he said finally. “Sven will assist you.” Gee, lucky me. “Ulf, also.” I guessed I’d been downgraded, what with Tobias getting the day off like that and only Sven needed to keep me in line. I sure as hell wasn’t going to count Teenwolf. A skinny kid like that? I could bench press him without breaking a sweat.

  There must have been some secret code word or hand signal or whatever, because as soon as Schreiber had finished speaking, the other four pushed their chairs back and stood. I looked out the kitchen window to watch them zoom off—Schreiber and Tobias in a beat-up Ford pickup, the other three in an old Trabant van I couldn’t believe was still on the road. Maybe Schreiber kept it going out of nostalgia for the good old days of the Iron Curtain. It seemed the Porsche was having a day off, or maybe it just felt too weird driving it to a scrap yard.

  The air felt lighter when those guys had gone and smelled even better when Sven stomped out of the room. I leaned forward on the table. “What does a guy have to do to get a cup of coffee around here?” After the night I’d had, I needed the caffeine only slightly less than I needed to breathe.

  I’d been talking to Ulf, but it was Silke who brought me a mug. I thanked her, trying to give her a smile—I was feeling a little bad about the early morning grouchiness—but she kept her eyes to the floor. This time, the coffee was hotter, so I sipped it carefully and set it down again when Ulf passed me the Berliner Zeitung. I took a quick glance at the headlines, but it was kind of disappointing. No, “Werewolves Are Among Us,” or even, “US Citizen Abducted”. I tossed it aside. Didn’t anyone have the first clue what was going on in this city? “So how are you planning on teaching me to control my inner beast?”

  “It’s very practical,” Ulf said with a bright, breezy enthusiasm that ought to carry the death penalty that early in the morning. “We’ll provide stimuli—like food or an impression of danger—and you have to practice staying human. When you can do that okay, we’ll try it the other way around, with you trying to change without stimulus. It’s pretty much the process you’d follow if you were doing this alone but should work much faster.” Ulf grinned, showing dimples, which were probably a big hit with any teenage girls he met but really didn’t go with the werewolf image. “It’s like a baby learning to talk—it does it naturally, but it takes years, and older children and adults can be taught the basics of a new language much more quickly.”

  Quickly turned out to be relative, at least in my case. And yeah, it was practical. It was also tedious, repetitive and humiliating. People always tell you Germans have no sense of humor. After a couple hours of Sven getting his yuks at my expense, I wished it were true. Teenwolf and Sven were zipping back and forth from human to freak like they were flicking through channels on cable. I seemed to be permanently stuck in some halfway house of fail.

  Plus, I had to listen to a whole lot of psychobabble from Sven, who’d obviously been waiting years for a chance to spout off parrot-fashion all the crap he’d learned at Schreiber’s knee. He leaned across the kitchen table on beefy forearms, cold eyes boring into mine with religious zeal. “Schreiber told you we are the true werewolves of Germany, yes?”

  He waited, and eventually I nodded. As I recalled, it’d been Sven himself who’d said it, but agreeing with the guy seemed like the path of least resistance.

  “There are others. Once they were like us, but they became undisciplined. They allowed the bestial side of themselves to take over. That is why you must practice to overcome your bestial nature. You must not let the wolf become stronger than you; if you do, he will take over, and eventually there will be nothing of the human left in you.” He leaned back in his chair.

  My gut felt like some asshole had just tap-danced over its grave. “That happens? Guys just get stuck in freak form? What happens then? I mean, hell, can you cure them?”

  The bastard smirked at me. “When that happens, they are a danger to themselves and others. They must be put down.”

  Shit. “Hey, are we going to start back on my lessons anytime soon?” I was just asking. Not in any way begging.

  Sven laughed anyhow, the fucker. They were crap teachers. Well, maybe Ulf was okay. If you judged by effort and sincerity, anyhow. I wondered if Christoph would’ve been any better.

  Then I wondered why the hell I kept thinking about that bastard. A nasty suspicion formed. “Is there, like, some kind of link between a werewolf and the guy who turned him? Like in all the vampire stories?” I felt like a dick even as I said it, but just in case I didn’t, Sven laughed out loud.

  “You think you’ve walked into Twilight? Your loyalty is to your pack leader. That is all.”

  “So who turned you?” I demanded, gritting my fangs.

  He shrugged and smirked. Bastard. “Schreiber.”

  “And you’re not pissed about that?”

  Sven shrugged. His blond buzz cut glinted in the late morning sunshine that streamed through the kitchen window. “Why should I be? It is an honor to be chosen.”

  “Then how come I don’t feel so fucking honored?”

  He looked down his arrogant, overlarge nose at me. I wanted to smash it all over his smug, self-important face. “You? You weren’t chosen. You were a mistake.” He laughed again.

  Damn it, my teeth were lengthening. I could see by his smirk that Sven had noticed it too. Ulf was hovering beside us, trying to look small and mostly succeeding.

  Shit. I was going to get an ulcer from swallowing so much bile.

  I’d never been so glad to hear the phone ring. Sven kept his eyes on me all the while as he crossed the room to answer it, the smirk disappearing as he listened. “Scheisse. Ulf, I have to go to the yard. Just for half an hour. You’ll be all right here alone?”

  “Alone? What am I, chopped liver?” I griped.

  “Not yet,” Sven said coolly. “Would you like to be?”

  Smart-ass. Sven slammed the door on his way out, making the old windows rattle in their frames. When I heard the Porsche’s engine start, I slumped into a chair while Ulf pulled another out and sat down more carefully. “Well, I guess it’s just you and me, kid,” I said to lighten the mood. “How about we take a break until that asshole gets back?”

  Ulf looked doubtful. “Schreiber said—”

  “Screw Schreiber.”

  “You don’t want to annoy him,” Ulf said seriously.

  “Yeah, about that.” I hesitated, but wha
t the hell, with Sven temporarily out of the way, I wasn’t going to get a better opportunity to ask. “You want to tell me what’s happened to Christoph?”

  Instant shutdown. Although maybe it wasn’t all to do with toeing the party line with Ulf. I hoped so.

  “Christoph’s a friend of yours, right?” I managed to keep it present tense.

  Ulf stared at the linoleum. I’d seen it already; I knew it wasn’t that interesting. Silke had missed a bit last time she’d cleaned, but I didn’t point it out. She had enough on her plate. “Rules must be followed. It’s for the good of the pack.”

  “And there’s a rule against bringing in new members?” I prodded. See, I hadn’t quite figured that one out. Schreiber seemed to have this whole megalomania thing going on; shouldn’t he be welcoming potential new minions with open arms?

  Ulf nodded, picking at a loose thread on his T-shirt. “New recruits must be carefully selected. The pack is only as strong as its weakest member.”

  “Bullshit!” His words left me with ice in my stomach and a foul taste in my mouth. “You carry that thought through, next thing you know we’ll be killing off the old and the weak and anyone who’s different—”

  “It’s not like that!” Finally, he looked up. “You don’t understand. We can’t risk betrayal. Schreiber is a good man. He does these things to protect us—”

  “What things?” I damn near bit his head off.

  Ulf stepped back. Didn’t answer.

  I stepped forward. I was taller than him. Older. Stronger. And okay, maybe I bared my teeth and snarled at him, just a little. “What things, Ulf?” I asked in my most menacing tones. It freaked me out to find something inside me enjoyed being threatening.