The Artifact Hunters

by Janet Fox

  Then the light from inside was extinguished.

  CHAPTER 3

  Josef, Anna, and Isaac Wolf

  1942

  Josef and Anna sat in their darkened apartment and listened. They had waited until Isaac was gone.

  “We must leave,” Josef said at last.

  “I can sense it,” Anna said. “The hunter. It’s close and can smell us. Isaac left just in time.” She added, “I will change us now, yes? I think it would be better, even if it gives us away.”

  Josef hesitated, then nodded. When she made the disguise, the shift to hide them as an old couple, he nodded again, approving. “We must hurry.”

  As they left the apartment for the last time, Anna paused and glanced back, wistful. “I loved it here.”

  Josef put his hand on her arm. He swallowed his own grief and worked to master his fear. They had to make it, for Isaac’s sake. Yes. For Isaac’s sake.

  They slipped down the stairs slowly, cautiously, haltingly—as suited the disguise—and out into the night.

  The smell (an odor of rot, a stench as of meat left out too long) greeted them, and they stopped and pressed back against the wall of the building. Anna gripped her husband’s arm tightly. Disguises really only helped against the Nazis. No disguise would fully shield them against the dark creature of the night—the fae hunter—who could see through almost anything and who might sense the shapeshift.

  The cobbles were treacherously slick, especially for a couple who were to all outward appearances very old.

  But it was only a short walk, a few blocks, and they would be in the Old Town Square. Just across the square they’d be safe inside. Anna could almost feel the vibrations of the magic locked inside the musty hidden space, so much magic, magic even greater than the fae that haunted and hunted them.

  The odor of rot grew stronger as they approached the square, and Anna made a small noise in her throat, then stopped and pointed with an age-bent and trembling finger. There, at the top of the Saint Nicholas Church, was the hunter, poised like the statues that graced the facade. But this hunter was not carved of stone; this one, darker than the night, turned its head. Josef and Anna could see the dragon-like wings, the almost-too-beautiful face, the red eyes, eyes like fire.

  They were all frozen for a moment, none of them moving. Anna was certain the fae smelled them. Josef stared across the square as if he could will himself and Anna to the Stone Bell and the wall with its painted symbol just beyond.

  Then, from the far corner of the square, a rumble, and a car appeared, careening across the cobbles in mindless abandon, a black auto. Josef and Anna pressed even more deeply into the darkness below the church steps. The car screeched to a halt in the middle of the square, a door opened, and a Nazi soldier staggered out, his companions laughing behind him as he relieved himself right there, his gray hat cocked back on his head. Josef suppressed the anger that rose in his chest at this desecration.

  He almost wished for the Unseelie fae to dive down from above onto the soldier’s head, then checked that ugly wish. No one deserved such a fate.

  But the Nazi car had startled the fae hunter. Anna felt it lift and drift on silent wings away toward the river and the Charles Bridge. The rot smell was gone and she could breathe again.

  The soldier fell back into the auto, which turned and tore away past the clock tower. As it disappeared, Josef whispered between his teeth, “Now.”

  They ran, no longer attempting to hide. They ran across the open space, making for the Stone Bell. Anna tripped on the cobbles and almost fell, and then she heard it, the fae, sensing them, the dark hunter screaming its deathly scream as it returned to the square, and Anna again smelled rot as the hunter bore down on them. “Hurry,” she cried. “Please.”

  Josef pressed his hand against the wall, and they made it, they made it, disappearing through the door that vanished, leaving a blank plaster wall, and the angry fae hunter beat its leathery wings against the tower above the wall, sending a shower of broken tiles loose upon the cobbles below.

  * * *

  * * *

  Isaac stumbled behind his guide while his heart tried to pound right out of his chest. But the woman was able to sense when a patrol car was coming, and she pressed Isaac back into the shadows until the taillights disappeared around a corner.

  Then, without warning, Isaac heard from behind them a dreadful, piercing scream. He froze, clapping his hands over his ears. The sound echoed down the labyrinth of streets until it died away.

  The woman stopped, turning, as Isaac flattened himself to the wall. “What?” she whispered.

  He stared at her, confused. “You didn’t hear that?” He could see by the crease on her forehead that she hadn’t. But her eyes softened and she took his arm and continued to guide him north out of Prague, away from his home, away from the terrifying scream.

  Isaac had to keep going. Yes. For the sake of his mother and father, and for his own dreams, too.

  But if someone looked in their direction after that—someone or something like a black cat, say, or a Nazi soldier or even Isaac’s own parents—they would only have seen two oddly shaped moving shadows.

  Isaac had made magic happen. Isaac had made a disguise. A shift, which grew out of his startled fear and encompassed them both.

  But he didn’t know he’d done it.

  Not yet.

  * * *

  * * *

  As soon as Anna and Josef were inside the chamber, Anna felt a shimmer from the magic, but she also felt the strain on the old protections, on the thin places between worlds that were now stretched to the point of vanishing.

  Her heart ached for Isaac, for her boy. “We gave him nothing. He knows nothing. We’ve failed.”

  Josef said, “I know. I know. I didn’t realize the hunter was so close. It’s the war. The world is more treacherous, the Order scattered. I would have started his lessons earlier if I’d understood . . . There’s only this one magic we can try. What I began to tell you about before. I’ve made a study of it, these past several days.” He turned to a nearby table and picked up an object, and then held out his hand, opening his fingers.

  It was a watch, a pocket watch with a hinged case that opened to reveal the face, but this one was anything but ordinary. Chills ran through Anna when she saw it.

  “The hunters are looking for us,” Josef said. “But they don’t yet know about him. The fae will sense us as we travel. They’ll try to follow us, especially me. That will distract them from Isaac, and we’ll have enough of a head start—I hope—to keep us safe, too. If we use this watch right, we can plant clues for him that he can follow until he understands it all. All his responsibilities. All his gifts. All the secrets he needs to keep the magic safe.”

  “So much for him to learn,” Anna murmured. “So we travel and he follows?”

  “Yes. Where we map his journey, yes.”

  “But, Josef, artifacts and those who seek them, for good or ill, tend to surface in times of strife and peril. With each travel wouldn’t we be sending him straight into danger?”

  “Yes, possibly,” Josef said, rubbing his forehead. “Very likely. But Isaac needs to learn how important, how critical his role is in preventing worse things from happening. This is a harsh way to train, yes, alone as he will be.” He nodded. “But it cannot be helped.”

  Anna gripped her husband’s arm, her eyes welling.

  Josef touched her hand before he went on. “We’ll meet him in our last trip, and then we give him the watch. He’ll put the puzzle together.”

  “But Moloch is so determined—”

  “Isaac will put it together,” Josef said, his voice firm. “Once he understands, he can . . .” Josef went silent. Then, “He’s clever.” Another pause. “There’s only one problem.”

  Anna waited.

  “We might be lost. Caught in the stream o
f time. It would be like being nowhere, or everywhere.”

  They were both silent, staring at the dreadful silver watch.

  Anna said, “What if I stayed behind, found him and trained him . . .”

  “You know full well I need you with me, Anna. I need your skills. I need the magic you’ve inherited. I can’t make it all happen without you.” Josef stared at the powerful object on his palm. “We need each other. We have to remain together. If we do it right, he won’t be caught.”

  “Maybe not caught in time, but caught by them,” Anna said, her voice rising. “When they realize who he is, if they discover him before he knows how to protect himself. Because we won’t be there to protect him.”

  Josef chewed his lip. “It’s a risk. But it’s our only choice. We have to trust in him.”

  Tears sprang into Anna’s eyes. “Then, after that, we might never see him again?”

  Josef said, “There’s one other artifact I’ve also set aside. But, yes. That is a possibility.”

  After a moment Anna looked at Josef and nodded.

  “We must believe that he can do this.”

  Anna nodded again.

  Josef held out his hand. “Hold on tight,” he breathed to Anna as their eyes met, and she clung to his arm.

  Josef Wolf, turning the crown on the top of the watch, set the time machine in motion.

  CHAPTER 4

  Isaac

  1942

  For a full three weeks, the memory of home kept Isaac fighting to survive.

  Surviving in a dark alley in Dresden where he huddled until he was fetched by yet another stranger. Surviving as he ran through rain-soaked woods, pushing to keep up with a silent smuggler. The smugglers were different with every passing day and sometimes more often than that.

  Isaac wanted to go home. To Prague, his Prague, not the Nazi Prague. He wanted to be back with his friends and he wanted his friends to be back with him, safe, happy, and well, as if they’d all simply been off on a long holiday . . .

  Isaac wanted to be with his mother and father.

  He wanted to walk down to the river and watch the boats and throw bread for the swans and cross the Charles Bridge and stare up at the magnificent castle as it was before it had been taken by the Nazis and become home to the Reichsprotektor—as if that evil man were any kind of king. He wanted to eat the flaky jablečný závin and listen to the music of Dvořák and Strauss, the music that was everywhere when he was little. He wanted to again be allowed inside the Old-New Synagogue, as he had been with his grandfather before the occupation had closed it.

  He tugged at the memories as if they were a lifeline keeping him afloat in swirling dark waters.

  He remembered riding through the streets on his grandfather’s shoulders. His tall, tall grandfather, who had taken him to the square with its sweets’ stalls and bought him strudel and let him eat it right there so they could watch the wondrous astronomical clock and the apostles who appeared and disappeared two by two as the clock struck the hour. Isaac could see them clearly from his perch, his lips and fingers sticky with sweet pastry and apple.

  The odd little apostles with their in-and-out, here-and-gone movements made him laugh.

  But Isaac couldn’t bear to look at one figure on the clock: that creepy skeleton called Death. He closed his eyes and clutched his grandfather tightly.

  It was strange that Isaac should be so tall now and hate it. He hated being a clumsy All-Legs, Too-Tall, like a doomed fairy-tale character. No, not being tall—he hated standing out. If only he could be who he was but invisible. Could be who he was but not awkward. Standing out called attention to him. Because in his new Prague, the now Nazi Prague, standing out was dangerous.

  His parents’ belief in him, and his desire to believe in himself, kept him going as he left his home behind.

  But in Hamburg, Isaac ran up against his worst fears.

  He sat on a bench in the train station, waiting to meet his next contact, tucking his too-long legs underneath the seat. He’d learned to scan a room without seeming to, searching, this time, for a gray knit cap and blue peacoat.

  So, when a man in a plaid jacket limped over and sat heavily on the bench beside him, Isaac stiffened, readying himself to move away.

  Especially when the man began to talk, and much too loud.

  “Have some?” the man offered in German. He leaned into Isaac, proffering a tin of mackerel and a fork.

  Isaac shook his head, sliding against the armrest. Anyone could be an informant.

  “Come on. You look hungry.”

  The man nudged Isaac so hard Isaac was afraid the oil would slop onto his pants, so he took the tin and a couple of bites, and returned the mackerel. “Thank you,” he said softly, with a little smile.

  “There you go.” The man leaned closer and dropped his voice, though not by much. “You escaping the Hitler Youth, then? You’re, what, nearly fourteen?”

  “No, um, I’m only—” Isaac began, but stopped himself. His accent and awkward German might give him away.

  “Ah,” said the man, looking at him knowingly. “I get it.” He nodded. “Escaping them, eh?”

  A couple of Nazi soldiers moved in their direction, pausing before those who sat at the far end of the bench.

  Isaac swallowed hard, and his heart began to pound. Where was his contact?

  “Ah, don’t worry. You’ll be all right.” The man paused. “I’m hoping my sister will take me in. They don’t much like me where I’m from.” He held out his leg, which was twisted in a painful way. “Doesn’t hurt,” he said. “Not much.”

  The soldiers moved closer. “Papers,” one demanded of a woman.

  Panic rose in Isaac. He stood abruptly, whispering, a lie, “Ah, my dad. Must go.” He paused. “Best of, um, luck.”

  “So, I’m right.” The man looked up at him. “Not German. And you’re . . . ah. That’s the thing. And a tall one, too, aren’t you.” Much too loud. The soldiers were staring at the man, but he didn’t seem to notice. They glanced from the man up to Isaac, and back.

  Then he saw. There. On the far side of the terminal. There was a gray cap and blue peacoat. Isaac began to walk away.

  Seconds later he heard a shout from behind. Isaac hunched his shoulders and shut his eyes, wishing he was invisible.

  Wishing he could—would—do something for the man. But what? What could he do? This was not a moment to jump into a hero’s role. Not a moment to be a wolf.

  But the man. His kindness. Isaac turned. He prepared himself, even when his heart was pounding. He raised his hand, ready to intervene.

  But the Nazi soldiers were already halfway across the station, dragging the limping man, whose game leg flapped helplessly as he kicked with his good one. One of the soldiers looked back and—Isaac was sure of this—looked right through him. Straight through, as if his wish had come true and he was invisible.

  He was frozen with surprise as the soldiers and the man disappeared around the corner. An old woman began rifling through the man’s abandoned pack.

  Isaac found the blue peacoat again and he was ushered out of the station. Confusion and then shame filled him, the shame of not having been able to act quickly enough.

  The man had been taken in the same way as he’d seen Miss Rachel taken, and Isaac once again had not been able to stop it.

  A few minutes later Isaac heaved mackerel and more against the outside wall of the station, tears blinding him as the cold brick pressed into his forehead. When he was finished, he straightened, shouldered his pack, and followed his guide.

  He had to keep going.

  * * *

  * * *

  The boat rocked and rolled as they approached shallower water. This was the last stage of his journey, from Norway across the North Sea to Scotland. Isaac would now be on his own, with only the paper in his pocket that he
’d worn thin with folding and unfolding and the hope in his heart of seeing his parents again at last. He lifted his head above the hatch just enough to peer over the gunwales of the boat. Near to sunset.

  “Down,” hissed the crewman, who pressed him back into the hold, sliding the hatch shut. Isaac was sure that between the movement and the fishy smell of the bilge he would be sick. But he held his mouth tight and swallowed his bile as he tried to bend his too-long legs back into his small space among the other refugees.

  They’d been pushing across the North Sea toward the Orkney Islands for what seemed like so long he’d lost track of day and night, especially since the ten passengers huddled together in the cramped hold were only allowed on deck to relieve themselves when it was dark.

  Isaac had hardly spoken to anyone else. Conversation was discouraged: “Sounds travel through water. Can’t risk it.” He’d just met the others—men, women, no one else nearly as young as he was—as they were being smuggled aboard in the dead of night in Stavanger. Plus, his English was practiced but stiff, and that was the only common tongue among them.

  But also silence, as he well knew, was best.

  A smuggler pushed through the refugees, handing each of them a bit of British currency. “For here’s where we leave you. Good luck.” Isaac folded the unfamiliar bills into his wallet.

  After maybe another hour, the hatch slid open again. “Time,” came the coarse whisper, just as Isaac felt the boat’s hull scrape bottom.

  The refugees pushed up through the hatch into the cold wind. Isaac tugged his coat across his chest and heaved his pack to his shoulder. The shallow beach butted against a headland. Distant fortifications loomed like hunched giants.

  As the boat beached, Isaac looked up at the sky and witnessed the infinite magic of the twilight stars.

  At last, he was safe, or so he thought. He leapt from the bow onto the damp sand and trailed the others toward the cliff, stumbling over jutting stones that were hard to make out in the gloom. He turned to look as the boat pushed back into the North Sea, swallowed up quickly by swell, leaving the refugees on their own. Leaving Isaac alone on a beach in a bracing wind.