Midnight in Berlin

by JL Merrow

  “I guess we’re eating somewhere decent tonight,” I prompted him when he failed to hand any of them over.

  Christoph looked at me. “You’re staying?”

  That was the sixty-four-dollar question. “You’re not?” I hedged.

  “You know my plans.” He stared straight ahead as he marched off a bit faster than I’d have liked.

  “You’re really going to do it?” I didn’t say out loud what I was talking about. We were walking down the street; you just don’t say things like “Kill Schreiber” out loud when you’re walking past families with kids and teenage couples with their hands on each other’s asses.

  “You don’t think I have cause?”

  “Okay, so he fucked you over—but shit, Christoph, he could…hell, you know. He’s got the others on his side, and there’s just one of you.”

  “He’s taken everything I had.” Christoph did that middle-distance stare thing, as if all the stuff Schreiber had taken from him was lying in a heap up ahead on the sidewalk.

  It was hard to argue with that, but I gave it my best shot. “You’re still alive, aren’t you? Isn’t that worth something?” He stopped suddenly. I walked on a couple paces before I realized, then had to backtrack, feeling like a dork.

  Christoph didn’t speak until I’d gotten back to where he was standing, blocking traffic on the sidewalk. Pissed-off pedestrians kept turning, I guessed to tell him to move his ass, then getting a glimpse of his face and changing their minds. “If you looked like I do now, would you still think that?” he said softly.

  Teeth in my shoulder… “Hell, no, but come on, you’ve known me for several days now. You have to have noticed I’m kind of shallow.” I gave a nervous laugh and was blown away when his mouth twitched in response.

  “Fine.” He started walking again. “You have any objection to Thai food?”

  “Me? I love the stuff. But hey, I’ll eat anything. Particularly if someone else is paying.” Christoph’s pace was a little easier now, his shoulders not so tense, and I felt myself relax a little in response.

  We picked up the subway, the next station we came to. After all the walking we’d been doing lately, it felt like stepping into a limousine. I guess Christoph figured it’d throw off pursuit. Like the modern equivalent of crossing running water or something. If there still was any pursuit, that was. It looked to me a lot like Tobias and Michael had headed on back home with their tails between their legs. Metaphorically speaking. We didn’t grow tails when we changed, not like Silke. Another thing that pissed me off. A tail would have been pretty cool. I tried to imagine Christoph with a tail, and had to stop in a hurry because it was having an unexpected effect on my libido. Christoph was already giving me funny looks, like he could smell my arousal. I wanted to walk down the subway car and open a window, but I figured that’d only draw attention to it.

  “The Porsche’s out of sight, right?” I asked, mostly to try to get both our minds off the subject of my dick. Then I thought about what I’d said and started to worry a little. Sure, there wasn’t exactly a shortage of Porsches in this city—but in Kreuzberg? Leaving your expensive car on the road there was just asking for someone to come and trash it.

  “An underground car park. I asked Burak while you were sleeping.” We were standing at the end of the subway car, Christoph with his bad side to the wall. I noticed a girl who’d gotten on at the last stop giving him the eye, and moved a little closer to him.

  “Maybe we should dump it anyhow,” I suggested reluctantly. I’d liked that car, despite the bad associations. “It’s kind of conspicuous.”

  “It’s my car. We’re keeping it.” Christoph’s voice was flat, take it or leave it.

  I left it.

  The girl was still looking when we walked through the car to get off at the next stop. I saw her eyes go wide as Christoph passed, heard her sharp intake of breath even over the flat tones of the station announcer.

  I may have snarled at her a little. I figured she had it coming.

  “So where are we going now?” I asked as we emerged into daylight again. “It’s kind of early to eat.” Although to tell the truth, ever since I’d gotten bitten, my stomach seemed to think it was never too early to eat.

  “Here.” Christoph nodded toward an Internet cafe a little way down the street.

  We went in and handed over a few euros. All the terminals were busy—hell, for at least five minutes after we got in and started looming over people’s shoulders.

  Okay. Maybe it was Christoph who did the looming. I just stood around and cleared my throat loudly.

  “You’re getting in touch with someone?” I asked. We parked our asses on the swiveling stools in front of a terminal that had suddenly become free. “Who?”

  “No one. I want to show you something.” Christoph kept his voice low, like he had something to hide. Apart from the obvious, that was.

  “Isn’t this place a little public to be watching porn?” I quipped.

  He gave me a sharp look. “The email I sent from the office. It was these files.”

  I’d have preferred the porn. There were a lot of files. Christoph flicked through them with total disregard for anyone for whom German was a second language. “Hey, slow up, will you?” I griped. “Some sort of commentary would be useful too.”

  “Okay. You see these emails?” He showed me a bunch of screenshots. “They are between Schreiber and a man identified only as Dr. L. His email address, as far as I can judge, is just a meaningless combination of simple words and numbers. And he’s careful enough to use a proxy.”

  I read them through. They were confusing, like when you turn on the TV to watch a movie and find you’ve missed the first half, the bit where they actually explain what it’s all about. What I did notice was that they seemed to be about members of the pack—kind of like reports on them. Names weren’t used, but hell, who else could Schreiber mean by M, C, U and so on? They went on about stuff like adaptation to the change, anger issues, pack loyalty, all that sort of crap—but all in brief sentences, more like updates than reports.

  “Says here C is still giving cause for concern,” I pointed out to the C in question. “I guess Schreiber got that one right. How the hell did you get all of these?”

  Christoph smiled. “I hacked into his email account.”

  I whistled. “So who’s this Dr. L guy?”

  “I don’t know.” Christoph was silent for a long moment. I was about to point out we were paying for Internet access by the half hour when he spoke again. “I believe he is the man who created us.”

  My stomach lurched. “What, you mean like the first werewolf?” It came out kind of hoarse, so I cleared my throat. “That’s impossible—unless you’re saying we’re going to live forever? Shit, does that mean we’re undead? Like zombies or vampires or something?” I guess my voice rose a little at the end there. I drew in a breath sharply as Christoph grabbed my hand and put it to his throat. “What…?”

  “Do you feel that?” he asked, not letting go.

  Feel what? Feel the warmth of his skin, the roughness of his stubble—oh. The soft, steady throb beneath my fingers told me his startlingly intimate gesture was innocent—at least on his part. Damn it. “Your pulse.”

  “Yes. The undead don’t, as a rule, have beating hearts—that’s one thing they’re renowned for. We’re alive.” Christoph’s gaze caught mine. Maybe I just imagined it but it seemed like he colored slightly as he let go of my wrist. “And there are clues in the other emails—things I haven’t shown you yet. I don’t think Dr. L is one of us. He is a scientist, collecting data.” Christoph’s jaw tensed, and he looked down at the table, so I could barely hear when he spoke again. “The evidence is not conclusive. But I suspect that we—the half wolves—have been infected with a mutated strain of the werewolf virus, if that is what it is. Something different from the full wolves you met at the zoo. Something created in a laboratory, by this man.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  After
the bombshell Christoph had dropped, I barely noticed where we were walking when we came out of the cafe. My mind was whirling so fast I was getting motion sickness. It was bad enough when I thought I was some kind of supernatural freak. Now to find out I was some mad scientist’s goddamn lab rat… “I need a drink.” I looked around. There was a bar on the corner. “Now would be good.”

  “Getting drunk won’t solve anything.” God, Christoph was a tight-ass at times.

  “You’re telling me you didn’t get drunk when you found out what you were?” I couldn’t look at him. I don’t know why. Just—seeing his face, the look in his eyes, made it worse, somehow.

  “No. I didn’t. And neither will you.”

  I was pissed. “Who died and put you in charge?”

  “Nobody, yet,” Christoph said in a voice heavier than a tombstone.

  I turned to him. “If all this is true, maybe it’s Dr. L you should go after, not Schreiber. I mean, hell, if it hadn’t been for that bastard mixing up his own personal anthrax for shits and giggles, we wouldn’t even be here, would we?” And Dr. L—hell, he had to be an easier target, right? I’ve known a few scientists, and not one of them could give Mike Tyson a run for his money even now. If Christoph went after Dr. L, I figured there was more chance he’d come out alive. I didn’t even want to think about the alternative.

  Christoph stared down the street. He didn’t answer. I figured that was good—he was at least giving it some thought. Time to change the subject before he made any snap decisions. “So are we going to go to this Thai place of yours, or do I have to go catch my own food like last night?”

  His mouth twitched, a flicker of a smile. “It’s this way. Not far—we can walk it.”

  My feet were skeptical. “Yeah, right. Like you said your office was just around the corner and it took us about a day and a half to reach it.”

  “I thought you enjoyed seeing the sights?”

  “There’s only one sight I want to see right now, and it’s a pretty waitress bringing me a shitload of food.” My stomach rumbled right on cue.

  He gave me a sharp look. “You go for pretty girls?”

  “Hell, no, but I can appreciate the scenery, can’t I?” I didn’t miss the way Christoph relaxed when I said that. Interesting. Maybe he didn’t want to be safe from my advances after all? “You’re telling me you’d rather be served by some ugly old hag dressed in a sack?” I carried on rather than think too hard about what I wanted.

  “I’d rather be served by a pretty young man.”

  He was smiling, but my mood turned sour quicker than milk in the desert. “Like Flower-boy?”

  “You mean Florian? You didn’t like him. Why not?” His tone was neutral, but his eyes were sharp.

  My face began to burn. Damn Christoph for making me hurry to catch up with those sky-high legs of his. “He’s an asshole. He’s the kind of mincing, simpering pretty boy who gives the rest of us a bad name.” I felt like a jerk even as I said it. Did I really think that?

  “He’s a very good architect,” Christoph said so damn mildly I was sure he was laughing at me. “His design portfolio is really quite superb.”

  “And if I ever see him again, I’ll tell him where the hell he can shove it. I bet he’d love that too, the ass-kissing little bastard.”

  Passersby stared as Christoph threw back his head and laughed out loud. I looked around nervously in case one of them turned out to be a wolf in people’s clothing. “I don’t see what the hell’s so funny,” I hissed, trying to hammer home the message that quiet was good.

  Christoph just gave me a look. “No?”

  “No. Are we there yet?”

  I was expecting another vague, “It’s just a few streets,” so I was wrong-footed when he came to a halt and pushed open a narrow, grey door. “Yes,” he said unnecessarily.

  The place was modern, with bench seating along the wall underneath vivid abstract art in deep red-and-orange tones. No cloths on the tables, but the cutlery was fancy and the napkins were folded into little lotus flowers. I decided that seeing as I wouldn’t be paying, I wouldn’t bother looking at the prices on the menu. I have a phobia about large prices too. Megaloprixaphobia? Something about that didn’t sound quite right. Actually, it sounded a lot like a whole different phobia—one I very definitely didn’t suffer from.

  There weren’t many people in the place apart from us, but it was still early. The waitress who came to seat us wasn’t all that pretty, as it happened—or maybe it was just her expression when she got an eyeful of Christoph. I decided the food here had better be damn good, and she could kiss my ass if she thought she’d be getting a tip.

  It felt weird, sitting down in a restaurant with Christoph. It felt like a date. You know, that awkward first real date with a guy you hooked up with in a bar, where you’ve already covered all the easy stuff like names and what you each do for a living, and small talk just seems dumb because you’ve fucked already. But you haven’t gotten to know the guy well enough to have the first clue what the hell else to talk about.

  Christoph and I hadn’t even fucked, although I guess we’d exchanged bodily fluids, if you count him biting me hard enough to draw blood. My dick gave a little jump as if to say yeah, that counted.

  Christoph gave me a look.

  “What?” I snapped.

  “Nothing,” he said, giving a half-smile. “Are you ready to order?”

  “I’m ready.” Damn, why did everything I said turn out to be a double entendre? I twisted in my seat to wave at the waitress. At least she wouldn’t give a damn if I was blushing or not.

  We didn’t bother with any fancy hors d’oeuvres, just ordered a variety of meat dishes off the randomly trilingual menu, with a side order of rice so they wouldn’t think we were weird. “You ever bring Flower-boy here?” I asked when the waitress had gone.

  “His name is Florian,” Christoph said with a suspicion of a smirk. “And no. He prefers a vegetarian restaurant close to the office.”

  “A vegetarian. Why am I not surprised?” I took a deep breath. It was time to quit stalling. Especially as Christoph was looking ready to laugh at me for getting my hate on about Flower-boy. Again. “Who do you think this Dr. L is? Government? Or just some nutjob with a lab?”

  Christoph sobered fast. “Not government. Or if he is, his experiments with werewolves are strictly unofficial.”

  “You sure about that? I mean, hell, based on past history—”

  “Own many slaves, do you?” Christoph didn’t quite do the table-thumping thing, but his eyes narrowed and his fist clenched. I figured it had been a close call. I wondered if the lotus napkins would have survived.

  I gave an exaggerated roll of my eyes. “Touchy, much?”

  Seemed he was still in rant mode. There was another flash of that seductive energy, that passion I’d noticed half a lifetime ago. “You can’t judge my nation—any nation—based solely on the actions of fanatics in its past. Don’t you realize it’s precisely because of the past that the German government would never sanction such research? Unlike America and Britain, Germany has outlawed research on embryos—do you really think it would allow research on people?” His eyes were flashing, and his hair swung wild around his face. Damn, it was hot.

  I made calm down motions with my hands. “Okay, okay, I get it. You’re the poster boys for ethics these days. Jeez.” I glanced out across the restaurant, wondering if our food would turn up anytime soon to break the tension. Before I found some whole other way to break it that really wasn’t appropriate in a public place. I didn’t even know why I kept having this same argument with Christoph. Hell, I was in Germany because I liked the place—and the people, crazed werewolves excepted. He was right—in a lot of ways, they were a damn sight more liberal and enlightened than your average redneck.

  Maybe I’d just had one Jewish friend too many asking me what the hell I was doing in the home of the Holocaust.

  I turned back to Christoph as he spoke again. This time his to
ne was more hesitant. As if maybe he regretted going off the deep end like that. It had the weird effect of making me listen all the harder to what he was saying. “Some of the emails allude to a long-term association between Schreiber and Dr. L.”

  “You mean, dating from his Stasi days?” A thought struck. “Hell, how long has Schreiber been a werewolf, anyhow?”

  Christoph frowned. “He was a border guard, not Stasi.”

  I shrugged. “Same difference.”

  “No. There is a difference.” There was a firm line to his jaw that kind of distracted me for a minute. Made me wish we had a little more privacy so I could get him to channel all that aggression, that intensity into something a hell of a lot more fun than an argument. “And I don’t know for certain how long,” he carried on, “but obviously, since before Silke’s birth. But that was some years after the reunification.”

  “This has to be the longest-running experiment ever,” I muttered, playing with my lotus-flower napkin and watching it fall apart into a creased-up mess. I looked up. “But why?”

  The waitress came back with our food, and nothing could have kept me from falling on the dishes of spiced meat like I’d been starving for a week. I guess Christoph felt the same as he didn’t answer my question. We shoveled down lamm massaman, rendang sapi and ente classic like we were worried the waitress was going to take it away and give it to someone else if it didn’t look like we were appreciating it.

  Once I was able to think with something other than my stomach, I asked him again. “Why? What the hell is the point of turning people into freaks?”

  Christoph licked a trace of sauce from his lower lip, making me forget what I’d asked for a moment, my libido coming up with plenty of ideas as to what else he might want to do with his tongue. “I’m fairly sure the original intent was to create an enhanced corps of soldiers. Think about it—they would have increased strength and healing ability, a huge advantage in unarmed combat, but still be capable of carrying guns.” He laughed suddenly. “Did you know that at the end of the Second World War there was an initiative called Operation Werwolf? That only involved human soldiers—but perhaps it gave this Dr. L ideas.”