Midnight in Berlin

by JL Merrow

  My bad feeling wasn’t getting any better. We followed her into a narrow room with a bed along one wall, a door off to what I guessed must be a bathroom, and an old guy in a soft leather chair. He had a laptop computer on a little table in front of him.

  Dr. Franz Leitner looked as old as Methuselah, although if he’d still been working when the Wall came down, he probably hadn’t seen ninety yet. He was all shrunk in on himself, with a wrinkly bald head surrounded by wisps of pure white hair. He looked up as we went in. “Ah! Excellent. Come in, sit down.”

  We sat on the bed, as there was nowhere else. “Dr. Leitner—” Christoph began.

  Leitner cut him off. “You’re here from Peter?”

  It took me a moment to realize he meant Schreiber. “Uh, yeah,” I said.

  He gave me a sharp look. “Ah! The American.” His beady little eyes fixed on Christoph. “And you are?”

  “Sven Friedrichs,” Christoph lied. None of the emails had mentioned his scarring, just a vague report on having to “discipline” him, so we’d hoped it’d pass.

  Apparently it was the right thing to say. Leitner beamed. “Excellent! Peter gives me splendid reports of your progress.” He frowned. “But where is Peter?”

  “He’s—” For the second time, Christoph got interrupted.

  “Would you and your guests like some coffee and biscuits, Dr. Leitner?” The nurse was still being aggressively chirpy.

  “No, no!” Dr. Leitner scolded her irritably. “We mustn’t be interrupted. This is important government research!”

  Her brown eyes twinkled. “Oh, I am sorry, Dr. Leitner. Perhaps when you’ve finished setting the world to rights?” She all but winked at us as she bustled out again.

  I felt sick.

  “Dr. Leitner.” Christoph leaned forward. “I would be very much interested to see the data you’ve collected on the project.”

  “Of course, of course!” Leitner beamed and shut the laptop. Pushing the table aside, he got up stiffly and doddered over to a cabinet. He pulled out a file and laid it open on the bed.

  I flicked through. It was full of faded photocopies of official-looking reports, many of them marked with the German equivalent of Top Secret.

  None of them was less than twenty years old. “Where’s the recent stuff?” I asked.

  “The file is up to date,” Leitner said tetchily.

  There was a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach as Christoph peered over my shoulder at the yellowing documents.

  “That’s impossible,” he snapped. “There’s nothing here since the reunification!”

  “Ach, the Western authorities.” Leitner made a dismissive gesture. “They have been slow to recognize my work, but I feel confident—”

  “Slow?” Christoph looked like a guy who really needed a desk to thump. “For God’s sake, you’re telling us this project was officially shut down over twenty years ago? What about your emails to Schreiber? You told him to turn new people. To provide data. What was done with all this data?”

  Leitner shuffled to his seat and sat down heavily. “All in here,” he said, patting his laptop with affection. “And in here, of course,” he added, tapping his head. He smiled.

  Christoph lost it. Totally. He surged forward, grabbing Leitner by his shirt front and hauling him bodily out of his seat. “This is it? My whole life, ruined because of a deluded old man living in the past?”

  I leaped up and tried to pull him off the old guy. “Christoph!” I hissed in his ear. “You’re going to have them calling the cops! At least keep the goddamn noise down.”

  “He tricked everyone! Even Schreiber—for God’s sake, the man was living in fear this piece of worthless, impotent filth would find out about his daughter!” He half threw Leitner back into his chair and just stood there, breathing so damn hard I was worried he’d either hyperventilate or freak out again.

  “Christoph, I think we’d better go,” I said urgently. “Now.” Leitner was cowering in his chair like he was scared Christoph was about to rip him to pieces, and right now I figured he was pretty damn close to it.

  “Fine.” Christoph wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, like he’d eaten something nasty. He picked up the laptop and the file, the sudden movement making Leitner flinch. “We’re taking these.”

  “No!” Leitner was quivering like Jell-O, half-rising from his chair in his agitation. “My life’s work—”

  “Is as worthless as you are,” Christoph snarled. He swept out the door, and I followed him, looking around nervously for any sign of big, burly security guys coming to kick our asses.

  Our asses remained unkicked. We passed Claudia in the corridor, but she was preoccupied with an old lady in a wheelchair and didn’t seem to notice we’d just robbed her patient blind. The desk lady didn’t even look up as we crossed the lobby to go out the front door.

  I made sure I got in the driver’s side when we got back to the Porsche. No way was I letting Christoph drive, the state he was in. He hardly seemed to notice anyhow, just climbed in the passenger seat and stared out the windshield, hugging Leitner’s stuff as if there was some kind of reassurance to be found inside. My hand hovered over his leg, not sure if it was safe to land. “Hey, you want to talk about it?”

  “I should have killed him.” Christoph’s voice was dead, flat.

  “Yeah, because prison is always a barrel of laughs.”

  That got his attention. “How can you joke about it?” he demanded hoarsely. “So many lives, sacrificed for one man’s delusions?”

  “We’re still alive, aren’t we?” I countered. Because hell, the only people who’d ended up dead were Schreiber and Sven, and I wasn’t counting either of them as any great loss.

  “We’re monsters.”

  “We’re not monsters,” I said, pissed. “Monsters would have killed the fucker. Hell, probably eaten him too. Although maybe he’s a little old and stringy for that. We’re just…guys. Who go a bit furry now and then.”

  “That’s not what you thought before.”

  “Well, jeez. Don’t I get a day or two to get used to this crap before I have to set stuff down in stone?” I grabbed his arm and dug in my fingers until he turned to look. “Is our situation in any way worse than it was before we went to see this guy?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “Hell, isn’t it better we don’t have some shady organization to fight? Shit, Christoph, don’t you want to stay alive? You’ve got everything back now—your house, your car, control over your life—everything.” I stopped, breathing hard, and managed a twisted smile. “And I know I’m not the only one who enjoyed going hunting in the Tiergarten.”

  Christoph took a deep breath. He put the laptop and the file down on his lap, and rubbed his face with his hands. “Just—take me home.”

  The house was kind of quiet when we got back. I guessed Michael and his boys hadn’t wasted any time. A tour of the bedrooms confirmed it—they’d packed up their stuff and left already. Ulf was watching TV, a mostly empty packet of cookies by his side.

  “I’ll be in my room,” Christoph told us shortly. I let him go. I figured he’d need a little time to come to terms with things. I sat down on the sofa next to Ulf and ate a cookie while in front of me, a dubbed John Wayne laid down the law in a voice two octaves too high.

  I had to think. Not about Leitner—hell, I hadn’t been lying when I’d told Christoph I was glad about the way things had turned out. Yeah, it sucked that we’d been turned into werewolves for no real reason. But I had a hunch getting sliced and diced on some shady government dissection table would have sucked just a little worse.

  Now that threat was over, it was time to concentrate on the real problems.

  Michael, Björn and Patrick were out of the picture, off to an all-you-can-eat chicken buffet down south. Sven was dead, and so was Schreiber. Silke and Jon would be leaving to go back to the wolf pack—the real wolf pack. Ulf…well, I guessed he might want to go back to his family. See his little sisters again. Or he could stay
here; I couldn’t see Christoph kicking the kid out.

  That just left one loose end untied.

  With most of the rooms cleared out, it didn’t take me long to work out which one belonged to Tobias. He didn’t have a whole lot of stuff—a few clothes, a couple of books. When I picked up a battered translation of The Da Vinci Code, a letter fell out. It was in spidery German script, asking “Tobi” why he hadn’t come back home to visit lately. I folded it back up and shoved it back where I’d found it.

  Then I went down to the Porsche and grabbed my backpack out of the back. I emptied the contents out onto the kitchen floor—did I really own that many pairs of dirty socks?—then took the empty pack up to Tobias’s room. I couldn’t get all of his shit in there, but I figured he wouldn’t miss his bulky fleece jacket for a couple more months anyhow.

  About to head downstairs, I halted and dumped the backpack for a moment. Sven’s room was next to Tobias’s—no surprise there—and had a lot more stuff in. Fuck knows what we’d do with it all. Burning was my preference. On the dresser was a wallet with Sven’s driver’s license and other crap inside, and a picture of Sven looking cocky with his arm around a little old lady. Mom? Grandma? I guessed I’d never know. It unnerved me, thinking of the old lady waiting for a call or a visit from Sven that never came. Nothing I could do about it now, though. I grabbed the wallet and the photograph and shoved them both into the side pocket of the backpack.

  I bumped into Christoph just as I got to the back door. His face went stony. “You’re leaving?”

  “What? No! No way.” Damn—I guess it must have looked that way to Christoph. “I just need to take care of something out back,” I said awkwardly. I didn’t think he’d try to stop me, but I figured it’d be better not to give him the chance.

  He looked at me for a long moment. “You need a hand?”

  I shook my head. “I’m good. Shouldn’t take long.”

  He nodded and let me pass.

  The birds were twittering away again in the trees. I guessed they didn’t give a damn about our little human—or not so human—dramas down below. It was actually an encouraging thought, in a life-goes-on sort of way.

  I ambled down the path like I was taking goodies to Grandma, then stood for a moment outside the old house, just looking at the place. I wondered what Christoph planned to do with it. He was an architect; he had to have something planned. If he’d been anyone else, I’d have assumed that’d involve a “sensitive” modernization that to the untrained eye was just a goddamn eyesore, but I figured Christoph had the talent to really bring this house to life. I tried to imagine it with bigger windows, maybe some skylights, more light inside…

  And I was stalling. I pushed open the door and stepped inside. The scent of blood wasn’t so strong this time, for which I was grateful. It was still dingy, musty and creepy as hell.

  Tobias didn’t speak as I entered the room. He was awake all right, sitting huddled in on himself in that damn cage. I put the backpack down by the door, and approached him. “Listen,” I said. “Schreiber’s dead, and Silke’s gone. Sven didn’t make it either,” I added, in case he was still clinging on to some desperate, deluded hope the guy had somehow managed to heal from near decapitation. “Cages…really aren’t my thing.” Understatement of the fucking year. As soon as I could work out how to dismantle that thing without getting third-degree burns, it was history. Maybe we could make a special delivery to that scrap yard of Schreiber’s. “I’m going to give you the key and trust you to get the hell out of here without hurting anyone. I packed up your stuff for you, so you don’t need to come in the house. Just…go.”

  He didn’t answer. I unhooked the key from its place on the wall, remembering to shield my fingers with the end of my shirt, and put it carefully on the floor where he’d be able to reach it through the bars. I didn’t take my eyes off him for an instant, but he didn’t make a grab for it, just watched me as I backed out of the room.

  Christoph was leaning on the wall, waiting for me when I got back to the main house, arms folded so the muscles bunched up, stretching his T-shirt. The sunlight fell on his face and on his lean, strong forearms. He looked good enough to eat, and I was hungry as hell. “You let Tobias go,” he said without inflection.

  I folded my arms, mirroring his posture. “You got a problem with that?”

  He half smiled. “No. But you should have let me go with you.”

  “Sorry, Mom.”

  Christoph raised an eyebrow but said nothing. I stood there for a moment, looking out at the woodland, wondering if I should ask him how he was feeling about all the Leitner crap. In the end, I decided to let that sleeping wolf lie. I unfolded my arms and moved to go past Christoph into the house.

  “So.”

  I turned. “Yeah?”

  “It’s as over now as it ever will be.” He looked down even as my chest tightened at his words. “We are what we are—that can’t be changed. But there should be no more fighting.”

  I breathed out again. “And?”

  “What will you do now?”

  “Me? Hell, make a phone call, I guess. See if I can get my old job back. If not, I guess I better start looking for something else. Hey, maybe I could get something nearer your office. We could meet up for lunch and stuff.” I kind of ran out of breath at the end there.

  Christoph was smiling as he unfolded his arms, still leaning against the wall. “If you don’t find anything…it’s about time I got on with renovating this place. Some help would be good.” His mouth twitched. “The last owner left it in a terrible mess.”

  My lips quirked in response. “Yeah? Animals.”

  Christoph laughed, the sound joyous and free. I took a step forward until we were almost touching. “So you’re okay with me staying here?” I asked, feeling his closeness work its magic on me.

  His arms came up to enfold me in warmth and comfort and the deepest sense of belonging I’d ever felt. The heady male scent of him surrounded me, mingling with my own. “Yes. For as long as you like.”

  “I’d better warn you, it’s likely to be a while.” I shrugged, my breathing getting faster as our bodies responded to one another, a knife-edge of pleasure and need and promise. “After all, I just gave away my backpack.”

  About the Author

  JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea. She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again. Her one regret is that she never mastered the ability of punting one-handed whilst holding a glass of champagne.

  She writes across genres, with a preference for contemporary gay romance and the paranormal, and is frequently accused of humour.

  Find JL Merrow online at: www.jlmerrow.com

  Look for these titles by JL Merrow

  Now Available:

  Pricks and Pragmatism

  Camwolf

  Muscling Through

  Wight Mischief

  To save his lover, he must become his own worst nightmare…

  Camwolf

  © 2011 JL Merrow

  Dr. Nick Sewell. Non-conformist. Werewolf. The first puts him at odds with his colleagues’ idea of how an All Saints College lecturer should behave. The second, bestowed upon him by an ex-boyfriend, puts him at odds with himself.

  There’s his tendency to change into a wolf on the full moon. And his visceral attraction to Julian Lauder, a troubled young German student. Despite his determination not to act on his desire, Nick’s brutal response to seeing Julian with another man frightens them both. At first.

  Then Nick learns that Julian is not only a naturally submissive werewolf, but one who has learned better how to deal with just being a werewolf. That explains the attraction, but it doesn’t make it any easier when the tables are turned, and Julian—once the student—is now teaching Nick…who still isn’t happy about conforming to the “werewolf way.”

  Meanwhile, reports of a strange
wolf stalking the town barely register on Nick’s radar—until Julian disappears. Accusing eyes—both wolf and human—are turned toward Nick. Even with the help of friends, hope is growing cold as the kidnapper’s trail. Unless Nick gives free rein to the wolf’s inhuman power…

  Warning: Contains hot outdoor man-on-man sex, alliterative insults, allusions to abuse, and really awful sherry.

  Enjoy the following excerpt for Camwolf:

  Nick found himself smiling up at the boy from his desk. Julian appeared a little flushed. As usual, he was rather more nicely dressed than the average student, in well-fitting jeans and a soft cream sweater Nick strongly suspected to be cashmere.

  “I wanted to ask, have you enjoyed the books?” Once again, his tones were oddly formal and German-sounding.

  “Ah, yes, thank you—although I should return this one to you,” Nick said, handing over the Kästner with an inexplicable feeling of reluctance. “I already have a copy. It’s a favourite of mine, as it happens.”

  Julian smiled. Nick wasn’t prepared for the feelings that engendered in him, either. “I’m glad. I have read his other books, but I like this one the best.”

  Nick nodded, feeling a little foolish at not quite knowing what to say. “Ah—can I offer you a coffee?” he asked. Surely, even among werewolves, the offering of refreshment was traditional? Although, of course, a pack-raised werewolf might have very different ideas of what refreshment to offer. No. He was being absurd.

  “Thank you. White, no sugar, please.”

  Well, if Nick wasn’t behaving how a werewolf should, Julian at least seemed to be taking it into his stride. Perhaps Nick would pluck up the courage to offer him a digestive biscuit. Or, if he was feeling really brave, a Jaffa Cake. Nick grinned at himself under cover of boiling the kettle.