by JL Merrow
I was right. We pulled into a narrow alley just off Kottbuser Damm and came to a halt behind an overflowing garbage bin. Nice. I wondered just how long we could leave the Porsche here before someone set fire to it. “Jon? You’d better go in ahead and make sure this guy you met wasn’t shitting you around.” Also, get them to say we could stay before they caught sight of Freddie Krueger’s less good-looking friend here.
He nodded and hopped out of the Porsche, disappearing through a door with three different colors of paint flaking off it. Silence fell with an audible thud. “Hey, Christoph, you got any bright ideas if this turns out to be a bust?” I asked just to break the tension. Somehow I thought if he’d had a plan B, we’d have been following it already.
“Schreiber has access to the addresses of everyone I know well enough to ask for help,” Christoph confirmed.
I didn’t waste my breath asking Silke. Hell, this was probably the first time she’d been out the house. Just before the atmosphere got so heavy you could choke on it, Jon reappeared with a grin on his face and a dark-skinned, black-haired guy beside him. “Guys, come on in,” Jon said, opening the car door. “Christoph, if you give Burak your keys, he’ll park the Porsche someplace safe.”
Christoph handed over the keys like he suspected it was the last he’d ever see of them or the Porsche. I figure Burak didn’t notice, what with all the trying not to stare and/or barf he was doing. He zoomed off around the corner as we stepped into the hostel.
The place was basic all right, but it was cleaner than my Grandma’s front porch. Bare light bulbs without a speck of dust, the floor covered with linoleum that had been worn thin by scrubbing, and walls as pockmarked as the face of the older Turkish guy who showed us to our rooms. There were two of them, each with twin, hard-looking beds and a tiny sink in the corner with a mirror fixed to the wall above it. I figured that’d mean Silke in one, with the rest of us drawing straws for the floor in the other, but Jon had other ideas. “Uh, Silke?” he said, drawing her aside when our host had muttered something in heavily accented German and waddled back down the stairs. “I told the guy you were my girlfriend. I hope that’s cool. I figured we ought to keep the room count to a minimum.”
I grabbed his arm and pulled him away from her. “Jon, you asshole, she’s fucking traumatized. You seriously think she wants to spend the night with a strange man who’s trying to get into her pants?”
“I’ll take the room with Silke,” Christoph announced, though how that was supposed to stop her from getting nightmares, I couldn’t begin to guess.
Maybe she had the same thought, as she touched Christoph’s arm gingerly, like it was wired up to the mains, and they had a low conversation in the corner. Jon’s German isn’t so hot compared to mine, and I could only make out about one word in ten, so I figured he was totally lost. When they came back, she walked straight up to Jon and looked him in the chest. “It’s okay. I trust you.”
She trusted him? She’d barely met him.
Women.
Thank God I’ve never wanted to date one.
Chapter Eight
Jon headed downstairs to catch up with his friend Burak and maybe charm us up a few cups of tea. Silke disappeared into one of the bedrooms to go do whatever it is girls do. Christoph headed for the bathroom—I guess he was well overdue for a shower.
I slung my backpack in a corner of the other room and started trying to wash Sven’s blood out of my T-shirt in the sink. Then I got busy trying not to puke at the sight and smell of all that rust-colored water going down the drain. Christoph came back when I was halfway through, making me startle guiltily and slop water on the floor. He’d gotten rid of the crusted-on blood and the grime of captivity, but the half-healed wounds on his face were still raw and ugly, the scar tissue that was forming raised and puckered. In a way it looked worse than it had before—with it all laid bare, there was no more kidding myself the damage probably wasn’t as bad as all that underneath the blood.
“You, uh, you want me to take a look at that?” I offered, my eyes fixed on his wounds, though I was damned if I knew what the hell I’d do about them if he accepted.
“No.” Christoph’s reply was curt, angry even. I guess he’d gotten a good look at himself in the bathroom mirror, poor bastard. I wanted to reach out to him, let him know he wasn’t alone. But my hands were all wet, and he was sending out strong don’t touch me vibes anyhow, so I just stayed at the sink and scrubbed at the bloodstains, feeling useless.
When I’d gotten the shirt as near clean as I was ever going to and hung it on the side of the sink to dry, and even mostly stopped shaking, I flung myself on one of the beds. Christoph was pacing through the room, his long legs eating up the floor space in about a bite and a half. I lay on my bed and watched him, hoping he wasn’t about to freak out on me. There was a kind of tension in his stride, a barely suppressed fury, a fierce energy I found attractive even as it scared me. Schreiber might have ripped his face apart, but he hadn’t done anything to spoil the lean, taut lines of Christoph’s torso, the powerful legs, the firm ass. And now there was a new sense of purpose in his movements, restless as they were. I wondered what it’d be like to be the object of all that intense focus. Then again, maybe I already knew. I shivered again as I thought back to when he’d bitten me.
I was pretty sure I hadn’t been turned on at the time, but damn if a little hindsight didn’t bring all the sexual connotations right out into the open. He’d overpowered me, flung me to the ground and bitten me—drawn my blood; tasted my flesh. Had he enjoyed it? For the wolf side of him, that had to be a yes. But what about the man? My mouth filled with the taste of Sven’s blood, and I gagged even as my wolf side reveled in it.
“Something wrong?” Christoph asked curtly.
I swallowed. “I’ll live.” I got up and strode to the window on legs that were stiff and jerky. I was feeling restless myself, like there was a storm brewing or something, but when I looked out the tall, narrow window, the darkening skies were as clear as they ever were in the city.
How the hell had I gotten into this situation? Hiding out, on the run from a pack of torturing, psycho monsters? Helping out the guy who’d ruined my life? Maybe it wasn’t much, as lives went, but it was mine. I could do whatever I wanted, go wherever I wanted.
Maybe I hadn’t had a big house—hell, any house—or a whole lot of money; maybe I wasn’t what you’d call a model citizen. But I could at least be reasonably certain of staying human, damn it. I guess in the end, though, it all came down to this: did I want to be the kind of guy who stood by and watched other men get tortured and imprisoned? And fuck, once you’ve been to Auschwitz and read the history, what sort of schmuck says yes to a question like that?
And okay, maybe the fact I kind of liked the guy had something to do with it too. Maybe.
I turned and leaned against the wall. There was nothing to see outside that interested me half as much as what was in the room with me.
Or it could have been I was just scared I’d see Schreiber and the boys heading up the alley toward us. Christoph caught me looking at the mess Schreiber had made of his face, and I tried to flash him a smile, but it must have fallen flat. “Guess when he told you to get in the cage, you should have gone quietly, huh?” I said, trying to lighten up the atmosphere a little.
He just looked at me for a moment, then made a jerky gesture toward the crime scene above his neck. “This was part of my punishment. Schreiber felt it would prevent me from making a similar mistake in future.”
What the hell? “Schreiber did that to you in cold blood?”
Christoph’s stony gaze didn’t alter. I wondered how much effort it was costing him. I felt sick to my stomach, and hell, it wasn’t even my face we were talking about. “He said that it would serve as a warning. To any who saw me. That those of our kind would know me for what I am, and the humans would run in fear.”
If Schreiber had been there with us right then, I don’t think I’d have been able to stop
myself going for the bastard. Christoph before—he’d had the type of face I go for in a big way. Old-fashioned, clean-cut good looks. And Schreiber had destroyed them. Deliberately.
It was hard enough for me, just looking at him. How bad must Christoph feel about it?
Maybe Schreiber had some mean sense of irony, as he’d left the right-hand side of Christoph’s face untouched. For a moment, Christoph stood at just the right angle from me, and it was like he’d never been clawed. For a moment, the old Christoph was back, looking like Baron von Richthofen on his way out for a duel in the skies. Then I frowned. No—something was different, even on his unmarked side.
He caught me looking again and turned away sharply, a hint of color in that unblemished cheek. Shit. That was it. It was like Schreiber had clawed all the confidence right out of him. Something twisted inside me at the thought. Ruining a guy’s looks? That’s one thing. But disfiguring his soul—that takes a special kind of bastard. I took a step toward him, not sure myself what I was going to do or even say. Christoph didn’t turn, but he went still, a tense line to his jaw—damn, to his whole body—that made the air crackle between us. I took another step, my heart pounding.
Then a thought struck that stopped me in my tracks and made me even sicker. “You think he’s done the same to Ulf? To punish him for not stopping us?”
“No.” Christoph said it just a little too loud. He sighed, flinging himself into motion again, the stillness and tension of a moment ago shattered so thoroughly I half expected to see the floor littered with debris. “I don’t think so. Ulf is just a child—Schreiber wouldn’t do that to him. He’ll know there was nothing Ulf could have done.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Besides, Schreiber and I already had…issues.”
I guessed I’d have to be content with that. But it bothered me, not knowing.
Christoph dropped onto the bed opposite mine. “I need to change. Soon.”
I didn’t think he was talking about his socks. “You mean let your inner monster come out to play?”
He nodded. “The cage, it…made it hard to change. Painful. And it will be full moon tonight.”
“So?” Christoph just looked at me, and my frustration boiled over. “Look, whatever the hell it is, I don’t know, okay? The guy who turned me into a freakazoid didn’t give me a fucking instruction manual.”
Christoph’s jaw clenched. I tried to suppress a sharp twinge of guilt. Damn it, didn’t I have a right to be pissed about what he’d done to me? “We need to change, to spend time in our other form. If we don’t do so voluntarily, our nature will show itself in…other ways. Bad ways,” he added, as if I couldn’t have worked that out for myself. “And the moonlight—we need that too.”
“Yeah? You sure all that isn’t just more of Schreiber’s pseudo-mystic crap?”
He gave me a look I couldn’t work out. Maybe he’d just never thought about it. Or maybe he was just surprised I had. “Perhaps. But we need to change in any case. We may as well do it under moonlight.”
“You want to tell me where the hell you think we’re going to go to bask in this moonlight? If you hadn’t noticed, we’re right in the center of the city here.”
Christoph smiled at me. It was freakish as hell—but it was the first smile I’d seen from him since he’d gotten out of that cage. Looking at it, I got a weird lump in my throat. “I think we should try the Tiergarten,” he said.
“Uh, hold on a minute. What about all those people you were so concerned about the night you picked me up?”
“We’ll go late. Around three a.m. There will be very few people there then.” He stared into space for a moment, still with that weird smile twisting his lips. “And none at all in the zoological gardens.”
I barked a laugh. “You’re shitting me, right? We’re on the run from a psycho who likes to mess up people’s faces, and you want to take a trip to the fucking zoo?”
He nodded. “It will be good for Silke.”
Yeah, right. Because obviously a trip to see the furry animals—or maybe eat them—was going to completely compensate for having a psycho werewolf for a dad. I opened my mouth to argue—and then thought, what the hell? I’d been turned into a freak, I’d—shit—maybe killed a guy, and now I couldn’t handle a midnight jaunt to the zoo? “Sure. Whatever you want,” I said, throwing my hands up in mock surrender. “You’re the boss.”
It was just a figure of speech, okay? But Christoph seemed to straighten.
Jon came back upstairs just then with Silke in tow and four tiny cups of sweet, minty tea, which we sipped, making it last as long as possible. It was actually kind of refreshing. It was way too early to go breaking into tourist attractions, so Jon emptied out the change from his pockets and, with the twenty he'd given me earlier, we worked out we had enough euros for a cheap meal at some dive that’d probably give us food poisoning. Hell, it was better than sitting in the hostel, staring at the walls and listening to our stomachs growl.
Put it this way—Jon might not have been my type, but he was looking tastier by the minute.
“Hey, dude, you want us to bring you something back?” Jon asked, looking past Christoph’s right shoulder.
It pissed me off. “Why would he want that?” I countered, jamming my foot into my sneaker. “He’s got legs, hasn’t he?”
“And a voice,” Christoph said calmly. “I’m coming with you.”
I guess nobody else noticed the way his jaw tightened as we stepped out onto the street. Or maybe they did, because there were plenty of people staring at us as we walked through Kreuzberg.
Assholes. We ended up on a bench outside an Imbiss in the Oppelner Strasse, eating Sudanese falafel in peanut sauce. The bench had been occupied when we’d arrived, but the gang of Turkish boys suddenly remembered someplace else they had to be when Christoph leaned against a lamppost, giving them the full benefit of his bad side.
“Bunch of lightweights,” I sneered as we sat down. Christoph gave me a smile.
The food was tasty, but there was something missing. It was some time later I figured out what I was craving was meat. All the time we were eating, I was mostly preoccupied with waiting for the management to come out and tell us to get the hell out of there and stop scaring away the customers, but I guess they were just real well-disposed toward the facially disfigured.
Or Christoph scared the shit out of them. One of the two.
Afterward, still with way too much time to kill, we followed our noses down to the river, passing under the U-Bahn tracks and ending up on a narrow tree-lined strip along the bank of the Spree. We sat on the scrubby grass, watching the water and the boats passing by as the sun went down. Some of the boats were tourist trips; if only they’d known, the guides could have pointed us out as one of the sights. On your left: the true werewolves of Germany. Yeah, right.
It was all way too goddamn peaceful for the way the day had started. I shivered. I’d killed someone only this morning. As I watched the water, I thought of all the blood that had spiraled down the drain when I’d washed my shirt, and the falafel threatened to make an unscheduled reappearance.
I told myself to get a grip. Hell, for all I knew, Sven was alive and well and hunting us right now. I looked around, feeling a little jumpy all of a sudden.
“They won’t be able to track us through the city,” Christoph said, reading my mind.
“Yeah? For all you know, that bastard Schreiber had us all chipped in our sleep.”
Christoph laughed, the effect macabre. “Too expensive. Otherwise, yes, I think he might consider it.”
“Not so much money in the scrap business, then? Hey, how come he can afford a silver cage, then?”
“You thought that was solid silver? A thin layer of plate, that's all.” Christoph didn't look so amused anymore. “Believe me, it was plenty. No, there’s only enough income from the scrap yard to keep the pack and provide for the basics.” His expression turned bitter. “That’s why I was allowed to keep my job—to bring in extra money.”
“What did you do?” I remembered as I said it that he’d already told me, back when we first met, around a lifetime ago. “Wait—you’re an architect, right?”
Christoph stared out over the water. “I would have liked to be an artist, but…” He shrugged. “It’s not an easy area to make a career in.”
That info was new. I wondered if he’d used to do self-portraits. I figured there wouldn’t be too many of those in his future. Someday soon, Schreiber was going to rot in hell, I promised myself. “I guess business has been booming in the building trade. Here in Berlin, I mean.”
“Not so much now. But in the years just after the Wall came down…” Christoph shrugged. “All at once there was a great swath of new land available, one hundred and forty kilometers long and over one hundred meters wide, going right through the heart of the city. It seemed a sensible business to go into.”
I gave a cynical laugh. “Yeah, you guys didn’t waste any time papering over that little stretch of history. The first time I came to Berlin, I was disappointed as all hell. I’d thought maybe it’d still be there. Like a museum or something.”
He bristled. “You think we Germans are too quick to try to erase the memory of the past?”
Like he was expecting me to deny it? “Maybe,” I said, feeling generous.
Christoph’s eyes narrowed. “What about your own country? If you asked a Native American whether your United States had anything to be ashamed of in its past, what do you think he would say?”
That was… That was different. “Hey! That was centuries ago, okay? You think I go around playing cowboys and Indians for real when I’m back home?”
“No more than I was a border guard or a member of the Stasi.”
There was a ladybug crawling on my pants leg, so I flicked it away. Too stupid to open its wings, the bug landed upside down on a bare patch of earth. I watched it wriggling its legs and seesawing helplessly on its back for a moment. Didn’t the damn thing realize it ought to take some responsibility for its own survival? Here it was, totally dependent on my better nature. I wasn’t sure I even had one. Grudgingly, I nudged the bug with my foot until it was right side up and watched it creep away over the grass. “What about Schreiber?” I asked.
